The Conversation Factory

My guest today is James Rutter, Chief Creative Officer at COOK, the pioneering frozen food company, where he oversees internal and external branding and communications. COOK is a founding UK B Corp, committed to using its business as a force for good in society, and has been ranked in the top 100 Best Companies To Work For every year since 2013. COOK's award-winning frozen meals and puddings (which are desserts, btw) are made by hand in Kent and Somerset, and sold from 98 of its own shops nationwide, in 950 concessions and through its own home delivery service.

James joined COOK in 2010 after 15 years as a financial journalist and editor, and he speaks and writes regularly about purpose-driven business and brands. You should really follow him on LinkedIn!

James and I talk about the glory that is a proper Fish Pie, and about citizenship and participation. James' leadership philosophy for his internal team is grounded in a sense of play and a recognition of community.

He shares some of his favorite insights from Peter Block's book, "Community: The Structure of Belonging" and the deep value he's found in working with Jon Alexander on Citizenship and Participation. Jon Alexander is the author of the bestselling book, "Citizens." James references Jon Alexander's Participation Premium Equation in the opening quote.

There is so much goodness in this episode!

At Minute 27 James shares his community and transformation insights from Peter Block, including the essential idea that a small group, a community, is the fundamental unit of change, especially when that group is grounded in possibility. He also goes to share the impact that Block's ideas of Inversion have had on him:

As James says, summarizing Block:

"It's not the performer who creates the performance, but the audience… And again, in a conversation sense… it's the listener who creates the conversation whereas we often think it's the speaker who creates the conversation… it's the child who creates the parent, not the parent who creates… this is (not) some kind of answer, but… a thought to play with. What if that's the way it works? How would you approach it differently? If the audience creates the performance, then how are you seeking to bring the audience into it? How are you giving them the power?"

At Minute 42 we discuss the importance of Connection over content:

"...you've got to seek to build the human bonds first before you seek to do whatever the worky thing is you want to do."

In essence, we are marinating in Danny Meyer's ideas of an Employee-First workplace, which is why we talk, at the end of the episode, about how Happy Cooks make Happy Food, referencing an earlier conversation we had.

And James insisted on talking about my Mom being on the Mike Douglas show with John Lennon, Yoko Ono and Chuck Berry in 1972, hosting a historical cooking segment - this episode is famous because it's the first time John and Chuck met and Played together. You can see A Tiny Video Clip of my mom on TV here (most of them seem to get pulled down). At a crucial moment in the cooking segment, my mother, just 22 and not actually my mother yet (or anyone's!) realized that the studio band was playing chaotic music, and that everyone was in a chaotic space, and she announced that unless we had a calm, peaceful environment, the food would taste chaotic - our intention and our energy would flow into the food. The Host, Mike Douglas, asked the band to play something quieter and more mellow, and John Lennon, assigned to cut cabbage, began reciting the mantra he wanted to suffuse the food:

"Rock n Roll…Rock n Roll…Rock n Roll"

What do YOU want to suffuse your work with?

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

James Rutter on LinkedIn

Fish Pie Recipes!

Peter Block on Community: The Structure of Belonging

Jon Alexander's book Citizens

Jon's Agency Equation: A Proposal

Agency = Purpose + Belonging + Power

Agency: the ability to shape the context of one's life

Purpose: the belief that there is something beyond your immediate self that matters

Belonging: the belief that there is a context to which you matter in turn

Power: practical access to genuine opportunities to shape that context

Exit, Voice, Loyalty: An essential book on people and organizations

Finding flourishing and play at work - inspiration in https://www.punchdrunk.com/work/

Quotes no one said: "Teach Them to Yearn for the Vast and Endless Sea"

Via quote investigator: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/08/25/sea/

Minimum Viable Transformation

Matt LeMay on Agile Conversations

Happy Cooks make happy food: On Daniel's Mom being on the Mike Douglas show with John Lennon, Yoko Ono and Chuck Berry Hosting a cooking segment: Context and History!

Why this episode is famous - it's the first time John and Chuck met and Played together.

A Tiny Video Clip of my mom on TV! (most of them seem to get pulled down)

Today I share my conversation with Suzanne Vickberg, aka Dr. Suz. She is a social-personality psychologist and a Research Lead at Deloitte Greenhouse. Along with her Deloitte Greenhouse colleague Kim Christfort, Suzanne co-authored the best-selling book Business Chemistry.

