The Strategy Skills Podcast: Management Consulting | Strategy, Operations & Implementation | Critical Thinking: Recent Episodes

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In this wide-ranging and direct conversation, Bill George, former Medtronic CEO and Harvard Business School professor, offers a disciplined framework for leading in conditions of persistent volatility. Drawing from decades of leadership experience and research, George emphasizes that leadership today is no longer about managing processes, it is about confronting ambiguity, enabling experimentation, and sustaining purpose across shifting conditions.

Five themes stand out:

1. Opportunity Must Be Created, Not Awaited. George argues that emerging leaders should not wait for promotions or formal permission. Instead, they should identify unaddressed problems, volunteer to lead, and deliver results without demanding titles. Career growth, he suggests, is a function of action, not seniority.
2. Innovation Begins at the Front Lines. Whether referencing his early decision to cancel a Medtronic pacemaker program that lacked patient benefit, or urging leaders to spend less time in conference rooms and more with customers and staff, George insists that enduring breakthroughs stem from direct observation and empathy, not from internal data analysis alone.
3. Risk Tolerance Determines Strategic Renewal. George contrasts firms that institutionalize risk such as Medtronic’s venture incubation model, with those that allow internal resistance to block change. Innovation, he asserts, must be structurally protected from corporate inertia, and leaders should be judged on the courage to champion unpopular ideas that later prove transformative.
4. Culture Must Reward Learning Over Defensiveness. Drawing parallels between U.S., European, and Japanese innovation cultures, George critiques over-regulated, failure-averse systems that suppress experimentation. True progress, he says, requires the willingness to learn through trial, adaptation, and even initial failure.
5. AI Is a Strategic Imperative, Not a Cost Play. Rather than using AI to drive out labor costs, George advocates for using it to rethink business models entirely, supporting frontline autonomy, enabling new services, and unlocking unmet needs. He cautions leaders against adopting a defensive posture and urges them to fund experiments that explore the true potential of the technology.

Throughout, George offers a leadership mindset anchored in authenticity, courage, and customer-centric design. His advice is clear: future leaders must raise their hands, operate at the edge, and move fast before the window of relevance closes.

Get Bill’s book here: https://shorturl.at/3iHRb

True North, Emerging Leader Edition: Leading Authentically in Today's Workplace

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Central banks in major economies have repeatedly misread inflation trends by relying on models that omit a fundamental economic lever: the money supply. In this episode, economist Steve Hanke offers a detailed critique of prevailing post-Keynesian frameworks and the policy missteps that have followed. Drawing on historical and current data, Hanke underscores the predictive power of the quantity theory of money, a model largely excluded from central bank thinking, and explains how ignoring this leads to erroneous inflation forecasts and misguided interventions.

The discussion outlines how inflation, often attributed to exogenous shocks such as supply chain disruptions or geopolitical events, is more reliably explained by changes in the money supply. Hanke presents evidence that inflation today is the result of decisions made one to two years prior, making it critical to focus on monetary trends rather than short-term data fluctuations. He further contrasts U.S. and Chinese monetary responses, highlighting how both under- and over-corrections in money supply growth have resulted in either recessionary pressures or deflation.

Key insights from the episode include:

• The quantity theory of money remains one of the most reliable frameworks for anticipating inflation, yet is absent from mainstream economic models used by central banks.

• Inflation is always a monetary phenomenon, rising or falling primarily in response to shifts in the money supply, not due to external shocks, which only affect relative prices.

• U.S. monetary policy is currently on a path toward recession, not inflation, due to anemic money supply growth since 2022, a trend Hanke predicts will continue unless reversed.

• Regime uncertainty, policy volatility that undermines business investment, amplifies economic stagnation. Drawing parallels to the New Deal era, Hanke warns that unclear or shifting fiscal and regulatory rules will delay recovery even further.

• Most of the money in circulation is created by commercial banks, not central banks. Post-2008 regulations have constrained these institutions, diminishing their role in supporting economic growth.

Taken together, these points call for a recalibration of macroeconomic policy, placing money supply at the center of analysis and re-empowering commercial banks to function as essential components of the financial system. For senior leaders navigating strategic decisions, the episode provides a timely and data-grounded lens on the structural drivers shaping inflation, recession risks, and economic stability.

Get Steve’s book here: https://shorturl.at/t5uDw

Making Money Work: How to Rewrite the Rules of Our Financial System

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In this episode, finance professor and author, Alex Edmans, offers a rigorous examination of the narratives surrounding diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in corporate strategy. Drawing on his critique of widely cited studies, including those from McKinsey and BlackRock, Edmans illustrates how flawed data interpretations and confirmation bias contribute to the persistence of questionable claims. He warns against relying on correlation-based research that lacks causal rigor, especially when such findings are used to justify high-stakes decisions in boardrooms and policy circles.

Edmans identifies three recurring issues in the current DEI discourse: cherry-picked performance metrics that ignore long-term shareholder value; reverse causality, where strong performance leads to more diversity, not the other way around; and omitted variable bias, such as industry effects that confound diversity claims. He also critiques the narrow definition of diversity, which often reduces individuals to surface-level demographic traits while ignoring cognitive and experiential variation that may be more relevant to performance.

The conversation extends beyond DEI to explore the structural incentives within academia, consulting, and media that reward oversimplified narratives. Edmans notes that when ideas become dominant, dissenters face not only reputational risk but also institutional hurdles that discourage honest debate. The result is a professional ecosystem in which flawed research is amplified and poorly contextualized advice is recycled across geographies and sectors without regard for applicability.

Other key themes include:

• The difference between demographic and cognitive diversity in strategic decision-making
• The dangers of universalizing business practices without accounting for local context
• Why flawed performance metrics (e.g., EBITDA) misrepresent firm success
• How misaligned incentives distort executive behavior and perpetuate ineffective initiatives
• The role of institutional culture in suppressing dissent and reinforcing groupthink

For senior leaders navigating complex decisions, Edmans’ commentary offers a timely reminder: even widely accepted practices warrant scrutiny. In environments where performance is difficult to measure and cause-effect relationships are opaque, intellectual discipline, not ideological alignment, is essential.

Learn more about Alex Edmans here: https://alexedmans.com/

Get Alex’s book here:

May Contain Lies: How Stories, Statistics, and Studies Exploit Our Biases—And What We Can Do about It. https://maycontainlies.com/

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In this episode, Tim Koller, co-author of Valuation and a leading authority on corporate finance, offers a substantive examination of capital allocation decisions under real-world constraints. The discussion moves beyond theory to explore how CEOs and CFOs should approach resource deployment in mature, capital-rich companies—where investment opportunities are limited not due to lack of ambition but due to economic reality.

Key insights include:

- Share Buybacks as Rational Policy: Many firms undertaking significant buybacks—particularly in tech, life sciences, and consumer products—do so because they generate more cash than they can reinvest profitably. Koller argues that, in such cases, returning excess capital to shareholders is not a sign of strategic failure but of disciplined decision-making.

- The Fallacy of Diversification Without Advantage: Koller highlights repeated failures by capital-rich companies that expand into unrelated sectors to deploy cash, citing historical missteps in energy, utilities, and industrials. He emphasizes the need to assess whether the firm has a genuine competitive advantage before moving beyond its core business.

- Granular Leadership in Resource Allocation: Effective CEOs are directly engaged with capital allocation at the business-unit level. Delegating such decisions without maintaining enterprise-wide oversight often leads to underinvestment in high-return growth areas and misaligned incentives at the divisional level.

- The Perils of Uniform Cost-Cutting Mandates: Broad directives to improve margins often result in cuts to product development and customer experience—leading to long-term degradation despite short-term financial gains. Koller stresses the importance of distinguishing between cost efficiencies that enhance value and those that erode it.

- Timing and Judgment in Capital Deployment: In cyclical, capital-intensive sectors such as chemicals and energy, building capacity in sync with competitors can destroy value. Koller calls for contrarian timing, grounded in independent analysis, even when boards and markets are predisposed to follow the cycle.

Additional themes include the underuse of postmortems in capital projects, the misalignment between project planners and operators, and the distinction between executional and experimental failure. Throughout, Koller reiterates that sound capital allocation depends not only on financial modeling, but also on institutional learning, leadership judgment, and clarity of strategic intent.

This conversation offers practical, senior-level guidance for executives, board members, and investors who must navigate capital planning amid structural constraints, investor pressures, and organizational complexity.

Get Tim’s book here: https://shorturl.at/nk7Z9

Valuation: Measuring and Managing the Value of Companies

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In a world that often rewards taking, James Turk believes the most powerful leaders are the ones who give clarity, opportunity, second chances, and their full attention.

In this episode, I speak with James Turk, who is an executive coach, CEO of The Turk Group, and author of The Giving Game, about what it truly means to become the kind of leader others want to follow.

We explore:

• Why most new leaders struggle and how to set them up for success from day one
• The difference between “getting” and “giving” leadership and why it changes everything
• Why he nearly didn’t make the phone call that launched his business
• How to lead through imposter syndrome, perfectionism, and personal doubt
• What to do when your definition of success starts to shift and how to build a business that matches it
• How giving away the spotlight can strengthen your brand, your business, and your people

James also shares the personal story behind The Giving Game, and how his childhood experiences gave him a lifelong belief in second chances and in the power of helping others see what they’re capable of.

Whether you’re an experienced CEO, a first-time manager, or a consultant striking out on your own, this conversation will challenge how you lead and who you choose to become in the process.

Get James’ book here: https://shorturl.at/c5oRT

The Giving Game: Becoming The Leader That Others Want To Follow

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What if cultural relevance isn’t just a marketing strategy but a business imperative?

In this episode, I speak with Hernan Tagliani, a multicultural marketing expert, award-winning strategist for Fortune 500 companies, and author of The Hispanic Market for Corporate America and Multicultural Mainstream, that explains how brands can drive lasting growth by truly understanding and serving Hispanic consumers.

Born and raised in Buenos Aires, Hernan shares how he rebuilt his career from the ground up after moving to the U.S., started his agency with a single client, and went on to lead multicultural strategy for some of the world’s most recognizable brands. His approach? Culture before language. Data before assumptions. And storytelling that builds trust, not just transactions.

We explore:

• Why many brands are missing out on long-term growth by overlooking multicultural strategy
• The biggest myths corporate leaders still believe about U.S. Hispanic consumers
• Why translating a campaign isn’t enough and how “transcreation” builds loyalty across generations
• How Hernan helped a national brand go from pilot campaign to national success by earning trust first
• What it takes to create a brand that reflects, and respects, the communities it serves
• How AI and digital media are reshaping what it means to be culturally relevant in real time

Hernan also shares personal insights on leadership, reinvention, and why taking risks, even when it’s uncomfortable, is key to becoming a purpose-driven entrepreneur.

Whether you’re building a brand, scaling a business, or trying to connect with today’s fastest-growing consumer segment, this episode offers practical strategies and a powerful reframe on what it means to lead with culture, not just campaigns.

Get Hernan’s book here: https://rb.gy/jjvvs4

Multicultural Mainstream: The Power of Hispanics In Consumer Marketing

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Your company’s next breakthrough isn’t about doing more, but doing less with purpose.

In this episode, I speak with Bill Canady, CEO of two major industrial companies (OTC Industrial Technologies and Arrowhead Engineered Products), a former U.S. Navy officer, and author of From Panic to Profit, about the operating system he’s used to turn around billion-dollar businesses and lead through uncertainty.

Bill brings a rare blend of military discipline, private equity strategy, and grounded human leadership. With more than 3,600 employees and $1.5 billion in revenue under his care, he shares what really drives growth, and why focus, not frenzy, is the secret to long-term results.

We talk about:

• How Bill used 80/20 thinking to stabilize a struggling company during the pandemic
• Why “doing everything” is the death of momentum and how to identify your critical few
• The real reason most teams fail to deliver (hint: it’s not effort)
• How AI is helping leaders focus on what matters and where human judgment still matters most
• Why you may need to say no to good ideas to unlock great outcomes
• The leadership triangle: visionary, operator, and prophet, and how to build teams that thrive

Bill also shares personal reflections on learning through failure, navigating high-stakes decisions, and how he’s applying his own advice as a continuous learner and leader of leaders.

Whether you’re in a turnaround, scaling up, or simply trying to get more focused in your business or career, this episode offers both strategic clarity and deeply practical tools for creating profitable, people-centered growth.

Bill Canady is the CEO of both OTC Industrial Technologies and Arrowhead Engineered Products (AEP). With over 30 years of experience, he specializes in driving organizational growth, cutting costs, and boosting profitability. At OTC, he led a 43% increase in revenue and an 80% rise in earnings, with annual sales now exceeding $1 billion. At AEP, he oversees more than 3,600 employees and $1.5 billion in sales. A U.S. Navy veteran, Bill holds an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and a BS in Business Administration from Elmhurst University. His Profitable Growth Operating System (PGOS) has helped countless organizations overcome challenges and seize new growth opportunities.

Get Bill’s book here: https://rb.gy/3a4mou

From Panic to Profit: Uncover Value, Boost Revenue, and Grow Your Business with the 80/20 Principle

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What if the key to innovation isn’t a process, but a mindset that travels across boundaries, disciplines, and decades?

From international development to McKinsey to leading AI strategy at Microsoft, Dean Carignan has built his career at the intersection of systems, people, and impact. Now, as co-author of The Insider’s Guide to Innovation at Microsoft, he’s helping organizations rethink how real innovation happens, not just in startups or labs, but in legacy institutions and global companies.

In this episode, Dean shares lessons from two decades at Microsoft, where he’s worked across Xbox, Office, cognitive services, and AI research. He also reflects on why innovation is ultimately about people, not products, and how leaders can create space for meaningful change, even inside complex organizations.

We explore:

• How Dean moved from solving global problems at the World Bank to driving change inside one of the world’s largest tech companies
• The power of being a “boundary crosser” and why innovation happens in the in-between
• Why mission often outperforms money as a motivator, especially in hiring for impact
• The overlooked value of storytelling in innovation (and how case studies bring ideas to life)
• How AI is transforming not only productivity, but the very nature of scientific discovery
• Why learning to build with agents may be the most valuable skill of the next decade

Dean also shares practical examples of how he uses AI today, from research to writing to daily decision-making, and why “thinking about thinking” is the leadership advantage most people overlook.

Whether you're guiding a team through change, building a new product, or trying to stay ahead of the AI curve, this conversation offers a grounded, human-centered approach to innovation in a time of exponential possibility.

Dean Carignan’s career spans international economic development, startup ventures, and strategic roles in technology. He is an alumnus of Georgetown University and INSEAD, he was a charter member of McKinsey & Company's advanced technology practice.

During his 20 years at Microsoft, he has guided new businesses, including the early internet division, Xbox, and multiple Al efforts through the critical growth phases to their first billion dollars in revenue.

Most recently, Dean has focused on leading AI innovations within Microsoft Research and the Office of the Chief Scientist. His intrapreneurial spirit, deep institutional knowledge, and expansive internal network made the behind-the-scenes perspective of The Insider's Guide to Innovation at Microsoft

Get Dean’s book here: https://www.innovationatmicrosoft.com/

The Insider's Guide to Innovation at Microsoft

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In this episode, Kris speaks with Matthew Dixon, founding partner of DCM Insights and bestselling author, about his latest research on business development in professional services. Drawing on a global study of 3,000 partners, Dixon outlines five distinct sales profiles and highlights the “Activator” as the only approach consistently linked to higher revenue performance.

Key insights: - Traditional models of client loyalty are eroding, with fewer clients returning automatically to the same firm. - Top performers distinguish themselves by proactively delivering value, leveraging internal and external networks, and consistently committing time to business development. - Effective firms drive adoption of these behaviors not through mandates, but by enabling teams with tools, mentorship, and a culture of collaboration. - Technology, including AI and network management tools, reduces the time required to execute these strategies, but success ultimately relies on human relationships and judgment.

Dixon’s upcoming book, The Activator Advantage, provides a practical guide for partners and leaders seeking to future-proof client engagement strategies in a more competitive and fast-changing market.

Matthew Dixon is the Founding Partner of DCM Insights. Matthew is a frequent contributor to Harvard Business Review and a WSJ bestselling author, with his books translated in a dozen languages.

Get Matthew’s book here: https://rb.gy/a6ygc7

The Activator Advantage: What Today's Rainmakers Do Differently

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In this episode, Kris speaks with Ken Rusk, nine-figure CEO and bestselling author of Blue Collar Cash, on building and scaling a successful business. Key insights: - True growth comes from empowering entrepreneurial employees and building autonomous teams aligned with the company’s mission and motivated to perform. - Rusk’s approach emphasizes the alignment of personal goals and corporate objectives, using a system of “timed pathways” where employees publicly commit to and pursue personal milestones, creating accountability and shared momentum. - Strategic reinvestment in marketing, reputation, and customer experience fueled steady expansion, while maintaining a clear long-term vision kept the organization resilient during challenges like the COVID-19 pandemic. - His leadership philosophy centers on building decision-makers, not just making decisions, and staying focused on time as the most valuable asset, balancing business success with personal well-being, family, and purpose. - Rusk’s recent move to an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) reflects his commitment to sharing long-term value and ensuring that the team that built the company benefits from its future growth. Rusk’s message is that sustainable business success stems from developing others, aligning incentives, and ensuring that leaders stay focused on the long view, both in business and in life.

Get Ken’s book here: https://www.kenrusk.com/blue-collar-cash/

Blue-Collar Cash: Love Your Work, Secure Your Future, and Find Happiness for Life

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What if the key to driving real innovation isn’t genius, but orchestration?

Innovation is often seen as the domain of visionaries or tech geniuses. But in this episode, JoAnn Garbin, former Director of Innovation at Microsoft Cloud and co-author of The Insider’s Guide to Innovation at Microsoft, shows that true innovation is a craft: one grounded in discipline, collaboration, and conscious leadership.

JoAnn brings a rare lens to the conversation — an engineer with a background in philosophy and performance, a systems thinker who has lived through startup exits, corporate reinvention, and a life-altering cancer diagnosis. Her approach to leadership, creativity, and risk is grounded not in theory but in lived experience.

We talk about:

• How real innovation happens inside complex, slow-moving organizations
• Why orchestration, not brilliance, is the most underrated leadership skill
• The critical role of community and trust in long-term innovation success
• How to build political capital without becoming “political”
• What cancer taught her about control, clarity, and letting go
• The mindset shift that makes innovation more accessible (and less magical)

JoAnn also shares how she navigates uncertainty with structured frameworks, how she invests in her learning every day, and why innovation, especially in an AI-powered future, must be inclusive, sustainable, and human-centered.

Whether you’re leading change, launching something new, or trying to stay relevant in a fast-shifting world, this episode will expand how you think about creativity, courage, and what it really means to build something that lasts.

JoAnn Garbin is a former Director of Innovation in Microsoft’s cloud business. She is the founder of Regenerous Labs, where she focuses on building practical solutions across industries that integrate sustainability and innovation.

Get JoAnn’s book here: https://www.innovationatmicrosoft.com/

The Insider's Guide to Innovation at Microsoft

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What if the leadership edge you’re looking for doesn’t come from working harder, but listening deeper?

We talk often about productivity, performance, and pushing through. But few conversations explore the quieter forces shaping our best decisions, like intuition.

In this episode, I speak with Hrund Gunnsteinsdóttir, a director, writer, systems thinker, and an award-winning sustainability leader, about intuition as a source of strength, clarity, and resilience in both leadership and life.

Hrund shares how her work in post-conflict Kosovo with the UN led to burnout and a full reset — one that turned her toward the science and practice of intuition. Through personal stories, research, and the Icelandic concept of innsæi (“the sea within”), she explains how we can train our intuition as rigorously as we train our intellect.

We explore:

• How to know whether your intuition is guiding you, or your ego is pulling you
• Why many of us lose touch with inner guidance (and how to return to it)
• How to use an “attention journal” to strengthen your discernment
• The difference between insight and overthinking
• What it takes to create workplace cultures that respect sensing as much as data
• Why intuition is not the opposite of reason, but essential to it

This episode is for anyone navigating uncertainty, complexity, or the quiet knowing that something needs to change.

Whether you're leading a team, facing a major decision, or simply looking to reconnect with your inner compass, this conversation offers both inspiration and practical tools to help you find your way — from the inside out.

Hrund Gunnsteinsdóttir is an Advisory Council member at Yale’s International Leadership Centre and has been recognised for her work as a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader and Cultural Leader and Yale World Fellow. She has qualifications from Yale, Harvard Kennedy School, the London School of Economics and Political Sciences, Oxford Said Business School and the University of Iceland.

Get Hrund’s book here: https://hrundgunnsteinsdottir.com/

InnSaei: Heal, Revive and Reset with the Icelandic art of intuition

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Dr. Tiffany Moon isn’t just breaking stereotypes — she’s rewriting the script.

In this episode, Dr. Tiffany Moon — board-certified anesthesiologist, founder of Aromasthesia, and former cast member of Bravo’s Real Housewives — opens up about what it really takes to balance ambition, motherhood, entrepreneurship, and public scrutiny.

From immigrating to the U.S. at age 6 to graduating from college at 19 and medical school at 23, where she finished in the top ten percent of her class, to launching a wellness brand rooted in science and self-care, Tiffany’s story is as raw and relatable as it is inspiring.

We cover:

• The culture of overachievement and how it can become an emotional cage
• The silent weight of perfectionism in high-achieving women
• How childhood trauma shaped her relentless drive and how she’s healing from it
• Why asking for help isn’t a weakness — it’s a strategy
• The behind-the-scenes reality of being a doctor and a reality TV personality
• Why she’s choosing presence over perfection in parenting, career, and business

Plus:

• Why even the most “put-together” people struggle with self-worth
• How Tiffany balances a medical career with being a mother, wife, and founder
• Why her social media presence is as real as it gets and why that matters

Tiffany also shares the surprising impact of being on reality TV, not on her brand, but on her identity, and why she now uses her platform to champion authenticity, self-care, and breaking generational cycles.

This is an honest, unfiltered conversation about legacy, self-awareness, and the courage to define success on your own terms.

Tiffany Moon, MD, is a board-certified anesthesiologist, entrepreneur, keynote speaker, mother of twins, and author of Joy Prescriptions: How I Learned to Stop Chasing Perfection and Embrace Connection. She is also the founder and CEO of Aromasthesia Candles, Three Moons Wine, and LeadHer Summit. Tiffany has published over fifty peer-reviewed articles, is one of D Magazine’s “Best Doctors,” and serves as an Oral Board Examiner for the American Board of Anesthesiology. She was the first medical doctor and Chinese American cast member on Bravo’s Real Housewives. Her story has been featured in Forbes, Variety, Harper’s Bazaar, USA Today, and more. She lives with her family in Dallas, TX.

Get Tiffany’s book here: https://rb.gy/5fvfl5

Joy Prescriptions: How I Learned to Stop Chasing Perfection and Embrace Connection

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What if the financial advice you trust is actually hurting your future?

Mark Matson believes it is, and he has the data to prove it.

In this episode, I sit down with Mark Matson, founder of Matson Money and a pioneer in the evidence-based investing movement. With over $10 billion in assets under management, Mark has helped thousands of families and advisors break free from Wall Street myths, media-driven panic, and the illusion of market timing.

But Mark didn’t start in finance. In fact, he nearly gave up on the entire industry — until a few key realizations (and one powerful idea from a Nobel Laureate) reshaped his approach to wealth entirely.

We talk about:

• The dangerous psychology behind most investing decisions and how to fix it
• Why traditional financial advice often fails to deliver real value
• What Wall Street doesn’t want you to understand about your money
• The importance of storytelling in transforming investor behavior
• Why “doing nothing” is sometimes the smartest move in volatile markets

Mark also shares how he trains financial advisors to become coaches — not salespeople — and why aligning your portfolio with purpose is key to long-term success.

Whether you’re an investor, advisor, or entrepreneur, this conversation will change how you think about money — and what it really means to grow wealth with integrity and intention.

Mark Matson is an American entrepreneur, author, and innovator in the fields of investing science and financial education. He is the creator of educational experiences, platforms, and tools that make Nobel Prize winning investing research accessible to investors and transform their relationship to money. Most notably, he is the creator of The American Dream Experience and the Matson Method.

Get Mark’s book here: https://rb.gy/h4brr0

Experiencing The American Dream: How to Invest Your Time, Energy, and Money to Create an Extraordinary Life

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 547, an interview with Bernard Harris, an astronaut, physician, venture capitalist, philanthropist, and author of Embracing Infinite Possibilities: Letting Go of Fear to Find Your Highest Potential.

In this episode, Bernard Harris, the first African American astronaut to walk in space, shares his experiences and describes the thrill of launching into space as well as the physical challenges of microgravity. He discusses the significance of inner strength, resilience, and a growth mindset. His book, Embracing Infinite Possibilities, encourages self-discovery, overcoming obstacles, and opening your mind to life's infinite possibilities, instilling hope in those who have yet to discover their own power.

Get Bernard’s book here: https://rb.gy/fgx6d8

Embracing Infinite Possibilities: Letting Go of Fear to Find Your Highest Potential

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 546, an interview with the authors of Radical Listening: The Art of True Connection, Prof. Christian van Nieuwerburgh and Dr. Robert Biswas-Diener.

Most conversations barely scratch the surface, because true connection isn’t just about hearing words, it’s about listening with purpose and presence.

In this episode, Prof. Christian van Nieuwerburgh and Dr. Robert Biswas-Diener introduce the concept of Radical Listening: an intentional, culturally aware approach to making others feel seen, heard, and valued. Drawing from their research and coaching experiences, they explain why our intentions behind listening matter just as much as the act itself and how distractions, politeness, and even the need to be right can undermine true connection. They share practical strategies leaders can use to build stronger teams, navigate conflict, and create space for deeper conversations, even across cultural differences.

Prof. Christian van Nieuwerburgh (PhD) is a leading academic and executive coach with an international reputation. He is Professor of Coaching and Positive Psychology at RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences (Ireland) and Principal Fellow at the Centre for Wellbeing Science at the University of Melbourne (Australia). Christian delivers consultancy, training, and executive coaching globally, regularly presenting in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and the Middle East. He is passionate about motorcycling, writing, and coaching.

Dr. Robert Biswas-Diener is a researcher, author, and consultant with 75 peer-reviewed academic articles and over 27,000 citations. His previous books include The Upside of Your Dark Side (New York Times bestseller, 2014) and the 2007 PROSE Award winner, Happiness. He has presented keynotes to Lululemon, Deloitte, Humana, AARP, the World Bank, and others. In 2024, Thinkers50 named Robert one of the “50 most influential executive coaches in the world.” He lives in Portland, Oregon, and enjoys drawing and rock climbing.

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From CIA hacker to cybersecurity advisor to a U.S. President. Now trusted by Fortune 500 companies, international banks, and leaders like Bill Gates. (And he almost missed the CIA meeting... because it was raining.) "Something told me, it was a Thursday afternoon. ... and something told me, you have to go to the co-op office today. You have to go today. ... I believe there’s this inner voice and ... this thing came over me, and I get out of class at 3:30. It’s raining. It’s a 10-minute walk... So the universe is testing me." In this episode of the Strategy Skills podcast, Dr. Eric Cole — former CIA hacker, Cyber Wingman for the U.S. Air Force, and Commissioner on Cybersecurity for the 44th President of the United States — shares lessons from a career built on discipline, pattern recognition, trusting your instincts, and letting data — not emotions — drive decisions. Today, his expertise is trusted by Fortune 500 companies, international banks, and some of the world’s most influential leaders, including Bill Gates. If you're serious about operating at the highest levels, you’ll want to study this episode carefully. We cover: - Why cybersecurity is a competitive advantage when used properly - How to build $7M companies that sell for 9–10x revenue - Why protecting your intellectual property early can create millions in extra value - Why minimizing exposure — in business and in security — is key to surviving long term - How real entrepreneurs use data, not emotions, to make decisions - Why building businesses in "Blue Oceans" (no competitors) is critical - Why ethical sales beat high-pressure tactics every time Plus: → The simple morning routine he uses to stay sharp → How he protects his personal AI to avoid being replaced by it → How to build companies designed for high-value exits — not 30 years of exhaustion If you’re thinking long-term about leading, building, and protecting real value, you will find this episode helpful.

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Cyber Crisis: Protecting Your Business from Real Threats in the Virtual World

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What can a $2B concert tour teach us about business strategy? Quite a lot. We often speak about innovation and reinvention in the corporate world. Yet, few embody it as consistently and successfully as the artist and strategist Taylor Swift. In this episode, I spoke with Kevin Evers, Senior Editor at Harvard Business Review and author of There’s Nothing Like This: The Strategic Genius of Taylor Swift. Kevin brings a rare perspective, someone who has quietly shaped the voices of influential business thinkers over nearly two decades, now stepping into authorship himself. Kevin shares insights from his new book on Taylor Swift, noting her strategic decision-making and marketing tactics that led her to where she is today. He stresses the value of trust and consistency in building a brand, citing Taylor Swift's $2 billion Eras Tour and her 2% market share in 2024. Kevin also underscores how Taylor treats her fans, leveraging fan engagement for marketing success, and how we can adopt it in the business world.

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There's Nothing Like This: The Strategic Genius of Taylor Swift

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 543, an interview with the author of The Power of Enough: Finding Joy in Your Relationship with Money, Elizabeth Husserl.

Many people chase wealth as a number, but the truth is that true wealth is more than just money in the bank.

In this episode, Elizabeth challenges common assumptions about financial success and explores how fulfillment, stability, and meaning factor into what it really means to be wealthy. Elizabeth explains how our “scarcity brain” influences money decisions, why understanding your financial DNA matters, and how daily practices like journaling and meditation can transform your relationship with money. She also offers practical tools for building financial freedom and rethinking the emotional triggers that shape our financial lives.

Elizabeth Husserl is the first female principal and co-founder of a comprehensive boutique wealth planning firm, Peak 360 Wealth Management. She holds Series 6, 63, and 65 licenses, as well as a B.S. in Economics from Tulane University and an M.A. in East-West Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies. She is also a Certified Money Coach with the Money Coach Institute.

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The Power of Enough: Finding Joy in Your Relationship with Money

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 542, an interview with the author The Psychology of Leadership: Timeless principles to improve your management of individuals, teams… and yourself!, Sébastien Page.

Ever wondered what truly drives successful leaders and how psychology plays a role?

In this episode with Sébastien Page, we explore the habits, mindset, and science behind great leadership. He shares lessons drawn from 20 years of experience and in-depth research in positive and sports psychology. Sébastien introduces the PERMA model (Positive Emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, Accomplishment) and explains how it can be applied to leadership and organizational success. He also shares insights from studying billionaires and what drives their success beyond money.

Sébastien Page is the Chief Investment Officer of T. Rowe Price. He manages the division responsible for managing Multi-Asset portfolios there. he has won six annual research-paper awards: two from The Financial Analysts Journal and four from The Journal of Portfolio Management. He appears regularly on CNBC and Bloomberg TV. He has been quoted extensively in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.

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The Psychology of Leadership: Timeless principles to improve your management of individuals, teams… and yourself!

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 541, an interview with the author of Transcend: Unlocking Humanity in the Age of AI, Faisal Hoque.

In this episode, Faisal shares his journey from his early days developing software to becoming a business leader focused on strategy and impact. Faisal talks about how Eastern philosophy, particularly Buddhism, influences his approach to business and leadership, helping him stay grounded while pursuing innovation. He opens up about how his son's serious illness changed his outlook on life and business, driving him to use technology to improve medical treatments. We also discuss AI's effects on society, with Faisal offering practical advice for leaders on balancing technological advancement with human skills. Throughout our conversation, he shares simple practices that keep him sharp - from reading widely to constantly trying new things - and explains how focusing on the journey rather than just outcomes has shaped his success.

Faisal Hoque is recognized as one of the world’s leading management thinkers and technologists. He is an award-winning entrepreneur, innovator, and #1 Wall Street Journal best-selling author with close to thirty years of cross-industry success. Faisal is the founder of SHADOKA, NextChapter, and other companies. He also serves as a transformation and innovation partner for CACI, an $8 billion company focused on U.S. national security.

As a founder and CEO of multiple companies, Faisal is a three-time winner of the Deloitte Technology Fast 50™ and Fast 500™ awards. He built his first commercial software product at the age of 20 while studying at the University of Minnesota. Since then, he has developed more than twenty commercial platforms and worked with leadership at the US DoD, US DHS, GE, MasterCard, American Express, Home Depot, PepsiCo, IBM, Chase, and others. For their innovative work, he and his team have been awarded several provisional patents in the areas of user authentication, business rule routing, and metadata sorting.

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Transcend: Unlocking Humanity in the Age of AI

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 540, an interview with the authors of Meaningful Work: How to Ignite Passion and Performance in Every Employee, Wes Adams and Tamara Myles.

What makes work truly meaningful, and how can leaders create it?

In this episode, Tamara Miles and Wes Adams, researchers and positive psychologists, have studied how leaders can intentionally promote cultures where people find purpose, connection, and challenge in their work. Drawing from their own career and research, they outline the practices that lead to lasting meaning, starting from onboarding and extending to everyday leadership behaviors like showing appreciation and building community. They also explore how AI can be developed to support human fulfillment, and why understanding generational differences is key to creating meaningful work environments for all.

Wes Adams is the founder and CEO of SV Consulting Group, where he works with high-performing companies to develop leadership excellence, build organizational resilience, and deepen employee engagement through a meaningful work lens. He has more than two decades of experience as a successful entrepreneur and strategic partner for clients including Microsoft, KPMG, BlackRock, Google, and the United Nations, along with a range of high-growth organizations. Wes has been featured at South by Southwest Interactive and the Nobel Peace Prize Forum, and his work has been covered by the New York Times, BBC News, Forbes, and Business Insider. His teams have won multiple Webby Awards and been recognized as one of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Brands. His early career was spent launching and managing high-profile hospitality businesses for which he was nominated twice for a coveted James Beard Award.

Wes is a graduate of Vanderbilt University and holds a master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania in Applied Positive Psychology.

