The Growth League

The Fire Phone is widely regarded as one of Amazon’s biggest failures. The phone sold what industry experts estimated to be 35,000 units in its first 25 days and they reportedly wrote off $170 million loss due to the phone’s failure in its first year.

This episode is an interview with Ian Freed, the product owner of the fire phone, who took it from inception to product launch.

At Amazon, Ian was a Vice President and served as Technology Adviser to Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos from 2004-2005. He led the Amazon Kindle business including business strategy, product development, business development, and marketing from 2006 until 2010. Additionally, Ian led the Amazon Echo/Alexa business from inception in 2011 through first product release in 2015. From 2016-2017, Ian led consumer services including Amazon Restaurants - a one-hour food delivery service from local restaurants in 25 cities.

In 2018 Ian took his Amazon learnings and launched Bamboo learning - focused on developing breakthrough at home learning experiences for children and families

Ian and I are going to discuss:

• What happened to the Amazon Fire phone – where it went wrong and why they didn't create a version 2
• How Jeff Bezos makes failure ok and his favorite story to tell to reinforce this point
• How Amazon decides which products are good but not good enough
• The advice Jeff Bezos gave to Ian after the Fire phone failure

Thanks for listening and be sure to find me online to tell me what you thought of the episode!

• @DianaKander on Instagram and Twitter
• Professional AF Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/943925015810362/
• Diana online: www.DianaKander.com
• Ian Freed on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ifreed
• Bamboo Learning: https://bamboolearning.com/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 2007 Nokia had 50% of the world’s cell phone market. The cover of Forbes magazine in November of 2007 read – Nokia – 1 Billion Customers – Can Anyone Catch the Cell Phone King? And in less than six years Nokia’s cell phone division tanked so quickly that they stopped selling cell phones and sold the division to Microsoft. Six years! It was one of the fastest collapses in corporate history.

Thanks to the research of two business professors, Timo Vuori and Quy Huy, we know that it was fear at Nokia that precipitated its fall from grace.

Today we have one of the professors to discuss the interviews with 76 of Nokia’s top managers, including two CEOs, vice presidents, middle managers, engineers, and external experts. These conversations, lasting an average of 90 minutes, are, in my opinion, the best after action review ever created.

And they highlight something really profound. While the senior executives were externally focused and worried about competition from Apple, Google and Research In Motion (RIM), their subordinates didn't share their concerns. Instead, middle managers were internally focused, worrying about what their managers wanted from them. And this dynamic that we're going to discuss today is prevalent in every other organization Professor Timo has studied.

Timo and I are going to discuss:

• The most comprehensive case study every done on a company
• The danger of doing after action reviews internally rather than asking an outsider to help
• How organizations inadvertently create fear within their workforce
• And how those fears prevent an organization from taking corrective action when it's in danger.

Thanks for listening and be sure to find me online to tell me what you thought of the episode!

• @DianaKander on Instagram and Twitter
• Professional AF Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/943925015810362/
• Diana online: www.DianaKander.com
• Link to the Nokia AAR: https://knowledge.insead.edu/sites/www.insead.edu/files/images/asq_2015_print_vuori_huy_distributed_attention_and_shared_emotions_in_innovation_process.pdf
• Timo on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timo-vuori-37226a5/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Annie Duke is an author, corporate speaker, and consultant in the decision-making space. Today we discuss Annie’s latest book, How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices. As a former professional poker player, Annie won more than $4 million in tournament poker before retiring from the game in 2012. Prior to becoming a professional player, Annie was awarded a National Science Foundation Fellowship to study Cognitive Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.

Annie is also the co-founder of The Alliance for Decision Education, a non-profit whose mission is to improve lives by empowering students through decision skills education.

Annie and I are going to discuss:

- How to be the most humble

- How to make better decisions

- Decision hygiene – how to make sure your opinion doesn’t infect others when asking for feedback

- Why looking back at past decisions is so hard and what you can do to make your reflection much more useful

- How to know if you are really learning from both failures and successes

- And you get Annie Duke's contact info in the episode!

Thanks for listening and be sure to find me online to tell me what you thought of the episode!

• @DianaKander on Instagram and Twitter
• Professional AF Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/943925015810362/
• Diana online: www.DianaKander.com
• Annie Duke online: https://www.annieduke.com/
• @AnnieDuke on Twitter

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sheila Heen is the Founder of Triad Consulting Group and a Lecturer at Harvard Law School.

Besides teaching at Harvard, Sheila has worked with the biggest companies in the world, helping their executive teams work through conflict, repair working relationships, and make sound decisions together.

She has also spent the last twenty years with the Harvard Negotiation Project, developing negotiation theory and practice. Sheila specializes in particularly difficult negotiations – where emotions run high and relationships become strained.

She's written two very successful books: Difficult Conversations

and the one we're talking about today, Thanks for the Feedback.

I really wanted to talk to Sheila because there have been so many books written on how to give feedback to others, but if we're going to learn from our mistakes and get even better at what we're already doing, we must learn how to not only ask for but listen to feedback. Sheila's book is a rare and incredible resource in this regard, and I just had to share it with you.

Specifically, Sheila and I discuss:

- How to make feedback work in your organization

- The problem with coaching and why it doesn't work quite like we hope

- The three different kinds of feedback you can give someone

- Why the feedback sandwich doesn't work, and how to give critical feedback much better.

- How to process the feedback you receive in a way you can actually use.

Thanks for listening and be sure to find me online to tell me what you thought of the episode!

• @DianaKander on Instagram and Twitter
• Professional AF Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/943925015810362/
• Diana online: www.DianaKander.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week we're reviewing the 2020 Iowa Democratic Caucus reporting malfunction. In case you missed it, here are some headlines about that night:

- Iowa caucus app ran into issues when reporting results

(https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/04/politics/iowa-caucus-voting-app/index.html)

- 'It was a total mess': Caucusing is long over, but Iowa still doesn't have a winner

(https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/elections/presidential/caucus/2020/02/04/iowa-caucus-delayed-results-mean-no-winner-yet-iowa-caucuses/4653022002/)

- Who won the Iowa caucuses? We still don't have the results ...

(https://www.vox.com/2020/2/3/21121883/iowa-caucus-results-delay-app-2020)

This interview is the first extended conversation with the head of the Democratic Party in Iowa at the time, Troy Price. Troy explains exactly what happened that night and in the days afterward. He reflects on his lessons learned and has powerful takeaways:

- Operating inside of a crisis

- Communications strategy during a PR "situation"

- What Troy learned about redundancies in executing a big project

- The assets that came out the caucuses

Thanks for listening and be sure to find me online to tell me what you thought of the episode!

• @DianaKander on Instagram and Twitter
• Professional AF Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/943925015810362/
• Diana online: www.DianaKander.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.