But there's another type of Chemistry - or Alchemistry - that I sat down to talk to Dr. Suz about - shifting the default track of a conversation from protection and opposition to collaboration,

Some years ago I interviewed Dr. Elizabeth Stokoe, a Professor of Social Interaction at Loughborough University, who speaks in her book Talk about conversations as having a landscape or a "track" that participants asses and orient to rather quickly…and that we glide down that track, while we monitor the texture of that landscape, and navigate the bumps in the road…so that we can keep things on safely on track. Check out our podcast conversation here and her TEDx talk here. In the opening quote to this podcast, you can hear Dr. Suz describing this process of "landscape orienting" happening very rapidly in a divorce context.

Knowing the default path is very helpful when navigating a "hello, how are you?" kind of "small talk" conversation in a non-wierdo-way. Knowing the default track can help make things smooth and easy…when you're visiting the store, or a bowling alley. And when you don't know the basics of the track, things can be hard - Doing simple things in a different culture can be surprisingly slippery to navigate when you don't know the basics of the track.

But sometimes the default path can be extremely detrimental - especially when the default is ineffectual or becomes unconscious and habitual - we keep doing things out of rote, not intent.

In business, a common default/habitual conversational path is looking at an underperformer and putting them on a Performance Improvement Plan in order to be able to fire them more easily,

A non-default, more conscious conversation is taking the time to learn *why* they are underperforming and helping them actually transform themselves, their work performance and their lives….and in the process deeply benefiting the company and even the community.

Seems impossible, right? Or grandiose? Carol Sandford, in her book about Regenerative Business talks about an organization that did just this… a manager discovered that a chronically underperforming and late employee was just functionally illiterate. That employee, once they felt safe to share more, helped that manager learn that many of their employees were facing similar issues. Instead of a PIP, this employee got literacy training, and became an advisor to a new literacy program developed inside the organization, which spread out to the larger community, in ripples of growth and transformation.

That is a *non* default conversation - turning a PIP conversation into a community-transformation conversation.

On a micro-scale, Dr. Suz's book tells the story of rethinking or re-designing the "default track" for a very, very common conversation - Divorce. When that word gets said out loud, people find lawyers, put up a shield, and start digging trenches.

There is a better way! It takes effort to deeply empathize with your "opponent" in a difficult conversation. It takes patience and imagination to collaborate with your "opponent" to design a win-win scenario.

But the default design for divorce doesn't usually create ideal outcomes…just conventional ones. It's possible to create something better than you can imagine if you create the space for a transformational conversation.

Dr. Suz helps break down how "design" in these situations just means really understanding the REAL problem we're solving and what our IDEAL outcome really could look like… BEFORE we jump to solutions.

Also check out my podcast conversation with Adam Kahane, author of, among many other amazing books, the book Collaborating with the Enemy - which is what I know a divorce can feel like. Some of his perspectives take this "divorce by design" mindset into the broader business and strategy arena.

Enjoy this conversation as much as I did…and think about how you might transform the most challenging conversations in your life and work. With more conscious creativity and intention, with empathy and collaboration…with more design you can create more of what you really want, just like Dr. Suz did for her own divorce and for her own life.

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

https://www.divorcexdesign.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/suzannevickberg/

https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/profiles/svickberg.html

https://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/facilitating-breakthrough-with-adam-kahane

My guest today is Jay Ruparel, co-founder and CEO of VOICEplug AI, a Voice-AI company empowering restaurants to leverage AI and automate food ordering using natural language voice ordering at drive-thrus, over the phone, websites, and mobile apps. VOICEplug's technology integrates with existing systems and apps, allowing customers to interact with the restaurant using natural voice commands, in multiple languages and be serviced seamlessly.

I wanted to sit down with Jay to unpack what he has learned about how conversations are structured (for computer-to-human interaction) that he brings into his CEO (human-to-human) conversations - crucial conversations, with his senior leadership team and his broader organization - does an AI-savvy conversation-aware CEO approach conversations and interactions with a different eye?

We also focused on a few questions of deep concern for our culture today: the responsible and ethical use of AI and how it might impact the future of work.

Through our conversation, it became clear that:

AI is great for:

Repetitive or highly similar and constrained tasks. Ordering fast food at a drive-in, VOICEplug's use case, is a perfect context for AI. In these kinds of conversations, there are boundaries on the scope of the interaction and a clear set of intents and possible goals.