Tamara Myles is an accomplished consultant, author, and international speaker with over two decades of experience helping leaders improve business performance. She is the author of The Secret to Peak Productivity, which introduced her proprietary Peak Productivity Pyramid framework. Tamara’s insights have been featured in leading publications such as Forbes, Fast Company, USA Today, and Business Insider. She has worked with clients such as Microsoft, KPMG, MassMutual, and Google.

Tamara has a master’s degree in Applied Positive Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania, where she also serves as an instructor in the master’s program and a trainer for the world-renowned Penn Resilience Program. She is a professor in the Master of Science in Leadership program at Boston College, where she integrates cutting-edge research into practical applications for leadership and organizational success.

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Meaningful Work: How to Ignite Passion and Performance in Every Employee

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 539, an interview with the author of From Panic to Profit: Uncover Value, Boost Revenue, and Grow Your Business with the 80/20 Principle, Bill Canady.

In this episode, Bill shares insights from his military background and how it shaped his leadership approach. Bill explains his Profitable Growth Operating System (PG OS) framework, including the five key components that drive business success. He also offers practical advice on pricing strategy, the need for a focused team, and the importance of data-driven decision-making. Bill also shared insights on balancing personal and professional life and the critical role of mentorship in leadership success.

Bill Canady is the CEO of both OTC Industrial Technologies and Arrowhead Engineered Products (AEP). With over 30 years of experience, he specializes in driving organizational growth, cutting costs, and boosting profitability. At OTC, he led a 43% increase in revenue and an 80% rise in earnings, with annual sales now exceeding $1 billion. At AEP, he oversees more than 3,600 employees and $1.5 billion in sales. A U.S. Navy veteran, Bill holds an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and a BS in Business Administration from Elmhurst University. His Profitable Growth Operating System (PGOS) has helped countless organizations overcome challenges and seize new growth opportunities.

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From Panic to Profit: Uncover Value, Boost Revenue, and Grow Your Business with the 80/20 Principle

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 538, an interview with the coauthor of Leading for Wellness: How to Create a Team Culture Where Everyone Thrives, Patricia Grabarek.

In this episode, Patricia talks about why workplace wellness matters and why it’s important to have a holistic approach that includes physical, mental, and emotional health. She explains the gap in research on leadership practices that help create a healthy work environment and how leaders can balance getting results with supporting their employees. Patricia shares simple ways to make wellness a priority, like setting aside time for self-care and building a supportive team culture. She also talks about the challenges of bringing wellness initiatives into remote and hybrid work settings.

Patricia Grabarek is a co-founder of Workr Beeing and an Industrial/Organizational Psychologist with a passion and expertise in workplace wellness, workplace culture, employee engagement, and leadership development. Patricia has spent her career as a practitioner, mostly working in consulting but, recently taking on more internal roles, leading people analytics and talent vitality teams. Throughout her career, Patricia has worked with over sixty different client organizations from various industries, implementing solutions to improve wellness, diversity, retention, performance, and engagement within their organizations. In addition, she taught organizational psychology in the Masters of Applied Psychology Program at the University of Southern California.

Patricia was featured on Culture Amp’s list of Top 25 Emerging Culture Creators for 2024 and has been featured in media outlets, including The L.A. Times, CBS News, and CBC Radio. Patricia received her PhD and MS in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from The Pennsylvania State University and her BA in Psychology from the University of California, Los Angeles.

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Leading for Wellness: How to Create a Team Culture Where Everyone Thrives

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 537, an interview with the author of Wild Courage: Go After What You Want and Get It, Jenny Wood.

In this episode, Jenny discusses her career journey and the key skills that helped her rise from an entry-level role to an executive over 18 years. She also discusses overcoming imposter syndrome, being strategic with time, and saying no to non-promotable work. Jenny shares the importance of obsessing over key projects, leading with enthusiasm, and breaking unwritten rules to stand out. Her book, Wild Courage, outlines nine traits for success, including being weird, shameless, and reckless.

Today’s guest is Jenny Wood. In her 18 years at Google, she grew from entry-level to executive, and she most recently led a large operations team that helped drive billions of dollars of revenue per year. Jenny’s writing has been featured in Harvard Business Review, Entrepreneur, Inc. She is a licensed private pilot, a daily hiker, an improv student, a tap dancer, and a zucchini bread connoisseur. She lives in Boulder, Colorado with her two young children and her husband, Jon.

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Wild Courage: Go After What You Want and Get It

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 536, an interview with the coauthor of Conflict Resilience: Negotiating Disagreement Without Giving Up or Giving In, Joel Salinas, MD.

In this episode, Joel Salinas talks about conflict resilience and how our brain reacts to disagreements. He explains how loneliness affects health, how conflicts activate pain-related brain areas, and shares techniques to manage stress. Joel also discusses brain plasticity, how age affects conflict resolution, and the power of focusing on positive outcomes to break negative thought patterns.

Joel Salinas, MD is a behavioral neurologist and clinician scientist at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, founder and Chief Medical Officer at Isaac Health, and former Harvard Medical School faculty. He is the author of Mirror Touch: A Memoir of Synesthesia and the Secret Life of the Brain.

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Conflict Resilience: Negotiating Disagreement Without Giving Up or Giving In

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 535, an interview with the author of Richer, Wiser, Happier: How the World's Greatest Investors Win in Markets and Life, William Green.

In this episode, William Green talks about his journey from Oxford to becoming a renowned journalist. He shares stories of his unconventional career path, including impulsive moves to New York and Hong Kong, financial struggles, and being laid off during the financial crisis. William discusses how he learned to handle failure with grace and experienced a spiritual awakening at 40 that changed his outlook. He offers practical advice for writers and thinkers on focusing on quality over quantity and finding work that aligns with their unique talents and personality.

William Green has written for many publications in the US and Europe, including Time, Fortune, Forbes, Fast Company, The New Yorker, The Spectator, and The Economist. He edited the Asian edition of Time while living in Hong Kong, then moved to London to edit the European, Middle Eastern, and African editions of Time. Born and raised in London, William studied English literature at Oxford University and received a master’s degree in journalism at Columbia University. He lives in New York with his wife and their two children.

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Richer, Wiser, Happier: How the World's Greatest Investors Win in Markets and Life

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 534, an interview with the author of The Science of Personal Power: How to Build Confidence, Create Success, and Obtain Freedom, Chris Lipp.

Powerful people operate with a fundamentally different mindset. While others seek approval and dodge accountability, influential individuals take ownership and remain anchored to their goals and values.

In this episode, Chris Lipp discusses the importance of personal power and the characteristics that differentiate powerful people from those who are not. He shares the habits and practices that help individuals attain and maintain power. Chris also provides strategies for regaining power in high-stress situations and emphasizes the significance of personal accountability and effective communication in both professional and personal contexts.

Chris Lipp is a social psychologist and author of The Science of Personal Power. He currently teaches at Tulane's Freeman School of Business.

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The Science of Personal Power: How to Build Confidence, Create Success, and Obtain Freedom

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 533, an interview with the author of Cultivating Audacity: Dismantle Doubt and Let Yourself Win, Anne Marie Anderson.

In this episode, Anne Marie Anderson shared her journey from being rejected by ESPN at 21 to working there for 35 years and becoming one of the most experienced female play-by-play announcers in the country. She discussed the importance of audacity, combining confidence with bold risks, and learning from rejection. In Cultivating Audacity, Anne Marie shares the system she developed to find the courage to confront hesitation and break down barriers that stood between her and the life she wanted.

Anne Marie Anderson is a 3x Emmy Award winning broadcaster, keynote speaker and author of Cultivating Audacity.

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Cultivating Audacity: Dismantle Doubt and Let Yourself Win

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 532, an interview with the author of Big Goals: The Science of Setting Them, Achieving Them, and Creating Your Best Life, Caroline Adams Miller.

In this episode, Caroline takes us through her journey of overcoming personal challenges to becoming an expert in positive psychology and goal setting. She breaks down why setting clear, challenging goals is so important and explains the difference between learning goals (developing new skills) and performance goals (improving existing ones). Caroline also talks about the role of accountability, having the right kind of support, and how self-belief and hope can make a big difference in our life. Caroline also discusses the unique challenges women face when setting goals and how feedback from role models and strong relationships can help us stay on track and succeed.

For over three decades, Caroline Adams Miller has been a pioneer with her groundbreaking work in the areas of the science of goal setting, grit, happiness, and success. She is recognized as one of the world's leading positive psychology experts on this research and how it can be applied to one's life and work for maximum transformation. She is the author of nine books, including My Name is Caroline, Getting Grit, Positively Caroline and Creating Your Best Life, which the "father of Positive Psychology," Dr. Martin Seligman, lauded in Flourish as "adding a major missing piece" to the world of goal setting.

She is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard University and attained one of the first 32 degrees in the world in Applied Positive Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania.

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Big Goals: The Science of Setting Them, Achieving Them, and Creating Your Best Life

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 531, an interview with the author of Conflict Resilience: Negotiating Disagreement Without Giving Up or Giving In, Bob Bordone.

Most of us instinctively avoid conflict, seeing it as a threat rather than an opportunity for growth. What if the conversations you dread most could actually strengthen your relationships and lead to better outcomes?

In this episode, Harvard Law's Bob Bordone talks about negotiation and conflict resolution. He discusses seeing conflict as an opportunity instead of a threat, and shares practical tips for handling difficult conversations. The episode covers when to address or avoid conflicts, dealing with family disputes, and the importance of being a good listener. Bob also offers advice on understanding others' perspectives and dealing with uncooperative and difficult people.

Bob Bordone is a Senior Fellow at Harvard Law School and the Founder and Principal of The Cambridge Negotiation Institute, a boutique consulting firm providing coaching, consulting, and training in negotiation conflict resilience, mediation, and conflict resolution.

He spent 21 years teaching full-time at Harvard Law School where he founded the Harvard Negotiation & Mediation Clinical Program. He is co-author/co-editor of three books, including his latest, Conflict Resilience: Negotiating Disagreement Without Giving Up or Giving In.

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Conflict Resilience: Negotiating Disagreement Without Giving Up or Giving In

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 530, an interview with a seasoned executive coach and the author of You're the Boss: Become the Manager You Want to Be (and Others Need), Sabina Nawaz.

In this episode, Sabina shares her journey from software development at Microsoft to advising C-level executives. She explains the dangers of pressure overpowering leaders and advocates for self-care and emotional intelligence. Throughout her journey as a leader, she realized the need for effective communication, urging leaders to seek feedback and practice active listening. Sabina introduces tools like the "joyline" to identify what brings joy and fulfillment and emphasizes the importance of celebrating self-acceptance and prioritizing continuous development through micro-habits like journaling and meditation. Her new book, You’re the Boss, offers practical strategies for maintaining success and leadership effectiveness.

Sabina Nawaz who advises C-level executives and teams at Fortune 500 corporations, government agencies, nonprofits, and academic institutions around the world. During her fourteen-year tenure at Microsoft, she went from managing software development teams to leading the company’s executive development and succession planning efforts for over 11,000 managers and nearly a thousand executives, advising Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer directly.

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You're the Boss: Become the Manager You Want to Be (and Others Need)

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 529, an interview with the author of Who Needs College Anymore?, Kathleen deLaski.

In this episode, Kathleen shares her journey from journalism to education reform. She talks about her time as a TV and digital journalist, White House correspondent, and Pentagon spokesperson, as well as her transition to education reform, founding the Education Design Lab in 2013, and her work on higher education innovation.

Kathleen discusses the changing role of college and the impact of the pandemic on workforce dynamics and the shift towards shorter, job-focused educational pathways. Her book, Who Needs College Anymore?, dives deeper into these topics.

Kathleen deLaski is an education and workforce designer, as well as a futurist. She founded the Education Design Lab in 2013 to help colleges begin the journey to reimagine higher education toward the future of work. Her non-profit has helped 1200 colleges, orgs and economic regions design shorter, more affordable pathways for learners to achieve their economic goals. She spends time as a senior advisor to the Project on Workforce at Harvard University and teaches human-centered design and higher ed reform as an adjunct professor in the Honors College at George Mason University. In a previous career, Kathleen spent twenty years as a TV and then a digital journalist, including time as ABC News White House correspondent. Followed by a political appointment as the first female Pentagon spokesperson.

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Who Needs College Anymore?: Imagining a Future Where Degrees Won’t Matter

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 528, an interview with the author of Performing Under Pressure: The Science of Doing your Best When it Matters Most, JP Pawliw-Fry.

In this episode, JP walks us through the concept of pressure management—how to reduce pressure in our personal and professional lives to better excel in whatever we do. He also discusses the importance of self-awareness, especially under pressure, and the concept of 'aggressive learning,' where high performers extract more information from experiences. JP shares how meditation can change one's relationship with stress and improve focus.

JP Pawliw-Fry is a world-renowned keynote speaker, and the author of the New York Times bestseller Performing Under Pressure which was named INC. Magazine’s Best Business Book of the Year. He teaches a leadership course at the Kellogg Graduate School of Management. Over the last 25 years, JP worked with leaders and high-pressure performers around the world — from Navy Seals and Olympic athletes to executives at global organizations like Intel, Coca Cola, and NASA.

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Performing Under Pressure: The Science of Doing Your Best When it Matters Most

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 527, an interview with the coauthor of Make Work Fair: Data-Driven Design for Real Results, Siri Chilazi.

In this episode, Siri shares her path from studying chemistry to researching workplace gender equality. Based on her experience and academic work, she explains how workplace systems shape behavior more than individual choices. Siri advocates for practical changes like redesigning resumes and conducting regular pay audits rather than focusing on diversity training. Siri discusses how to create fairer workplaces and suggests that small changes in organizational culture can lead to significant improvements in gender equality.

Siri Chilazi is a senior researcher at the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard Kennedy School whose life’s work is to advance gender equality in the workplace. Siri has an MBA from Harvard Business School, a Master’s in Public Policy from Harvard Kennedy School, and a BA in Chemistry and Physics from Harvard College.

Get Siri’s new book here: https://rb.gy/99mu86

Make Work Fair: Data-Driven Design for Real Results

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 526, an interview with the author of Ping: The Secrets of Successful Virtual Communication, Andrew Brodsky.

In this episode, Andrew shares the nuances of effective virtual communication in the workplace. He introduces the PING framework (Perspective Taking, Initiative, Nonverbal Behavior, and Goals) and discusses how different communication modes suit various objectives. Andrew also touched on strategies for maintaining creativity in virtual settings, building trust in remote teams, and the importance of leading by example even in a virtual environment.

Andrew Brodsky is an award-winning professor at The University of Texas. He is an expert in workplace technology, communication and productivity and serves as the CEO of Ping Group. Andrew earned a PhD in organizational behavior from Harvard Business School and BS from The Wharton School. He currently lives with his wife and two rescue dogs in Austin.

Get Andrew’s new book here: https://rb.gy/ikgmit

Ping: The Secrets of Successful Virtual Communication

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 525, an interview with the authors of The ROI of Thought Leadership: Calculating the Value that Sets Organizations Apart, Cindy Anderson and Anthony Marshall.

In this episode, Cindy and Anthony discuss how their work at IBM shaped their understanding of thought leadership's value in building client relationships and explain the quantifiable benefits of thought leadership. They also address how AI is impacting thought leadership creation and consumption, and the distinction between thought leadership and sales content. They stress the need for independent, data-driven content to build trust and relationships, not for direct sales. Their insights stem from decades of combined experience at organizations like the Project Management Institute and IBM's Institute for Business Value.

Cindy Anderson is the Chief Marketing Officer/Global Lead for Engagement & Eminence at the IBM Institute for Business Value.

Anthony Marshall is the Chair of the Board of Advisors for The Global Thought Leadership Institute at APQC and the Senior Research Director of thought leadership at the IBM Institute for Business Value.

Get The ROI of Thought Leadership here: https://rb.gy/3vv7wm

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 524, an interview with the author of Meet Every Learner's Needs: Redesigning Instruction So All Students Can Succeed, Robert Barnett.

In this episode, Robert discussed his approach to educational fairness and equity and the importance of personalized learning experiences. He explained the need for engaging and challenging learning environments rather than a one-size-fits-all approach, highlighting the importance of tailoring learning to individual needs.

Robert Barnett co-founded the Modern Classrooms Project. Robert’s approach - now known as the Modern Classroom instructional model - has empowered more than 80,000 educators, across all grade levels and content, in all 50 states and 180+ countries worldwide. Evaluators from Johns Hopkins found "overwhelming positive support" for this model’s many benefits. Robert graduated cum laude from Princeton University and Harvard Law School and speaks English, French, and Spanish.

Get Robert’s new book here: https://shorturl.at/2al4p

Meet Every Learner's Needs: Redesigning Instruction So All Students Can Succeed

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 345, an interview with the Chairman of the BCG Henderson Institute, BCG’s think tank for new ideas in management and strategy. Martin has authored numerous books, including Your Strategy Needs a Strategy and The Imagination Machine, a handbook about how to systematically harness imagination to generate new ideas and transform businesses.

Get Martin's book here: https://rb.gy/qmifgx

The Imagination Machine: How to Spark New Ideas and Create Your Company's Future.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 522, an interview with the author of Gambling Man: The Secret Story of the World's Greatest Disruptor, Masayoshi Son, Lionel Barber.

In this episode, Lionel discusses his career and insights on leadership, journalism, and business transformation. He talks about his tenure at the Financial Times and offers advice to young professionals on how to succeed in today’s ever-changing and challenging world. In this interview, Lionel also shares key lessons from his new book and his research on SoftBank CEO and financial disruptor, Masayoshi Son, highlighting the insights we can learn from him.

Lionel Barber is the former editor of the Financial Times. As editor, he interviewed many of the world’s leaders in business and politics, including US Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Barber has cowritten several books and has lectured widely on foreign policy, transatlantic relations, and economics. He also served on the Board of Trustees at the Tate and the Carnegie Corporation of New York. He graduated in 1978 from St Edmund Hall, Oxford University, with a joint honors degree in German and modern history, and speaks French and German fluently.

Get Lionel’s new book here: https://rb.gy/4svgv0

Gambling Man: The Secret Story of the World's Greatest Disruptor, Masayoshi Son

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 521, an interview with the author of Essential: How Distributed Teams, Generative AI, and Global Shifts are Creating a New Human Powered Leadership, Dr. Christie Smith.

In this episode, Christie shares her career journey through boutique firms, Deloitte, Apple, and Accenture. She shares key lessons about building client relationships, emphasizing that consultants should focus on understanding client needs rather than pushing their own agenda. Christie explains that successful consulting leaders need empathy and adaptability, especially as workplaces change with new technology. She also talks about balancing work and family life, and how trust matters more than brand in building a successful career. Through her new project, the Humanity Studio, she now helps organizations deal with workplace challenges, particularly as AI becomes more common in business.

Dr. Christie Smith has over 35 years of experience advising the C-Suite of Fortune 500 companies on strategy, leadership, culture, talent, and the impact of workforce technologies, including AI, and has led global talent teams at Deloitte, Apple, and Accenture.

Get Christie’s new book here: https://shorturl.at/8aKhq

Essential: How Distributed Teams, Generative AI, and Global Shifts Are Creating a New Human-Powered Leadership

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 520, an interview with the author of TALK: The Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves, Alison Wood Brooks.

In this episode, Alison shares how her experiences at Harvard shaped her understanding of one of the most critical skills for anyone in any industry: conversation. She introduces the concept of the “topic pyramid”, which includes small talk, tailored talk, and deep talk, and shares strategies for handling difficult conversations, such as using acknowledgment, affirmation, and hedging language. Alison shows why conversing more effectively can make a big difference in the quality of our close personal relationships and our professional success.

Alison Wood Brooks is an Associate Professor at the Harvard Business School. She created and teaches a cutting-edge course to MBA students and executives.

Get Alison’s new book here: https://shorturl.at/WS7i1

Talk: The Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves

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In this episode with Rob Markey, we will discuss valuing and measuring customer loyalty. Rob highlights the gap between executives' intentions to prioritize customers and their actual practices, noting that only 8% of customers believe they receive exceptional experiences, despite 80% of executives thinking so. Rob discusses the need for companies to measure and manage customer lifetime value, using tools like Net Promoter Scores and customer segmentation. He also discusses the challenges of implementing customer-centric strategies, the importance of relationship recovery, and the role of leadership in driving these changes.

Rob Markey is a partner and director at Bain & Company and the founder of the firm’s Global Customer Strategy and Marketing practice. He is a co-author of The Ultimate Question 2.0 and is the host of the Net Promoter System podcast. He is based in New York.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 518, an interview with the author of Change: Six science-backed strategies to transform your brain, body, and behavior, Michael J. Lopez.

In this episode, Michael shares his consulting journey and leadership challenges that shaped his leadership style and led him to start his own firm. He shares his advice for consultants aiming to become partners in today's hybrid work environment.

Michael also discussed change and how deeply personal it is that it can't be approached with one-size-fits-all solutions. Lopez explains why change takes longer than expected, especially in adults, and warns against organizations' tendency to focus too much on immediate outcomes rather than the necessary process of transformation.

Michael J. Lopez is a leading voice in change, combining scientific principles and human behavior to unlock potential in individuals and organizations. With diverse experience across industries, he designs innovative strategies that drive transformation and accelerate performance, earning recognition as a LinkedIn Top Voice.

Get Michael’s new book here: https://shorturl.at/NSBAn

Change: Six science-backed strategies to transform your brain, body, and behavior

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In this episode, we dive into digital transformation consulting, exploring the top digital transformation challenges faced by today’s technology leader from a large consulting firm working with C-suite executives on large-scale transformation projects. We’ll discuss how emerging tech consulting is shaping the future and how to balance vision and practicality while staying up to date on technology trends, especially the rapid move from AI to generative AI. We cover the challenges of business case development and overcoming ambiguous requirements that often arise in these fast-paced engagements.

We also cover the challenges of staying up to date with consulting best practices, and skill-building for consultants to stay ahead of complex client demands at a time when there is almost no time left in leaders' days for skills development.

It is about adapting to change, managing client expectations, and leading teams through fast-paced tech adoption. Gain insights into delivering digital strategy, employing communication skills and strategic thinking to achieve industry impact.

We will also touch on benchmarking a 5-year vision, aligning stakeholder goals, and working in a lucrative consulting niche, even though it can be stressful.

It is not easy to build disruptive solutions to earn client trust while staying up to date on tech advancements. Whether you’re new to continuous learning in consulting or an established professional, this video will give you ideas on navigating your consulting career successfully.

Also, learn how you can leverage knowledge from McKinsey, BCG et al. former partners, and resources from firmsconsulting.com and StrategyTraining.com to strengthen your consulting skills and stay relevant in a fast-changing world.

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Nine Leaders in Action eBook: https://specialoffers.firmsconsulting.com/gift

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Well-Managed Strategy Study Guide: https://firmsconsulting.com/overallapproach

Watch the video version here: https://youtu.be/jUaO9WiR8NM?si=xGfAik9paUKV6zBE

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 516, an interview with the author of Change the Wallpaper: Transforming Cultural Patterns to Build More Just Communities, Nilanjana Dasgupta.

In this episode, Nilanjana discusses her career journey and research on implicit bias and diversity science. She highlights her groundbreaking 2001 study showing that implicit attitudes can be changed through exposure to counter-stereotypical media images. Nilanjana also discusses the importance of understanding and addressing subtle forms of discrimination, such as accent and social class, in professional settings. She advocates for evidence-based strategies over diversity training to foster inclusive cultures.

Her new book, "Change the Wallpaper," offers practical approaches to creating cultural change for equality and justice, focusing on situational forces that influence behavior and perceptions.

Nilanjana Dasgupta is a professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts. She is a leader in research on implicit bias, diversity science, and designing interventions to create local culture change. Her passion is to translate science for social good.

Get Nilanjana’s new book here: https://changethewallpaper.com/

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Today, we will answer a common question about how to determine office location preference to include on the consulting job application with firms like McKinsey, BCG, and Bain and when applying to firms like Deloitte, PwC, KPMG, et al. The thinking process will also be applicable when considering taking a leadership role in various parts of the world versus selecting a role in your hometown or closer to home.

Question we received from one of our subscribers:

“I’ve been told that the office locations you select on your full-time consulting job application can significantly impact your opportunities. I am considering applying to my hometown office (I am from the US) or applying to another country to get international experience. What is your advice on thinking about this and making a decision?” #McKinsey #consultinginterviews #caseinterview

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Students and consultants usually ask us for help with consulting specialization. This is a crucial question that consultants have to consider when mapping out their management consulting career path. Today’s video will provide our perspective on this topic. Many consultants do not understand consulting specialization. Sector and type of work are not mutually exclusive. What does that mean? To specialize, you need to define your area of specialization around three areas. After watching this video, you will have a much better understanding of how to select your area of specialization as you are building your consulting career.

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Watch the video version here: https://youtu.be/FIOSVGq2mNs?si=EhGqKZMOQWw495Sr

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 513, an interview with the author of Leading Giants: A Leader's Guide to Maximum Influence, Dave Durand.

In this episode, Dave explains his decision to approach life as an adventure, without fearing mistakes and prioritizing the best ideas over being right. He talks about building successful organizations by creating the right culture, hiring for values and cultural fit, and adapting to technological changes. He shares how he balances personal and professional responsibilities, advising us to maintain order in life and strive for continuous improvement.

Dave Durand is a 9-figure founder. He has built and sold multiple businesses which have collectively done over one billion dollars in sales in industries including media, digital services, and leadership training. He has been named Most Respected CEO three times by Glassdoor and Entrepreneur of the Year by Ernst & Young.

Get Dave’s new book here: https://shorturl.at/qoogX

Leading Giants: A Leader's Guide to Maximum Influence

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In this episode, we dive into the art and science of creating consulting storyboards early in a strategy study. We'll address a thoughtful question from Henry, a subscriber, about how consultants at firms like McKinsey, etc. can prepare storyboards so quickly without pre-determined answers.

You'll learn:

• Why starting with the objective function is key. - How decision trees, hypotheses, and targeted analyses guide our approach. - Common mistakes in communication and how to avoid them.

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Watch the video version here: https://youtu.be/-BbNqxtryHQ?si=XuAEOuzbjh2pIjXV

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 511, an interview with the author of The Imagination Emporium: Creative Recipes for Innovation, Duncan Wardle.

In this episode, Duncan discusses how to promote creativity in business and explains how the subconscious mind generates better ideas when we’re not at work. He introduces tools like "What If," "Where Else," and "How Else" to help teams think differently. The discussion also covers how businesses can adapt to AI advancements while maintaining human touch and creativity. His book, The Imagination Emporium, presents these concepts through characters that represent different aspects of innovation.

Duncan Wardle is the former Head of Innovation and Creativity at Disney, where he spent 30 years fostering groundbreaking ideas. He now helps organizations like Apple, the NBA, and Spotify redefine problem-solving with practical tools that make innovation accessible and creativity actionable.

Get Duncan’s book here: https://tinyurl.com/5n783ud5

The Imagination Emporium: Creative Recipes for Innovation

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 510, an interview with the author of Collaborative Disruption, Tom Muccio.

In this episode, Tom Muccio shares his experience leading Procter & Gamble's collaboration with Walmart. By breaking down corporate barriers and focusing on mutual understanding, Tom helped both companies grow dramatically and expand their business from $350 million to $8 billion. His approach focuses on respect, testing new ideas, and challenging traditional business norms through transparent communication and shared strategic goals.

Tom Muccio was the architect and first team leader of the groundbreaking process that turned an adversarial relationship between Walmart and P&G into one that created dynamic a win-win for both companies and has now been replicated in thousands of Customer-Supplier relationships around the world. P&G-Walmart groundbreaking relationship is outlined in his book "Collaborative Disruption."

Get Tom’s book here: https://shorturl.at/GDNgl Collaborative Disruption: The Walmart and P&G Partnership That Changed Retail Forever

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 509, an interview with a renowned innovation cultivator, speaker, and founder of Creativity Partners, Jamie Woolf.

In this episode, Jamie shared her remarkable experience working at Pixar under Ed Catmull's leadership and explained its unique culture that combines art and technology to drive innovation. She explained the concept of “constructive disruption” at work and how leaders can build healthy, innovative, and creative workplaces where everyone feels free to speak up, be heard, and support employees in bringing their authentic selves to work.

Jamie Woolf was the first Director of Culture at Pixar Animation Studios where she was recruited to be a force for “constructive disruption.” Jamie has 30+ years of experience practicing organizational psychology and draws on her impactful work with organizations like Google, Dreamworks, University of California, and Pixar Animation.

Visit Jamie's blog here: https://www.creativity-partners.com/blog

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McKinsey's Marvin Bower: Father of Management Consulting | 19 Rules That Shaped McKinsey In this video, we dive deep into the legacy of Marvin Bower, the man who turned McKinsey & Company into the gold standard of management consulting. Known as the "father of management consulting," Marvin Bower’s vision, integrity, and groundbreaking leadership set McKinsey apart and established consulting as a respected profession. Discover the 19 rules that Marvin Bower enforced at McKinsey to ensure consultants upheld the highest standards, from wearing specific attire to prioritizing client interests above all else. Learn why these principles helped build McKinsey into a preeminent global firm and what they can teach us about leadership, values, and success. 🎯 Listen till the end to uncover:

• The story of Marvin Bower’s rise and his role in shaping modern consulting.
• 19 rules that McKinsey consultants had to obey or leave the firm.
• Key lessons from Marvin Bower’s leadership that you can apply in your career.

📖 For more insights: Marketing saves the world - https://amzn.to/40NW7UN McKinsey’s Marvin Bower - https://amzn.to/4hPACZP 💡 Want to learn how to become a trusted advisor for your clients? Start by understanding Marvin Bower's philosophy.

Watch the video version here: https://youtu.be/-GURIMZqS7Y?si=7cR9ffF4yd-yVcfB

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 507, an interview with the authors of The M&A Failure Trap: Why Most Mergers and Acquisitions Fail and How the Few Succeed, Baruch Lev and Feng Gu.

In this episode, Baruch Lev and Feng Gu discuss the pitfalls of corporate acquisitions and the reasons why CEOs repeatedly make strategic errors that lead to costly mistakes. They argue that many acquisitions are driven by investor pressure and unrealistic expectations, with large deals often failing due to many factors including poor due diligence, lack of synergies, and talent retention challenges. Acquisitions should be a carefully considered last resort, not a knee-jerk strategic move.

Baruch Lev is a professor emeritus at NYU Stern School of Business, where he has taught and conducted research on mergers and acquisitions for decades. He worked formerly at UC Berkeley and the University of Chicago. His work has been widely cited in academic and professional circles (over 63,000 Google Scholar citations), and he is a leading authority on corporate finance and valuation.

Feng Gu is a professor of accounting at the University at Buffalo and has extensive experience in analyzing the financial aspects of corporate acquisitions. His research focuses on the economic consequences of corporate decisions and has been published in top-tier academic journals.

Get The M&A Failure Trap here: https://shorturl.at/YZydV

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One of the most powerful tools management consultants from firms like McKinsey, BCG, Bain, Deloitte, PwC, KPMG, et al. use to solve problems and communicate solutions to clients is the consulting storyboard. Whether you’re new to consulting or just want to sharpen your storyboarding for consulting skills, this video is for you. Here are some of the topics we covered: - Why you should use consulting storyboard- Where storyboard fit in a consulting strategy study- How corporate strategy studies are different- What is a storyboard? - What are the biggest questions you have about consulting storyboards?

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 505, an interview with the author of The Resilience Plan, Dr. Marie-Hélène Pelletier.

Resilience is a skill that can be developed, not a fixed personality trait. In this episode, Dr. Pelletier shares practical strategies for building resilience, including regular exercise, balanced nutrition, quality sleep, and creating a personal plan to manage stress and prevent burnout. She advises on how professionals can navigate challenges and maintain high performance while protecting their well-being.

Throughout her career in management and psychology, Dr. Pelletier has spearheaded the dialogue on the crucial issues of leadership resilience and work performance. Drawing on her extensive background in corporate, insurance, and governance, she brings an international perspective and unique expertise in leadership. She has over 20 years of experience as a leadership psychologist, executive coach, and senior leader.

Marie-Helene is a Member of the Global Clinical Practice Network of the World Health Organization, and past Director on the boards of the Canadian Psychological Association and the International Association of Applied Psychology. She has presented and authored and co-authored a number of industry and academic publications and has won numerous academic and industry awards. Dr. Pelletier is a highly rated instructor at the University of British Columbia, Sauder School of Business, Executive Education and a member of the Harvard Business Review Advisory Council, an opt-in research community of business professionals. Her award-winning book, The Resilience Plan: A Strategic Approach to Optimizing Your Work Performance and Mental Health, was named a “Top 5 Book to Read” by Inc. Magazine and Forbes.

Get Dr. Pelletier’s book here: https://shorturl.at/iTfXg

The Resilience Plan: A Strategic Approach to Optimizing Your Work Performance and Mental Health

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 504, where we interview Ex Harvard Kennedy School researcher Matt Kohut, the author of Speaking Out: The New Rules of Business Leadership Communication.

In this episode, Matt discusses the role leaders play in public communication. Drawing from his book "Speaking Out," he explores how CEOs can engage with political and social issues while balancing stakeholder perspectives, organizational values, and potential risks. Matt also shares practical advice on effective public speaking, managing communication anxiety, and building communication skills that help leaders connect authentically with their audiences.

Matthew Kohut is the managing partner of KNP Communications where he prepares CEOs, elected officials, and public figures for events such as live television appearances.

Matt has taught at George Washington University and held a fellowship at Bennington College. His writing has appeared in publications from Harvard Business Review to Newsweek.

Get Matt’s book here: https://shorturl.at/htduE

Speaking Out: The New Rules of Business Leadership Communication

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 503, where we are doing round 2 with John Rossman. John was an early Amazon executive and senior innovation advisor at T-Mobile & the Gates Foundation. He is the co-author of Big Bet Leadership and a keynote speaker and advisor.

In this episode, John Rossman discusses the insights from his recent book, Big Bet Leadership, on how companies can manage major strategic initiatives ("big bets") that involve significant risks. He explains why organizations need to test ideas before making big commitments and stay focused on key priorities. John describes how companies can adapt to increasing digitalization through careful planning and controlled experiments.

