Nearly Invisible: Recent Episodes
Dan Frost
In this podcast we explore the nearly invisible forces, phenomena, ideas and behaviours which both create and prevent change, and the tension this creates in our economy, society and in us as individuals.Think of this as the human side of understanding disruption.
In this episode of the Nearly Invisible podcast, I interview Khurshed Dehnugara, co-founder of Relume, a consultancy which focuses on helping challenger organisations and teams. He describes what this means in the interview, but in the context of this podcast this starts to build an idea of why changing an organisation is hard and what the differences between business-as-usual (where the jobs to be done are fairly static) and a changing organisation.
Throughout this interview, I felt I was learning something different useful every few minutes. Here are a few examples:
- Relume - the history of their name, which means to reignite.
- What it looks like going to work in challenger organisations
- Tools and techniques - whether these help or get in the way
- Where does organisation change come from - outside (i.e. they are disrupted) or inside
- If you’re the challenger, what’s about to come at you? And how do you prefer for it?
- Improvising at work - Khurshed uses the idea of improv theatre, and we discuss what kind of skill improvising is vs having strict roles
- The 4 As - arrogance, avoidance, agreement, antagonism
- Venting
- Disruptive change vs being a perfectionist
- Tolerating “less than perfect”
- Leading change means you have to destabilise
- Organisational resistance to change
This episode of the Nearly Invisible podcast is an interview with Gareth Marlow, an exec coach based in Cambridge in the UK.
Show notes: https://nearlyinvisible.com/pod/gareth-marlow-exec-coach
Anyone who knows Gareth knows that just a few minutes of conversation with him will lead to an immediately useful way of seeing something.
In this conversation we talk about
- Humans as complex systems
- How humans are not just individuals
- Whether you, as a leader have the whole picture or not
- Don’t turn up with the answers
- Why bother getting a coach
- Are you really aware of what you’re doing?
- Coach vs nagging 2 year old
- When people don’t understand each other
- Sailing (or thereabouts - as an analogy)
- The difficulty of building mental models at scale
- Testing mental models
- When the mental model meets reality
- Leadership and uncertainty
- The stanford experiment - putting on different uniforms
- Transitioning to management
- When the work is not obvious
- …and many more things
What is the Nearly Invisible podcast?
In this podcast, I explore what disruption - in the business and technological sense - means beyond the simple buzz words of technology and innovation. It has occurred to me for years that when any industry - publishing, music, banking - undergoes disruption, there’s a lot more to it it than one product replacing another.
We no longer go to record shops, we stream. We don’t queue for taxis, we get an Uber. But whole new ways of running our lives emerge.
These are the tip of the iceberg. Underneath, every person involved in the old and the new ways of doing things has had to change something. The experience of disruption is much more than replacing a shop with an app.
Sign up updates at https://NearlyInvisible.com/pod
Exploring the nearly invisible forces, phenomena, ideas and behaviours which both create and prevent change, and the tension this creates in our economy, society and in us as individuals. Think of this as the human side of understanding disruption.
This episodes gives us a grounding in a key aspect of change: the brain.
When I started researching disruption through the lense of the music industry I didn’t expect that I would end up feeling that understanding the human brain would help me think about what it means for an industry to change, but this is where I’ve ended up. We cannot escape the fact that technology disruption and innovation is a large percentage about humans - the humans who create, use, distribute, fund, consume and live with the results of whatever technology it is.
So I am very excited to share this interview with you with Susan Greenfield.
Susan is Founder and CEO of Neuro-Bio Ltd, a neuroscientist, writer and broadcaster. She has published over 200 papers in peer-reviewed journals, based mainly at Oxford University but has held research fellowships at the College de France Paris, NYU Medical Center New York and Melbourne University. She holds 32 honorary degrees from UK and foreign universities, has received numerous honours including the Legion d’Honneur from the French Government, an Honorary Fellowship from the Royal College of Physicians, The American Academy of Achievement Golden Plate Award, and The Australian Medical Research Society Medal. She is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
Find out more at https://nearlyinvisible.com/pod
More at NearlyInvisible.com/pod
Exploring the nearly invisible ideas and behaviours which create and prevent change, and the tension this creates in our economy, society and in us as individuals. Think of this as the human side of understanding disruption.
This episode is a quick story from me about music.
More at NearlyInvisible.com/pod
Isn’t it weird how badly humans react to change? And doesn’t that contradict wildly with how much humans love novelty. We simultaneously love novelty and hate change.
This podcast is about the nearly invisible forces, phenomena, ideas and behaviours which both create and prevent change, and the tension this creates in our economy, society and in us as individuals.
If you have ever marvelled at how quickly a technology proliferates through our society, then this should interest you.
Or, if you have ever wondered why policy markers, governments and regulators aren’t stopping the change, then this podcast should also interest you.
Or, alternatively, if you have ever found yourself torn between one career and another. Or if you’ve ever found yourself hating the change happening to your industry. Or loving it.
In short, if you want to get under the skin of the change which technology creates in society then this podcast should give you some deep thinking and food for thought.
You can subscribe to emails at NearlyInvisible.com. More social activity will come soon.
Explore the nearly invisible ideas and behaviours which both create and prevent change, and the tension this creates in our economy, society and in us as individuals. Think of this as the human side of understanding disruption.
A story about Kodak. I needed to get Kodak in early because it’s both very interesting but, because it’s the canonical story of disruption which many, many people refer to it’s also a bit over done.
For now, the story you need to know is this: Kodak was disrupted when smartphones and digital cameras replaced film and chemicals as a way of capturing and sharing photographs and video. Like the music industry, some nerdy techies had somehow found a way of disrupting their business model and delivering the value the customer wanted in a new way.
But that’s not quite what happened with Kodak.
Follow at nearlyinvisible.com/pod for more.