Jay also points out that his AI is trained on many, many different instances of people ordering food from other people. So,the voice-driven bot can get better and better at these kinds of conversations, all the time.

Humans are best for:

High-risk and high-complexity conversations with no clear comparables or no clear scope. For Jay's conversations with key industry stakeholders, at company-all-hands, and with his leadership team, AI can give him ideas or first drafts, but ultimately, he needs to navigate nuance with his human conversational intelligence

++++++++++++

AI is great for:

Crunching lots of data (which is always from the past) and summarizing it.

Humans are best for:

Deciding what kind of future they want to create.

Jay points out in the opening quote that the Human mind can think, reflect, envision and CHOOSE an ideal future, creatively. AI can do a lot of that…but it can't choose the future it wants. That is still a uniquely human strength - to dream and to choose to create that dream.

Jay dreams of a future where work is a deeper and deeper collaboration between humans and AI, where humans focus on higher-value activities while AI takes over repetitive tasks.

Jay goes on to suggest that curiosity and powerful questions are THE most critical of human skills.

When I asked Jay to share his favorite ways of designing conversations, he shared three tips:

1. Take just a few minutes before a meeting to be very clear about your key one or two objectives for the conversation. In other words, start the end in mind. Another way of putting it is to take time to set an intention. You might enjoy my conversation with Leah Smart, the host of one of LinkedIn's top podcasts, on just this idea.

2. If Jay is meeting with folks he doesn't know as well, from outside the company, like new clients or stakeholders, he'll deliberately slow down the conversation and delay getting to the core objective. Instead, he'll spend 20-30% of the meeting time getting to know them, talking about other things, all in service of trying to understand them as people, and their conversational style

3. Jay consciously chooses some conversational areas to NOT be highly scalable or automated - he shares a story about being offered an AI tool that would send automated and personalized birthday emails to his employees. As he says "What is the point of me having to use that as the CEO (when)…that relationship, that wishing someone on their birthday as a personalized conversation means so much to me. That's the last thing I would want to ever automate." Not all conversations, even ones that can seem small and inconsequential SHOULD be automated. It is possible that a real, human touch will be the ultimate in luxury in the future.

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

https://voiceplug.ai/

Jay on LinkedIn

I'm excited to share my conversation with Kevin Bethune, a multidisciplinary design executive, entrepreneur, best-selling author and keynote speaker based in Redondo Beach, California. He's been a VP of Strategic design at BCG Digital, A global process product manager at Nike and a Nuclear Engineer at Westinghouse. He currently leads his own firm, https://dreamsdesignandlife.com/

One of his key ideas is "Open your aperture." -ie, shifting the lens that you are looking at a problem from or through. Design and Design Thinking has so many tools to help us do just that, and find creative approaches to our biggest challenges.

In our conversation, we discussed the importance of embracing creative approaches (since our habitual approaches most likely can't solve them!) and the need for bold leadership to optimize for curiosity and creativity - because going with business as usual is usually a lot easier than spending time on curiosity.

It takes a willingness to slow down to optimize for curiosity in a business environment that is often so focused on quarterly capitalism.

We also highlight the lack of diversity in design and innovation, particularly in black representation, and the cognitive dissonance of claiming to serve certain communities without actually representing them - an unresolved critique of many innovation firms.

The S-Curve and the Cone of Possibility

Kevin's book, Reimagining Design: Unlocking Strategic Innovation, is CHOCK A BLOCK with diagrams (and I love diagrams!) that will stretch your thinking, but we spent some time on one diagram in particular that combines two classic models of thinking: The cone of possibility and the s-curve.

The Cone of possibility is a cone on its side, with the tip at the present, and the sides of the cone stretching out like rays of sunshine to the right. The rays represent possible futures along the timeline. There are many versions of this diagram online. Kevin's version calls the center of the cone the "most likely" or projected future. The cone of possibility invites us to consider widening edges - future scenarios that are plausible and even impossible or preposterous futures, not just the projected or ideal future.

Opening our aperture to consider multiple possible futures means that our plans can be more resilient, adaptable and even antifragile.

The S-curve is a visual representation of one of my favorite Shakespeare Sonnets. #15:

When I consider everything that grows Holds in perfection but a little moment, That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows Whereon the stars in secret influence comment; When I perceive that men as plants increase, Cheered and check'd even by the selfsame sky, Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease, And wear their brave state out of memory;

Things are born (or emerge), they grow, mature and then fade away. Kevin's version of the S-curve includes more detail:

1. Emergence

2. A dip - the trough of disillusionment

3. A hyper-growth phase that slows into..

4. Maturity and then…

5. Decline, or retirement.

Kevin overlays the cone of possibility with a set of cascading s-curves, representing a host of possible trends rising and cresting as we look out into the possible futures.