John Rossman is an author, executive advisor and keynote speaker on digital transformation, leadership, and business reinvention. With a career spanning consulting roles at renowned brands like Novartis, Gates Foundation, Microsoft, Walmart, and T-Mobile, he brings extensive expertise in solving complex business challenges and driving customer-centric solutions. As an early Amazon executive, Rossman played a pivotal role in launching the Amazon Marketplace in 2002, shaping its transformative impact.

Rossman is the author of four influential books on leadership and business innovation, including the bestseller “The Amazon Way” and his recent release “Big Bet Leadership.” He served as senior innovation advisor at T-Mobile and senior technology advisor to the Gates Foundation, where he honed his strategic acumen in driving organizational change and creating enduring enterprise value.

Today, Rossman is a sought-after keynote speaker renowned for his insights into leadership for innovation and transformation. His work focuses on practical applications of Amazon’s Leadership Principles to foster innovation, drive growth, and navigate digital disruption effectively.

Get John’s book, Big Bet Leadership, here: https://shorturl.at/XLpaB

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 502, an interview with Ed Fidoe, the founder and CEO of the London Interdisciplinary School (LIS), the first institution in decades to be granted degree-awarding powers from inception in the UK and offers an innovative, interdisciplinary curriculum focused on tackling complex global issues such as inequality, sustainability, ethics, and AI.

In this episode, Ed shares his journey from child actor to McKinsey consultant to educational innovator. Throughout the conversation, Ed emphasizes the importance of broad intellectual curiosity, the growing impact of AI on education, and the need for future leaders to develop skills beyond traditional academics. His story illustrates how combining consulting expertise with educational vision can drive meaningful change in learning institutions.

Before LIS, Ed co-founded School 21, an acclaimed school designed to nurture children from diverse backgrounds, achieving Outstanding Ofsted within two years. He also founded Voice 21, a leading oracy education charity. Ed’s latest endeavour involves expanding the LIS’ offering to include a future-proof MBA challenger, alongside the existing undergraduate, master, and leadership programs.

From his early days as a child actor on ‘Woof!’, and setting up a theatre production company with Oscar-nominee Matt Charman, to his tenure at McKinsey & Co., Ed’s journey exemplifies resilience, innovation, and a relentless pursuit of change. His transformative vision has attracted educators from esteemed institutions worldwide, united by a shared belief in LIS’s mission to reshape higher education. Ed’s narrative is one of passion, innovation, and purpose, promising to inspire and challenge conversations about the future of learning.

Learn more about Ed here: https://speakonpodcasts.com/ed-fidoe/

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 501, an interview with the innovative CEO of Motiv, David G. Ewing where we speak about entrepreneurial resilience and customer experience innovation.

In this episode, David shares his journey from early struggles during the 2000 tech recession to building a successful Oracle partnership that transformed his business. He candidly discusses overcoming self-doubt through meditation and mindfulness, while offering practical insights on testing business concepts and managing multiple ventures. The conversation explores how Motiv creates "moments of wonder" in customer experience, the value of the Entrepreneurs Organization community, and practical strategies for work-life integration.

David G. Ewing has revolutionized the realm of customer experience since 1998. With a keen understanding that altering customer attitudes drives ideal behaviors, David has transformed this insight into substantial revenue growth for over 500 clients. A Harvard cum laude graduate in Engineering, his leadership acumen has not only propelled Motiv to the Inc 5000 list of America's fastest-growing companies but has also generated millions in additional revenue for his clients. Beyond his professional prowess, David's leadership extends to the community as the president of The Entrepreneur's Association, Austin Texas Chapter, where he's committed to unlocking every entrepreneur's potential. Outside the boardroom, David is the proud coach of his son's robotics team and cherishes his 19-year marriage, considering it his crowning achievement.

Learn more about David here: https://www.davidgewing.com/

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 500, an interview with an entrepreneur and global thought leader in high-performing teams and Chairman of Ferrazzi Greenlight and its Research Institute, Keith Ferrazzi.

In this episode, Keith takes us through his inspiring journey from a challenging childhood in a poor immigrant family to becoming a global leader in relationship-building and team performance.

Keith introduces us to the concept of teamship, a profound shift from today’s hierarchical model to sharing the load among a team that elevates one another and the organization to achieve exponential results. He shared the 10 critical shifts to teamship and how to adopt these transformative practices to build high-performing teams.

Keith Ferrazzi, a #1 New York Times Bestselling Author of Never Eat Alone, Leading Without Authority, Competing in the New World of Work, and his newest book, Never Lead Alone: 10 Shifts from Leadership to Teamship. Keith is an acclaimed global executive team coach, who stands at the forefront of transformative leadership having coached the transformation of Fortune 500 corporations, the World Bank, fast growth Unicorns and even governments of entire countries. The founder of Ferrazzi Greenlight, Keith spearheads behavioral shifts in leadership and high impact teams, empowering organizations to thrive in the ever-evolving landscape of business.

Keith's research can be found in prestigious publications including Harvard Business Review, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Fast Company, and Inc. Magazine, where his columns serve as valuable insights for business leaders.

Get Keith’s new book here: https://shorturl.at/DNHur

Never Lead Alone: 10 Shifts from Leadership to Teamship

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 499, an interview with the author of Strategy and Leadership as Service, Sara Daw. Her new book provides businesses with access to the complete range of functional, emotional, and collective intelligence at the C-suite level by moving their positions from the “pay-roll” to an “access-role.”

In this episode, Sara discussed strategies for advancing a career to the C-suite, including joining the right organization with clear career paths and development opportunities, and how to find a mentor and a sponsor within the organization to help open doors and realize career ambitions.

Sarah took us on her journey to becoming a fractional CFO and finding her first few clients, a motivational story of persistence and not giving up. Additionally, Sara shares her advice on marketing strategies, time management, and maintaining a balance between work and personal life.

Sara Daw is an entrepreneur, researcher, writer, speaker and future of work expert. Listed in the 2024 E2E Female 100, Sara is passionate about designing the future of work for C-level talent and organizations. As well as publishing the first research on the Access Economy for C-suite talent in her second book, Strategy and Leadership as Service, she is Co-Founder and Group CEO of The CFO Centre and The Liberti Group, the global number one provider of part-time and fractional C-suite professionals. Sara is a graduate in Chemistry from Oxford University, a Chartered Accountant, holds an MBA from The London Business School, and a Mastère Spécialisé® in Consulting and Coaching for Change, run jointly by Oxford University (Saïd Business School) and HEC Business School in Paris.

Get Strategy and Leadership as Service here: https://shorturl.at/I3TSS

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 498, an interview with the coauthor of Triple Fit Strategy: How to Build Lasting Customer Relationships and Boost Growth, Christoph Senn.

In this episode, Christoph introduces us to the concept of the "Triple Fit Strategy," a groundbreaking approach to strategy and sales with the power to transform businesses. It replaces the traditional single product-market fit with a three-fold alignment: planning, execution, and resource fit.

Christoph Senn is an adjunct professor of marketing at INSEAD, one of the world's leading and largest graduate business schools. He is also Codirector of the INSEAD Marketing & Sales Excellence Initiative (MSEI). He frequently works with leading companies, including BASF, Coca-Cola, General Electric, Hoffmann-LaRoche, Konica Minolta, Maersk, Microsoft, Otis, Pfizer, Schindler, Sonos, Vodafone, and many more. He is also Chairman of boutique consultancy AMC and the founder and CEO of Valuecreator, a software startup advancing the practice of value co-creation.

Get Christoph’s book here: https://shorturl.at/n70UA Triple Fit Strategy: How to Build Lasting Customer Relationships and Boost Growth

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 497, an interview with the author of 12 Questions for Love: A Guide to Intimate Conversations and Deeper Relationships, Topaz Adizes.

Topaz After a decade of exploring human connections through 1,200+ conversations in his Emmy Award-winning experience design studio, Topaz Adizes founder of The Skin Deep, popular on TikTok (1.2M) and Youtube (905k), is bringing his knowledge of the power of questions to the workplace.

In this episode, Topaz shares his filmmaking journey leading to creating "The And," a project focused on deep, human conversations. He emphasizes that in order to have meaningful conversations, we need to consider giving well-constructed questions, avoiding binary ones, and fostering a safe space for dialogue. Topaz also touched on creating impactful conversations by setting intentions, using connective questions, and ensuring participants feel safe and heard. He also highlights the significance of deep listening, which involves engaging the whole body and feeling, and how these types of conversations enhance relationships and personal growth.

Topaz Adizes is an Emmy Award-winning writer, director, and experienced design architect. He is an Edmund Hillary fellow and Sundance/Skoll stories of change fellow. His works have been selected to Cannes, Sundance, IDFA, and SXSW; featured in New Yorker magazine, Vanity Fair, and the New York Times; and have garnered an Emmy for new approaches to documentary and Two World Press photo awards for immersive storytelling and interactive documentary. He is currently the founder and executive director of the experience design studio The Skin Deep. Topaz studied philosophy at UC Berkeley and Oxford University. He speaks four languages and currently lives in Mexico with his wife and two children.

Get Topaz’s book here: https://shorturl.at/lj2Ro

12 Questions for Love: A Guide to Intimate Conversations and Deeper Relationships

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 496, an interview with the author of Hospital, Heal Thyself, Mark Taylor. In this episode, we explore the challenges and potential solutions in the healthcare industry, focusing on Dr. Litvak’s methods. The discussion highlights the inefficiencies in hospital operations, such as overcrowding and unnecessary expenditures, and the reluctance of hospital CEOs and surgeons to adopt more efficient practices. Dr. Litvak's methods, which involve optimizing surgical schedules, have been successfully implemented at many top 12-ranked hospitals to save hundreds of millions of dollars and countless thousands of patient lives.

Mark Taylor is a veteran healthcare journalist who has covered health and medicine for newspapers and business publications for decades. He is the recipient of Kaiser and Knight fellowships and is a co-founder of the Association of Health Care Journalists. Taylor is a former steelworker, taxicab driver, waiter, and lifeguard who lives in a Northwest Indiana suburb of Chicago.

Get Mark’s book here: https://shorturl.at/6kevO

Hospital, Heal Thyself: One Brilliant Mathematician's Proven Plan for Saving Hospitals, Many Lives, and Billions of Dollars

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 495, an interview with healthcare visionary, Eugene Litvak. In this episode, Eugene discussed the challenges in global hospital management, highlighting overcrowded emergency departments, nursing shortages, rising healthcare costs, and mismanaged surgery schedules leading to delays and increased mortality. Eugene discussed ways to improve the current healthcare system to save millions of dollars for each hospital while improving patient satisfaction and outcomes, nurse retention, hospital efficiency, and addressing healthcare disparities and inequities.

Eugene Litvak, PhD is President and CEO of the nonprofit Institute for Healthcare Optimization. He is also an Adjunct Professor in Operations Management in the Department of Health Policy & Management at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH). He was a co-founder and director of the Program for the Management of Variability in Health Care Delivery at the Boston University (BU) Health Policy Institute. Since 1995, he has led the development and practical application of innovative approaches for managing patient flow variability, first introduced by him and his fellow co-founder Michael C. Long, MD, for cost reduction and quality improvement in health care delivery systems.

Get Hospital, Heal Thyself here: https://shorturl.at/6kevO

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 494, an interview with the author of Mindshift: Transform Leadership, Drive Innovation, and Reshape the Future, Brian Solis. In this episode, Brian discusses the concept of 'Mindshift'—moving beyond industrial-era, business-as-usual mindsets to become a visionary for a future that has yet to emerge. He also explores the importance of a beginner's mind, emphasizing the need for curiosity and awareness in leadership, which opens the door to new possibilities and fosters innovation.

Brian Solis is a world-renowned futurist, keynote speaker, and author of over 60 industry-leading research publications and 8 best-selling books exploring disruptive trends, corporate innovation, business transformation, and consumer behavior.

Forbes has called him “one of the more creative and brilliant business minds of our time” and The Conference Board described Brian as "the futurist we all need now."

Brian serves as the Head of Global Innovation at ServiceNow where he leads vision, strategy, and program innovation for the company's global Innovation Centers. Brian also studies disruptive technologies, emergent trends, and market shifts to advise business executives on innovation and transformation strategies.

Brian continues to publish business and technology thought leadership in industry publications such as CIO, Forbes, and Worth, and has consistently been recognized as one of the world's leading thinkers in innovation, business transformation, and leadership for over two decades.

Get Brian’s book here: https://shorturl.at/KHi7j

Mindshift: Transform Leadership, Drive Innovation, and Reshape the Future

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 493, an interview with the coauthor of the book Personalized: Customer Strategy in the Age of AI, Mark Abraham.

In this episode, we explore the rise of personalization through digital tools and AI, and how companies and organizations are leveraging it to build connections and engage with their customers. We discuss companies that excel in this area, such as Starbucks with its personalization engine, and Spotify with its tailored music recommendations. Personalization is not just about data; it's also about responding effectively to customer insights, enhancing customer experiences, and driving growth.

Mark Abraham is a senior partner at BCG and the founder of the firm's Personalization business, which he has built into a global team of more than 1,000 agile marketers, data scientists, engineers, and martech experts. He and his team have accelerated the personalization efforts of more than a hundred iconic brands (including Starbucks, The Home Depot, and Google) and built some of BCG's largest ventures and AI platforms, including Fabriq by BCG for personalization. Currently, Mark leads BCG's North American Marketing, Sales & Pricing practice and is reenergizing the growth and development of talent in what is one of the firm’s largest regional practices.

Get Mark’s book here: https://shorturl.at/Qj6Ys Personalized: Customer Strategy in the Age of AI

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 492, an interview with the co-author of the book Personalized: Customer Strategy in the Age of AI, David C. Edelman. This book is a playbook for delivering true personalization at scale that will help executives learn how to put personalization at the center of their strategy and accelerate growth. BCG's Mark Abraham and HBS's David C. Edelman describe five promises of personalization: Empower Me, Know Me, Reach Me, Show Me, Delight Me.

David C. Edelman is a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School, an executive adviser and board member to brands and technology providers, and an adviser to BCG. Previously, David was chief marketing officer at Aetna and has worked with dozens of companies on personalization, AI, and agile marketing at BCG and Digitas. Forbes has repeatedly named him one of the Top 20 Most Influential Voices in Marketing, and Ad Age has named him a Top 20 Chief Marketing and Technology Officer.

Get David’s book here: https://shorturl.at/Qj6Ys

Personalized: Customer Strategy in the Age of AI

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 491, an interview with the author Directional Living: A Transformational Guide to Fulfillment in Work and Life, Megan Hellerer.

In this episode, Megan shares her experience as an executive at Google and how she realized the misalignment in her career path, which led to physical and mental health issues. She also discusses how she navigated through it by listening to her inner voice and experimenting with new paths. Additionally, Megan explains how she built her coaching practice, how to find clients that are a good fit for you, the common issues clients face, and how to help them solve those issues.

Megan Hellerer is a career coach and the founder of Coaching for Underfulfilled Overachievers. She has led hundreds of women, including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, to transform their lives by transforming their careers. After checking all the traditional boxes of success—graduating at the top of her class from Stanford University and spending eight years as a Google executive—and still deeply unhappy, she quit her great-on-paper job with no plan. Now her mission is to provide others with the support and guidance that she needed when she herself was struggling. Megan has been featured in New York, Vogue, The Wall Street Journal, CNBC, and The Times. She lives with her husband and daughter in the Hudson Valley, New York.

Get Megan’s book here: https://shorturl.at/Icv8w Directional Living: A Transformational Guide to Fulfillment in Work and Life

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 490, featuring an interview with the author of Likeable Badass: How Women Get the Success They Deserve, Alison Fragale. In her book, Alison addresses the recurring questions from high powered and early career women alike: How do women thread the needle of kindness and competence in the workplace? How can women earn credit for their accomplishments, negotiate better, and navigate complex office politics without losing the goodwill of their peers?

Alison Fragale is the Mary Farley Ames Lee Distinguished Scholar of Organizational Behavior at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill Kenan-Flagler Business School. As a research psychologist, award-winning professor, international keynote speaker, and author, she is on a mission to help others — especially women — use behavioral science to work and live better. Her scholarship has been published in the most prestigious academic journals in her field and featured in prominent media outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Financial Times, Boston Globe, and Inc. She lives in Chicago with her husband and three children, who are all named after professional athletes. For more information, visit AlisonFragale.com.

Get Alison’s book here: https://shorturl.at/uPfaJ

Likeable Badass: How Women Get the Success They Deserve

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 489, featuring an interview with Mitch Warner, a bestselling author and Arbinger managing partner.

In this episode, we dive deep into the critical topic of self-deception and its profound impact on leadership and personal effectiveness. Mitch shares powerful insights on how self-deception can undermine our relationships and professional success, often without us even realizing it. He explains the concept of self-betrayal and how it leads to a distorted view of ourselves and others, creating unnecessary conflicts and reducing our influence as leaders. Mitch shares a valuable advice on how to rebuild trust in relationships damaged by self-deception and how to not let it happen again.

Mitch is the co-author of Arbinger’s latest bestseller, The Outward Mindset. He writes frequently on the practical effects of mindset at the individual and organizational levels as well as the role of leadership in transforming organizational culture and results. He is an expert on mindset and culture change, leadership, strategy, performance management, organizational turnaround, and conflict resolution.

Mitch is a sought-after speaker to organizations across a range of industries, bringing his practical experience to bear for leaders of corporations, governments, and organizations across the globe. Specific clients include NASA, Citrix, Aflac, the U.S. Army and Air Force, the Treasury Executive Institute, and Intermountain Healthcare. Mitch carries his first-hand perspective as a proven leader into his speeches and facilitation, dynamically bringing Arbinger’s concepts and tools to life through his powerful stories and hands-on experience. His audiences leave inspired to improve and equipped with a practical roadmap to effect immediate change.

In his role as managing partner, Mitch directs the development of Arbinger’s intellectual property, training and consulting programs, and highly customized large-scale organizational change initiatives. He has been instrumental in Arbinger’s rapid growth, including its expanding international presence in nearly 30 countries.

Mitch received his B.A. in philosophy and is a licensed nursing administrator. Trained in fine art at the Art Students League and the National Academy, he spends much of his free time painting. His work hangs in organizations nationwide.

Visit Arbinger Institute here: https://arbinger.com/

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 488, featuring an interview with a seasoned business strategist and operator respected for his pivotal role in Amazon’s early days, John Rossman. In John’s book, Think Like Amazon, he provides 50 ½ answers drawn from his experience as an Amazon executive―and shows today’s business leaders how to think like Amazon, strategize like Bezos, and beat the competition like nobody’s business.

John Rossman is an author, executive advisor and keynote speaker on digital transformation, leadership, and business reinvention. With a career spanning consulting roles at renowned brands like Novartis, Gates Foundation, Microsoft, Walmart, and T-Mobile, he brings extensive expertise in solving complex business challenges and driving customer-centric solutions. As an early Amazon executive, Rossman played a pivotal role in launching the Amazon Marketplace in 2002, shaping its transformative impact.

Rossman is the author of four influential books on leadership and business innovation, including the bestseller “The Amazon Way” and his recent release “Big Bet Leadership.” He served as senior innovation advisor at T-Mobile and senior technology advisor to the Gates Foundation, where he honed his strategic acumen in driving organizational change and creating enduring enterprise value.

Today, Rossman is a sought-after keynote speaker renowned for his insights into leadership for innovation and transformation. His work emphasizes practical applications of Amazon’s Leadership Principles to foster innovation, drive growth, and navigate digital disruption effectively.

Get John’s book, Think Like Amazon: 50 1/2 Ideas to Become a Digital Leader, here: https://shorturl.at/zyUHR

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic from a 10 episode program to help our clients and customers measurably, radically transform their careers through The Author Program.

How would your career, reputation, and earnings change as a published author?

Imagine your client interactions when potential and current clients saw your thinking in a published book before they met you? Imagine the time you would save not having to explain your ideas and the value you could add to them? Imagine the fee premium you could earn? Imagine avoiding awkward meetings trying to establish your credibility? Imagine how many potential clients would find you and reach out to you?

Learn more and see the application guidelines: https://www.firmsconsulting.com/experts-published-author-program/

Apply: email team@firmsconsulting.com

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic from week 4 of the Corporate Strategy & Transformation study.

Promoting women into leadership roles is a hot topic and, sadly, a debate. Why is it a debate? What are the elements that require further analysis? To paraphrase Marvin Bower, one does not ask a client if a woman should take over the relationship, one simply tells a client a woman is taking over. It is not the client’s job to decide what is right.

In this podcast, we explain why we have more female than male partners at FC and how we constantly develop them to serve in more and more senior roles.

Click here to see the full study and here to see the merger study and market entry study.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 485, featuring an interview with Richard Ruback and Royce Yudkoff, HBS professors and the hosts of 'Think Big, Buy Small' podcast.

In this episode, we discuss current market trends related to entrepreneurship through acquisition. We also touch on the demographic trend of baby boomers retiring and needing to sell their businesses, and its impact on buying and selling businesses. Most importantly, Richard and Royce share their advice on how to find the right business to buy, the key considerations and how to evaluate businesses, common buyer errors, and the challenges of buying from baby boomers.

Think Big, Buy Small is a new podcast from Harvard Business School that explores this innovative approach to entrepreneurship: acquisition entrepreneurship. The show is an extension of their courses on small firms, including “Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition,” which has been taken by thousands of MBA students, and their highly-regarded book, HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business: Think Big, Buy Small, Own Your Own Company, which has sold more than 65,000 copies.

Richard S. Ruback is a Baker Foundation Professor and the Willard Prescott Smith Professor of Corporate Finance, Emeritus at the Harvard Business School. Over the last 15 years, he and Royce Yudkoff have been developing and teaching a second year course titled “The Financial Management of Smaller Firms” and a field course called “Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition”. Ruback and Yudkoff’s book, HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business was published by Harvard Business Review Press in 2017. The book is a practical roadmap through the steps required to find, evaluate, negotiate, and finance the acquisition of a smaller firm.

Ruback earned his Ph.D. in business administration at the University of Rochester in 1980 and taught at MIT's Sloan School before joining the HBS faculty as a visiting professor in 1987. He was appointed associate professor in 1988 and full professor in 1989. Ruback has served as an editor for the Journal of Financial Economics and is the author of numerous articles on corporate finance and valuation.

Royce Yudkoff is the MBA Class of 1975 Professor of Management Practice of Entrepreneurial Management at the Harvard Business School and a General Partner and co-founder of ABRY Partners, LLC in Boston, MA. Alongside Professor Richard Ruback, Royce currently co-teaches a second year case course titled “The Financial Management of Smaller Firms” and a field course called “Entrepreneurship through Acquisition”. These courses focus on how to acquire, finance, and operate your own smaller firm.

As was mentioned above, Ruback and Yudkoff’s book, HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business, was published by Harvard Business Review Press in 2017. The book is a practical roadmap through the steps required to find, evaluate, negotiate, and finance the acquisition of a smaller firm.

In 1989, Royce co-founded ABRY Partners, a private equity firm focused on the media, communications and business and information services markets. Since 1989 the firm has completed over $27 billion of leveraged transactions and other private equity investments involving approximately 450 properties. Over this period Royce has also served on numerous private and public corporate boards.

Royce graduated from the Harvard Business School in 1980 as a Baker Scholar and is an honors graduate of Dartmouth College.

Get a copy of HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business: Think Big, Buy Small, Own Your Own Company: https://rb.gy/2omnrh

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we discuss how your cost of capital changes as you take on more debt and how this change is different between organizations. It's a crucial concept for this utility. We explain how the cost of capital change usually takes place and then we review the drivers at play that are different for this power utility vs. an average company.

Click here to see the full study and here to see the merger study and market entry study.

Watch the video version of this episode on YouTube: When too much debt is a good thing

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we use economics to explain what is the role of government, when governments should intervene, how they should intervene, and when they should hand over certain activities to the private sector. If you want to further your understanding of strategy at the highest possible level you should listen to this.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 482, an interview with the author of Beyond the Hammer: A Fresh Approach to Leadership, Culture, and Building High Performance Teams, Brian Gottlieb. In his book, Brian shares his straightforward business ideology of having a clear strategy, inspiring teams, providing best-in-class training, using metrics for empowerment, and executing with consistency. Beyond the Hammer provides five foundational pillars of leadership and an actionable path to weaving these pillars into any business, giving leaders and managers the power to build teams that perform at a high level, consistently.

Brian Gottlieb is an inspirational business leader who founded a home services business in 2009 on a plastic folding table with $3,000. Twelve years later when he sold the family of businesses he created, they had diversified products, expanded across multiple states, grown to 600 employees, and neared $1 billion in lifetime sales. INC 5000 recognized the organization as one of the fastest-growing companies in America.

Get Brian’s new book here: https://rb.gy/f4gq2v

Beyond the Hammer: A Fresh Approach to Leadership, Culture, and Building High Performance Teams

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 481, an interview with the author of Lead Bigger: The Transformative Power of Inclusion, Anne Chow. In her book, Anne shows us how we can all learn to leverage inclusion far beyond DEI to elevate our work, workforce, and workplace. Lead Bigger offers a no-nonsense approach to leading outside of traditional parameters that challenges us all to “lead bigger” by seeking a broader impact, embracing the whole of your team beyond the workplace, and engaging in self-reflection.

As the former CEO of AT&T Business, Anne Chow was the first woman and first woman of color to hold the position of CEO at AT&T in 2019, overseeing more than 35,000 employees who collectively served 3 million business customers worldwide during her time there. She is currently the Lead Director on the board of Franklin Covey, serves on the board of 3M and CSX, and teaches at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. You can listen to Anne on Harvard Business Review’s Race at Work, WFAA and MSNBC.

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Lead Bigger: The Transformative Power of Inclusion

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic from the Corporate Strategy & Transformation study.

In this podcast, we look at the problem of superficial financial analysis. One way to save the client money, before they run out of cash in about 16 months, is to stop all investments which lose money. This, however, is a terrible idea that will cause enormous damage to the client’s core business, consumers, and the economy. We discuss how we handle this recommendation and what we proposed in the study to fix the problem.

Click here to see the full study and here to see the merger study and market entry study.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 479, an interview with Marshall Goldsmith, a world-renowned executive coach and leadership thinker.

In this episode, Marshall offers invaluable advice for aspiring leaders and coaches, emphasizing the importance of maintaining an adult-to-adult relationship in coaching scenarios. His focus on measurable results has made him a trusted advisor to some of the world's top CEOs and leaders. He also gave us a glimpse of marshallgoldsmith.ai, an Al Avatar that is infused with Marshall’s knowledge, experience, nuances and voice to answer management-related questions leaders have.

Whether you're a seasoned executive or an aspiring leader, this episode offers practical wisdom and inspiration from one of the best in the business world.

Dr. Marshall Goldsmith is the only two time Thinkers50 #1 leadership thinker in the world. He has been recognized as the #1 executive coach in the world for over a decade. He is the #1 New York Times best-selling author of books that have sold over 3 million copies including What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, MOJO, Triggers and The Earned Life. He is the only living author who has 2 books recognized by Amazon.com as the Best Leader and Success books of all time. He has over 1.5 million followers on LinkedIn alone.

Learn more about Marshall here: https://marshallgoldsmith.com/

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 478, an interview with Ben Orlin, a math teacher turned full-time writer who's on a mission to make mathematics engaging and accessible to all and the author of the book Math for English Majors: A Human Take on the Universal Language.

In this episode, Ben offers insights into his teaching and writing journey, the challenges in teaching math, the unexpected success of his first book "Math with Bad Drawings," and how he balances teaching with his writing career. He also touches on the broader implications of mathematical thinking in various fields, from business to everyday life.

Whether you're a math enthusiast, an educator, or someone who's always found math intimidating, this conversation will give you a fresh perspective on the beauty and relevance of mathematics in our world.

Ben Orlin is a math teacher who can't draw. His book Math with Bad Drawings (2018) has sold more than 100,000 copies worldwide, and has since been followed by Change is the Only Constant (2019), Math Games with Bad Drawings (2022), and most recently, Math for English Majors (Sept 2024). His work has appeared in The Atlantic, Popular Science, Slate, Vox, and The Los Angeles Times; he himself has appeared in the lines to ice cream stores everywhere. BBC star and leading mathematician Hannah Fry once described him as "terribly bad at drawing" before kindly adding “he’s also fantastically clever and charming.”

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 477, an interview with Hollywood insiders and the authors of Briefly Speaking, Deborah Shames and David Booth.

In this episode, we discuss effective communication and presentation strategies for individuals and business professionals. With their extensive experience coaching executives, celebrities, and leaders, Deborah and David share invaluable insights about different topics including the power of storytelling in business communication using the OSB (Obstacle-Solution-Benefit) template, practical tips for leaders to command attention in meetings and presentations, how to showcase your unique attributes and differentiators, how to present yourself authentically, and how you can engage audiences through visual language, novelty, and genuine enthusiasm.

This episode offers actionable advice to help you connect with audiences, win pitches, and advance your career through more impactful speaking and presenting.

Deborah and David are co-founders of Eloqui, a business communication and presentation training firm based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. They have translated performance techniques from the entertainment industry for the business professional. Eloqui training utilizes the latest research from neuroscience on how to be memorable. They also draw upon impression management from the field of psychology.

Learn more about Deborah and David here: https://eloqui.biz/

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we address how to answer difficult questions raised by the client during an executive workshop or another type of client's executive group meeting.

We start with discussing the right mindset any consultant requires to be able to effectively handle difficult questions from a client. We thereafter review the particular steps in addressing a client's difficult questions raised during a workshop or a presentation. Lastly, we dive into which skills are required to be able to handle difficult questions, especially the kind of questions for which you don't have an immediate answer.

Click here to see the full study and here to see the merger study and market entry study.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 475, an interview with Dr. Sam Adeyemi (Ah Day yeh me), a global speaker, strategic leadership expert, minister, and author who has influenced millions of people on success and leadership through radio, television, conferences, and information products for more than 25 years.

Atlanta-based Dr. Sam Adeyemi leads leaders. He shifts mindsets to help leaders see possibilities and become those possibilities. More than 3 million CEOs and high performing individuals follow Dr. Sam on top social media sites. He holds a Doctorate in Strategic Leadership from Virginia's Regent University, and is author of the book "Dear Leader: Your Flagship Guide to Successful Leadership." He and his wife, Nike (say Nee keh) have three children and founded Daystar Christian Centre in Lagos, Nigeria. More than 45,000 alumni have graduated from Dr. Sam's leadership school.

As a global conference speaker, Sam has addressed audiences in the United States, Canada, Germany, United Kingdom, South Africa, Nigeria, India, and several other countries. In 2015 and 2017, he spoke at the Global Leadership Summit, a global conference attended by over 400,000 leaders in 130+ countries.

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we discuss how accurate our financial model for the market entry strategy study is.

Watch the video version here: How accurate was our financial model for the market entry strategy study?

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Welcome to Strategy Skills, episode 473—an interview with Deborah Ancona, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management.

In this episode, we explore "family ghosts," a rarely discussed topic that significantly impacts professional growth, behavior, and attitudes toward work. We discuss how to achieve your greatest potential as a leader by recognizing your own "family ghosts" and determining which ones to embrace or leave behind.

Deborah Ancona is a distinguished Professor of Management and Founder of the MIT Leadership Center. Deborah specializes in studying, teaching, and consulting in the areas of individual leadership, team effectiveness, and organizational transformation. Her new work centers on how Family Ghosts end up in the Executive Suite.

Deborah is also the coauthor of X-Teams: How to Build Teams That Lead, Innovate, and Succeed, a classic book on teams and collaboration. This work demonstrates how an externally focused team model is key to driving innovation and ensuring your organization's success.

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic about the top-down view of energy. It is crucial to provide boundaries when discussing sector-wide issues or the executives may get lost in the details and miss the key levers.

Watch the video version here: Top-Down View of Energy

Click here to see the full study and here to see the merger study and market entry study.

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we share one of our more in-depth episodes taken as a sample video from one of our strategy studies. This episode is complimentary and available on iTunes, Youtube, Spotify, and many other podcast players.

Watch the video version here: How do I build the storyboard and why is it done so early?

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we explain how leadership is defined at great firms like McKinsey and BCG, and how we also manage leadership transition at FC. It will surprise you to see how different the mindset can be and that we think about these issues all the time.

The most important role of a partner is to leave the firm in a better place than when she/he joined, and to hand over a client relationship to a newer partner. The ability to maintain this cycle is critical.

If the mechanism is not there, even proud and great firms suffer during leadership changes. You want to avoid that. The cycle must be continuous.

Click here to see the Corporate Strategy & Transformation study.

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Let’s be honest. Most consultants simply go into Google and search for any reports / analyses to compile market trends/an industry analysis fact pack. In other words, they do not put much thought into it beyond ensuring they are not caught for plagiarism. This is because many consultants think of the market trends or industry analysis as an output to deliver, which will never be used, and it does not matter what comprises the analysis.

For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic from week 4 of the Corporate Strategy & Transformation study, where we discuss how/why we built a bespoke market trends pack for the client addressing the issues important to them and them only. We used this market trends analysis to guide the executives on the issues we considered important to their strategy.

Click here to see the full study and here to see the merger study and market entry study.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 468, an interview with the author of Job Therapy: Finding Work That Works for You, Dr. Tessa West. In her book, Dr. Tessa West helps you figure out the real reason you’re unhappy and shows you how to find a new position in which you’ll thrive, whether in a different role, company, or new industry altogether.

Dr. Tessa West is Professor of Psychology at New York University, where she is a leading expert on the science of social relationships. Her academic research and writing for the media focuses on how to improve communication between employees, bosses, and hiring professionals across workplace settings. She has over 100 academic publications and is a regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal. Her work has been covered by Scientific American, the New York Times, Financial Times, The Guardian, CNN, CNBC, ABC World News, TIME, Bloomberg, HBR, Fast Company, and the US Supreme Court. Her first book Jerks at Work published to rave reviews.

Get Dr. Tessa's book here: https://rb.gy/e1iwmg

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we discuss how to convert insights into Strategy Maps. It is a powerful tool to create prescriptive / forecasting models to explain and predict strategy options. This is how to move from being a consultant to thinking and presenting like a partner. It is complimentary and available on iTunes, Youtube, Spotify, and many other podcast players.

The Video version of this episode is available on youtube - https://youtu.be/hcStB7fjsJ0

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 466, featuring an interview with the coauthor of Business on the Edge: How to Turn a Profit and Improve Lives in the World’s Toughest Places, Viva Ona Bartkus. In this book, they argue that by entering markets in the world’s frontline regions—areas stuck in cycles of violence and extreme poverty—businesses can actually create stability and expand opportunity for communities and corporations alike. Business on the Edge shows how businesses can reduce risks, cut costs, and increase profits, all while creating economic opportunities that transform communities.

Viva Ona Bartkus is Paul E. Purcell Associate Professor at the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business. She is a former partner at McKinsey & Company and the founder of the revolutionary course Business on the Frontlines.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 465, an interview with an award-winning marketer, TEDx speaker and authority in harnessing the instinctive mind to accelerate brand and business growth, founder and CEO of Triggers, Leslie Zane.

In this episode, continuing the discussion from her first interview, we delved deeper into the conventional marketing wisdom and instinctive behaviors that drive people to buy your product.

Leslie is the author of The Power of Instinct: The New Rules of Persuasion in Business and Life. In her book, Leslie shows that to grow a brand, business, or even a social movement, traditional persuasion tactics fall short. Instead, you must connect to the instinctive mind. And to do this, you need to understand the science of consumer choice and employ techniques that work with a person's brain, not against it.

Leslie Zane is an award-winning marketer, TEDx speaker and the foremost authority in harnessing the instinctive mind to accelerate brand and business growth.

In her early career at P&G and Johnson & Johnson, Zane championed the position that what people say is unreliable and that telegraphic cues are more powerful than direct communication, but her unconventional thinking was often disregarded. In 1995, she founded Triggers®, the first brand consulting firm rooted in behavioral science, where she continued to champion the primacy of the instinctive mind in brand decisions.

With her groundbreaking discoveries in boosting salience, the Brand Connectome® and Growth Triggers®, Zane and her team have delivered over $20 billion in incremental revenue for Fortune 100 clients.

Today Triggers’ strategies are evident in diverse fields from consumer-packaged goods, health care and insurance to fighting anti-Semitism, showcasing its versatility.

An alumna of Yale, Harvard Business School and Bain & Company, Zane is a recipient of the Congressional Women of Distinction and the Ogilvy Award. In 2021, she coined the term “Covid-stasis” forecasting the pandemic’s lasting psychological and behavioral effects. Zane has been published in prestigious publications including Knowledge@Wharton, Harvard Business Review, World Economic Forum, Newsweek and Ad Age. Zane is a board member of El Centro Hispano, the leading non-profit empowering Hispanic immigrants with skills to thrive in the United States.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 464, featuring an interview with the author of Pattern Breakers: Why Some Start-Ups Change the Future, Mike Maples, Jr. In this book, Maples and coauthor Peter Ziebelman set out to discover the hidden forces that drive extraordinary start-up success. Pattern-breaking success, they reveal, demands a different mindset and actions to harness developments others miss or that may, at first, seem crazy.

Mike Maples, Jr is an entrepreneur, venture capitalist, podcaster, and the co-founder of FLOODGATE, a leading seed stage fund in Silicon Valley that invested in companies like Twitter, Twitch, Okta, and Outreach at the very beginning of their startup journeys.

An eight-time member of the Forbes Midas List of Top Venture Capital investors, he was one of the pioneers of the seed investing movement, which started in the mid-2000s and now is a mainstream part of startup funding.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 463, featuring an interview with golf coach, entrepreneur, and personal development enthusiast Eric Corgorno. In this episode, Eric shares the most effective tips and techniques that he uses to grow his business and followers.

Eric took his business from $80K to $1.5 million revenue a year -- in less than five years. He has grown an audience of 500K+ followers (and 3-5 million views every month) from zero. All the while, he decreased his work time from 60 hours a week to 10-15 hours!

In 2017, Eric Cogorno took to YouTube the experience he gleaned from giving more than 20,000 in-person golf lessons. His distinct style of clear language and simplified concepts have attracted close to 400,000 followers across his channels and many millions of view from all across the globe. He’s on a mission to make world-class golf instruction available to everyone and, through the process, create the biggest and best online golf school in the world.

Born and raised in the Lehigh Valley, PA, Eric was a scratch golfer by the age of 15. He golfed through high school and at Lehigh University. He has been featured on Forbes.com and was voted as a Golf Digest Best in State Teacher.

Eric is a golf teaching professional who took his business from $80K/year teaching one-on-one lessons by the hour to a multimillion dollar golf instruction brand utilizing these same skills (and strategies). In the process, he was able to also transform his entire lifestyle – from working on the lesson tee 7 full days a week, to having freedom to work when/where he chooses – splitting his time between Pennsylvania and Florida.

Learn more about Eric Cogorno Golf here: https://www.youtube.com/c/ericcogornogolf

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 462, featuring an interview with the author of Intentionality: A Groundbreaking Guide to Breath, Consciousness, and Radical Self-Transformation, Finnian Kelly. In this book, Finnian Kelly shares his step-by-step process for manifesting Intentionality into success. Through combining both scientific and spiritual principles, Finnian leads you through the five key intentions, including actionable steps and targeted breathing exercises you can incorporate into your everyday life.

Finnian Kelly is the founder of Intentionality Inc., a sought-after speaker and high-performance coach, and a master breathwork facilitator. He helps world-changing leaders implement his Intentionality® methodology to find new levels of fulfillment and growth in their creative endeavors, relationships, and overall well-being. As a successful entrepreneur and a retired officer in the Australian military, Finnian has been dubbed "the Business Mystic'' because of his unique ability to awaken consciousness in business and inspire CEOs and leadership teams to have a more expansive human experience.

Get Finnian’s book here: https://www.intentionality.com/

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 461, a follow-up interview with the author of Survive, Reset, Thrive: Leading Breakthrough Growth Strategy in Volatile Times, Dr. Rebecca Homkes.

How would you stabilize your business to withstand and grow through market shocks, reset your strategy to take account of new realities and thrive through uncertainty?

Survive, Reset, Thrive is a playbook for leaders derived from the author's first-hand experience working with executive teams across industries from software, technology, retail, fashion, and construction through to manufacturing. Drawing from over a decade of rich real-world experience, the author illustrates how to navigate the most complex strategic situations with a simple, executable approach.

Rebecca Homkes is a high-growth strategy specialist and CEO and executive advisor. She is a Lecturer at The London Business School, Faculty at Duke Corporate Executive Education, Advisor and Faculty at the Boston Consulting Group focused on AI and Climate and Sustainability, and a former fellow at the London School of Economics Centre for Economic Performance. A global keynote speaker and recognized thought leader, she is also the global Faculty Director of the Active Learning Program with the Young Presidents Organization (YPO), leads several fintech accelerators, and serves on the boards of many high-growth companies. She earned her doctorate at the London School of Economics as a Marshall Scholar and is now based in Miami, the Bay Area, and London, UK.

Get Rebecca’s book here: https://rb.gy/aq85ee

Survive, Reset, Thrive: Leading Breakthrough Growth Strategy in Volatile Times

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 460, featuring an interview with the author of Crossing the Desert: The Power of Embracing Life's Difficult Journeys, Payam Zamani.

In this episode, Payam shares the most important lessons he learned from building a record-breaking billion-dollar IPO called AutoWeb, and how it fell apart. He took those early lessons and created his current company, One Planet Group, with the “people-first” culture he wanted all along for AutoWeb. As a result, One Planet Group’s success has allowed Payam to reacquire AutoWeb and bring it back to profitability.

In Payam’s book, Crossing the Desert, readers take an intimate look at how the paths we choose, the values we embrace, and the systems we decide to participate in (or not) can make or break us, not only financially, but spiritually. Payam’s story is a timely reminder that enduring and embracing life’s most difficult journeys can lead us to a brighter future—not only for ourselves, but for the people around us, and even the world.

Payam Zamani is an entrepreneur, investor, and the founder of One Planet Group, a closely held private equity firm that owns a suite of online technology and media businesses.

Born in Iran, Zamani was forced to flee at the age of 16 due to his religious beliefs as a Baha’i. He was offered asylum in the United States in 1988, settling in the San Francisco Bay Area. Upon graduation from the University of California, Davis, he and his brother founded AutoWeb, one of the first online car marketplaces, which they took public in 1999.

Since then, he has built and currently owns multiple technology and media businesses, has invested in more than 50 companies, and is striving to redefine capitalism in an attempt to elevate business to serve humanity. He has been named the “Best CEO for Diversity,” is the recipient of Tahirih Justice Center’s Hope Award, and received an Award of Distinction from UC Davis in 2018. Zamani and his wife, Gouya, have two daughters, Sophia and Ella.

Get Crossing the Desert here: https://rb.gy/pio8ht

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 459, featuring an interview with the author of May Contain Lies: How Stories, Statistics, and Studies Exploit Our Biases―And What We Can Do about It, Alex Edmans. In this book, renowned economist Alex Edmans teaches us how to separate fact from fiction. Using colorful examples, he highlights the biases that cause us to mistake statements for facts, facts for data, data for evidence, and evidence for proof.

Alex Edmans is Professor of Finance at London Business School and an expert in the use and misuse of data and evidence. He has given the TED talk What to Trust in a Post-Truth World with 2 million views, spoken at the World Economic Forum in Davos, and testified in the UK Parliament.

Alex served as Managing Editor of the Review of Finance, the leading academic finance journal in Europe. He has written for the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and Harvard Business Review, and been interviewed by Bloomberg, BBC, CNBC, CNN, ESPN, Fox, ITV, NPR, Reuters, Sky News, and Sky Sports. He was previously a tenured professor at Wharton and an investment banker at Morgan Stanley.

Alex’s first book, Grow the Pie: How Great Companies Deliver Both Purpose and Profit, was featured in the Financial Times Best Business Books of 2020 and has been translated into nine languages. Alex was named Professor of the Year by Poets & Quants in 2021 and won 25 teaching awards at LBS and Wharton. Alex has a BA from Oxford and a PhD from MIT as a Fulbright Scholar, and is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.

Get May Contain Lies here: https://maycontainlies.com/

Learn more about Alex Edmans here: https://alexedmans.com/

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 458, featuring an interview with the CEO of Fireflies.ai, Krish Rameni.

In this episode, Krish took us back to the early days of starting their company, Fireflies.ai, and how they stayed motivated despite the challenges. He shared valuable advice from the lessons he learned throughout his career that will be useful for individuals who are starting their careers or planning to transition into the world of startups.

Krish Ramineni is the Co-Founder and CEO of Fireflies.ai, an AI meeting assistant that transcribes, summarizes, and analyzes meetings. Named on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list, Krish graduated from UPenn. He was one of the youngest Product Managers at Microsoft, leading projects in customer voice and growth. He has guest lectured at Stanford on machine learning and holds patents in workflow automation. Krish is a thought leader in SaaS/AI and an active startup advisor.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 457, featuring an interview with the author of Solving for Why: A Surgeon's Journey to Discover the Transformative Power of Purpose, Dr. Mark G. Shrime. Solving for Why is an inspiring memoir about finding the answer to life's biggest question—"Why?"—and about following that answer through remarkable, unlikely places on the road to fulfillment, purpose, and joy.

"Turning your heart toward the poor doesn't have to be on a hospital ship in West Africa. It doesn't have to be grandiose. It doesn't have to be newsworthy. It doesn't have to be what your friends, pastors, rabbis, priests, or colleagues say it should. It just has to be." Dr. Mark Shrime

Dr. Mark G. Shrime is the International Chief Medical Officer at Mercy Ships and a Lecturer in Global Health and Social Medicine at the Harvard Medical School. He is the author of Solving for Why: A Surgeon's Journey to Discover the Transformative Power of Purpose (Hachette 2022).

He previously served as the O’Brien Chair of Global Surgery at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, as the founder and Director of the Center for Global Surgery Evaluation at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, and as Research Director for the Program in Global Surgery and Social Change at Harvard.

He has spoken at the United Nations, WHO, Harvard, Princeton, and around the world addressing issues of healthcare inequity, moral injury in the healthcare workforce, and the non-health outcomes of health policies. In 2018, he was awarded the Arnold P. Gold Humanism in Medicine Award by the American Academy of Otolaryngology—Head and Neck Surgery.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 456, featuring an interview with the author of Better Decisions Faster: Unshakable Confidence When You Need It Most, Paul Epstein. In Better Decisions Faster, Paul draws from the green-light wisdom of Fortune 500 CEOs, Olympians, Shark Tank entrepreneurs, world-record holders, Ivy League professors, and Navy SEALs to reveal a revolutionary new system for maximally efficient and confident decision-making. Paul shares how to make better decisions using the Hands Equation, which is Head + Heart. This equation taps into the three most primal and powerful aspects of our humanity to make better, faster decisions.

Paul Epstein is a former high-level executive for multiple NFL and NBA teams and the bestselling author of “The Power of Playing Offense” and “Better Decisions Faster”. In 2022, he was named one of SUCCESS magazine’s top thought leaders who get results—alongside Tony Robbins, Brené Brown, Gary Vaynerchuk, and Mel Robbins—and his work has been featured on ESPN, NBC, Fox Business, and in USA Today.

In nearly 15 years as a leader in the world of pro sports, Paul helped take NBA teams from the bottom of the league in revenue to the top two, broke every premium sales revenue metric in Super Bowl history while in the NFL’s league office, opened a billion-dollar stadium, and founded the San Francisco 49ers Talent Academy, where he was known as the “Why Coach”.

As an award-winning keynote speaker, Paul’s impact continues off stage providing leadership development and culture transformation programs for companies and teams including Amazon, Disney, Johnson & Johnson, NASA, Los Angeles Lakers, and Dallas Cowboys.

He’s also the founder of the Win Monday community (an elite personal and professional development network) and host of the Win Monday podcast, where he interviews high-profile guests who reveal their secrets of confidence and work-life mastery.

Get Paul’s book here: https://www.paulepsteinspeaks.com/better-decisions-faster-book

Check out the Confidence Quiz: https://www.paulepsteinspeaks.com/confidence-quiz

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 455, featuring an interview with the author of Ping Pong Leadership: 18 Principles to Succeed at Any Table in Business, Sports, and Life, Justin Bookey. In this book, Justin distills lessons from a beloved global sport into 18 actionable and unforgettable “Pong Principles.” Justin has spent decades as a competitive table tennis player, trained with national and world champions, and won medals at the US Open. He is an Emmy-nominated content creator and strategist, and he’s worked with leaders at global companies to accomplish their business goals. As these two worlds overlapped, Justin realized that the core principles he learned while training to compete at the table also apply to success in business and leadership. Ping Pong Leadership is a powerful guide to success at any table.

Justin Bookey is a former lawyer, an award-winning marketing strategist, and global ping pong player. He’s had the good fortune of learning from some of the best and brightest in several arenas while working with leaders at Disney, Sony, Honda, Qualcomm, XPRIZE, and more. After practicing communications law for several years in Washington, DC, he transitioned to web content development. He’s earned Emmy nominations for feature documentaries he produced, and Telly, Viddy, and ADDY awards for digital marketing campaigns he spearheaded.

Upon moving to LA, Bookey stepped up his training with Olympian and world-class table tennis coach Wei Wang. His efforts with her and other national/world champions helped him win medals at the US Open and the US national championships. He learned different leadership cultures while studying in India and teaching in Japan, and has played table tennis on seven continents. He grew up in Seattle, Washington, and now lives and works in Santa Monica, California, where he also runs PongFit, a nonprofit that builds fitness and community through ping pong.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 454, featuring an interview with the author of Behind the Startup: How Venture Capital Shapes Work, Innovation, and Inequality, Benjamin Shestakofsky. This book draws on nineteen months of participant-observation research inside a successful Silicon Valley startup, and examines how the company was organized to meet the needs of the venture capital investors who funded it. Investors push startups to scale as quickly as possible to inflate the value of their asset. Benjamin Shestakofsky shows how these demands create organizational problems that managers solve by combining high-tech systems with low-wage human labor. Behind the Startup explains how the gains generated by these companies are funneled into the pockets of a small cadre of elite investors and entrepreneurs. Shestakofsky compellingly argues that we must focus less on fixing the technology and more on changing the financial infrastructure that supports it.

Benjamin Shestakofsky is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is affiliated with AI at Wharton and the Center on Digital Culture and Society. He is the author of Behind the Startup: How Venture Capital Shapes Work, Innovation, and Inequality (on sale March 19, 2024, University of California Press).

Shestakofsky’s research centers on the relationship between work, technology, organizations, and political economy in the age of AI.

Articles based on his research for Behind the Startup have been awarded the 2021 Star-Nelkin Paper Award from the American Sociological Association’s (ASA) Section on Science, Knowledge, and Technology and the 2019 W. Richard Scott Article Award from the ASA's Section on Organizations, Occupations, and Work. His research has been supported by the Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy and the UC Berkeley Institute for Research on Labor and Employment. His work has been featured in the Financial Times, Axios, and in a publication of the World Economic Forum.

Author website: https://www.benjaminshestakofsky.com/ Book website: Behind the Startup: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520395039/behind-the-startup X/Twitter: @bshestakofsky

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 453, featuring an interview with the authors of Fair Shake: Women and the Fight to Build a Just Economy, Naomi Cahn, June Carbone, and Nancy Levit. This book explains that the system that governs our economy—a winner-take-all economy—is the root cause of these myriad problems. The WTA economy self-selects for aggressive, cutthroat business tactics, which creates a feedback loop that sidelines women. The authors, three legal scholars, call this feedback loop “the triple bind”: if women don’t compete on the same terms as men, they lose; if women do compete on the same terms as men, they’re punished more harshly for their sharp elbows or actual misdeeds; and when women see that they can’t win on the same terms as men, they take themselves out of the game (if they haven’t been pushed out already). With odds like these stacked against them, it’s no wonder women feel like, no matter how hard they work, they can’t get ahead.

Naomi Cahn is the Justice Anthony M. Kennedy Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law, as well as the Co-Director of the Family Law Center. Cahn is the author or editor of numerous books written for both academic and trade publishers, including Red Families v. Blue Families and Homeward Bound. In 2017, Cahn received the Harry Krause Lifetime Achievement in Family Law Award from the University of Illinois College of Law and in 2024 she was inducted into the Clayton Alumni Hall of Fame.

June Carbone is the Robina Chair of Law, Science and Technology at the University of Minnesota Law School. Previously she has served as the Edward A. Smith/Missouri Chair of Law, the Constitution and Society at the University of Missouri at Kansas City; and as the Associate Dean for Professional Development and Presidential Professor of Ethics and the Common Good at Santa Clara University School of Law. She has written From Partners to Parents and co-written Red Families v. Blue Families; Marriage Markets; and Family Law. She is a co-editor of the International Survey of Family Law.

Nancy Levit is the Associate Dean for Faculty and holds a Curator’s Professorship at the University of Missouri–Kansas City School of Law. Professor Levit has been voted Outstanding Professor of the Year five times by students and was profiled in Dean Michael Hunter Schwartz’s book, What the Best Law Teachers Do. She has received the N.T. Veatch Award for Distinguished Research and Creative Activity and the Missouri Governor’s Award for Teaching Excellence. She is the author of The Gender Line and co-author of Feminist Legal Theory; The Happy Lawyer; The Good Lawyer; and Jurisprudence—Classical and Contemporary.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 452, featuring an interview with the author of The Problem with Change: And the Essential Nature of Human Performance, Ashley Goodall. Drawing on two decades spent leading HR organizations at Deloitte and Cisco, Ashley Goodall reveals in his book why change is not the same as improvement, and how, by prioritizing team cohesion (instead of reshuffling teams at will), by using real words (rather than corporate-speak), by sharing secrets (not mission statements), by fixing only the things that are truly broken (instead of moving fast and breaking everything in sight, and more, leaders at every level can create the stability that people need to thrive.

Ashley Goodall is a leadership expert who has spent his career exploring large organizations from the inside, most recently as an executive at Cisco. He is the co-author of Nine Lies About Work, which was selected as the best management book of 2019 by Strategy + Business and as one of Amazon’s best business and leadership books of 2019. Prior to Cisco, he spent fourteen years at Deloitte as a consultant and as the Chief Learning Officer for Leadership and Professional development.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 451, featuring an interview with an award-winning marketer, TEDx speaker and authority in harnessing the instinctive mind to accelerate brand and business growth, founder and CEO of Triggers, Leslie Zane. Leslie is the author of The Power of Instinct: The New Rules of Persuasion in Business and Life. In her book, Leslie shows that to grow a brand, business, or even a social movement, traditional persuasion tactics fall short. Instead, you must connect to the instinctive mind. And to do this, you need to understand the science of consumer choice and employ techniques that work with a person's brain, not against it.

Leslie Zane is an award-winning marketer, TEDx speaker and the foremost authority in harnessing the instinctive mind to accelerate brand and business growth.

In her early career at P&G and Johnson & Johnson, Zane championed the position that what people say is unreliable and that telegraphic cues are more powerful than direct communication, but her unconventional thinking was often disregarded. In 1995, she founded Triggers®, the first brand consulting firm rooted in behavioral science, where she continued to champion the primacy of the instinctive mind in brand decisions.

With her groundbreaking discoveries in boosting salience, the Brand Connectome® and Growth Triggers®, Zane and her team have delivered over $20 billion in incremental revenue for Fortune 100 clients.

Today Triggers’ strategies are evident in diverse fields from consumer-packaged goods, health care and insurance to fighting anti-Semitism, showcasing its versatility.

An alumna of Yale, Harvard Business School and Bain & Company, Zane is a recipient of the Congressional Women of Distinction and the Ogilvy Award. In 2021, she coined the term “Covid-stasis” forecasting the pandemic’s lasting psychological and behavioral effects. Zane has been published in prestigious publications including Knowledge@Wharton, Harvard Business Review, World Economic Forum, Newsweek and Ad Age. Zane is a board member of El Centro Hispano, the leading non-profit empowering Hispanic immigrants with skills to thrive in the United States.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 450, featuring an interview with the coauthor of The Venture Mindset: How to Make Smarter Bets and Achieve Extraordinary Growth, Ilya Strebulaev. This book offers a transformative playbook for delivering results in a rapidly changing world from a top Stanford professor and a technology executive. Packed with entertaining stories and scientific precision, The Venture Mindset is a must-read for anyone who wants to be better equipped for the era of uncertainty when industry, company, and career can be disrupted overnight. It will teach you more than how to simply survive. It’ll teach you how to win big.

Ilya Strebulaev is the foremost academic expert on venture capital. He is the founder of the Venture Capital Initiative and David S. Lobel Professor of Private Equity and Professor of Finance at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, where he teaches a popular class on venture capital. Ilya’s research has been widely published in leading academic journals and featured by the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Bloomberg and the Harvard Business Review. He frequently leads executive sessions for senior business and government leaders around the world and has consulted for companies and investors on venture industry trends and corporate innovation. In 2023, he was named a Top Voice on LinkedIn.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 449, featuring an interview with the coauthor of Data Rules: Reinventing the Market Economy (Acting with Technology), Cristina Alaimo. In Data Rules, Cristina Alaimo and Jannis Kallinikos establish a social science framework for analyzing the unprecedented social and economic restructuring brought about by data. Working at the intersection of information systems and organizational studies, they draw extensively on intellectual currents in sociology, semiotics, cognitive science and technology, and social theory. Making the case for turning “data-making” into an area of inquiry of its own, the authors uncover how data are deeply implicated in rewiring the institutions of the market economy.

Cristina Alaimo is an Assistant Professor (Research) of Digital Economy and Society at LUISS University, Rome. She holds a Ph.D. in Management, Information Systems and Innovation from LSE–The London School of Economics and Political Science, London. Her research focuses on the innovation brought about by data-based services and their consequences for organizations and society.

Cristina’s work has been published in journals such as The Information Society, Journal of Information Technology and Research in the Sociology of Organizations. Cristina is currently Visiting Research Fellow at Surrey Business School, University of Surrey, UK.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 448 with Martin Gonzalez and Josh Yellin. Martin is the creator of Google’s Effective Founders Project and a frequent lecturer at Stanford, Wharton and INSEAD. Josh co-founded Google's first Startup Accelerator and is presently an organizational leader at Google DeepMind.

Josh and Martin are the authors of The Bonfire Moment: Bring Your Team Together to Solve the Hardest Problems Startups Face. In this book Martin Gonzalez and Josh Yellin outline the common traps startup teams fall into, and share their powerful one-day workshop that helps teams escape those traps. The unique process of The Bonfire Moment brings colleagues together for a full day of facing hard truths, noticing hidden dynamics, and gearing up for the intense challenges of startup life. When the constant hustle feels overwhelming, a team’s Bonfire Moment pulls them out of the day-to-day intensity to reflect and reboot.

Martin Gonzalez is the creator of Google’s Effective Founders Project, a global research program that decodes the factors that enable startup founders to succeed. He also works closely with Google’s engineering and research leaders on org design, leadership and culture challenges. Martin is a frequent lecturer at Stanford, Wharton and INSEAD, and has advised leaders across the Americas, Europe, Africa and Asia. He has been recognized as a Fellow by the Aspen Institute's First Movers Program and as a Thinkers50 Radar awardee, both for his contributions to shaping the future of management and leadership. He studied organizational psychology and behavioral science at Columbia University and the London School of Economics.

Josh Yellin co-founded Google's first Startup Accelerator and spearheaded its growth, reaching founders in 70 countries. Along with Martin, he co-founded Google’s Effective Founders Project. Josh recently spent four years as the Chief of Staff at Google Brain, and is presently an organizational leader at Google DeepMind. Josh studied biology at the University of Illinois and business at the Wharton School.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 447, featuring an interview with the author of The Year of Living Constitutionally: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Constitution's Original Meaning, AJ Jacobs. In The Year of Living Constitutionally, A.J. Jacobs tries to get inside the minds of the Founding Fathers by living as closely as possible to the original meaning of the Constitution. He asserts his right to free speech by writing his opinions on parchment with a quill and handing them out to strangers in Times Square. He consents to quartering a soldier, as is his Third Amendment right. He turns his home into a traditional 1790s household by lighting candles instead of using electricity, boiling mutton, and—because women were not allowed to sign contracts— feebly attempting to take over his wife’s day job, which involves a lot of contract negotiations.

A.J. Jacobs is a journalist, lecturer, and human guinea pig whose books include Drop Dead Healthy, The Year of Living Biblically, and The Puzzler. He is host of the podcast The Puzzler. A contributor to NPR, The New York Times, and Esquire, among other media outlets, Jacobs lives in New York City with his family.

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The Year of Living Constitutionally: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Constitution's Original Meaning

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 446, featuring an interview with the author of Ask: Tap Into the Hidden Wisdom of People Around You for Unexpected Breakthroughs In Leadership and Life, Jeff Wetzler. In this book, Jeff offers a hands-on, surprisingly effective way to find out what others really think, know, and feel. Jeff brings you a powerful method called The Ask Approach™, based on a simple premise that tapping into what other people truly think, know, and feel is a game-changing superpower. Ask leads to smarter decisions, more creative solutions, and deeper relationships.

Jeff Wetzler is co-CEO of Transcend, a nationally recognized innovation organization, and an expert in learning and human potential. Wetzler combines unique leadership experiences spanning more than 25 years in business and education, as a management consultant to the world’s top corporations, a learning facilitator for leaders around the world, and as Chief Learning Officer at Teach For America. Jeff earned a Doctorate in Adult Learning and Leadership from Columbia University and a bachelor’s in psychology from Brown University. Based in New York, he is a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network and is an Edmund Hillary Fellow.

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Ask: Tap Into the Hidden Wisdom of People Around You for Unexpected Breakthroughs In Leadership and Life

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 445, featuring an interview with the author of Leadership Shock: Using Authenticity to Navigate the Hidden Dangers of Career Success, Pete Steinberg. Leadership Shock teaches readers to view leadership as an adaptive, continuous process rather than a fixed set of behaviors. By regularly re-evaluating their leadership models, professionals at any level can evolve their principles and actions to lead with authenticity as they navigate new challenges.

Pete Steinberg is a leadership and innovation expert with extensive experience consulting with top Fortune 500 professionals. He also has more than 20 years of experience as an elite rugby coach, coaching the USA Women’s Rugby Team at two World Cups and the Rio Olympics. As a former U.S., international, and Olympic sports coach and commentator for major outlets such as CBS, ESPN, and Fox Sports, Pete has a track record of bringing teams to victory. He has won 11 National Championships with the Penn State Women, MARFU Men, and Temple Women rugby teams. He has also worked with the Men’s Eagles and other age-grade programs within the U.S. National team pathway. Pete was the Head of Coach Development for USA Rugby, leading the program as it became integrated into the World Rugby programs. Pete is also the President of Innovative Thought, a business consultancy focused on leadership and organizational development. He supports clients in the areas of innovation, leadership, strategic planning, marketing, recruiting and organizational development. Pete works regularly as an executive coach for senior executives of global companies.

Get Pete’s new book here: https://www.petesteinberg.com/book

Leadership Shock: Using Authenticity to Navigate the Hidden Dangers of Career Success

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 444, featuring an interview with the author of Burnout Immunity: How Emotional Intelligence Can Help You Build Resilience and Heal Your Relationship with Work, Kandi Wiens. In her book, Kandi shares her research and discoveries about burnout immunity. After extreme stress caused a life-threatening health cri­sis in her own life, Dr. Kandi Wiens dedicated herself to understand why work was leaving millions of us sick, exhausted, unmoti­vated, and feeling stuck and ineffective. In her research, she discovered something remarkable: Despite dangerous levels of work-related stress, some people seemed to be naturally “immune” to burnout.

Kandi Wiens, EdD, MSEd, MBA is a Senior Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, Director of the Penn Master’s in Medical Education Program and the Penn Health Professions Education Certificate Program, and Academic Director of the PennCLO Master’s Program. She often teaches in various graduate-level programs across the University of Pennsylvania. She is a researcher, national speaker, and executive coach whose work focuses on helping leaders hone and use their emotional and social intelligence to amplify their positive impact and protect themselves from burnout.

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Burnout Immunity: How Emotional Intelligence Can Help You Build Resilience and Heal Your Relationship with Work

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 443, featuring an interview with the co-author of Persuade: The 4-Step Process to Influence People and Decisions, Andres Lares. This book deliver a concise and insightful take on how to transform your ability to persuade others regardless of the setting. Persuade is perfect for executives, managers, entrepreneurs, and other business leaders who negotiate or influence regularly. It is an invaluable resource for anyone seeking to improve their persuasion or deal-making abilities.

Andres Lares is the Managing Partner at Shapiro Negotiations Institute. Lares' expertise ranges from coaching live negotiations for sports clients, including the Cleveland Browns, Brooklyn Nets, and more, to developing online content for facilitating real estate, advisory, media, banking, and pharmaceutical programs. He is a guest lecturer on negotiation and influencing at various universities, including Ohio University, and annually teaches a sports negotiation course at Johns Hopkins University. Lares is a recognized contributor to numerous national media outlets, including Forbes, Entrepreneur, Selling Power, Sales and Marketing Management, Training Mag, and many more. He is quoted in Forbes, Business Insider, Fast Company, MarketWatch, and Huffington Post.

Get Andres’s new book here: https://www.shapironegotiations.com/resources/books/persuade/

Persuade: The 4-Step Process to Influence People and Decisions

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 442, featuring an interview with the author of The Illusion of Innovation: Escape "Efficiency" and Unleash Radical Progress, Elliott Parker. The Illusion of Innovation tackles the problem with innovation inside big companies, having activities that feel like innovation but lead to value destruction, not progress. This book explains why meaningful innovation naturally emerges from deliberate inefficiency and how large corporations can harness the power of small teams—startups—to drive radical change through systematic experimentation.

Elliott Parker is the founder and CEO of High Alpha Innovation, a venture builder that partners with corporations, universities, and entrepreneurs to co-create startups that solve compelling problems. He built his career in strategy consulting at Innosight, the firm founded by Clayton Christensen, in corporate venturing, and as an entrepreneur bringing new ideas to market. To date, he has launched over 40 venture-backed startups. Originally from California, Elliott currently resides with his family in Indiana. He earned a B.S. in Finance from BYU and an M.B.A. from the UCLA Anderson School of Management.

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The Illusion of Innovation: Escape "Efficiency" and Unleash Radical Progress

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we discuss how to know what is corporate strategy.

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we discuss what big picture thinking is.

At least once in your life, you would have received feedback to be a more big picture thinker. The problem is that everyone will have a different definition of big picture thinking and many of the definitions are vague, counter-intuitive, or wrong.

Based on advising some of the consultants on the study, this podcast provides a very simple, intuitive, practical, and correct definition of the big picture concept. It also explains why it is so important and how to use it.

Keep in mind that this study is being updated on our website where you can view the training videos and PowerPoint slides. This is a huge study and will offer the most realistic training for both consultants and industry professionals. Pure corporate strategy studies are rare. This is a unique training opportunity.

Click here to see the full study and here to see the merger study and market entry study.

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we discuss about financial strategy.

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we discuss scenario planning's common problems.

Scenario planning / Scenario Analysis is a powerful tool in consulting. This is how to move from being a consultant to thinking and presenting like a partner.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 437, featuring an interview with the author of Uptime: A Practical Guide to Personal Productivity and Wellbeing, Laura Mae Martin. In her book, Laura shows how to thrive no matter where you’re working, giving concrete steps that help you focus on your priorities and keep good systems, routines, and tactics in place. Uptime explains how to make technology work for you and make “feeling on top of it” your new normal. It’s a blueprint for operating at the highest levels of productivity while enhancing your own personal well-being.

Laura Mae Martin is the Executive Productivity Advisor in the Office of the CEO at Google. She coaches Google’s top executives on the best ways to manage their time and energy and sends out a weekly productivity newsletter that reaches tens of thousands of employees. During her 13-year tenure at Google, she has worked in sales, product operations, event planning, and now executive coaching. Laura holds a Bachelor of Science in business administration from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and lives in Charlotte, NC, with her husband and three children.