As Kevin describes this diagram in our conversation, his hands are making waves of opening and closing, diverging and converging. That's what he's seeing when he looks along the cone of possibility: all of these different trends, multiple pathways. It's this complex, undulating space that he tries to illustrate for the teams that he works with to help them see a bigger aperture to think inside of.

These diagrams, these mental models, help redesign the conversation about strategy and innovation. We're not designing for a single, simple, ideal future. We're looking out at a complex landscape with multiple possible twists and turns. That is how you unlock strategic innovation - step back, widen the aperture and change the conversation.

In short - creative visualization facilitates dialogue and widens perspectives.

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinbethune/

https://dreamsdesignandlife.com/

My guest today, Emily Levada, is a seasoned Chief Product & Technology Officer. Currently, she is the Chief Product Officer and Interim co-CEO at Embark Veterinary, a company dedicated to leveraging genetics to enhance the health and longevity of dogs. During her tenure, the company has achieved notable recognition, ranking as the #3 fastest-growing private company in Massachusetts and earning a spot on Forbes' list of promising venture-backed startups.

She also serves as a Board Member at JCC Greater Boston, bringing her expertise to contribute to the organization's growth and development and holds a significant role as a Member of the Customer Advisory Board at UserTesting, where she actively engages in guiding and advising the company.

Emily is also a two-time podcast guest, my first ever! We did an episode a few years back where she shared some wonderful insights and frameworks about Trust, Communication and Psychological Safety in teams.

Emily was also gracious enough to be a guest mentor for the Innovation Leadership Accelerator cohort I co-ran with my friend Jay Melone from the product innovation consultancy New Haircut some years back.

In this conversation, we sat down to talk about managing organizational emotions, especially negative emotions, and especially during critical junctures, like layoffs - something that many folks have been through, and many folks in the past year. I knew that Emily had some experience with this in the past and had some great thinking to share around this crucial leadership topic.

There's no *good* side to be on in a downsizing event - the people who are losing their jobs and income are also losing a sense of identity and need to navigate an uncertain future. But the loss of identity and the need to face an uncertain future is also true for the folks who are still with the company - both the "rank and file" and the leadership.

Layoffs done poorly can dent a company culture.

Emily emphasized the importance of transparency in the period leading up to a layoff, as it builds trust and can mitigate negative emotions.

On the other hand, leaders often have a desire to protect people from such difficult conversations until the last possible moment, so the whole team can focus on their day-to-day jobs.

I explored this polar tension between these two fundamental values, transparency and protection, with Emily using a tool called Polarity Mapping, developed by Barry Johnson Ph.D., the creator (and registered trademark holder!) of The Polarity Map®! You can read more about polarity mapping in my friend Stephen Andserson's short blog post here and check out Dr. Johnson's company, Polarity Partnerships here. IMHO, Stephen's version of Barry's diagram (below) is a bit clearer!

The basic idea of Polarity mapping is that often we feel pulled by two values, like:

Should we focus on Innovation or Efficiency?

Should we prioritize Deadlines or Quality?

Growth vs. Consolidation?

Short-term Gains vs. Long-term Organic Growth?

Centralization vs. Decentralization?

(thanks for these examples, Stephen!)

In my own coaching work, I've found leaders can struggle to navigate conflicting parts of themselves, forming inner polar tensions that leave them feeling stuck, like:

"I need to be flexible vs I need to be firm"

"I need to lead the conversation vs I need to let the conversation flow"

"I need to be aggressive or I have to be more passive"

"I need to listen more vs I feel the need to fix challenges"

"I want to be authentically myself vs I need to be a chameleon to get by"

And because we get pulled between them, and feel the polarity to be an unwinnable double bind of "damned if I do," we kind of flub the balancing act. Polarity mapping asks us to be ultra-specific about the positives of both values AND to be very clear on the downsides of over-indexing on one value to the detriment of the other.

Doing a mapping like this can help us thread the needle of polarity, and look out for the early warning signs of over-indexing in one direction or another.

Below is a version of a polarity map for the tension Emily describes in our conversation, between Transparency and Protection.

Emily points out that these polarities pop up, not just at crucial moments in a business like layoffs, but in day-to-day operations, too.

Leaders can feel that Emotions are Inconvenient, but Team Emotions have real impact

Emily shares the top three negative organizational emotions she finds can deeply impact a team's ability to learn (ie, be willing to experiment), be creative (ie, being able to innovate) and be fundamentally effective:

Anxiety (Fear)BoredomApathy

Fear, anxiety, and boredom are detrimental to creativity and productivity in knowledge work. Leaders need to address these emotions and create an environment that fosters engagement and challenge - and ultimately, create a learning organization.

"People cannot do creative knowledge work when they feel fear and anxiety and boredom. Those things are just incompatible."

Emily suggests that well-run one-on-one meetings are crucial for understanding how team members are feeling and detecting signs of overwhelm, underwhelm, or "whelm" in their job. One-on-ones can help build a foundation of trust and safety, on which we can build honest and productive conversations.

Emily also shares some straightforward approaches for shifting these key negative emotions:

Anxiety: focus on building psychological safety for teams experiencing anxiety, and provide more transparency and context. Boredom: create relevant challenges Apathy: create accountability and challenge for teams experiencing apathy

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

Trust, Communication, and Psychological Safety with Emily Levada

The Joys of Polarity Mapping, by Stephen Anderson

Polarity Partnerships

My guest today is Jason Knight, the creator, host, producer, editor and promoter of the One Knight in Product podcast, a B2B SaaS product consultant, and fractional Chief Product Officer for companies that have gotten to product market fit and need help scaling their product team. Jason is also the founder of My Mentor Path, an inclusive, accessible and cloud-based mentorship service.

Sandra Monteiro, a Product Manager at SAGE Publishing and a mentee of Jason's, joined us halfway through to share her own experiences with mentoring, how she found her way to working with Jason as a mentor and what some of her learnings and insights from working with Jason as a mentor have been. She also shares her thoughts on what mentees should be thinking about as they search for and work with mentors.

We explored Jason's mentorship journey and why mentorship matters to him, the challenges of Industrializing mentorship pairing and productizing the matching of the lopsided mentorship marketplace.

We also touch on how to measure the impact of the work and the subtle and important difference between Mentoring and Coaching. Jason suggests that many people who say they want coaching really want mentoring from someone who has "been there and done that"…and that great mentoring leverages coaching mindsets and skills in a practice he affectionately calls "centering".

Some fundamental questions we explored were the differences and relative merits of FORMAL vs INFORMAL mentorship as well as working with someone INTERNAL vs EXTERNAL to your Organization

One of the big insights Sandra shared was shifting her expectations on the nature of the mentoring relationship from one centered around SOLVING vs conversations centered around TOOLS (ie, being offered relevant examples, learning materials and frameworks, holding space for emotional distance, and being offered broader context for challenges).

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

Sandra Monteiro

Jason Knight

https://www.oneknightinproduct.com/bio/

https://www.oneknightconsulting.com/

My conversation on Unapologetic Eating and Living with Alissa Rumsey is here

It's not every day that a patient-doctor relationship turns into a Techstars-Funded medical innovation startup. In this episode I sit down with Dr. Onyinye Balogun and Eve McDavid, the co-founders of Mission-Driven Tech, a women's health venture in collaboration with Weill Cornell Medicine dedicated to the transformation of cervical cancer care with modern technology.

Onyi, as her friends call her, is the CMO of Mission Driven Tech and also an Assistant Professor of Radiation Oncology at Weill Cornell Medicine specializing in the treatment of breast and gynecologic malignancies and does research into improving cancer care in low and middle income countries.

Eve, the CEO, is a former Google executive who is also a Stage IIB Cervical Cancer survivor. Eve and Onyi met during the pandemic, when Eve was undergoing cancer treatment under Onyi's care.

I heard Eve and Onyi's presentation at the 2023 Techstars Demo day in New York and was stunned by the fundamental disparities in historical improvement in gynecological cancer outcomes - as they point out in this conversation, in recent years, Prostate cancer treatment has achieved a nearly 100% five year survival rate. In the same period, cervical and uterine cancer mortality has gotten worse, while cancer treatment for all other cancers has improved exponentially. Their company exists to change that story.