Get Laura's book here: https://rb.gy/nu5qr6 Uptime: A Practical Guide to Personal Productivity and Wellbeing

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 436, featuring an interview with Claire Milligan, a Stanford graduate turned startup founder. Claire helps businesses grow by spending smarter and reducing their cloud costs. Her target market is PE firms. In this episode, we discuss what PE firms care about, how to approach them, the biggest challenges and potential solutions they encounter, as well as the sales process and lead time.

Whether she’s helping businesses transform their cloud spending or hitting the slopes as a ski patroller, Claire Milligan thrives on distilling complex problems down to their core issues — and turning these pragmatic findings into groundbreaking solutions. Through a journey spanning marketing, UX, and leadership roles at tech companies like Tallie and SpringAhead, she’s meticulously constructed a diverse skill set built upon hands-on expertise and an unrelenting thirst for knowledge. Now, as the CEO of startup Aimably, she’s applying her unique superpowers to help businesses grow by spending smarter and dramatically reducing their cloud costs.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 435, where we feature an interview with the co-author of the inspiring new Generative AI study, Jeremy Utley. This episode highlights the common mistakes and missed opportunities many corporate teams and individuals make when using AI. Too often, individuals treat AI as a mere search engine, leading to answers that fall short of actual solutions.

Jeremy Utley is an adjunct professor specializing in creativity and entrepreneurship at Stanford University, where he has taught design thinking and creativity to nearly one million students of innovation worldwide. In 2023, he was named a top ten global innovation leader by Thinkers50 for his recent book Ideaflow: The Only Business Metric That Matters.

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic from the Corporate Strategy & Transformation study.

This podcast is for those who have mastered all the basics on slide design and formatting. In this podcast, we discuss how to determine if your PowerPoint slides are influential on a study. Influential PowerPoint slides may not be the most beautiful pieces of work or even the ones with the most effort, though it is usually at least the latter.

Click here to see the full study and here to see the merger study and market entry study.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 433, an interview with the coauthor of Fusion Strategy: How Real-Time Data and AI Will Power the Industrial Future, Venkat Venkatraman. In Fusion Strategy, digital strategy expert Venkat Venkatraman and world-renowned innovation guru Vijay Govindarajan offer a first-of-its-kind playbook that will help industrial companies combine what they do best—create physical products—with what digitals do best—use algorithms and AI to parse expansive, interconnected datasets—to make strategic connections that would otherwise be impossible.

Venkat Venkatraman is the David J. McGrath Jr. Professor of Management at the Questrom School of Business, Boston University. He has previously taught at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and at the London Business School. He is considered one of the foremost authorities on how companies develop strategies to win with digital technologies. He has lectured and conducted digital strategy workshops all over the world with companies such as IBM, Merck, Ericsson, BP, Canal+, and others.

Get Venkat’s book here: https://rb.gy/2vq6rx

Fusion Strategy: How Real-Time Data and AI Will Power the Industrial Future.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 432, an interview with the coauthor of Fusion Strategy: How Real-Time Data and AI Will Power the Industrial Future. In Fusion Strategy, world-renowned innovation guru Vijay Govindarajan and digital strategy expert Venkat Venkatraman offer a first-of-its-kind playbook that will help industrial companies combine what they do best—create physical products—with what digitals do best—use algorithms and AI to parse expansive, interconnected datasets—to make strategic connections that would otherwise be impossible.

Vijay “VG” Govindarajan is widely regarded as one of the world's leading experts on strategy and innovation. He is the Coxe Distinguished Professor, a Dartmouth-wide chair, at Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College and a former Marvin Bower Fellow at Harvard Business School. Govindarajan is the author of the bestselling books Reverse Innovation and Three-Box Solution.

Get Vijay’s book here: https://rb.gy/2vq6rx

Fusion Strategy: How Real-Time Data and AI Will Power the Industrial Future.

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we discuss value chain analysis.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 430, an interview with the author of Think Remarkable: 9 Paths to Transform Your Life and Make a Difference, Guy Kawasaki. In Think Remarkable, tech titan Guy Kawasaki teams up with Madisun Nuismer, producer of the Remarkable People podcast, to share invaluable knowledge from more than 40 years of working with game-changing organizations such as Apple, Canva, Google, Mercedes Benz, and Wikipedia, and delivers insights from a collection of amazing interviews that'll kick you into high gear and get you ready to start showing the world your best, most amazing self. Together the authors show you how to lead a fulfilling life by drawing on insights from working closely with some of the world's most remarkable people.

Guy Kawasaki is the chief evangelist of Canva and the creator of Guy Kawasaki’s Remarkable People podcast. He is an executive fellow of the Haas School of Business (UC Berkeley), and adjunct professor of the University of New South Wales. He was the chief evangelist of Apple and a trustee of the Wikimedia Foundation. He has written Wise Guy, The Art of the Start 2.0, The Art of Social Media, Enchantment, and eleven other books. Kawasaki has a BA from Stanford University, an MBA from UCLA, and an honorary doctorate from Babson College.

Get Guy’s book here: https://rb.gy/tvng27

Think Remarkable: 9 Paths to Transform Your Life and Make a Difference

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic from the Corporate Strategy & Transformation study, where we explain how benchmarking analysis, or what is also called best practice analysis, should be used for the top-down analysis and why they are so difficult to manage in a real study.

Click here to see the full study and here to see the merger study and market entry study.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 427, an interview with Paul Stonick, the Vice President of SCADpro—Savannah College of Art and Design’s in-house design, research, and innovation studio—which is generating innovative designs and products for the world's most influential brands, including Google, Amazon, and Apple.

From sketches to on-screen visuals, SCADpro students conceptualized and created augmented reality graphics ahead of Super Bowl LVIII. Their game-changing use of Augmented Reality was an epic viewing experience like never before!

Visit the behind the scenes with CBS Sports here: https://twitter.com/NFLonCBS/status/1755382181998841907

Prior to SCAD, Paul spent 25 years in the corporate world leading world-class digital and user experience design teams primarily in e-commerce, most notably with The Home Depot. His work has been featured in multiple news outlets, research organizations like Forrester and L2 Gartner, national television spots, and multiple Apple WWDC keynotes.

Paul also coaches and mentors the next generation of design leaders in his work with Amazing Design People (adplist.org). ADPList inspires powerful conversations and collaborations among designers worldwide so together we can change the world with creativity. In addition, Paul is a founding cohort member of Punks & Pinstripes -- a private network of badass transformation executives. Because it takes a rebel to change a company. Find us at punksandpinstripes.com

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 427, an interview with the author of Survive, Reset, Thrive: Leading Breakthrough Growth Strategy in Volatile Times, Dr. Rebecca Homkes. Survive, Reset, Thrive is a playbook for leaders derived from the author's first-hand experience working with executive teams across industries from software, technology, retail, fashion, and construction through to manufacturing. Drawing from over a decade of rich real-world experience, the author illustrates how to navigate the most complex strategic situations with a simple, executable approach. Rebecca Homkes explains how proactively to stabilize your business to withstand and grow through market shocks, reset your strategy to take account of new realities and thrive through uncertainty.

Rebecca Homkes is a high-growth strategy specialist and CEO and executive advisor. She is a Lecturer at The London Business School, Faculty at Duke Corporate Executive Education, Advisor and Faculty at the Boston Consulting Group focused on AI and Climate and Sustainability, and a former fellow at the London School of Economics Centre for Economic Performance. A global keynote speaker and recognized thought leader, she is also the global Faculty Director of the Active Learning Program with the Young Presidents Organization (YPO), leads several fintech accelerators, and serves on the boards of many high-growth companies. She earned her doctorate at the London School of Economics as a Marshall Scholar and is now based in Miami, the Bay Area, and London, UK.

Get Rebecca’s book here: https://rb.gy/aq85ee

Survive, Reset, Thrive: Leading Breakthrough Growth Strategy in Volatile Times

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 426, an interview with the author of Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory's Power to Hold on to What Matters, Dr. Charan Ranganath. In the book, Dr. Charan radically reframes the way we think about the everyday act of remembering. Combining accessible language with cutting-edge research, he reveals the surprising ways our brains record the past and how we use that information to understand who we are in the present, and to imagine and plan for the future. Why We Remember is a captivating read that unveils the hidden role memory plays throughout our lives. When we understand its power-- and its quirks--we can cut through the clutter and remember the things we want to remember. We can make freer choices and plan a happier future.

Charan Ranganath is a Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience and director of the Dynamic Memory Lab at the University of California at Davis. For over 25 years, Dr. Ranganath has studied the mechanisms in the brain that allow us to remember past events, using brain imaging techniques, computational modeling and studies of patients with memory disorders. He has been recognized with a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship. He lives in Davis, California.

Get Charan’s book here: https://rb.gy/xfdgjo

Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory's Power to Hold on to What Matters

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 425, an interview with the authors of Career Forward: Strategies from Women Who've Made It, Christiana Smith Shi and Grace Puma. In this book, the authors challenge negative stereotypes about female ambition, and urge women to be bold, follow their dreams, and seize the chance to lead “big” lives. The secret is to focus on career first, job second. Instead of chasing a better job title or a salary bump, the goal should be a long-range career path that leads to success. “Career forward” means keeping a focus on the future and recognizing that being good at your job is often not enough—that you should take every opportunity to boost your connections, take on “difficult” assignments, and work actively to broaden your skills.

Christiana Smith Shi is the former president of Nike’s consumer-direct division where she led the company’s global retail and ecommerce business. Before that she was a senior partner at McKinsey & Co. Christiana has been named one of the Most Influential Corporate Directors by Women, Inc. She currently leads Lovejoy Advisors, which is focused on digitally transforming consumer and retail businesses. Shi is a graduate of Stanford University and has an MBA from Harvard Business School, where she graduated as a Baker Scholar. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

Grace Puma is the former executive vice president and COO of PepsiCo, and before that held senior positions with United Airlines, Kraft Foods, Motorola, and Gillette. A board member of both Organon & Co and Target, she has been ranked on the “Most Powerful Latina” list by Fortune magazine and recognized as the “Executive of the Year” by Latina Style magazine. Puma holds a BA in business administration and economics from Illinois Benedictine University. She lives in Tampa, Florida.

Get Career Forward here: https://rb.gy/t7e8f9

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 424, an interview with the Chief Executive Officer for Churchome, David Kroll.

In this episode, David shares his career journey and transition from investment banking to becoming a pastor, highlighting his exposure to extreme success and the realization that money doesn't equate to happiness. David found personal freedom and alignment by pursuing work that aligns with his values. He discusses how he leveraged technology to enhance faith practices and reach a wider audience.

David advises those feeling lost in their careers to keep their eyes open for the next step and to embrace the journey toward their desired destination, acknowledging that it may not be a straight path, and to not be afraid to turn sideways or backward to get there.

David Kroll is the Chief Executive Officer for Churchome. Prior to stepping into the CEO role, David began his career within investment banking, wealth management, and technology, and he served in a variety of pastoral roles within Churchome. A loving husband to Jenna and father to William, Teddy, and Charlotte, David is passionate about helping people!

Learn more about Churchome and David here: https://www.churchome.org/

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we discuss value chain mapping.

We have seen many value chain mapping examples. We have seen good value chain mapping, bad value chain mapping, and incomplete value chain mapping. Ultimately, given the nature of how value chain mapping will work, it can and cannot do a few things. So if value chain mapping is presented to do things it cannot do, then it is flawed.

When you do value chain analysis, 1.) it is far more useful to see where profits will shift over time. 2.) assign some probabilities of what are the odds of this happening. And 3.) what influences those probabilities?

You are analyzing the entire sector, the entire industry. A lot of things influence a sector. Consumer spending can change with the recession. Recession can change things. Different legislation could cause profits to move from point x to point y. Competitors making a misstep could cause it, new competitors entering, and competitors going bankrupt. So whenever someone says "I am certain this will happen", you should question their business judgement because you cannot predict the future.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 422, an interview with the author of Winning with Data Science: A Handbook for Business Leaders. This book is a compelling and comprehensive guide to data science, emphasizing its real-world business applications and focusing on how to collaborate productively with data science teams. The book follows the stories of Kamala and Steve, two professionals who need to collaborate with data science teams to achieve their business goals.

Akshay Swaminathan is a data scientist who works on strengthening health systems. He earned a degree in Statistics from Harvard University and is an MD candidate and Knight- Hennessy Scholar at Stanford University School of Medicine. He has more than forty peer-reviewed publications, and his work has been featured in the New York Times. He currently leads the data science team at Cerebral.

Get Akshay’s book here: https://rb.gy/tievb8

Winning with Data Science: A Handbook for Business Leaders

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 421, an interview with the author of The Purposeful Growth Revolution: 4 Ways to Grow from Leader to Legacy Builder. In this book, you will learn to apply 4 holistic and revolutionary processes found in nature to help individuals, teams, and organizations find purpose, fulfill their true growth potential, and leave a living legacy—what Mears calls paying it backward. All designed to fulfill Purposeful Growth, Purposeful Self, Purposeful Work, and a Purposeful Life.

Mark A. Mears is a #1 Best Selling author, keynote speaker, consultant, and visionary business leader. He has a significant track record of building shareholder value. He has driven innovation and profitable growth among world-class, high-profile brands such as PepsiCo/Pizza Hut, McDonald’s, Frito-Lay, JCPenney, NBCUniversal, and The Cheesecake Factory.

Today, Mark serves as Chief Growth Officer for LEAF Growth Ventures, LLC—a consulting firm helping individuals, teams, and organizations find purpose in fulfilling their true growth potential while making a positive, lasting difference in the world. Mark is also a member of the Senior Leader Network within Conscious Capitalism, Inc.

Learn more about Mark here:

www.MarkAMears.com

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

Get Mark’s book here: https://rb.gy/20buif

The Purposeful Growth Revolution: 4 Ways to Grow from Leader to Legacy Builder

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we discuss what a strategy workshop will not give you at the end.

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we discuss one important thing every consulting case study must produce.

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we discuss one important thing you always need to present in all of your management consulting projects, a business case.

If you are not presenting a business case to a client, or a benefits case, I prefer the word benefits because it makes it clear you are looking for a benefit for a client, if you are not presenting a benefits case to a client you are making it very difficult for the client to make the decision to implement what you are saying in your recommendation as part of your management consulting project.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 417, an interview with the author of Fluke: Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters, Brian Klaas. In Fluke, myth-shattering social scientist Brian Klaas deep-dives into the phenomenon of randomness, unpicking our neat and tidy storybook version of events to reveal a reality far wilder and more fascinating than we have dared to consider. The bewildering truth is that but for a few incidental changes, our lives - and our societies - would be radically different. Offering an entirely new perspective, Fluke explores how our world really works, driven by strange interactions and random events.

Brian Klaas grew up in Minnesota, earned his DPhil at Oxford, and is now a professor of global politics at University College London. He is a contributing writer for The Atlantic, host of the award-winning Power Corrupts podcast, and frequent guest on national television. Klaas has conducted field research across the globe and advised major politicians and organizations including NATO and the European Union.

You can find Brian at BrianPKlaas.com and on Twitter @BrianKlaas.

Get Brian’s book here: https://rb.gy/gueipv

Fluke: Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we discuss consulting workshop best practices.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 415, an interview with the author of Venture Meets Mission: Aligning People, Purpose, and Profit to Innovate and Transform Society, Arun Gupta. The book argues that if Business, Government, and Society come together, rebuild trust, and collaborate, we have a generational opportunity to address societal challenges―climate change, cybersecurity, disease outbreaks, food insecurity, and education. The book explains, with hope and passion, how our existing entrepreneurial ecosystem, with the ideals of democracy, can be the foundation for a new mission-driven capitalism.

Arun Gupta is a venture capitalist, Lecturer at Stanford University, and Adjunct Entrepreneurship Professor at Georgetown University. He is CEO of NobleReach Foundation, which is focused on catalyzing and inspiring a renewed spirit of national service through innovation.

Get Arun’s book here: https://rb.gy/9eu518

Venture Meets Mission: Aligning People, Purpose, and Profit to Innovate and Transform Society

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How can you resign from your job with dignity, compassion, and grace, without burning any bridges with your employer?

For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we share simple principles to help you leave your role in a way that leaves a positive impression on your superiors, colleagues, and organization.

Do you have a story about resigning? Tell us more with a comment below.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 413, an interview with the author of Deep Purpose: The Heart and Soul of High-Performance Companies, Ranjay Gulati. In his book, Ranjay reveals the fatal mistakes leaders unwittingly make when attempting to implement a reason for being. Moreover, he shows how companies can embed purpose much more deeply than they currently do, delivering impressive performance benefits that reward customers, suppliers, employees, shareholders, and communities alike. To get purpose right, leaders must fundamentally change not only how they execute it but also how they conceive of and relate to it.

Ranjay Gulati is the Paul R. Lawrence MBA Class of 1942 Professor and the former Unit Head of the Organizational Behavior Unit at Harvard Business School. Until recently, he chaired the Advanced Management Program, the flagship senior leader executive program, at the school.

Professor Gulati has been ranked as one of the top ten most-cited academics in the fields of economics and business by ISI-Incite and has received similar recognition from The Economist, Financial Times, and the Economist Intelligence Unit.

Professor Gulati studies how “resilient” organizations—those that prosper both in good times and bad—drive growth and profitability. His work bridges strategy (establishing clear strategic pillars for growth), organizational design (reimagining purposeful and collaborative organizational systems), and leadership (fostering inspired, courageous, and caring execution).

Get Ranjay’s book here: https://rb.gy/31r53k

Deep Purpose: The Heart and Soul of High-Performance Companies

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we discuss the overall goal of every consulting interaction.

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we discuss the importance of corporate strategy.

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For this episode, let's revisit the 47th podcast on the Corporate Strategy & Transformation study. As I mentioned in previous posts, the reason we spend so much time on visioning workshop is because if you ever take a senior role in strategy in any company, or if you ever serve as a corporate strategy consultant, running a visioning workshop or corporate strategy workshop, in general, is the skill you must have. And scenario planning is something used extensively in visioning workshops.

In this podcast and related article, we discuss what is scenario planning and how to run a scenario planning session during a visioning workshop as part of a consulting engagement. There is also a very elegant way to combine corporate finance and corporate strategy to help companies develop effective strategies under extreme uncertainty.

Click here to see the full study and here to see the merger study and market entry study.

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For this episode, let's revisit the 42nd podcast on the Corporate Strategy & Transformation study.

What I noticed on this, and other studies is that the associates and business analysts are very competitive, in a way that is damaging to clients, to the firm and to their own careers.

I am fine with consultants being competitive but I think they go about it the wrong way. You can be competitive and work long hours but you should not seem to be competitive when you are working long hours.

I am not saying don't work long hours. Yet, don't make it sound like you are competitive and that is why you are working long hours. Cause and effect matters. If you work hard to be competitive, people see you as someone who is working hard only because you want to get promoted and only because you want to stand out from everyone else.

These consultants tend to be so obsessed with telling people how committed they are that they are moving away from the objective of getting the right work done.

No one likes someone who is competitive for the sake of being competitive. Because this is just wasted energy. If you are being competitive for the sake of being competitive, versus focusing on the client and working hard to solve a problem resulting in the by-product of you being competitive, you are basically just wasting valuable time that you could use much more productively.

If people just think you are competing with them they don't want to help you, they don't want to work with you.

Yet, if they see you as someone who is like them but for whatever reason needs to work harder because the client needs it they tend to like you more. They tend to relate to you better. And that dynamic becomes good for your career.

In this podcast, we discuss in detail how to go about being competitive on consulting projects while projecting the proper image and maintaining the right mindset to deliver the best value for the client and the firm.

Click here to see the full study and here to see the merger study and market entry study.

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we will talk about general professional values or etiquette that consultants should apply during an engagement. We specifically discuss things that consultants sometimes do on studies that may alienate the client. And rather than talking about every single thing you need to avoid, we will talk about some principles. And these principles apply across every issue.

We also discuss how to address a situation where a consultant’s behavior is incompatible with the firm’s professional values.

Click here to see the full study and here to see the merger study and market entry study.

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we discuss how to identify a corporate strategy.

It is actually very simple to know if a study qualifies as a corporate strategy study. Irrespective of what anyone tells you, if you go into a strategy study where the key question – or what we call an objective function – is known to you, then it is not a corporate strategy.

This is because corporate strategy is not about knowing how to maximize an objective function. It is about choosing the objective function you want to maximize. That is the key difference between corporate strategy and every other kind of strategy.

So, if you are in consulting, in an internal consulting role, or interested in strategy consulting, you should know there is a significant difference between corporate strategy and the other types of strategy analyses like business unit strategy, market entry strategy, etc. And in this podcast, we explain the two requirements that must exist for an engagement to be a corporate strategy study.

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we discuss how to communicate recommendations that are radical in nature.

If the recommendations are presented too early, they are hypotheses with little data backing them and they can be easily challenged.

If the recommendations are presented at the end, it shocks the client and there likely will be little agreement from the client.

The solution is to present early but to present them as hypotheses. That seems easy, but this podcast explains the communication mistakes that occur when most consultants present complex hypotheses very early, and how to fix them.

You will learn that communication, your choice of words, and the way you emphasize them can dramatically alter the way the client interprets what you are saying. In fact, the emphasis will radically alter the meaning.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 405, an interview with the author of Strategic, Rich Horwath. In his book, Rich delivers an incisive roadmap to help leaders at all levels think, plan, and act strategically to navigate every business challenge they face. The book offers business leaders a proven framework―the Strategic Fitness System―containing dozens of tools, techniques, and checklists to confidently master every area of the business, from designing market-winning strategies to shaping the organization’s culture.

Rich Horwath is founder and CEO of the Strategic Thinking Institute where he is a strategy facilitator, advisor, and coach to executive leadership teams. He is the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of eight books on strategic thinking and rated the number one keynote speaker on strategy at national events, including the Society for Human Resource Management Strategy Conference. Rich has helped more than a quarter million people develop their strategic thinking and planning capabilities over the past 20 years in pursuit of his vision to teach the world to be strategic.

Get Rich’s book here: https://rb.gy/ml6vk9

Strategic: The Skill to Set Direction, Create Advantage, and Achieve Executive Excellence

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 404, an interview with Rana Salman, M.B.A, PhD, a renowned expert in the sales industry who is transforming the performance of sales teams worldwide. With a background in marketing and years of experience in enterprise-level B2B sales, she has established herself as a trusted partner for global organizations seeking to elevate their sales strategies and execution. As the founder of Salman Consulting, LLC, Salman collaborates with midsize and Fortune 500 IT companies to create tailored sales strategies, develop compelling sales content, and deliver impactful training sessions. Whether it's in-person, through webinars, or on-demand, her expertise in sales and sales enablement ensures an optimized end-to-end customer experience that fosters loyalty and drives revenue growth.

Beyond her consulting work, Salman is a cofounder of WiSE (Women in Sales Enablement), a thriving networking group connecting female sales enablement professionals from around the world. Through WiSE, she facilitates the exchange of ideas and knowledge-sharing among industry peers. She was recognized as one of the Women Making an Impact in Enablement by Sales Enablement PRO in 2022 and named one of the Top Female Sales Practitioners for Your Next Panel, Presentation, or Podcast by Sales Hacker in 2021. Her expertise has also led her to be a sought-after guest speaker at prestigious events like the Texas Conference for Women, Sales Enablement Society Conference, and Competitive Marketing Summit.

Get Rana’s book here: https://rb.gy/i7ix7c

Sales Essentials: The Tools You Need at Every Stage to Close More Deals and Crush Your Quota

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we spoke about the approach and philosophy used by the study leadership team in a power sector corporate strategy study as they guide and mentor corporate leaders at the client.

We discuss the four pillars on which our leadership philosophy is built and use practical examples to demonstrate how we help clients adopt these principles.

The four pillars are:

1. Sincere authenticity matters.
2. Embrace – don’t hide – leadership flaws.
3. Forget about image.
4. Focus on results.

This approach is about helping corporate leaders be successful in the short term. If you would like to learn more about this leadership work, please read this article.

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For this episode, let's revisit one of Strategy Skills classics where we discuss something that affects every consultant in the world: the issue of confidence – or even arrogance – and its role in getting results on a consulting engagement.

We discuss the role that confidence plays in your career and look at what actually creates a competitive advantage in your career. We also look at an example that showcases the limited value of confidence in a consulting engagement.

Click here to see the full study and here to see the merger study and market entry study.

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For this episode, let's revisit one of Strategy Skills classics where we take a brief look at how to conduct a value chain analysis.

Click here to see the full study and here to see the merger study and market entry study.

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For this episode, let's revisit one of Strategy Skills classics where we discuss corporate strategy. In this episode, we explain why conventional and step-by-step strategy analysis will always yield incorrect answers in any corporate strategy study.

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For this episode, let's revisit one of Strategy Skills classics where we shared five tips to fight fatigue.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 398, an interview with a Professor of Integrated Marketing Communications, at Northwestern University, Lan Nguyen Chaplin. In this episode, we focused on how to disrupt a system that was built to hold you back. We also touched on to move past an embarrassing moment at work.

Lan Nguyen Chaplin, Ph.D. is Professor of Integrated Marketing Communications, at Northwestern University, Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications. She is also a member of the Core Faculty, Golub Capital Social Impact Lab at Kellogg School of Management. She received her Ph.D. in marketing from the University of Minnesota (Carlson School of Management), and her B.A. in neuroscience with a concentration in behavioral medicine from the University of Pennsylvania.

She was named one of the Top 50 Undergraduate Business Professors in the world by Poets & Quants (November 2018) and set a new record for top undergraduate professor nominations in the process. She has taught at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Villanova School of Business, University of Arizona, Eller College of Management, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where she was also the Head Coach of the Illinois Women’s Lacrosse Club team, and the University of Minnesota, Carlson School of Management.

Professor Nguyen Chaplin conducts research in the areas of children’s consumer behavior and branding. She publishes in outlets including, Science, Harvard Business Review, Journal of Consumer Research, Psychological Science, Journal of Consumer Psychology, Child Development, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, and Journal of Public Policy & Marketing.

Her research has been covered by TIME, Forbes, National Geographic, The New York Times, Fortune, Esquire Magazine, MSN, NBC Boston, ABC news radio, CBS news, Washington Times, Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! Parenting, Scientific American, Smithsonian Magazine, New York Magazine, Popular Science, Psychology Today, and Glamour.

Her article with Marsha Richins titled “Material Parenting: How the Use of Goods in Parenting Fosters Materialism in the Next Generation,” won Best Paper published in the Journal of Consumer Research (Financial Times top 50 business journals), in 2018 and was one of the most highly cited JCR articles in 2016. Her work on the development of materialism in children won one of the most prestigious awards in the marketing discipline—the ACR-Sheth award for public purpose research. She and her collaborators have presented their research throughout the USA and around the globe (Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, England, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, and Singapore).

She serves on the Editorial Review Board of the Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, Journal of Consumer Affairs, and Journal of Positive Psychology.

Professor Nguyen Chaplin teaches at the Ph.D., MBA, and undergraduate levels and has received numerous teaching accolades.

Visit Lan’s website: https://lanchaplin.com/

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 398, an interview with the author of Be the Unicorn: 12 Data-Driven Habits that Separate the Best Leaders from the Rest, William Vanderbloemen. In his book, William reveals how job seekers, employees, hiring managers and company leaders everywhere can stand out from their peers and become irreplaceable, building the careers they've always wanted.

William Vanderbloemen has been leading the Vanderbloemen Search Group for 15 years, where they are regularly retained to identify the best talent for teams, manage succession planning, and consult on all issues regarding teams. This year, Vanderbloemen will complete their 3,000th executive search. Prior to founding Vanderbloemen Search Group, William studied executive search under a mentor with 25+ years of executive search at the highest level. His learning taught him the very best corporate practices, including the search strategies used by the internationally known firm Russell Reynolds. Prior to that, William served as a Senior Pastor at one of the largest Presbyterian Churches in the United States.

Get William’s book here: https://rb.gy/45lms

Be the Unicorn: 12 Data-Driven Habits that Separate the Best Leaders from the Rest

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For this episode, let's revisit one of Strategy Skills classics where we discuss a special type of case study called a period case study which is significantly harder to do, but incredibly useful.

Most consultants prefer case studying the latest and greatest fad, which is extremely misleading, as explained in this podcast.

Click here to see the full study and here to see the merger study and market entry study.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 396, an interview with the author of The Power of Conscious Connection: 4 Habits to Transform How You Live and Lead. In this book, Talia shares her methodology for transforming how we live and lead by first tapping into our own power so that we can make choices that align best with what really matters to us as individuals. The Power of Conscious Connection is a blueprint for a more conscious, compassionate, and connected world. Each page of this book will stir you to the core, awaken your senses, and challenge you to commit to a new way of living and leading. In a time where division seems to prevail, Talia Fox reminds us of our potential for coming together.

Talia Fox is the CEO of KUSI Global, Inc. She holds an M.Ed. in counseling psychology from Howard University and she is a Harvard University Fellow. An inspirational leader in every sense of the word, Talia is often referred to as the Jedi of Inspiration by her clients. With over two decades of experience in transforming thousands of executives from all sectors, she has become a visionary for leadership and legacy building. Her extensive background in psychology and education has given her the tools she needs to assist leaders in developing successful strategies for complex missions, ranging from defense systems to healthcare initiatives. As CEO of KUSI Global, Inc., Talia helps organizations like the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Harvard University, Transunion, the National Institutes of Health, Howard University, and the U.S. Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs maximize human potential by leveraging strategic intelligence and helps individuals and organizations foster connected cultures and promote conscious equity.

Get Talia’s book here: https://shorturl.at/aiwAQ The Power of Conscious Connection: 4 Habits to Transform How You Live and Lead

Visit Talia’s website: https://kusitraining.com/

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For this episode, let's revisit one of Strategy Skills classics where we discuss the tough work being done by the Organizational Design team. We discuss the three tensions which drive all Organizational Design recommendations and the trade-offs required. We also spoke about the most important requirement to implement a new culture and structure at any company, and it is quite simple to do. As you will see, the Organizational Design stream is struggling in the study.

Click here to see the full Corporate Strategy & Transformation study and here to see the merger study and market entry study.

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For this episode, let's revisit one of Strategy Skills classics where we discuss why you should avoid the strategy echo chamber.

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For this episode, let's revisit one of the classics by Strategy Skills where we discuss what makes a study a "transformation study" and how to determine if an organization is going through a transformation or something else, such as restructuring.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 392, an interview with the author of The Bad Bitch Business Bible, Lisa Carmen Wang. The Bad Bitch Business Bible is Lisa’s no-holds-barred guide for women who want to break free of Good Girl Brainwashing and take charge of their bodies, boundaries, and bank accounts. Interweaving intimate personal stories with large life lessons, Lisa shows you how to transform from insecure good girl to unapologetic Bad Bitch so you can start earning the money, power, and respect you deserve.

Lisa Carmen Wang is the Founder & CEO of BAD BITCH EMPIRE, a community investment platform building unapologetic worth and wealth for women. She is a former 4-Time USA National Champion & Hall of Fame Gymnast turned serial entrepreneur, angel investor, venture capitalist, certified executive coach, and global speaker. She has been named Forbes 30 under 30 in Venture Capital, Entrepreneur Magazine’s 100 Most Powerful Women, Fast Company Executive Board, and Red Bull Hero of The Year. Featured on WSJ, Forbes, Fortune, Reuters, Bloomberg, Business Insider, and more. Lisa began her career at a $15 billion dollar hedge fund, is a graduate of Yale University, and is on a lifelong mission to help women build unapologetic worth and wealth.

Visit Lisa’s website and check out her new book: https://www.lisawang.co/

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For this episode, let's revisit one of the classics by Strategy Skills where we discuss how to complete logical case studies.

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In today’s Strategy Skills podcast episode, Kris and Michael will share with you some key lessons you need to know related to the upcoming Mega Program called Innovating An Industrial Giant. This particular program is phase two as part of a larger series, phase one is called How to Sell Over $10 Million Consulting Studies, which we also called the Andrew program where all 214 episodes were already published on strategytraining.com. We decided to separate this discussion into three parts: person, assets, and problem. So, in this second episode of this three-part series, our focus will be on problem.

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In today’s Strategy Skills podcast episode, Kris and Michael will share with you some key lessons you need to know related to the upcoming Mega Program called Innovating An Industrial Giant. This particular program is phase two as part of a larger series, phase one is called How to Sell Over $10 Million Consulting Studies, which we also called the Andrew program where all 214 episodes were already published on strategytraining.com. We decided to separate this discussion into three parts: person, assets, and problem. So, in this second episode of this three-part series, our focus will be on assets.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 388, an interview with the author of The Sound of the Future: The Coming Age of Voice Technology, Tobias Dengel. In his new book, Tobias answers why voice technology is the next big thing in technology, as big as mobile a decade ago and the internet in the late 90s, fundamentally altering the way companies do business. Tobias connects the dots about this emerging paradigm to vividly illustrate how business leaders can stay ahead of the game, rather than scrambling to catch up, as voice technology gradually reveals its power, creating a host of new winners and losers.

Tobias Dengel is president of WillowTree, a TELUS International Company, a global leader in digital product design and development, with 13 offices in North America, South America, and Europe, headquartered in Charlottesville VA. The company has been named by Inc. magazine to the Inc. 5000 list of America’s fastest-growing companies for 11 straight years. WillowTree, a TELUS International Company’s clients include some of the best-known brands in the world, such as T Mobile, Mastercard, Capital One, HBO, Fox, Time Warner, PepsiCo, Regal Cinemas, Charles Schwab, Johnson & Johnson, Lidl, Wyndham Hotels, Hilton Hotels, Holiday Inn, Canadian Broadcasting Corp, Synchrony Bank, Edward Jones Investments, and National Geographic. These industry leaders trust WillowTree, a TELUS International Company to design and develop their websites, apps, internal systems and voice interfaces.

Get Tobias’ book here: https://rb.gy/y4p29

The Sound of the Future: The Coming Age of Voice Technology

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In today’s Strategy Skills podcast episode, Kris and Michael will share with you some key lessons you need to know related to the upcoming Mega Program called Innovating An Industrial Giant. This particular program is phase two as part of a larger series, phase one is called How to Sell Over $10 Million Consulting Studies, which we also called the Andrew program where all 214 episodes were already published on strategytraining.com.

In today's session, we will get you up to speed on phase one. We also decided to separate this discussion into three parts: person, assets, and problem. So, in this first episode of this three-part series, our focus will be on the person—Andrew.

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For this episode, let's revisit one of the classics by Strategy Skills where we discuss the 3 career path options that consultants face once they become partners. We discuss each career path and what it means for a consultant's career. These are differences that are crucial to know and understand because partner career paths that appear to be more attractive often lead to disappointing results. For example, did you know it is a really bad idea to emulate the career path of all the McKinsey and BCG partners who appear in the McKinsey Quarterly, BCG perspectives, and HBR? This counter-intuitive podcast will explain why.

Many consultants don't spend enough time analyzing and considering the implications of following each career path. They take a superficial look at who are the partners most known and respected within the firm and try to emulate those partners. Yet, down the road, they often end up at a dead end.

We further address which partner career path you should follow if your goal is to become a CEO one day.

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For this episode, let's revisit one of the classics by Strategy Skills where we talk about one of the issues that we deal with at Firmsconsulting and which many ex employees of major consulting firms (e.g. ex McKinsey and ex BCG consultants) encounter as they embark on building their own boutique consulting firms or even when they join other consulting firm as employees.

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How do you become an outstanding management consultant? Should you excel at analysis? Should you master problem-solving? Should you become the world's most gifted communicator?

You could master all of the aforementioned items and still be an average management consultant at best. Great management consultants have all these skills but they have one more quality that makes them great, they are not just competent business people but they are also artists.

For this episode, let's revisit one of the classics by Strategy Skills where we explain the mindset we encourage teams to use on the study. This is the mindset I used in my career and it is very different from what you would expect.

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For this episode, let's revisit one of the classics by Strategy Skills where we answer a question from our audience.

Facing a "horrible" client is a common experience in the business world. You could say that it is part of the journey. It can be hard to know what you should do during this situation. But it is exactly in these types of situations that we learn a lot.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 382. For this episode, let's revisit one of Strategy Skills classics, where we discuss when a consultant must dissent and how it should be done.

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I recently had a great conversation with Sam Moses, which I think you will enjoy. We speak about how Sam managed to build a $500k in revenue per month business in just 4 years. We cover a lot of ground in this episode of the Strategy Skills podcast.

Sam shares the most important points that anyone planning to start a business wishes to know. He discussed how to find the right manufacturer and supplier and how to build relationships with them. He generously shared the process of his business from manufacturing to delivery, how to manage SEO for an online business, how to find the right employees, and most importantly how to get customers and clients. As a bonus, Sam offered his advice to other entrepreneurs who are starting their own businesses.

If you are thinking about starting your own business, or if you are already an entrepreneur, this episode is a must-listen.

Samuel is the Founder and CEO of Sockrates Custom Socks, a company based in Boca Raton Florida which specializes in producing the highest quality custom socks at the fastest turnaround time. With over 4000 clients, Sockrates has emerged as the industry leader in its field with clients in the United States, Germany, France, Iceland, UK, Israel, and Canada.

Visit Sam’s website: ​​https://www.sockratescustom.com/

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Cheers,

Kris

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 380, an interview with an experienced founder, leader, and thinker across a variety of domains, Rick Walker.

In this episode, Rick walks us through his leadership journey, how he built his first company in his 20's, the lessons he learned across multiple domains, and how he was able to do multiple things successfully, simultaneously. He also shared his views about fear, pride, faith, religion, and ethics in relation to leadership and business.

Rick Walker scaled his first company to 400 employees when he was 26, and simultaneously, as Chairman, scaled a 53-country international nonprofit from 800 to 2,100 team members, simultaneously while helping his hometown of Houston attract over $5 Billion in job-creation investments. Rick’s volunteer service also includes stints as a Director of a college in the middle east and Chairman of a $250 Million charitable foundation. His 3:30 AM wake-up call helps fit everything in.

Rick hosts a podcast to help multi-domain leaders learn well - and has interviewed friends, who also happen to be world-class leaders, such as billionaires, musicians, members of the President’s Cabinet, US Senate, US Congress, and great thinkers. The podcast is hosted inside a 13,000-square-foot mansion, which was the former party mansion of a Fortune 500 CEO, which Rick restored and uses for his family office, charitable events, and podcasts.

Rick lives in Houston with his wife and 3 girls, where he spends much of his time serving alongside the best team members in his commercial real estate private equity firm.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 379, an interview with the author of Autonomous Transformation: Creating a More Human Future in the Era of Artificial Intelligence, Brian Evergreen. Autonomous Transformation provides a blueprint for leaders and managers who have aspired or attempted to harness artificial intelligence and its adjacent technologies for the betterment of their organization and the world, weaving strategy, management thinking, economics, systemic design, and philosophy into actionable steps with accompanying frameworks to create and sustain Profitable Good.

Brian Evergreen is best known for his work advising FORTUNE 500 executives on artificial intelligence strategy. Building on his experiences working at Accenture, Amazon Web Services, and Microsoft, Brian guest lectures at Purdue University and the Kellogg School of Management and is a Senior Fellow in the Economy, Strategy, and Finance Center of The Conference Board, sharing the unconventional and innovative methods and frameworks he developed leading and advising Digital Transformation initiatives at many of the world's most valuable companies.

Brian is the founder of The Profitable Good Company, a leadership advisory company that partners with and equips leaders to harness the economic and societal of technology by creating a more human future in the era of artificial intelligence.

Get Brian’s book here: https://rb.gy/ejept

Autonomous Transformation: Creating a More Human Future in the Era of Artificial Intelligence

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 378, an interview with the director of the Advanced Management and Leadership Programme at the University of Oxford's Saïd Business School, Dr. Andrew White.

In this episode with Dr. Andrew White, we delved deeply into the changes and challenges of leadership, as well as the reason behind the negative tone of discussions around leadership. Dr. White also discussed how to know if you are approaching leadership in the right way, the indicators of healthy leadership, and how leaders can assess themselves to be better leaders.

Dr. Andrew White is the host of the Leadership 2050 podcast, on which he has interviewed the likes of former Unilever CEO Alan Jope and Mercedes F1 team CEO Toto Wolff. He is also the CEO of Transcend.Space, a leadership coaching company. Dr White's work focuses on the type of leadership needed to transcend 21st-century challenges.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 377, an interview with the author of How to Lead Your Family Business: Excelling Through Unexpected Crises, Choices, and Challenges, Julie Charlestein. In this book, Julie gets vulnerable about her experience as an emerging leader and ultimately CEO, who has worked to earn her colleagues’ respect while navigating the succession to her father’s company. Through stories full of candor and humor, Julie shares her leadership adventure, offering actionable strategies for those leading and working within their own family businesses.

Julie Charlestein is a Philadelphia-based business leader and healthcare innovator who serves as the fourth-generation CEO of Premier Dental, just named a 2023 Top Ten Most Innovative Company in Wellness by Fast Company.

Premier Dental is a global provider of innovative dental products used by dentists in 75 countries. Products range from hygienist instruments to teeth polishers to prosthetic mouth devices. As Charlestein likes to say: “You may not know our name, but we’ve probably been in your mouth.” Heading the most trusted brand in dental products for over 100 years, Julie is an advocate for change and industry expert on integrating technology into modern dental practices to improve the treatment journey for both dentists and patients. She was recognized as one of Philadelphia Business Journal’s “Most Admired CEOs,” awarded the Silver Stevie Award as Female Executive of the Year and honored with the Gold Award by the Best in Biz Awards as Executive of the Year. She has served on the Dean's Advisory Board of the School of Dental Medicine at Harvard University and as the Chair of the Government Relations Committee for the Dental Trade Alliance and is a member of The Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO).

Get Julie’s book here: https://rb.gy/d07jl How to Lead Your Family Business: Excelling Through Unexpected Crises, Choices, and Challenges

Check out Julie’s website: https://www.juliecharlestein.com/

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 376, an interview with the author of The Experience Mindset: Changing the Way You Think About Growth, Tiffani Bova. This book details exactly how your company can adopt an Experience Mindset, at scale. It’s not enough to know that happy employees equals happy customers. You must have an intentional, balanced approach to company strategy that involves all stakeholders – IT, Marketing, Sales, Operations, and HR – with KPIs and ownership over outcomes.

Tiffani Bova is the global customer growth and innovation evangelist at Salesforce, and the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Growth IQ. Over the past two decades, she has led large revenue-producing divisions at businesses ranging from start-ups to the Fortune 500. As a Research Fellow at Gartner, her cutting-edge insights helped Microsoft, Cisco, Salesforce, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Oracle, SAP, AT&T, Dell, Amazon-AWS, and other prominent companies expand their market share and grow their revenues. She has been named one of the Top 50 business thinkers in the world by Thinkers50 twice. She is also the host of the podcast What’s Next! with Tiffani Bova.

Get Tiffani’s book here: https://rb.gy/bcal2

The Experience Mindset: Changing the Way You Think About Growth

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 375, an interview with the author of Decision Sprint: The New Way to Innovate into the Unknown and Move from Strategy to Action, Atif Rafiq. In this book, Atif shares the breakthrough methods to put your company on the path to innovation, creativity, and growth. Atif has written Decision Sprint to pull the curtain back on the hidden management systems within your organization that impact how people think, collaborate, and make decisions.

Atif Rafiq has blazed trails in Silicon Valley and the Fortune 500 for over 25 years. After rising through digital native companies like Amazon, Yahoo!, and AOL, Atif held C-suite roles at McDonald’s, Volvo, and MGM Resorts. He oversaw thousands of employees as a global P&L, transformation, and innovation leader.

Atif was the first Chief Digital Officer in the history of the Fortune 500, a pioneering role he held at McDonalds, and he rose to the president level in the Fortune 300. While leading business units, teams, and growth for companies, Atif has built a large following as one of today’s top management thinkers. Over 500,000 people follow his ideas about management and leadership on LinkedIn, where he is a Top Voice, and his newsletter Re:wire has over 100,000 subscribers.

Atif is passionate about helping companies push boldly into the future. He accomplishes this through Ritual, a software app revolutionizing how teams innovate and problem-solve, and through his work as keynote speaker, Board member, and CEO advisor.

Get Atif’s book here: https://rb.gy/kvxed

Decision Sprint: The New Way to Innovate into the Unknown and Move from Strategy to Action

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 374, an interview with the author of The Perennials: The Megatrends Creating a Postgenerational Society, Mauro F. Guillén. In this book, Mauro unpacks a sweeping societal shift triggered by demographic and technological transformation. Guillén argues that outmoded terms like Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z have long been used to pigeonhole us into rigid categories and life stages, artificially preventing people from reaching their full potential.

Mauro F. Guillén is one of the most original thinkers at the Wharton School, where he is Professor of Management and Vice Dean for the MBA for Executives Program. An expert on global market trends, he is a sought-after speaker and consultant. He combines his training as a sociologist at Yale and as a business economist in his native Spain to methodically identify and quantify the most promising opportunities at the intersection of demographic, economic, and technological developments. His online classes on Coursera and other platforms have attracted over 100,000 participants from around the world. He has won multiple teaching awards at Wharton, where his presentation on global market trends has become a permanent feature of over fifty executive education programs annually. He is the WSJ bestselling author of 2030: How Today's Biggest Trends Will Collide and Reshape the Future of Everything.

Get Mauro’s book here: https://rb.gy/u9n0w

The Perennials: The Megatrends Creating a Postgenerational Society

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 373, an interview with the author of Reunion: Leadership and the Longing to Belong, Jerry Colonna. In this book, Jerry guides us on a journey of reunification with the disowned parts of ourselves, the myths and truths of our ancestors, as well as a deeper connection with those most affected by systems of exclusion.

Jerry Colonna is the CEO, and co-founder, of Reboot.io, an executive coaching and leadership development firm whose coaches and facilitators are committed to the notion that better humans make better leaders. For nearly 20 years, he has used the knowledge gained as an investor, an executive, and a board member for more than 100 organizations to help entrepreneurs and others to lead with humanity, resilience, and equanimity. Previous to his career as a coach he was a partner with JPMorgan Partners (JPMP), the private equity arm of JP Morgan Chase. He joined JPMP from Flatiron Partners, which he launched 1996 with partner, Fred Wilson. Flatiron became one of the most successful, early-stage investment programs in the New York City area. Jerry is the author of Reboot: Leadership and the Art of Growing Up (2019), and Reunion: Leadership and the Longing to Belong (2023).

Get Jerry’s book here: https://rb.gy/h9a6aReunion: Leadership and the Longing to Belong

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 372, an interview with the author of All Pride, No Ego: A Queer Executive's Journey to Living and Leading Authentically, Jim Fielding, where he delivers an inspirational leadership story told from the perspective of an out and proud LGBTQ+ executive. In the book, you’ll explore a call-to-action for authentic servant leadership that encourages people to own their truth and bring out the best in themselves and their communities.

Jim Fielding is a respected retail and media industry veteran whose expertise combines storytelling, product innovation, merchandising, and consumer experiences. Jim currently serves as a partner at Archer Gray, an independent media company, and president of its Co-Lab Division. Having led consumer products groups at the world’s largest media companies, including Disney, Dreamworks, and Twentieth Century Fox, Jim has built diverse cultures and visionary teams that excelled in competitive global markets. He served as president of Disney Stores Worldwide for four years, transforming its global consumer experience. He also served as CEO of Claire’s Stores, Inc., a leading jewelry and accessories retailer.

Jim’s early experience spanned leading global retail companies, from The Gap to Lands’ End. He mastered all aspects of vertical specialty retail, including supply chain, product design, store operations, and visual merchandising.

An active community leader and philanthropist, Jim serves on the board of directors for the Indiana University Foundation and was a founding member of the Dean’s Council for the Hamilton Lugar Global and International School. Jim is a founder of the Queer Philanthropy Circle, the nation’s premier fundraising and advocacy group for the queer community. He also participates in the Women’s Philanthropic Leadership Circle and the Black Philanthropy Circle. Jim has served as a board member for GLSEN, Make-A-Wish International, and American Red Cross, as well as an executive-in-residence for IU Ventures and Indiana University’s Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. He has endowed several scholarships at IU to support overseas study, international internships, and advocacy leadership training.

Jim lives in Atlanta with his partner, Joseph, and their dogs, Cricket and Olive. In the summers, you will find them in Leland and Northport, Michigan.

Get Jim’s book here: https://rb.gy/ax3aj

All Pride, No Ego: A Queer Executive's Journey to Living and Leading Authentically. Jim Fielding.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 371, an interview with the author of Power to the Middle: Why Managers Hold the Keys to the Future of Work, Emily Field. In this book, McKinsey thought leaders Bill Schaninger, Bryan Hancock, and Emily Field call for a profound reimagining of managers and their roles. They explain how middle managers are uniquely positioned close to the ground but with a crucial connection to company strategy, enabling them to guide their organizations through periods of rapid and complex change, as well as to help shape the new world of work.

Emily Field is a partner in McKinsey's Seattle office. She helps organizations with distributed workforces deliver on their performance goals, with the role of the manager front and center. Emily holds a BA in government from Georgetown University.

Get Emily’s book here: https://rb.gy/q4qmv

Power to the Middle: Why Managers Hold the Keys to the Future of Work

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 370, an interview with the author of MoneyZen: The Secret to Finding Your “Enough”, Manisha Thakor. In this book, Manisha shares her candid journey out of the Cult of Never Enough—a painful mindset that tells you the money you earn, accomplishments you achieve, and praise you receive is always insufficient.

Manisha Thakor has worked in financial services for more than thirty years, with an emphasis on women’s economic empowerment and financial wellbeing. A nationally recognized thought-leader in this space, Thakor has been featured in a wide range of publications including the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, NPR, PBS, CNN, Real Simple, and Women’s Health. Prior to writing MoneyZen, Thakor co-authored two personal finance books for women in their twenties and thirties. Today her work focuses on helping people of all ages to balance financial health and emotional wealth. Thakor earned her MBA from Harvard Business School, her BA from Wellesley College and is both a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) and a Certified Financial Planner (CFP). She splits her time between Portland, Oregon and rural Maine. Her website is MoneyZen.com.

Get Manisha’s Book here: https://rb.gy/od9zz
MoneyZen: The Secret to Finding Your “Enough”

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 369, an interview with the author of The Perfection Trap: Embracing the Power of Good Enough, Thomas Curran. In his book, Thomas calls for both introspection and broader, societal change. He shows what we can do as individuals to resist the modern-day pressure to be perfect, and in so doing, win for ourselves a more purposeful and contented life.

Thomas Curran is a professor of psychology at the London School of Economics and the author of a landmark study that the BBC hailed as “the first to compare perfectionism across generations.” His TED talk on perfectionism has received more than three million views. His research has been featured in media ranging from the Harvard Business Review to New Scientist to CNN and he has appeared on numerous television and radio programs.

Get Thomas’ book here: https://rb.gy/6m35h
The Perfection Trap: Embracing the Power of Good Enough, Thomas Curran.

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For this episode, let's revisit one of the classics by Strategy Skills, where we answer a question, "Should I email the full deck to participants before the strategy workshop?"

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For this episode, let's revisit one of the classics by Strategy Skills, where we covered a topic about analyses.

• Are the analyses always the same for a strategy workshop? In other words, what determines the analyses you should undertake for a strategy workshop?
• How does one set objectives for the workshop? 
• How many strategy workshops should be completed during an engagement? 
• Why are top-down analyses so important? 

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For this episode, let's revisit one of the classics by Strategy Skills, where we cover a topic about what to do if the client demands more analyses.

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For this episode, let's revisit one of the classics by Strategy Skills, where we cover a topic about what happens if the client asks for proof of the strategy.

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For this episode, let's revisit one of the classics by Strategy Skills, where we cover a topic about understanding the readiness and level of confidence required to go out there and lead.

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For this episode, let's revisit one of the classics by Strategy Skills where we discuss the most important concepts you need to understand in order to advance your career.

Be reminded about what is Corporate Strategy and how is it different from the other types of strategies.

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we explain what it means to be a conceptual thinker and how to demonstrate this skill.

If you work at any major consulting firm – and especially if you want to be promoted – you must prove you are a conceptual thinker. The only problem is that it is hard to define the word conceptual.

In this podcast, we explain a similar problem experienced by a consultant on the Corporate Strategy & Transformation Study and how I helped them improve. The definition also explains why a conceptual thinker is a functional specialist (in strategy, operations, corporate finance, etc.) and almost never a specialist in sectors.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 361, an interview with the author of Building Trust: Exceptional Leadership in an Uncertain World, Darryl Stickel. In his book, Darryl outlines his groundbreaking Trust Unlimited blueprint for building trust. Stickel moves away from the traditional approach of influencing people’s willingness to trust—the con artist’s tactic—to employing one or more of ten levers, which leaders can “pull” to close the gap between how much they are trusted and how much they should be. This approach also makes them more trustable and increases trust where it is deficient.

Darryl Stickel is one of the world’s leading experts on trust with over twenty years of experience. His Ph.D. ¨Building Trust in Hostile Environments¨ from Duke University established him as a global leader for governments, businesses and NGOs on practical approaches to building trust.

Darryl has worked for Mckinsey & Company in their Toronto office, as well as advised the Canadian Military on trust building in Afghanistan. He has served as faculty for the Luxembourg School of Business and the Center for Effective Organizations at the University of Southern California and recently completed his book Building Trust: Exceptional Leadership in an Uncertain World.

His contribution to the field of trust has been recognized by his nomination to the Top Thought Leaders on Trust by Trust Across America; Trust Around the World.

Get Darryl’s book here: *https://rb.gy/3boas

Building Trust: Exceptional Leadership in an Uncertain World, Darryl Stickel*

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For this episode, let's revisit one of the classics by Strategy Skills where we discuss why everyone should read Bill Matassoni's book, MARKETING SAVES THE WORLD.

Every now and then, someone comes along and makes the subject of management both fun and insightful. That’s what Bill Matassoni has done in his memoir—a combination of compelling stories and contrarian substance—that covers his forty-year career selling what he calls “ephemeral things.” In addition to the memoir, Bill plays host to a series of videos that are entertaining, irreverent, and filled with his conviction that marketing is the primary driver of progress in both commercial and social markets.

MARKETING SAVES THE WORLD: Stories Why Capitalism Works. Bill Matassoni https://rb.gy/2gjss

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 360, an interview with the author of Environmentally Sustainable Growth: A Pragmatic Approach, Steven Cohen. In this book, Steven explores the causes of environmental degradation and examines what sustainability looks like in practice and outlines realistic paths toward a renewable resource–based economy, demonstrating that, in many respects, the shift to sustainability is already underway. Steven describes a range of public policy and infrastructure initiatives that can encourage cleaner production in the private sector and consumption in everyday life.

Steven Cohen is senior vice dean of the School of Professional Studies and professor of the practice of public affairs in the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. He is also the director of the Earth Institute’s Research Program on Sustainability Policy and Management as well as two other master’s programs in environmental sustainability. Cohen previously worked for the EPA and currently serves on the board of directors of the Willdan Group. He is the author of Sustainability Management, Understanding Environmental Policy, and The Sustainable City.

Get Steven’s book here:
Environmentally Sustainable Growth: A Pragmatic Approach. Steven Cohen: https://rb.gy/gew25

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic with Kevin P. Coyne, founder of Coyne Scientific. He is the former Director and co-leader of both McKinsey’s Worldwide Strategy Practice and CEO transitions practice, and the host of The Consulting Offer II

Kevin attended the Harvard Business School after his junior year of college. He simultaneously graduated from both Rice University and Harvard in 1978 and joined McKinsey as the youngest associate ever and one of the youngest principals ever appointed. During a 27 year career at McKinsey Kevin advised clients on a variety of issues and across a broad range of industries including banking, consumer goods, venture capital, industrial, telecommunications and the public sector. His primary area of focus was corporate strategy. He has worked one-on-one with over twenty-five different CEOs.

Kevin has been an active leader in civic roles throughout his career. He served as an Executive Assistant and sole policy advisor to the Deputy Secretary of the United States Treasury, the second ranking department official in the Reagan Administration.

In that role he advised on Brazil’s economic growth, served as an intermediary between Britain and Argentina after the Falklands war and advised on opening Japan’s capital markets. He recently co-led several pro-bono efforts, including the following:

Setting up the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund
Leading the Atlanta and London Olympic Games committees on several initiatives
Leading the team supporting former US President Carter on the Atlanta Project helping low-income citizens

Kevin has co-written 6 Harvard Business Review articles, 12 McKinsey Quarterly articles and 2 bestselling business books, as well as many other articles across influential business publications.

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic from week 4 of the Corporate Strategy & Transformation study.

The previous podcasts discussed each of the elements which together comprise the visioning workshop. This podcast discusses the workshop structure, how we ran it, and the overall outcome. 

Click here to see the full study and here to see the merger study and market entry study.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 357, an interview with the author of Paradoxical Leadership: How to Make Complexity an Advantage, Ivo Brughmans. Paradoxical Leadership reveals how to transform divisive dilemmas into creative solutions and paralyzing polarization into a constructive dialogue.

Ivo Brughmans studied philosophy, international politics, and business management. He worked for twenty-five years for a global management consulting firm, supporting organizations in redesigning and transforming their business. Ivo is fascinated by paradoxes and the challenge of bringing together opposite approaches. Connecting opposite poles has been a common thread throughout his own life and work: as a philosopher working with practical business challenges, as a rationalist relying on his intuition, and as a workaholic enjoying doing simply nothing at all.

Ivo has written several books on this theme, developing a “both/ and” perspective as a radical alternative to our current way of living, managing, governing, and coaching. He has a deep conviction that this perspective helps create more sustainable solutions to the challenges of the twenty-first century, providing the fundamentals for a fulfilled and balanced life, for better-performing and more innovative organizations, and for a better world.

Ivo lives in Antwerp, Belgium. He gives keynotes, leads workshops and training programs on paradoxical leadership, and works with public and private organizations throughout Europe and around the globe. For more information check https://paradoxical-leadership.com.

Get Ivo’s book here:

https://rb.gy/322nl

Paradoxical Leadership: How to Make Complexity an Advantage. Ivo Brughmans

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 356, an interview with the author of Madison Avenue Makeover: The Transformation of Huge and the Redefinition of the Ad Agency Business, Michael Farmer. He also wrote the award-winning Madison Avenue Manslaughter, an inside view of fee-cutting clients, profit-hungry owners, and declining ad agencies (Third Edition, 2019).

In this episode, Michael speaks about the time he worked for McKinsey, Bain, and BCG, and the differences between the three consulting firms. He also shared his advice for those aspiring to build their consulting firm and discussed the technique that helped him write his first book, Madison Avenue Manslaughter. Finally, Michael shared his experience of helping in the Transformation of a Creative Ad Agency (Huge).

Michael Farmer is Chairman and CEO of Farmer & Company LLC, a strategy consulting firm for advertisers and agencies. He also serves as Professor of Branding and Integrated Communications at The City College of New York (CCNY). He has an MBA from Harvard Business School and was previously a Director of Bain & Company.

Connect with Michael here: https://www.farmerandco.com/

Get Michael's book here: https://www.amazon.com/Madison-Avenue-Makeover-transformation-redefinition/dp/1911687646

Madison Avenue Makeover: The Transformation of Huge and the Redefinition of the Ad Agency Business. Michael Farmer.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 355, an interview with the author of REWIRED: The McKinsey Guide to Outcompeting in the Age of Digital and AI, Kate Smaje. The book REWIRED delivers a road-tested, how-to manual that Mckinsey consultants use to help companies build the capabilities to outcompete in the age of digital and AI. It reveals the learnings from large companies around the globe for succeeding at the six core elements of a digital transformation—strategy, talent, operating model, technology, data, and adoption and scaling capabilities. 

Kate Smaje is a senior partner in McKinsey’s London office. She co-leads the McKinsey Digital practice globally and is a member of McKinsey’s Shareholders Council, the firm’s board of directors. She works with senior executives to deploy the power of data, digital culture and capabilities, and modernized core technology. She also has firsthand experience as a chief technology officer across core technology, digital product management and innovation, and cybersecurity work. In addition to her work with McKinsey, Kate is a trustee of Tommy’s, the children’s charity.

Get Kate’s book here:

REWIRED: The McKinsey Guide to Outcompeting in the Age of Digital and AI. Eric Lamarre, Kate Smaje, Rodney Zemmel. https://www.amazon.com/Rewired-McKinsey-Guide-Outcompeting-Digital/dp/1394207115#:~:text=This%20book%20is%20your%20how,teams%2C%20and%20scale%20the%20value.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 354, an interview with the author of The Datapreneurs: The Promise of AI and the Creators Building Our Future, Bob Muglia. In this book, Bob helps us understand how innovation in data and information technology has led us to AI—and how this technology must shape our future.

Bob Muglia is a data technology investor and business executive, former CEO of Snowflake, and past president of Microsoft's Server and Tools Division. As a leader, Bob focuses on how innovation and ethical values can merge to shape the data economy's future in the era of AI. He serves as a board director for emerging companies which seek to maximize the power of data to help solve some of the world's most challenging problems.

The Datapreneurs: The Promise of AI and the Creators Building Our Future. Bob Muglia and Steve Hamm. https://www.amazon.com/Datapreneurs-Promise-Creators-Building-Future/dp/1510778411

Connect with Bob Muglia:
Website: https://www.thedatapreneurs.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/bob_muglia?lang=en
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bob-muglia-714ba592/

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic from the power sector corporate strategy study.

A stream of our consultants is assessing the management skills of senior EI managers and executives to manage the transformation process. This process has not gone well. A senior manager of EI felt the management skills assessment was designed to present him in a poor light. He, therefore, complained to the unions and is considering legal action against EI.

This is not good, but fairly common on such studies. So there is no need to overreact, though it must be managed and done very quickly and efficiently.

The spillover of this is that the unions are refusing to allow the management skills analyses to take place and many employees are also refusing to participate.

In this podcast, I discuss the process we will use to manage this misunderstanding. It is a real concern with the potential to spiral out of control. We have a plan and, to be fair, we could have managed this a little better from our side.

The unions are not to blame for this.

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic from the power sector corporate strategy study.

In this critical podcast, we focus on two things.

First, we discuss the reason why corporate strategy studies rely so heavily on executive workshops. We explain why simply handing the perfect strategy to the client will never yield results, even if the client accepts it without any challenges.

The workshop process plays a crucial role that cannot be easily replicated anywhere else in the study. That is the reason to hold the workshop.

Second, we discuss the components of the corporate strategy analyses and how we use each part:

1 - Case studies 2 - Market analyses 3 - Customer value chain analyses 4 - Client value chain analyses

Finally, we discuss how all of these come together in the scenario planning.

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we discuss advanced predictive problem solving. 

Turquoise Eyes started off the groundbreaking new genre developed by FIRMSconsulting that combines compelling narrative while teaching problem-solving and critical thinking skills. Set after a bank begins implementing a new retail banking strategy, we follow Teresa García Ramírez de Arroyo, a director-general in the Mexican government, who has received some disturbing news. A whistleblower has emailed Teresa with troubling news about a mistake in the loan default calculations and reserve ratios. The numbers do not add up.

Get the book here: The Turquoise Eyes: A Novel about Problem Solving & Critical Thinking https://amzn.to/3bzVa6g

Watch the video version of this podcast here: https://youtu.be/xQqufjwFm9E

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we discuss how to finalize the overall storyboard for the client.

Watch the video version of this podcast here: https://youtu.be/7LXOL_KDZYQ

Click here to see the full study and here to see the merger study and market entry study.

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we discuss the role of the business unit strategy stream within a corporate strategy study.

Watch the video version of this podcast here: https://youtu.be/mSNDAvmXjzA

Click here to see the full study and here to see the merger study and market entry study.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 348, an interview with the author of Bold Move: A 3-Step Plan to Transform Anxiety into Power. Bold Move is Dr. Luana Marques’ unique, tried and tested method to get you out of your rut and give you the courage to create a more confident and meaningful life. Dr. Luana pinpoints the anxiety at the root of avoidance and shows you how to overcome it and achieve your goals.

Dr. Luana Marques is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and the Director of Community Psychiatry Program for Research in Implementation & Dissemination of Evidence-Based Treatments at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). Dr. Marques is a national and international expert in Cognitive Behavioral Therapies (CBTs) and a leader in increasing access to scientifically rigorous mental health practices. Her decades of clinical and research experience implementing evidence-based practices encompass all types of roles and settings, from front-line staff to CEOs, diverse communities to organizations, both in the US and globally. Dr. Marques is the Former President of the Anxiety and Depression Association of America (ADAA). Connect with her online at drluana.com or follow her on Twitter at @DrLuanaMarques

Get Luana’s book here: Bold Move: A 3-Step Plan to Transform Anxiety into Power. Dr. Luana Marques Enjoying this episode? Get access to sample advanced training episodes here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic from a 10 episode program to help our clients and customers measurably, radically transform their careers through The Author Program.

How would your career, reputation, and earnings change as a published author?

Imagine your client interactions when potential and current clients saw your thinking in a published book before they met you? Imagine the time you would save not having to explain your ideas and the value you could add to them? Imagine the fee premium you could earn? Imagine avoiding awkward meetings trying to establish your credibility? Imagine how many potential clients would find you and reach out to you?

Learn more and see the application guidelines: https://www.firmsconsulting.com/experts-published-author-program/

Apply: email team@firmsconsulting.com

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic from a 10 episode program to help our clients and customers measurably, radically transform their careers through The Author Program.

How would your career, reputation, and earnings change as a published author?

Imagine your client interactions when potential and current clients saw your thinking in a published book before they met you? Imagine the time you would save not having to explain your ideas and the value you could add to them? Imagine the fee premium you could earn? Imagine avoiding awkward meetings trying to establish your credibility? Imagine how many potential clients would find you and reach out to you?

Learn more and see the application guidelines: https://www.firmsconsulting.com/experts-published-author-program/

Apply: email team@firmsconsulting.com

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 345, an interview with the Chairman of the BCG Henderson Institute, BCG’s think tank for new ideas in management and strategy. Martin has authored numerous books, including Your Strategy Needs a Strategy and The Imagination Machine, a handbook about how to systematically harness imagination to generate new ideas and transform businesses.

Get Martin's book here:

The Imagination Machine: How to Spark New Ideas and Create Your Company's Future. Martin Reeves and Jack Fuller

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic from a 10 episode program to help our clients and customers measurably, radically transform their careers through The Author Program.

How would your career, reputation, and earnings change as a published author?

Imagine your client interactions when potential and current clients saw your thinking in a published book before they met you? Imagine the time you would save not having to explain your ideas and the value you could add to them? Imagine the fee premium you could earn? Imagine avoiding awkward meetings trying to establish your credibility? Imagine how many potential clients would find you and reach out to you?

Learn more and see the application guidelines: https://www.firmsconsulting.com/experts-published-author-program/

Apply: email team@firmsconsulting.com

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic from a 10 episode program to help our clients and customers measurably, radically transform their careers through The Author Program.

How would your career, reputation, and earnings change as a published author?

Imagine your client interactions when potential and current clients saw your thinking in a published book before they met you? Imagine the time you would save not having to explain your ideas and the value you could add to them? Imagine the fee premium you could earn? Imagine avoiding awkward meetings trying to establish your credibility? Imagine how many potential clients would find you and reach out to you?

Learn more and see the application guidelines: https://www.firmsconsulting.com/experts-published-author-program/

Apply: email team@firmsconsulting.com

Enjoying our podcast? Get access to sample advanced training episodes here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic from a 10 episode program to help our clients and customers measurably, radically transform their careers through The Author Program.

How would your career, reputation, and earnings change as a published author?

Imagine your client interactions when potential and current clients saw your thinking in a published book before they met you? Imagine the time you would save not having to explain your ideas and the value you could add to them? Imagine the fee premium you could earn? Imagine avoiding awkward meetings trying to establish your credibility? Imagine how many potential clients would find you and reach out to you?