Co-Founder Communication Insights

This conversation is one of a series on co-founder communication. Check out my interviews with the co-founders of online gaming start-up Artie on Pivoting while staying sane (the secret - have a coach and a therapist!), a conversation with Carolyn Gregoire and Scott Barry Kaufman, the co-authors of the 2015 bestseller, Wired to Create, on navigating Paired Creativity, and this interview with the co-founders of collaboration tool Range, Jennifer Dennard and Dan Pupius, on the keys to healthy conflict. One key that Beth Bayouth and Mario Fedelin, the COO and CEO (respectively) of Changeist, a non-profit organization dedicated to youth empowerment, discussed was the importance of co-founders sharing how they are really doing so that they can be sure to not fall apart at the same time, a sentiment that Eve and Onyi echoed.

I also discussed the idea of "prototyping partnerships" with Jane Portman and Benedikt Deicke, co-founders of Userlist - and they helped me see that the healthiest companies have partners that have worked together in some capacity - and indeed, in this interview, Onyi and Eve called Eve's cancer treatment their "first collaboration".

Know yourself and each other

The start of a startup journey can be optimistic, so we explore what they have learned about each other that has helped them to better communicate and collaborate together since they started the project.

Accelerators can't do it all for you

Eve and Onyi share how the accelerators can help with structure, mentorship, capital and community, but that ultimately you need to have something worth accelerating - a key customer insight or a core technology - both of which Mission-Driven Tech has!

Have multiple modes and frequencies of communication

Eve and Onyi have a weekly meeting just focused on their flagship product, the Blossom device, and another meeting weekly for other issues, and to simply connect. Meanwhile, they have a Whatsapp thread that enables them to constantly stay connected and in touch with each other. Balancing always-on connectivity and scheduled connectivity is key.

A partnership is a marriage and reflective listening is key!

Onyi shared their perspective that being in a co-founder relationship is like marriage, and that communication is key for any marriage to work. As she says, "The future of this company rests partly in how well we're able to communicate. So we tell each other the good, the bad and the ugly." She shared their simple and effective approach to communication - making specific time for it, and using active listening intentionally:

"I hear what you're saying, I reflect it back to you. You hear what I'm saying and you reflect it back to me."

Know who your real audience is

We discuss user-driven product development, which Eve and Onyi, as a former patient and doctor, are a unique example of…but we also discuss how in their current stage, investors are their actual "buyers". Onyi discussed how she's developed a keen sense of "push vs pull" when they are making their investment pitch - some investors just get the commitment required to make a startup like this successful, and those people are their real audience. It's not about convincing the wrong people, it's about finding the right people.

Balance Now and Next

Every startup needs to balance managing their current challenges and opportunities with putting energy into strategic vision and planning. Eve points out that this is a particular challenge for medical and device companies - the rate of change can be slow, due to fundamentals of the problem space. So, there needs to be more patience and intention put into planning and hypothesis testing. As Eve pointed out, There is immense pressure to achieve immediate results, but real impact takes time.

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

https://missiondriventech.com/

LinkedIn:

Onyi: https://www.linkedin.com/in/onyinye-balogun-md-ms-22b57283/

Eve: https://www.linkedin.com/in/evemcdavid/

David Hoffman built and sold big-data and data analytics company Next Big Sound to Pandora in 2015. He's now building Beam, which helps people create shoppable mood boards for DTC brands.

David reflects on his experience with mentorship and the long arc of the conversation that is being a co-founder and being in community. We unpack the Techstars motto "give first" and discuss the power of the Techstars community and the importance of community relationships in entrepreneurship.

We talk through the complex evolution that is founding and scaling a startup, his experience doing just that with Next Big Sound, and the challenges of becoming a leader inside a growing company.

One challenge is always scaling culture as a company scales, and David outlines some of the routines and structures that helped in defining his startup's culture. David also shares some insights on the post-startup-sale emotional roller coaster and the decision to build another company. Some of my other favorite insights from David:

• Living the "Give First" motto requires approaching everything with curiosity.

• "Grown ups" is a construct: When it is your idea and your company, you can make the decisions you need to make.

• Your Culture is made of your routines, whether it's Friday bagels or snap-clapping after people share wins.

• Your MVP product can be much, much more simple than you think if it creates value for your customers.

David's nuanced reflections are a gift, and I'm so glad he sat down for this conversation.

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

Beam

My guests today, Ryan Horrigan and Armando Kirwin, bonded over their mutual fascination with the future of entertainment and their desire to do something innovative, which led to the creation of their current company, Artie. We talk about pivots and micro pivots and staying sane through the million tiny conversations Cofounders need to navigate.

Ryan, the CEO, and Armando, President and co-founder of Artie have a pretty radical vision for the future of social media— namely, to make TikTok, Instagram, Twitter and other social media apps the gaming consoles of the future.

Before co-founding Artie, Ryan served as Chief Content Officer of the Comcast-backed VR & AR startup Felix & Paul Studios. He oversaw the development and production of feature films, including Academy Award Best Picture Winner "12 Years A Slave." at Fox/New Regency, and is a two-time Emmy Award winner for immersive entertainment projects he produced with President Barack Obama and NASA, as well as a Peabody Award winner.

Armando has been in the VFX world for over fifteen years, working with numerous award-winning directors, including two-time Academy Award nominee Lucy Walker, Sundance Grand Jury prize nominee Sandy Smolan on The Click Effect, which was nominated for an Emmy; and Imraan Ismail on The Displaced, which won the Grand Prix at Cannes. He also produced Take Flight, starring Benicio del Toro, Michael Fassbender, and Charlize Theron. His most recent VR film, Nothing is Safe (2022), was an official selection of the Cannes Marché du Film.

While movies are a wonderful industry, they both saw the power and potential of gaming as a storytelling platform - and a financial juggernaut. If you didn't know: According to a report by SuperData Research, the global gaming market was valued at $159.3 billion in 2020. This includes revenue from console games, PC games, mobile games, and esports. Let's put that into perspective: the music industry was valued at $19.1 billion in 2020, and the movie industry at $41.7 billion. That means the gaming industry is more than three times the size of the music industry and almost four times the size of the movie industry.

TikTok used to be where people just watched videos (as of this writing, TikTok and Netflix are nearly tied for eyeball-hours). Now, hundreds of thousands of people are playing games on TikTok thanks to Artie and the technology breakthroughs that make streaming app-quality games from within social media apps possible.

But how did they get here? Through a million micro conversations about data, signals, stakeholders and what it all means. Artie is where are are today not because of one big pivot, but many, many micro-pivots over the course of years.

Pivots impact the team - who you needed on staff when you were focused on one path isn't always who you need when you've decided to shift directions. Communication between departments and involving the team more is important - which means being intentional about regular check-ins and interdepartmental communication, but eventually, it comes down to the co-founder conversation - owning the choices that need to be made and moving forward, all while making sure you stay healthy and sane.

Pivots vs Shaping Clay

I loved this metaphor from Ryan, where he suggested that, from the outside, to investors, bloggers and customers, a company may have pivoted once, or a few times. From the inside, there are daily conversations, where the product is being shaped like clay, remade, refocused, almost constantly.

"Listen to your body, have a Coach and a Therapist"

This was one of my favorite insights from this conversation. It's not often that men talk openly about mental health and needing support. Ryan and Armando both have a coach (although they meet with that coach separately) and Armando advocated for having a therapist, while Ryan discussed how they got much much more intentional about listening to their bodies and taking down time. Armando suggests that therapy focuses on self-awareness, learning about yourself and your patterns, while his coaching focuses on future outcomes and goals.

"You have to care deeply about your people, but at the same time, you can't care about what they think of you"

Ryan quotes what he describes as a harsh-sounding notion from Dick Costello when he was at Twitter: In Ryan's experience, when you make a tough decision, you can't worry about everyone's collective feelings (even though you DO care about them as people and teammates). You have to make the decision that you, as the leader, believe needs to be made.

As a founder, you have to make and own tough decisions.

Ryan points out that, at the end of the day, you can't ignore tough decisions. You can't have someone else do it for you. He suggests that while these moments are hard, it's helpful to focus on the people who are still with you and the ultimate goals you're trying to achieve.

Links

https://www.artie.com/

I am excited to share my conversation with Leah Smart, who I had the pleasure of meeting at the Culture Summit where we were both giving main stage talks. Leah is brilliant! She's all about helping people become the authors of their lives, which she does through her work on the LinkedIn Editorial team and hosting her LinkedIn podcast, In the Arena with Leah Smart, which is out every week wherever you find your podcasts.

She loves facilitating human development work for leadership teams through coaching and workshops and sharing science-backed actionable concepts and strategies to transform your life, your work, and your relationship to everyone around you.

Today we talk about how she approaches designing her conversations with guests as a dance, how she molds her conversations with herself through personal mantras, and her perspectives on the power of intention.

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

https://www.leahsmart.co/