Learn more and see the application guidelines: https://www.firmsconsulting.com/experts-published-author-program/

Apply: email team@firmsconsulting.com

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 341, an interview with the author of Inside the Competitor's Mindset, John Horn, where he shares proven techniques to help businesses think like the competition and understand why they act the way they do. Inside the Competitor’s Mindset presents a systematic approach to competitive intelligence that starts with three frameworks to get inside the competitor’s mindset, predict their reactions to your moves, and assess whether the competition is getting ready for a spontaneous move of their own.

John Horn is a professor of practice in economics at the Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis. He teaches MBA students microeconomics, macroeconomics, and global business.

John was a Senior Expert in the Strategy Practice of McKinsey & Company for 9 years, working with clients on competitive strategy, war gaming workshops, and corporate and business unit strategy across a variety of industries and geographies. He helped over 100 clients with war game workshops and developed a set of simulation exercises to help companies understand the challenges of reallocating resources. He continues to consult through his LLC: Gateway Competitive Insights.

John has published nine papers in the McKinsey Quarterly and three in the Harvard Business Review, mostly on the application of behavioral economics and competitive insight to business strategy. John has a PhD in economics from Harvard University, where he also received a Masters degree in economics.

Get John’s book here:

Inside the Competitor's Mindset: How to Predict Their Next Move and Position Yourself for Success. John Horn

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic from a 10 episode program to help our clients and customers measurably, radically transform their careers through The Author Program.

How would your career, reputation, and earnings change as a published author?

Imagine your client interactions when potential and current clients saw your thinking in a published book before they met you? Imagine the time you would save not having to explain your ideas and the value you could add to them? Imagine the fee premium you could earn? Imagine avoiding awkward meetings trying to establish your credibility? Imagine how many potential clients would find you and reach out to you?

Learn more and see the application guidelines: https://www.firmsconsulting.com/experts-published-author-program/

Apply: email team@firmsconsulting.com

Enjoying our podcast? Get access to sample advanced training episodes here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic from a 10 episode program to help our clients and customers measurably, radically transform their careers through The Author Program.

How would your career, reputation, and earnings change as a published author?

Imagine your client interactions when potential and current clients saw your thinking in a published book before they met you? Imagine the time you would save not having to explain your ideas and the value you could add to them? Imagine the fee premium you could earn? Imagine avoiding awkward meetings trying to establish your credibility? Imagine how many potential clients would find you and reach out to you?

Learn more and see the application guidelines: https://www.firmsconsulting.com/experts-published-author-program/

Apply: email team@firmsconsulting.com

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 338, an interview with Ryan McAnnally-Linz, coauthor of Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most. This book provides readers with jumping-off points, road maps, and habits of reflection for figuring out where their lives hold meaning and where things need to change. The book draws from major world religions and from impressively truthful and courageous figures such as Jesus, Muhammad, the Buddha, Aristotle, Socrates, Martin Luther King, Jr., the Dalai Lama, Ida B. Wells, James Baldwin, Mary Wollstonecraft, Confucius, and Nietzsche, to name a few. The authors’ goal is for readers to define and create a flourishing life, and answer one of life’s most pressing questions: how are we to live?

Ryan McAnnally-Linz is the associate director of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture. He is a coauthor with Volf of The Home of God and Public Faith in Action (Brazos), a 2016 Publishers Weekly Best Book in religion, and has written for The Washington Post’s Acts of Faith, Sojourners, and The Christian Century.

Get Ryan’s book here:

Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most. Miroslav Volf, Matthew Croasmun, Ryan McAnnally-Linz

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic from a 10 episode program to help our clients and customers measurably, radically transform their careers through The Author Program.

How would your career, reputation, and earnings change as a published author?

Imagine your client interactions when potential and current clients saw your thinking in a published book before they met you? Imagine the time you would save not having to explain your ideas and the value you could add to them? Imagine the fee premium you could earn? Imagine avoiding awkward meetings trying to establish your credibility? Imagine how many potential clients would find you and reach out to you?

Learn more and see the application guidelines: https://www.firmsconsulting.com/experts-published-author-program/ Apply: email team@firmsconsulting.com

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic from the Corporate Strategy & Transformation study.

In this phase of the podcast series, we are focusing on week 4 when we are bringing the entire leadership team together to help them make one decision.

The only decision they have to make is:

"Should Empire International focus on the non-regulated non-core activities as they are now doing or refocus their efforts to support Empire Energy on their core regulated business: generating energy, transmitting energy and distributing energy?"

In today’s podcast, while we are heavily focused on week 4 and the build up to that major visioning workshop, we step back to understand a little bit of the broader contextual issues facing this client.

If you have been following this podcast series you will realize that there are 2 criteria that must be met for any strategy study to be a corporate level strategy study.

The first one is the objective function for the client, the key question for the client, must be unclear. If the objective function is known for the client than you are not doing a corporate strategy study. You are doing some other kind of strategy study, like BU strategy.

The other condition is that you have to help the client pick the market where they want to compete. And that usually involves doing a lot of industry analysis /value chain analysis.

The skill explained in this podcast is essential for any partner, but it is equally useful for any consultant at any level. Getting clarity when many paths are possible is a crucial skill to have. Most bad consulting engagements hit their main hurdles at this early stage, in determining the key problem facing the client.

In this podcast, we want to help you understand how we went about figuring out the objective function for this client. And this is something we did way back at the beginning of the study, before we even started. And if you go onto the website and you look at the detailed maps, videos, power points as we explain each step in the study, this is explained in enormously more detail than what we are going to do here.

Yet, seeing this helicopter view is important.

What we want to do here is simply explain the questions we wanted to answer to determine the objective function and how we wrote out the logic. If you do this, you will always be on the right track.

Click here to see the full study and here to see the merger study and market entry study.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 335, an interview with Sandeep Chennakeshu, the author of Your Company Is Your Castle: Proven Methods for Building a Resilient Business, where he describes how to assess and systematically build a company’s business model, financial health, strategy, culture, products, sales channels, execution, and stakeholder confidence to make the company formidable. Your Company Is Your Castle equips you with critical insights and principles to build strong businesses and in turn build yourself into a strong leader.

Sandeep Chennakeshu is a lifelong student and aspiring teacher whose heart is in technology and mind is in business. He earned a postgraduate diploma in industrial management from the Indian Institute of Science and a PhD in electrical engineering from Southern Methodist University. He then entered the electronics industry and led the development and launches of technology that billions use every day via cell phones, laptops, wearables, satellites, medical equipment, and cars. He is a Fellow of IEEE and a named inventor on 180 patents.

After two decades in corporate roles as CTO of Ericsson Mobile Phones and Sony Ericsson, president of Ericsson Mobile Platforms, SVP at Freescale, president of BlackBerry Technology Solutions, and EVP of AMD, Sandeep returned to consulting and the start-up world. He is currently COO at Uhnder Inc., a pioneer in digital-imaging radar, and sits on the advisory boards of exciting tech start-ups.

Managing operations in fourteen different countries over the span of his career gave Sandeep a deep appreciation for global businesses. Along this rich cultural journey, he led the transformation of three underperforming businesses using the principles outlined in his new book.

Sandeep lives and works in Austin, Texas and plans to spend the next chapter of his life sharing his learnings through writing and mentoring.

Get Sandeep’s book here:

Your Company Is Your Castle: Proven Methods for Building a Resilient Business. Sandeep Chennakeshu

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 334, an interview with Rishi Dave, a partner in Bain’s Commercial Excellence practice with deep expertise in B2B marketing and digital marketing.

In this episode, Rishi explains the concept of a “Day 1 List” in B2B sales and marketing and the three things that will get a supplier or seller on the list. Rishi also discussed what a “sales play” is, how to build it, institutionalize the knowledge within the company, and get the sales team to adopt the sales play to fulfill their potential and increase their productivity and sales.

Rishi Dave partners with CMOs and management teams to drive marketing transformations and build modern marketing capabilities. He serves as an expert on the implementation of Bain’s B2B Marketing Diagnostic and Sales Play System.

Rishi has held global CMO roles at public technology and cloud companies, including Dun & Bradstreet, Vonage, and MongoDB. Prior to these roles, he served as the global head of digital marketing for Dell’s B2B businesses. Rishi started his career at Bain & Company.

As a marketing executive, Rishi has built world-class marketing organizations and capabilities that have driven top-line growth leveraging the right marketing technology, data, analytics and content strategy. Rishi has driven major brand and messaging transformations, reimagined digital customer experiences, and built and scaled go-to market models.

Rishi earned an MBA in Marketing from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania as well as a BS in Chemical Engineering and an AB in Economics with Honors from Stanford University.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 333, an interview with Gaia Bernstein, a Law Professor, Director of the Institute for Privacy Protection and Co-Director of the Gibbons Institute for Law Science and Technology at the Seton Hall University School of Law. She writes, teaches and lectures in the intersection of law, technology, health and privacy. Gaia is also the mother of three children who grew up in a world of smartphones, iPads and social networks.

Her forthcoming book: Unwired: Gaining Control Over Addictive Technologies shatters the illusion that we can control how much time we spend on our screens by resorting to self-help measures. Unwired shifts the responsibility for a solution from users to the technology industry, which designs its products to addict. The book draws out the legal action that can pressure the technology industry to re-design its products to reduce technology overuse.

Gaia has academic degrees in both law and psychology. Her research combines findings from psychology, sociology, science and technology studies with law and policy. Gaia’s research has been featured extensively by the media including the New York Times, Forbes, ABC News and Psychology Today.

Gaia has spearheaded the development of the Seton Hall University School of Law Institute for Privacy Protection’s Student-Parent Outreach Program. The nationally acclaimed Outreach Program addresses over-use of screens by focusing on developing a healthy online-offline balance and the impact on privacy and online reputation. It was featured by the Washington Post, CBS Morning News and Common-Sense Media.

Gaia delivers lectures to parents and general audiences about the harms of excessive screen time, the effectiveness of self-help measures, and the options for technology re-design through social and legal action.

Get Gaia’s book here:

Unwired: Gaining Control Over Addictive Technologies. Gaia Bernstein

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 332, an interview with the author of How to Listen, Oscar Trimboli.

Effective communication is not all about eloquent speaking. The key sits on the ability to listen and how you react and respond to what you hear. As Oscar said in the episode, “The difference between hearing and listening is action”.

In this episode, we discuss what good listening and communication is. We also highlighted the impact of good listening in your career, organization, and personal life.

Oscar Trimboli is on a quest to create 100 million Deep Listeners in the world. He is an author, host of the Apple Award winning podcast—Deep Listening and a sought-after keynote speaker. He is passionate about using the gift of listening to bring positive change in homes, workplaces and the world.

Through his work with chairs, boards of directors and executive teams in local, regional and global organizations, Oscar has experienced first-hand the transformational impact leaders and organizations can have when they listen beyond the words.

He consults with organisations including Cisco, Google, HSBC, News Corp, PayPal, Qantas, TripAdvisor helping executives and their teams listen to what’s unsaid by the customers and employees.

Oscar lives in Sydney with his wife Jennie, where he helps first-time runners and ocean swimmers conquer their fears and contributes to the cure for cancer as part of Can Too, a cancer research charity.

Get Oscar’s book here:

How to Listen: Discover the Hidden Key to Better Communication. Oscar Trimboli

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 331, an interview with the co-author of The Burnout Challenge, Michael P. Leiter, Ph.D.

Burnout is one of the major contributors driving people to leave their job. It results from unsuccessfully managed workplace stress and is a combination of exhaustion, psychological distancing, and a low sense of accomplishment. So how do we address burnout and who is responsible for managing this issue?

In this episode, we discuss the factors contributing to employee burnout and what leaders and managers can do to understand, protect, and manage their employees to alleviate the distress from the elements that result in burnout.

“Some people are looking for something from that job that it's not providing, that there is a mismatch.” —Michael P. Leiter, Ph.D.

Michael P. Leiter, Ph.D., is an organizational psychologist interested in the relationships of people with their work. He has been a professor of Industrial and Organisational Psychology at Deakin University in the Faculty of Health and Canada Research Chair in Occupational Health at Acadia University.

Michael lives in Nova Scotia where he writes and consults with workplaces on preventing burnout while improving respect among people.

Get Michael’s new book here:

The Burnout Challenge: Managing People’s Relationships with Their Jobs. Christina Maslach and Michael P. Leiter

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 330, an episode with Christina Maslach, PhD, a professor of psychology (Emerita) and a researcher at the Healthy Workplaces Center at the University of California, Berkeley.

In this episode, we discuss the causes of burnout and the factors contributing to it, and how leaders and organizations can address this issue to provide a sustainable and healthy working environment for their employees.

Christina Maslach, PhD, received her BA from Harvard and her PhD from Stanford. She is best known as the pioneering researcher on job burnout, producing the standard assessment tool (the Maslach Burnout Inventory, MBI), books, and journal articles. She has received numerous awards for her work, including both academic (the 2020 award for scientific writing from the National Academy of Sciences) and public (named in 2021 as one of the top 100 people transforming business, by Business Insider).

In addition, she is an award-winning teacher and was Professor of the Year in 1997. As an administrator, she was Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education and Instructional Technology, and the Chair of the faculty Academic Senate (twice) at UC-Berkeley. She was the president of the Western Psychological Association when it celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2020. She is now interviewing women faculty who arrived at Berkeley in the 1970s, after the historic low point for women in the 1960s.

Get Christina’s new book here:

The Burnout Challenge: Managing People’s Relationships with Their Jobs. Christina Maslach and Michael P. Leiter

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 329, an episode with a Senior Partner and the global leader in the Tech and Telecommunication practice at McKinsey and Company, Venkat Atluri.

In this episode, we defined the emerging ecosystem economy and how most successful companies navigate and thrive in this new world.

Venkat Atluri is a thought leader at McKinsey, a prolific author, and a sought-after speaker at industry events. He collaborates with top executives, boards, and investors to create value through end-to-end performance transformation, programmatic M&A, and new business building from scale-up to IPOs. He is keenly focused on the future of technology, with special emphasis on the cross-sector opportunities at the intersection of new technologies and emerging business models. He serves clients in the high-tech, media and telecommunications, advanced industries, and consumer sectors. He has a passion for advising venture capital and private equity investors.

Venkat is a leading expert on vast and emerging opportunities created by the network connectivity of devices, systems, platforms, and people that are powered by software and hardware. He draws on this expertise to guide clients through the design and deployment of network and ecosystem-based businesses across sectors.

He has held many leadership positions throughout his tenure at the firm. He co-founded and led McKinsey’s IoT (Internet of Things) Practice. He also created a group that aims to incubate new analytic and digital assets, develop innovative client offerings, and build alliances and partnerships with innovators. He previously spearheaded digital, analytics, and tech-enabled transformations for clients in advanced industries, and also led the firm’s global efforts in the Technology, Media & Telecommunications Practice to help clients fast-track and sustain transformational impact through leadership alignment, execution support, capability-building, and leadership development via a distinctive set of assets and exceptional digital-learning programs.

Prior to joining McKinsey, Venkat held global operating leadership roles overseeing large businesses and functions, with a focus on product development, management, and deployment.

Outside of McKinsey, Venkat serves on the board of 1871, a world-leading not-for-profit start-up incubator. He is the current chairman of the board and a founding member of Current Water, a not-for-profit that seeks sustainable solutions to water challenges through innovation and collaboration for developing and deploying the tools, practices, and technologies to promote sustainable blue economy growth.

Get Venkat’s new book here:

The Ecosystem Economy: How to Lead in the New Age of Sectors Without Borders. Venkat Atluri and Miklós Dietz

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we go back to the visioning workshop part of the study and re-visit some of the most important points you need to keep in mind.

Click hereto see the full study and here to see the merger studyand market entrystudy.

Watch the video version of this episode on YouTube: Structure of the visioning workshop

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic from week 4 of the Corporate Strategy & Transformation study.

Promoting women into leadership roles is a hot topic and, sadly, a debate. Why is it a debate? What are the elements that require further analysis? To paraphrase Marvin Bower, one does not ask a client if a woman should take over the relationship, one simply tells a client a woman is taking over. It is not the client’s job to decide what is right.

In this podcast, we explain why we have more female than male partners at FC and how we constantly develop them to serve in more and more senior roles.

Click here to see the full study and here to see the merger study and market entry study.

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we discuss how your cost of capital changes as you take on more debt and how this change is different between organizations. It's a crucial concept for this utility. We explain how the cost of capital change usually takes place and then we review the drivers at play that are different for this power utility vs. an average company.

Click here to see the full study and here to see the merger study and market entrystudy.

Watch the video version of this episode on YouTube: When too much debt is a good thing

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we use economics to explain what is the role of government, when governments should intervene, how they should intervene, and when they should hand over certain activities to the private sector. If you want to further your understanding of strategy at the highest possible level you should listen to this.

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we interviewed the author of LET THEM LEAD: Unexpected Lessons in Leadership from America's Worst High School Hockey Team. This book is a true story filled with unforgettable characters, stories, and lessons that apply to organizations everywhere. It includes the leader’s mistakes and the reactions of the players, who have since achieved great success as leaders themselves. Let Them Lead is a fast-paced, feel-good book that leaders of all kinds can embrace to motivate their teams to work harder, work together, and take responsibility for their own success.

John U. Bacon has written twelve books on sports, business, health, and history, and the last seven are all National Bestsellers.

Bacon's radio essays earned him NPR's PRNDI Award for best commentary in 2014. He appears often on national TV, gives speeches across North and South America, and teaches at the University of Michigan, where he won the 2009 Golden Apple Award for "exceptional teaching." In 2006, he was inducted into the Ann Arbor Huron High School Hall of Fame for turning around the hockey team.

Bacon is a decent hockey player, a mediocre Spanish speaker, and a poor piano player, but that has not prevented him from enjoying all three.

Get John’s book here:

LET THEM LEAD: Unexpected Lessons in Leadership from America's Worst High School Hockey Team. John U. Bacon

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we interviewed the coauthor of Monster: A Tough Love Letter on Taming the Machines that Rule our Jobs, Lives, and Future, Ben Pring.

Who is responsible for regulating and overseeing technology and online platforms? Is it the government? The ITs and developers? Or maybe…the users?

In this episode, we deliberated the significance of technology in human lives and the negative consequences brought by irresponsible and abusive use of technology.

Ben Pring is a widely acknowledged IT futurist and thought leader with a storied track record working with the biggest and fastest-growing IT vendors and with the most demanding and sophisticated IT buyers.

Get Ben’s book here:

Monster: A Tough Love Letter On Taming the Machines that Rule our Jobs, Lives, and Future. Ben Pring and Paul Roehrig.

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we interviewed the author of Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life, Luke Burgis.

Why do we want what we want? This topic is rarely presented in conversations, business meetings, or political agendas, but it has a comprehensive impact on our lives and shapes our societies. This episode explores the psychology behind human desires, role modeling, competition, and the awareness of intentional wanting.

Luke Burgis has founded and led multiple companies. He’s currently entrepreneur-in-residence and director of programs at the Ciocca Center for Principled Entrepreneurship at the Catholic University of America, where he also teaches business and develops new education initiatives. He's also the founder and director of Fourth Wall Ventures, an incubator for people and companies that contribute to the formation of a healthy human ecology. He graduated from NYU Stern School of Business and later from a pontifical university in Rome, where he studied theology. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, Claire.

Get Luke’s book here:

Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life, Luke Burgis.

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we interviewed Jenn Lim, the CEO of Delivering Happiness, also known as DH.

In this episode, Jenn speaks about her journey of discovering and understanding the meaning of happiness and purpose. What is the source of genuine happiness and how does it impact your work and career?

Delivering Happiness, also known as DH is a company that Jenn Lim and Tony Hsieh, the late CEO of Zappos.com, cofounded to create happier company cultures for a more profitable and sustainable approach to business. DH started as a book and evolved into a business consultancy and global movement that has impacted and inspired over 400 companies around the world.

Jenn’s mission is something both simple and profound: to teach businesses how to cultivate cultures that generate profit, sustain all people at every level of the organization with humanity, and share how we can make an impact by being true to our authentic selves. In 2017, Jenn was selected to be on the Global Happiness Council of Work and Wellbeing with the charter to scale the impact she's made in even more sustainable ways. In 2020, DH was on Inc. 5000’s list of fastest-growing companies.

Get Jen’s book here:

Beyond Happiness: How Authentic Leaders Prioritize Purpose and People for Growth and Impact. Jenn Lim

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we interviewed the author of Sales Management That Works: How to Sell in a World that Never Stops Changing, Frank Cespedes.

How do you manage sales in a world that never stops changing? In this episode, Frank shares valuable insights to equip sales professionals and business leaders in managing sales within their organization and how to better improve and develop themselves while managing constant change.

Frank Cespedes is a sales expert and Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School. He run a business, served on the boards of corporations and start-ups, and consulted to companies around the world. He is the author of articles in Harvard Business Review, California Management Review, Organization Science, Wall Street Journal, and other publications as well as 6 books, including Aligning Strategy and Sales which was cited as "the best sales book of the year" (Strategy & Business), "a must read" (Gartner), and "perhaps the best sales book ever" (Forbes).

Get Frank’s book here:

Sales Management That Works: How to Sell in a World that Never Stops Changing. Frank Cespedes.

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we interview the coauthor of The Power of Trust, Sandra Sucher. In this book, Sandra Sucher and Shalene Gupta examine the economic impact of trust and the science behind it and conclusively prove that trust is built from the inside out. Trust emerges from a company being the “real deal”: creating products and services that work, having good intentions, treating people fairly, and taking responsibility for all the impacts an organization creates, whether intended or not.

Sandra Sucher is a professor of management practice at Harvard Business School and studies trust and moral leadership. She’s authored 110 business cases, technical notes, video interviews, teaching notes, and three books.

Sucher is on the Edelman Trust Institute advisory board and has collaborated with Deloitte on TrustIQ™, a proprietary tool that measures key elements of trust in major corporations and public sector organizations.

Sucher was a business executive for 20 years before joining Harvard. As a senior executive at Fidelity Investments, she measured customer loyalty, redesigned back-office operations, and improved the quality of service. In retailing, she co-authored the proposal to expand Filene’s Basement from a single-unit business to a national chain. She has served on corporate and nonprofit boards and as the Better Business Bureau chair.

Get Sandra’s book here:

The Power of Trust: How Companies Build It, Lose It, Regain It. Sandra J. Sucher and Shalene Gupta

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we interviewed one of Wall Street’s legendary tech analysts, Mark Mahaney.

In this episode, Mark discusses ten lessons that are proven to help investors succeed in tech stock investing. He shares powerful advice and knowledge from analyzing the most explosive sector on Wall Street over the past quarter century.

Lesson 1: There Will Be Blood… When You Pick Bad StocksLesson 2: You Can Lose $...Even When You Pick The Best StocksLesson 3: Don’t Play QuartersLesson 4: Revenue Matters More Than AnythingLesson 5: It Doesn’t Mean a Thing, If It Ain't Got That Product SwingLesson 6: TAMs - The Bigger The BetterLesson 7: Follow the Value Prop, Not the MoneyLesson 8: Management Matters MostLesson 9: Look for Ballpark Reasonable ValuationLesson 10: Hunt for DHQs - Dislocated High-Quality Stocks

Mark Mahaney has been covering internet stocks on Wall Street since 1998, with Morgan Stanley, American Technology Research, Citibank, RBC Capital Markets, and Evercore ISI. Institutional Investor magazine has ranked him as a top Internet analyst every year for the past 15 years, including five years as number one, and he has been ranked by the Financial Times and StarMine as the number-one earnings estimator and stock picker. In addition, TipRanks has placed Mahaney in the top one percent of all Wall Street analysts in terms of single-year stock picking performance.

Get Mark's book here:

Nothing But Net: 10 Timeless Stock-Picking Lessons from One of Wall Street’s Top Tech Analysts. Mark Mahaney

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we interviewed one of the most recognized, connected, and dynamic executives in the sports and entertainment industry today, Scott O'Neil.

In this episode with Scott, he shared most of the valuable lessons in his life that keep him grounded and thriving as a leader, coach, husband, and father.

Scott has more than 25 years of experience leading NBA, NHL, and NFL teams and leagues, including the National Basketball Association, Philadelphia 76ers, New York Knicks, New Jersey Nets, Philadelphia Eagles, New York Rangers, and New Jersey Devils. His mission to build innovative, inspiring, socially impactful, and high-performing teams and business organizations have earned him a reputation as a “leader of leaders.”

A Harvard Business School-educated CEO, O’Neil contends that fostering a corporate culture founded in respect, diversity, employee development and corporate social responsibility is what drives the success of the award-winning sports teams and businesses he oversees. These awards include Fast Company’s “Most Innovative Company,” Entrepreneur Magazine’s “Top 50 Cultures,” Sports Innovation Lab’s “Top 25 Most Innovative Professional Teams in the World” and many others. The “Most Innovative Executive in Sports” (SportTechie) and “Most Admired CEO” (Philadelphia Business Journal) have been named to lists that include the “100 People of Power and Influence” (#37, The Hockey News/Sports Illustrated), multiple “Power 100” lists (NJ Biz, Philadelphia Business Journal, Philadelphia Magazine) and more.

A decade-long Member of the NBA and NHL Board of Governors, O’Neil’s insights on the sports industry’s ability to move the global market have made him a prominent, regular voice on Bloomberg, FOX Business, CNBC, CNN, and across global business media.

Scott is a man of faith and a father of three. His conviction to lead a perpetually present life as he famously “runs to work” and “runs home,” guides his commitment to helping others realize their full potential.

Be Where Your Feet Are: Seven Principles to Keep You Present, Grounded, and Thriving. Scott O'Neil

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 316, an episode with the author of Digital Transformation Payday, Tim Bottke.

Why do companies embark on digital transformation? Is it because they need it? Or is it because it is the trend?

In this episode, we deep-dived into the world of digital transformation. We discussed the common mistakes companies make when pursuing digital transformation and the rationale that CEOs and leaders must have to succeed in this endeavor.

Tim Bottke is a senior Strategy Partner at Monitor Deloitte and an Associate Professor for Strategy and Digital Transformation at SDA Bocconi, a Financial Times/Forbes/Bloomberg Businessweek Top-Five European business school. He has more than 22 years of top management consulting and (digital) transformation experience from two global strategy boutiques and Deloitte, working with clients in more than 20 countries.

Digital Transformation Payday: Navigate the Hype, Lower the Risks, Increase Return on Investments. Tim Bottke

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we interviewed Suneel Gupta, the author of the international bestselling book Backable (2020). This book is rooted in his inner journey from twice-failed entrepreneur to becoming a leader behind two IPOs and being named “The New Face of Innovation” by the New York Stock Exchange. The book reveals the mindset shifts and hidden habits of people who are extraordinary at pushing new ideas forward. It shows how the key to success is not charisma, connections, or even your résumé, but rather your ability to persuade others to take a chance on you.

As the founding CEO of RISE, a breakthrough wellness company, Suneel helped thousands of people establish a way to personalize their physical and mental health journey while connecting with certified nutritionists and trainers at an affordable price. The company was named “App of the Year” and partnered with then first-Lady Michelle Obama before being acquired by the NASDAQ-listed company One Medical Group. In 2022, with its acquisition of One Medical Group, RISE is now part of Amazon.

As visiting scholar at Harvard Medical School, Suneel researches and teaches the interconnection between inner well-being and outer leadership. He is also emissary for Gross National Happiness between the United States and the Kingdom of Bhutan.

Suneel is currently the host of Business Class, a docuseries created by American Express where he showcases entrepreneurs and business visionaries who embody struggle and resilience. He is joined on the show by guests like Top Chef's Tom Colicchio, former monk Jay Shetty, and Martha Stewart.

Suneel has also personally backed ventures including Impossible Foods, AirBnB, 23andMe, and SpaceX. He was one of the very first investors in CALM, which now helps millions of people achieve a greater sense of work/life balance.

Get Suneel’s book here:

Backable: The Surprising Truth Behind What Makes People Take a Chance on You. Suneel Gupta

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we interviewed the former Amazon Digital Media VP, Bill Carr. Bill is the coauthor of Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon, an insider's breakdown of Amazon's approach to culture, leadership, and best practices from two long-time, top-level Amazon executives.

Bill Carr joined Amazon in 1999 and spent more than 15 years with the company. As the former Vice President of Digital Media, Bill launched and managed the company's global digital music and video businesses, including Amazon Music, Prime Video, and Amazon Studios. After Amazon, Bill was an Executive In Residence with Maveron LLC, an early-stage, consumer-only venture capital firm. Bill later served as the Chief Operating Officer of OfferUp, the largest mobile marketplace for local buyers and sellers in the U.S.

Today, Bill is the co-founder of Working Backwards LLC where he coaches executives at large and early-stage companies on how to implement the management practices developed at Amazon. Bill holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Colby College and a Masters in Business Administration from the Goizueta Business School at Emory University.

Get Bill’s book here:

Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon. Bill Carr and Colin Bryar.

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic from the Corporate Strategy & Transformation study.

In this podcast, we look at the problem of superficial financial analysis. One way to save the client money, before they run out of cash in about 16 months, is to stop all investments which lose money. This, however, is a terrible idea that will cause enormous damage to the client’s core business, consumers, and the economy. We discuss how we handle this recommendation and what we proposed in the study to fix the problem.

Click here to see the full study and here to see the merger study and market entry study.

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we address how to answer difficult questions raised by the client during an executive workshop or another type of client's executive group meeting.

We start with discussing the right mindset any consultant requires to be able to effectively handle difficult questions from a client. We thereafter review the particular steps in addressing a client's difficult questions raised during a workshop or a presentation. Lastly, we dive into which skills are required to be able to handle difficult questions, especially the kind of questions for which you don't have an immediate answer.

Click here to see the full study and here to see the merger study and market entry study.

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we discuss how accurate our financial model for the market entry strategy study is.

Watch the video version here: How accurate was our financial model for the market entry strategy study?

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic about the top-down view of energy. It is crucial to provide boundaries when discussing sector-wide issues or the executives may get lost in the details and miss the key levers.

Watch the video version here: Top-Down View of Energy

Click here to see the full study and here to see the merger study and market entry study.

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we interview an amazing neuroscientist, Dr. Wendy Suzuki. Wendy and Michael discuss how much many of us compromise our cognition and what can be done to improve our performance. You may be able to brag about that 1 a.m. email but if you could monitor your level of cognition you would quickly see, "Oh my God! This is not good." What is it doing for your brain? What is it doing for your executive functions in the prefrontal cortex? Leadership is not just about managing a team and setting goals for them. This is such a one-dimensional definition of leadership. Leadership is whether you can be fulfilled by what you are doing, be able to get up in the morning, and not kill yourself in the process of meeting a goal that some shareholder wants you to meet. You have to distinguish between health and performance. You can be performing quite high but you can be doing some dangerous things to push those numbers up or to push that productivity up. Just because you are performing well does not mean you are doing it in a sustainable way. If you enjoy the conversation and would like to learn more from Wendy, we recommend you read her engaging and practical book "Healthy Brain, Happy Life: A Personal Program to Activate Your Brain and Do Everything Better."

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we share one of our more in-depth episodes taken as a sample video from one of our strategy studies. This episode is complimentary and available on iTunes, Youtube, Spotify, and many other podcast players.

Watch the video version here: How do I build the storyboard and why is it done so early?

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 307, an episode with the Editor-in-Chief of the Harvard Business Review Group, Adi Ignatius.

In this episode with Adi Ignatius, we discussed timeless pieces from the Harvard Business Review, deep-dived into the business ideas and concepts within, and discussed how its perspective on business ideas helps us prepare for the future. Adi shared how HBR’s mission changed from the time it was founded and how it is improving for readers.

Adi Ignatius oversees the editorial activities of Harvard Business Review, hbr.org, and HBR’s book-publishing unit. Prior to joining HBR in 2009, Mr. Ignatius was the No. 2 editor at TIME. He is the editor of two books: President Obama: The Path to the White House and Prisoner of the State: The Secret Diaries of Premier Zhao Ziyang. Both made the New York Times Bestseller List.

Adi lived and worked overseas for nearly 20 years. He was Editor of Time’s Asian edition and served as Beijing Bureau Chief and Moscow Bureau Chief for the Wall Street Journal. He is also host of the HBR Channel.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 306, an episode with one of America’s most respected and accomplished voices on women as leaders and their relationship with power, Carolyn Buck Luce.

Have you ever wondered what the world looks like from someone else’s point of view?

We are all born different, with unique perspective, set of skills, talent, and experience, and with this combination, we can write our own story and design a life that is aligned with our purpose and meaning. As Carolyn said, “If you want to live in a way that is worth dying for, you can choose the most epic story for yourself knowing that you already have everything you need to have a life of meaning and purpose. The only question is how you want to invest your time, your trust, your talent, and your treasures.”

Carolyn Buck Luce is a sought-after speaker, she was appointed by New York City’s former Mayor Bloomberg to his Commission on Women’s Issues and has co-authored numerous articles in the Harvard Business Review on women’s leadership, as well as diversity and inclusion.

Across five decades, Carolyn has been a successful diplomat, Wall Street banker, management consultant, healthcare futurist, talent innovator, professor, author, philanthropist, wife, mother, and grandmother. Carolyn’s life journey navigating a man’s world has given her a unique perspective on living an epic life of meaning and purpose, regardless of the obstacles. Today, she uses her proprietary Decade Game to coach leading women around the globe to step fully into their power at home, at work, and in the world. Connect with her at carolyn@mydecadegame.com.

Get Carolyn’s book here:

Epic!: The Women's Power Play Book. Carolyn Buck Luce

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 305, an episode with a leading expert in digital marketing, Dr. Mindy Weinstein.

In this episode, Mindy discussed how to leverage the principle of scarcity to influence customer decisions, boost sales, and positively impact your business. She also shared the four types of scarcity: time-related, supply-related, demand-related, and limited edition. In this conversation, Mindy highlighted the importance of using scarcity ethically and developing marketing tactics that align with your product or service that aim not only to sell but to help your audience and customers.

Dr. Mindy Weinstein is a leading expert in digital marketing and has been named one of the top women in the industry globally. Founder of the digital marketing firm Market MindShift, she has trained thousands of professionals from organizations of all sizes, including Facebook, The Weather Channel, and World Fuel Services. She has a doctor of philosophy degree in general psychology with an emphasis on technology and is a marketing instructor at Grand Canyon University and the University of Denver, as well as a program leader for The Wharton School and Columbia Business School.

Weinstein uses her experience and knowledge as a marketer, researcher, teacher and scholar to help businesses increase revenue. She is the host of the popular podcast, Persuasion in Business, and is a global speaker. Weinstein is married, the mom of two boys, and calls Arizona home.

Get Mindy's book here:

The Power of Scarcity: Leveraging Urgency and Demand to Influence Customer Decisions. Dr. Mindy Weinstein

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 304, an episode with Dr. Ella F. Washington, the author of The Necessary Journey: Making Real Progress on Equity and Inclusion.

How do we build an environment where employees feel safe to be themselves? Who is responsible for creating an organization that values and embraces diversity, equity, and inclusion? And what do we truly need to achieve, sustain, and maintain the workplace utopia that we dreamed of?

Dr. Ella F. Washington is an organizational psychologist and DEI expert with a wealth of experience through her involvement as the Founder and CEO of Ellavate Solutions, a Professor of Practice at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business, and the co-host of Gallup's Center of Black Voices Cultural Competence Podcast.

Dr. Washington continues to deepen her research pipeline and thought leadership as a Gallup Senior Scientist studying inclusive leadership, strengths and other DEI workplace topics. She has global consulting experience in the human capital space, which has allowed her to impact clients across a myriad of industries including financial services, sports & entertainment, oil & gas, higher education and government.

Previously, Dr. Washington worked at Gallup and led the Diversity and Inclusion practice where she provided insight to clients on issues of culture, strategic DEI and engagement.

The Necessary Journey: Making Real Progress on Equity and Inclusion. Dr. Ella F. Washington

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 303, an episode with Frank O’Connell, the author of Jump First, Think Fast.

In this episode, Frank takes us on his career journey as he successfully explores multiple industries from baked goods to sporting apparel to video games. He shares the lessons he learned and how he built lasting relationships as he worked in different industries.

Frank O’Connell is known for his unconventional approach for high performance through his strategic thinking, brand building, breakthrough marketing, and new product ideas. His accomplishments include serving as president of Reebok Brands, president of HBO Video, CEO of Indian Motorcycle, and chairman and CEO of Gibson Greetings, Inc. He spent the first fourteen years of his career developing well-known brands at Arnold Bakery, Mattel, Carnation Company, and Hunt Wesson foods, among other brands in the baking and natural foods industry.

O’Connell was a senior partner with The Parthenon Group, a top strategic consulting company for seven years. He also spent sixteen years on the board of TreeHouse Foods Inc., and he is an investor and board member at Schylling, Inc., a toy company and is cofounder of Tuckerman Capital. He has also served on numerous Cornell University boards where he earned his BS in Economics and an MBA.

Get Frank’s book here:

Jump First, Think Fast: An Unconventional Approach to High Performance. Frank O’Connell

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 302, an episode with a Professor of International Business and Strategy at Northeastern University's D'Amore-McKim School of Business, Ravi Sarathy.

What happens if a company or country regulates its own digital currency? In this episode, Ravi Sarathy answers very interesting questions about blockchain and cryptocurrency. He outlines the features and capabilities of a blockchain, the implications of using it, and how organizations can leverage blockchain to their advantage.

Ravi Sarathy is the author of Enterprise Strategy for Blockchain, published by MIT Press in Oct. 2022, in which he explains how companies can gain a competitive advantage by developing and deploying blockchain capabilities. Ravi has published in journals such as Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of Management Studies, Long Range Planning, Small Business Economics, and California Management Review. His previous book was Firms within Families: Enterprising in Diverse Country Contexts.

His research interests are in global strategy, technology strategy, and family business. Ravi holds a Ph.D., Univ. of Michigan, and is a graduate of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. He has taught executive education programs for companies such as BAE Systems, LG Electronics (S. Korea), Masa Shipyards (Finland), Mathworks, EMC, and others. He was a Fulbright scholar, as the Fulbright-Flad Chair in Strategic Management at the Technical University of Lisbon. He has been a Visiting Professor at the University of Michigan, at the Australian Graduate School of Management in Sydney, and other institutions.

Get Ravi’s book here:

Enterprise Strategy for Blockchain: Lessons in Disruption from Fintech, Supply Chains, and Consumer Industries (Management on the Cutting Edge)

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we explain how leadership is defined at great firms like McKinsey and BCG, and how we also manage leadership transition at FC. It will surprise you to see how different the mindset can be and that we think about these issues all the time. 

The most important role of a partner is to leave the firm in a better place than when she/he joined, and to hand over a client relationship to a newer partner. The ability to maintain this cycle is critical. 

If the mechanism is not there, even proud and great firms suffer during leadership changes. You want to avoid that. The cycle must be continuous. 

Click here to see the Corporate Strategy & Transformation study.

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Let’s be honest. Most consultants simply go into Google and search for any reports / analyses to compile market trends/an industry analysis fact pack. In other words, they do not put much thought into it beyond ensuring they are not caught for plagiarism. This is because many consultants think of the market trends or industry analysis as an output to deliver, which will never be used, and it does not matter what comprises the analysis.

For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic from week 4 of the Corporate Strategy & Transformation study, where we discuss how/why we built a bespoke market trends pack for the client addressing the issues important to them and them only. We used this market trends analysis to guide the executives on the issues we considered important to their strategy.

Click here to see the full study and here to see the merger study and market entry study.

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we discuss how to convert insights into Strategy Maps. It is a powerful tool to create prescriptive / forecasting models to explain and predict strategy options. This is how to move from being a consultant to thinking and presenting like a partner. It is complimentary and available on iTunes, Youtube, Spotify, and many other podcast players.

The Video version of this episode is available on youtube - https://youtu.be/hcStB7fjsJ0

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we discuss how to know what is corporate strategy.

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we discuss what big picture thinking is.

At least once in your life, you would have received feedback to be a more big picture thinker. The problem is that everyone will have a different definition of big picture thinking and many of the definitions are vague, counter-intuitive, or wrong.

Based on advising some of the consultants on the study, this podcast provides a very simple, intuitive, practical, and correct definition of the big picture concept. It also explains why it is so important and how to use it.

Keep in mind that this study is being updated on our website where you can view the training videos and PowerPoint slides. This is a huge study and will offer the most realistic training for both consultants and industry professionals. Pure corporate strategy studies are rare. This is a unique training opportunity.

Click here to see the full study and here to see the merger study and market entry study.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 296, an episode with Nick Santhanam, the CEO of Fernweh Group, an investment company adapting an engaged investor & operator model (EIOM) to create alpha in the industrial and industrial technology sector.

In this episode, we dig deep into the prevailing narrative about the decline of manufacturing in the US and if that is the case, the actions needed from the government to bring back the US as a thriving manufacturing nation.

Nick Santhanam is a former Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company’s Palo Alto Office and was the leader of their global industrials practice. In addition, Nick was the global convener of several McKinsey annual events, including the Industrial CEO event (GILS), Industrial-tech and Semiconductors CEO event (T-30), Food Processing CEO event (FPH-30), and Senior Tech Influencers Summit (TEDS). He co-authored several of their leading industrials research – McKinsey on Industrials, McKinsey on Food Processing and Handling, and McKinsey on Packaging.

He is also on the Advisory Board of Smithsonian Libraries, given his passion in continuous learning.

Early in his career, Nick worked as a technical manager at a printed circuit board (PCB) and ceramics manufacturer in New York. He also worked as a manufacturing engineer at another PCB and ceramics manufacturer in their Delaware facility.

Nick has an MS in chemical engineering from University of Illinois and an MBA in strategic management and finance from the Wharton School University of Pennsylvania, where he was a Ford and Palme Scholar.

Get Nick’s book here:

The Titanium Economy: How Industrial Technology Can Create a Better, Faster, Stronger America. Asutosh Padhi, Gaurav Batra, and Nick Santhanam

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 295, an episode with a highly regarded global executive, Daphne E. Jones.

In this episode, Daphne shares her inspiring journey of overcoming criticism, judgment, racism, and doubt. She was told by her career counselor that Black girls don’t successfully make it in college, but should instead go to secretary school. Today, Daphne is a corporate board member who has held CIO and other leadership positions at Fortune 500 companies including IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Hospira (now Pfizer) and General Electric. With the right mindset and perseverance, Daphne defied everyone’s doubts, overcame life’s challenges, and emerged victorious.

Daphne also discussed the role and significance of finding the balance with your 5 F’s (faith, family, finances, fitness, and furthering your career) to succeed in life. She also elaborated on the 4-step EDIT methodology (Envision, Design, Iterate, and Transform) that enables women to transform their mindset to win.

Daphne E. Jones has 30+ years of experience in general management and executive level roles at IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Hospira, and General Electric but began her career as a secretary. At GE, she served as SVP for Future of Work, SVP & CIO for Product Engineering, Imaging, and Ultrasound, and as Senior Executive & CIO for Global Services, all of which composed a $13 billion segment of GE Healthcare. Jones serves on the board of directors for AMN Healthcare, Inc., Barnes Group Inc., and Masonite International Corp, and is the recipient of numerous domestic and international awards. She recently started a company that teaches leaders how to prepare to serve on boards.

Get Daphne’s book here:

Win When They Say You Won't: Break Through Barriers and Keep Leveling Up Your Success

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we discuss about financial strategy.

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we discuss scenario planning's common problems.

Scenario planning / Scenario Analysis is a powerful tool in consulting. This is how to move from being a consultant to thinking and presenting like a partner.

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic from the Corporate Strategy & Transformation study.

This podcast is for those who have mastered all the basics on slide design and formatting. In this podcast, we discuss how to determine if your PowerPoint slides are influential on a study. Influential PowerPoint slides may not be the most beautiful pieces of work or even the ones with the most effort, though it is usually at least the latter.

Click here to see the full study and here to see the merger study and market entry study.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills Episode 291 with the first-ever Chief Design Officer and SVP of PepsiCo, the world's second-largest food and beverage company, Mauro Porcini.

In this episode, Mauro talked about how his career started and how his love of what he is doing helped made PepsiCo what it is today. He also talked about the step-by-step process of designing and establishing a new culture in any corporation and how this would lead to innovation, eventual growth, and overall success.

In the past eight years, Mauro and his design team have won more than 1,100 design and innovation awards and in 2018, PepsiCo was recognized by Fortune in its Driven by Design list. He was previously 3M’s first Chief Design Officer. Porcini has been recognized with several personal awards, including Fortune’s 40 under 40, GQ Italia’s 30 Best Dressed Men, and Fast Company’s 50 Most Influential Designers in the United States. In 2018, he was awarded a knighthood (cavaliere) by the president of the Italian Republic. He lives in New York City.

Get Mauro’s new book here:

The Human Side of Innovation: The Power of People in Love with People. Mauro Porcini.

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we discuss value chain analysis.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 289, an episode with Linda Yates, the founder and CEO of Mach49, the leading growth incubator for global businesses with clients including Goodyear, Hitachi, Intel, JetBlue, Nestlé Purina, Prudential and Shell.

In Linda’s new book The Unicorn Within, she empowers large companies to beat startups at their own game—to build a pipeline and portfolio of new ventures to drive meaningful growth through teachable, repeatable, scalable method focused 100 percent on execution across the spectrum of venture creation from Ideate to Incubate, Accelerate, and Scale. She also offers keys to managing the Mothership and seizing the Mothership advantage to ensure your ventures reach escape velocity and thrive.

Linda Yate is a seasoned CEO with over 25 years of experience creating global strategy and driving innovation for large multinationals around the world. A native of Silicon Valley, Linda spent a decade as a member of the Board of Directors for NYSE-traded Sybase Inc. (now SAP) and has been a board member and advisor to many entrepreneurs and private companies. Linda was previously CEO of Strategos, pioneering the field of Corporate Innovation with Co-Founder and Chairman, Professor Gary Hamel. She is a Henry Crown Fellow with the Aspen Institute. She has been interviewed by Reid Hoffman for “Masters of Scale” and other programs.

Get Linda’s book here:

The Unicorn Within: How Companies Can Create Game-Changing Ventures at Startup Speed. Linda Yates.

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic from the Corporate Strategy & Transformation study, where we explain how benchmarking analysis, or what is also called best practice analysis, should be used for the top-down analysis and why they are so difficult to manage in a real study.

Click here to see the full study and here to see the merger study and market entry study.

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we discuss value chain mapping.

We have seen many value chain mapping examples. We have seen good value chain mapping, bad value chain mapping, and incomplete value chain mapping. Ultimately, given the nature of how value chain mapping will work, it can and cannot do a few things. So if value chain mapping is presented to do things it cannot do, then it is flawed.

When you do value chain analysis, 1.) it is far more useful to see where profits will shift over time. 2.) assign some probabilities of what are the odds of this happening. And 3.) what influences those probabilities?

You are analyzing the entire sector, the entire industry. A lot of things influence a sector. Consumer spending can change with the recession. Recession can change things. Different legislation could cause profits to move from point x to point y. Competitors making a misstep could cause it, new competitors entering, and competitors going bankrupt. So whenever someone says "I am certain this will happen", you should question their business judgement because you cannot predict the future.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 286, an episode with a top-rated speaker, best-selling author, and consultant, Dr. Cindy McGovern. Get Cindy’s book here: https://amzn.to/3Cys1ae

Most of us view “sales” as a pushy, manipulative, and one-sided thing. But really, “sales” is understanding what others need and trying to deliver on those needs. Regardless of the nature of work—whether you're selling a product, service, or idea, you are selling yourself first and it is a life skill that everybody needs. Therefore, it is important to first build trust and develop your personal brand around it which will make selling easier.

In this episode, Dr. Cindy defined sales in a different light. She discussed how to sell yourself and how to proactively manage your personal brand.

Dr. Cindy McGovern is the founder of Orange Leaf Consulting, which helps organizations, entrepreneurs, and individuals create dynamic and robust sales processes. Before launching her business, McGovern was a college professor of communication as well as a successful sales professional. She has worked with hundreds of organizations of all sizes and specialties across the globe and is now one of the most sought-after business and sales authorities.

Get Cindy’s book here:

Sell Yourself: How to Create, Live, and Sell a Powerful Personal Brand. Dr. Cindy McGovern. https://amzn.to/3Cys1ae

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 285, an episode with Ashish Kothari. In his book “Hardwired for Happiness” Ashish outlines an easy-to-follow recipe that can help anyone increase joy, health, love, and meaning in their lives. His transformational approach is secular, interdisciplinary and integrates learnings and best practices across the fields of science and spirituality. Get Ashish's new book here: https://amzn.to/3yyzfdh

Ashish is an executive coach, author and founder of Happiness Squad, a company focused on helping individuals and organizations unleash the power of happiness and well-being to achieve their full potential. Ashish is a deep expert on happiness and human flourishing having read over 450 books and trained under masters across the disparate fields of spiritual wisdom traditions, psychology, and neuroscience. Prior to starting Happiness Squad, Ashish spent over 17 years at McKinsey and Co, a premier management consulting firm, supporting thousands of leaders and their organizations succeed through increasing their effectiveness, building more human-centric cultures, and developing new mindsets and capabilities at scale. He served as the co-dean for the Centered Leadership as well as Reenergizing organizations training programs at McKinsey and is a highly sought-after expert on leadership and well-being, both internally and externally.

Ashish is a Newfield-certified ontological coach trained to help leaders overcome obstacles through the use of language, mood, and somatics to shift how they observe the world. He also has a Master’s in Business administration (MBA) with a specialization in Organizational behavior from Chicago Booth and a Bachelor's and Master's degree in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, India.

Ashish is married and lives with his wife Lizzie, son Ashwin and their dog Ms. Puggles in Boulder, Colorado. He serves on the advisory board of the CU Leeds business school.

Get Ashish’s book here:

Hardwired for Happiness: 9 Proven Practices to Overcome Stress and Live Your Best Life. Ashish Kothari. https://amzn.to/3yyzfdh

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 284, an episode with CNBC’s Senior Media & Tech Correspondent, Julia Boorstin. Get Julia’s Book here: https://amzn.to/3ekjT4Y

In this episode, Julia speaks about female leaders and their struggles in facing gender bias and “pattern matching” in largely male-dominated industries. She discusses the key commonalities of female leaders who thrived in spite of the challenges that made them uniquely equipped to lead and grow successful businesses.

Julia also shared her journey of becoming a CNBC senior media and tech correspondent. As an expert, she shares tips on how to prepare for interviews, how to become a better communicator, and how to respond to opportunities.

Julia Boorstin is CNBC’s Senior Media & Tech Correspondent and has been an on-air reporter for the network since 2006. She also plays a central role in CNBC’s bicoastal tech-focused program “TechCheck” delivering reporting, analysis, and CEO interviews with a focus on social media and the intersection of media and technology.

In 2013, Boorstin created and launched the CNBC Disruptor 50, an annual list she oversees, highlighting private companies transforming the economy and challenging companies in established industries. She also helped launch the network’s ‘Closing the Gap’ initiative covering the people and companies closing gender and diversity gaps. Julia is a graduate of Princeton University, she has been a reporter for Fortune magazine, as well as a contributor to CNN and CNN Headline News. She also was an intern for Vice President Gore’s domestic policy office. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two sons.

Get Julia’s book here:

When Women Lead: What They Achieve, Why They Succeed, and How We Can Learn from Them. Julia Boorstin. https://amzn.to/3ekjT4Y

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 283, an episode with an expert on organizational paradoxes, Wendy Smith. Get Wendy’s Book here: https://amzn.to/3fF1b8C

When faced with a tough decision-making situation, it is common for us to assess and select what we believe is the best deal and then move on. We tend to assume that we need to pick one option and eliminate the other. But what if we could actually succeed in pursuing both options?

In this episode with Wendy Smith, we discuss how leaders and individuals can effectively respond to contradictory yet interdependent demands and have the mindset shift needed to successfully navigate a paradox.

Wendy Smith is the Dana J. Johnson Professor of Management and faculty director of the Women’s Leadership Initiative at the Lerner College of Business and Economics, University of Delaware. She earned her PhD in organizational behavior at Harvard Business School, where she began her intensive research on strategic paradoxes—how leaders and senior teams effectively respond to contradictory yet interdependent demands.

Working with executives and scholars globally, she received the Web of Science Highly Cited Research Award (2019, 2020, and 2021) for being among the 1 percent most-cited researchers in her field and received the Decade Award (2021) from the Academy of Management Review for the most cited paper in the past 10 years. Her work has been published in such journals as Academy of Management Journal, Administrative Science Quarterly, Harvard Business Review, Organization Science, and Management Science.

She has taught at the University of Delaware, Harvard University, and the University of Pennsylvania–Wharton while helping senior leaders and middle managers all over the world address issues of interpersonal dynamics, team performance, organizational change, and innovation.

Wendy lives in Philadelphia with her husband, three children, and the family dog.

Get Wendy’s book here:

Both/And Thinking: Embracing Creative Tensions to Solve Your Toughest Problems. Wendy Smith, Marianne Lewis, Amy C. Edmondson. https://amzn.to/3fF1b8C

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 282, an episode with a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, Sean McLain. Get Sean’s book here.

This episode with Sean McLain revolves around the story of Carlos Ghosn, one of the world’s most feared and admired business executives who had remarkable success, yet faced a catastrophic fall. He was accused of financial misconduct and arrested for a bevy of alleged crimes—all of which he vehemently denied.

Sean is a reporter for The Wall Street Journal based in Los Angeles, covering EV startups like Rivian, Lucid, and Japanese and Korean automakers.

Since 2016, Sean McLain has overseen The Wall Street Journal's coverage of the largest automakers in Japan, including Toyota, Honda, and Nissan, and received the Malcolm Forbes Award by the Overseas Press Club of America for his coverage of the former Nissan and Renault executive's arrest and detention.

Sean graduated from St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, and lives in Tokyo.

Get Sean’s book here:

Boundless: The Rise, Fall, and Escape of Carlos Ghosn. Nick Kostov and Sean McLain

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 281, an interview with a leadership coaching legend, David Noble.

Most leaders experience a lack of motivation to continue the things they once had a passion for. So, how do you rekindle the fire of motivation when it starts to die? The key is to know your “why” and assess if your reason is strong enough to continue the journey.

In this episode, David shares the role he plays in reframing things and bringing the best out of leaders, executives, and CEOs. David shares a powerful new framework called MOVE that characterizes great and extraordinary leaders. Most of us dislike having only one strategy to win. In David's framework, he discusses the four simple yet powerful options that will take you to the same goal: lean in, lean back, lean with, and don’t lean.

David Noble has more than twenty years of global experience advising CEOs, their teams, and major investors on leadership and strategy, and an additional fifteen years as a top executive. He was named by Thinkers50 as one of the world's top coaches. Noble has served as a senior adviser to Egon Zehnder and Oliver Wyman.

Get David's book here:

Real-Time Leadership: Find Your Winning Moves When the Stakes Are High. David Noble and Carol Kauffman.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 280, an episode with a renowned digital entrepreneur and founder of ENTRE institute, Jeff Lerner. Get Jeff's book here.

In this episode, Jeff discussed how he was able to build a multi-million dollar company from scratch and the key elements behind his success.

At the age of 18, Jeff started his first business after dropping out of high school and becoming a musician. After the first one failed, Jeff continued starting more businesses and failed at them too. Despite years of trying and numerous unsuccessful businesses, one of which had left him $500,000 in dept, he chose to keep going and eventually built multiple successful businesses.

Instead of retiring early, Jeff chose to spend his time inspiring and helping others build their businesses. After becoming an authority in startups, he established ENTRE institute, an online education company dedicated to helping entrepreneurs how they could start their own businesses. To date, ENTRE Institute has taught over 150,000 across the world.

Get Jeff's book here:

Unlock Your Potential: The Ultimate Guide for Creating Your Dream Life in the Modern World

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 279, an episode with a practicing emergency physician at Mayo Clinic, Dr. Richard Winters. Get Dr. Richard’s book here.

As a physician, Dr. Richard shares how he managed, adapted, and remained calm during times of covid. He discussed some of the best practices that can be adapted from the medical field into the space of business. We speak about leadership, administration, and leveraging your expertise to be effective in your career.

In this episode, we also discussed one of the traps that most leaders face today where they strive to become successful in their career, and groom and develop new leaders while taking into account the fear of being replaced.

As director of Leadership Development for the Mayo Clinic Care Network, Dr. Winters facilitates retreats and delivers programs that train leaders at healthcare organizations worldwide.

Dr. Winters graduated from the Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine in 1994. He is board certified and residency trained in Emergency Medicine from the University of California, San Francisco at Fresno. He graduated from the University of Texas at Dallas Executive and Professional Coaching Program and is a professional certified coach through the International Coaching Federation. He completed a Healthcare Management Executive MBA from the University of Texas at Dallas and UT Southwestern Medical Center. He obtained a Bachelor of Science in Biological Sciences from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Prior to his work at Mayo Clinic, Dr. Winters served as managing partner of a democratic physician group, chair of emergency medicine, president of an 800-physician medical staff, and CEO/founder of a managed care startup.

He lives in Rochester, Minnesota with his family.

Get Dr. Richard’s book here:

You're the Leader. Now What? : Leadership Lessons from Mayo Clinic. Dr. Richard Winters

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we discuss what a strategy workshop will not give you at the end.

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we discuss one important thing every consulting case study must produce.

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we discuss one important thing you always need to present in all of your management consulting projects, a business case.

If you are not presenting a business case to a client, or a benefits case, I prefer the word benefits because it makes it clear you are looking for a benefit for a client, if you are not presenting a benefits case to a client you are making it very difficult for the client to make the decision to implement what you are saying in your recommendation as part of your management consulting project.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 275, an episode with Cassie Holmes, a professor at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management and an award-winning teacher and researcher of time and happiness.

In society today, we generally equate productivity with the number of activities we do, regardless of the value it brings us and how it contributes to our well-being and happiness. We often feel “time-poor” for having too much to do and not having enough time to do it. As a result, we feel less happy and less fulfilled. On the contrary, people with too much free time feel unproductive and lack a sense of purpose. So how should we think about time and happiness?

In this episode, Cassie discusses how we can recreate our approach to time and transform every moment into a happier hour. She shares how we can spend time optimally, create moments of gratitude and fulfillment, and live life with no regrets.

Cassie earned her PhD at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and her BA at Columbia as a psychology major. Cassie’s research has been widely published in lead academic journals and featured in such outlets as NPR, The Economist, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, and The Washington Post. Happier Hour is her first book.

Get Cassie’s book here:

Happier Hour: How to Beat Distraction, Expand Your Time, and Focus on What Matters Most. Cassie Holmes

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 274, an episode with Bill George, former chairman and CEO of Medtronic and currently a professor at Harvard Business School. He has written two of the most enduring leadership classics of all time: Authentic Leadership and True North. Now, Bill has written a new book aimed at the next generation of leaders, the Emerging Leaders Edition of True North, coauthored with millennial entrepreneur Zach Clayton. Get Bill’s new book here.

This book is a clarion call to emerging leaders to step up to lead their organizations with their hearts, not just their heads, as authentic leaders who lead with purpose by inspiring and coaching their teammates. It heralds the end of the baby boomer era of Jack Welch, when too many leaders focused on maximizing shareholder value and taking shortcuts rather than building sustainable enterprises to serve all of their stakeholders. Our best hope for a better world is to empower the next generation of emerging leaders – not just those on top – to follow their True North to make this world better for everyone.

The stories in this book, which came from 220 interviews with exceptional leaders, illustrate that most authentic leaders first discovered their True North through their life stories and crucibles, developed self-awareness, and then found their North Star – the purpose of their leadership. Wisdom learned from leaders like Satya Nadella, Mary Barra, Ken Frazier, Indra Nooyi, Ursula Burns, and Hubert Joly will guide emerging leaders at all levels in their development.

Bill joined Medtronic in 1989 as president and chief operating officer, was chief executive officer from 1991-2001, and board chair from 1996-2002. He is currently a senior fellow at Harvard Business School, where he has taught leadership since 2004. He is the author of Discover Your True North and The Discover Your True North Field Book, Authentic Leadership, Seven Lessons for Leading in Crisis, Finding Your True North, and True North Groups. He has served on the boards of Goldman Sachs, ExxonMobil, Novartis, Target, and Mayo Clinic.

He received his BSIE with high honors from Georgia Tech, his MBA with high distinction from Harvard University, where he was a Baker Scholar, and honorary PhDs from Georgia Tech, Mayo Medical School, University of St. Thomas, Augsburg College, and Bryant University.

True North: Leading Authentically in Today's Workplace, Emerging Leader Edition. Bill George & Zach Clayton.

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we discuss consulting workshop best practices.

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How can you resign from your job with dignity, compassion, and grace, without burning any bridges with your employer?

For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we share simple principles to help you leave your role in a way that leaves a positive impression on your superiors, colleagues, and organization.

Do you have a story about resigning? Tell us more with a comment below.

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we discuss the overall goal of every consulting interaction.

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we discuss ten warning signs for a consulting workshop.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 269, an episode with Gaurav Gupta, the Director at change management and strategy execution firm Kotter. Get Gaurav’s book here: https://amzn.to/3ApxT5J

The level of complexity and the pace at which things are changing in modern society requires leaders and organizations to be more reactive to change. Companies can no longer depend on a linear, methodical, deliberate approach to change. Instead, the key is to rely on a more agile, organic approach where employees are engaged and motivated to participate. As Gaurav mentioned in this episode, “The more organizations, individuals, teams, and leaders can start to frame change as an opportunity, the more people are going to run towards it because there are changes we embrace.”

In this episode, we discussed the level of change that organizations face today and how they can effectively manage, adapt, and embrace the shifts required in the business. We discussed the kind of leader who thrives in situations where the organization goes through a fast-paced change.

Gaurav Gupta worked with clients in industries as diverse as food and beverage, oil and energy, healthcare, chemicals, and finance. Gaurav draws on his extensive global (having worked in over 10 countries) and diverse functional experience in collaborating with business leaders to develop and implement effective transformation efforts.

Prior to joining Kotter, Gaurav led the operations for the European office of Stroud International, a management and operations consulting firm. Gaurav combines his passion for international development and education by serving as an executive board member for a non-profit, Medic to Medic, that sponsors medical students in Uganda and Malawi.

Gaurav holds a Bachelor of Arts in Physics from Middlebury College and a Master of Science in Aerospace Engineering from Cornell University.

Get Gaurav’s book here:

Change: How Organizations Achieve Hard-to-Imagine Results in Uncertain and Volatile Times. John P. Kotter, Vanessa Akhtar, Gaurav Gupta. https://amzn.to/3ApxT5J

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 268, an episode with an attorney and the host of the No Straight Path Podcast, Ashley Menzies Babatunde.

The pressure of keeping up with today’s competitive world is undeniably haunting. Most people spend a considerable amount of time at work and struggle to maintain their wellness and wellbeing. Many people are unhappy because they try to achieve too many things in life and lose track of the simple things that truly matter.

In this episode, we speak about the gravity of maintaining wellness, prioritizing the time for taking care of yourself, finding your purpose, and living a life with a sense of completeness. We discussed how we can create a healthier and happier society while being successful in our careers and life.

Ashley Menzies Babatunde was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. Ashley is a litigation associate in O’Melveny’s Los Angeles office. Her practice focuses on Health Care and White Collar Defense & Corporate Investigations.

Ashley is a storyteller, optimist, professional heart-warmer, and hopeful romantic. She is passionate about the intersection of humanity and career. She has realized that her achievements or her failures do not define her. Instead, she is defined by the human qualities that have allowed her to achieve success and overcome challenges.

Check out Ashley’s podcast:

No Straight Path aims to humanize success from the millennial perspective. The world often sees the shiny resumes, highlights shared on social media, and job titles associated with a person's LinkedIn profile. We rarely see the story behind it. And when we do, it's often in a memoir towards the end of someone's journey. The podcast aims to delve into the story behind the success with a closer to real-time approach.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 267, an episode with an award-winning advisor, speaker, and author, Christie Hunter Arscott. Get Christie’s book here: https://amzn.to/3Qia05S

Most of the time, the word risk is associated with fear and uncertainty. We tend to struggle with harnessing the power of risk-taking. But the first bold step sheds light on that. As Christie mentioned in this episode, “An intentional and strategic risk, even when the output is not what you desired, still can propel you further than if you made the consistent choice to play it safe.”

In this episode, we discussed the power of intentional risk-taking in building one’s career. We spoke about how to encourage women to take chances on themselves to face intentional, intelligent, and strategic risks.

Christie Hunter Arscott is a leading expert on how we can harness the power of intentional risk-taking to create more dynamic and vibrant careers and organizations. A Rhodes Scholar, Christie has been named by Thinkers50 as one of the top management thinkers likely to shape the future of business. Christie was also selected for the biannual Thinkers50 Talent Award shortlist of the top global thought leaders in the field of talent management.

Christie’s research and writing have been featured across international publications, including Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Fortune, European Business Review, TIME, Fast Company, Business Insider, and more. Her article "Why So Many Thirtysomething Women Are Leaving Your Company" was selected for the Harvard Business Review collection of the top articles on diversity.

Christie has spoken worldwide to organizations and institutions, including the World Economic Forum, Harvard Business School, the University of Oxford, and the Global Women’s Forum for the Economy and Society. Her corporate clients include Bacardi, Deloitte, PWC, HSBC, and more.

Christie holds a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Brown University, a certificate of Distinction in General Management from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business and two Master’s degrees with a focus on gender research from the University of Oxford. She currently serves on the Women’s Leadership Board of the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard Kennedy School.

Get Christie’s book here:

Begin Boldly: How Women Can Reimagine Risk, Embrace Uncertainty, and Launch a Brilliant Career. Christie Hunter Arscott. https://amzn.to/3Qia05S

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we discuss the importance of corporate strategy.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 265, an episode with a veteran Silicon Valley dealmaker, Touraj Parang. Get Touraj’s book here: https://amzn.to/3bmsDGj

In this episode, Touraj takes us through his unique, decades-long experiences as an entrepreneur and investor. He shares the lessons he learned when he sold his first startup – with no exit plan – for pennies on the dollar. It was then followed by great success with his next startup as he applied his learnings and prioritized executing an exit strategy. Touraj discussed the key things to consider and the red flags to avoid when selecting investors and co-founders.

Touraj Parang is a seasoned entrepreneur, investor, advisor, and M&A expert who has sat in every seat around the table, structuring and negotiating strategic transactions since the late 1990s, including as a corporate attorney at legal powerhouses WSGR and O’Melveny & Myers. Touraj has been a founder, executive, and trusted advisor to several fast-growing technology startups with exits to LinkedIn, Instacart, Vistaprint, Postmates, and Amplify, among others. He has also spent nearly a decade on the acquirer side of M&A deals as a corporate development executive at Webs and GoDaddy.

Exit Path draws on Touraj’s unique, decades-long experience involving hundreds of M&A transactions, strategic partnerships, and venture capital investments totaling billions of dollars in aggregate value. He is currently the President and Chief Operating Officer at Serve Robotics, a startup shaping the future of sustainable, self-driving delivery that he helped spin out of Uber, and an Operating Advisor at Pear VC, an early-stage venture capital firm, where he enjoys collaborating with and providing strategic guidance to mission-driven entrepreneurs. He earned his JD from Yale Law School and his BA in Philosophy and Economics from Stanford University.

Get Touraj’s book here:

Exit Path: How to Win the Startup End Game. Touraj Parang. https://amzn.to/3bmsDGj

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 264, an episode with startup entrepreneurs Ash Ali and Hasan Kubba. Get Ash and Hasan’s book here: https://amzn.to/3Q8ctPD

In this episode, we speak about the concept of unfair advantage and the process of identifying and managing it so it’s your edge over any competition. Many people have the limiting belief that they don’t have something authentic to offer, but what they don’t realize is that we all have unique skill sets and talents. It only takes self-awareness to realize that the ingredients to success are already within you.

Ash Ali is an award-winning serial tech entrepreneur and angel investor. Ash sold his first internet business at just 19 years old (and most recently, his Dubai-based on-demand mobile app startup in 2018). As the first marketing director of Just Eat UK, which IPO’d for £1.5 billion, he was included in the Top 250 Growth Hackers, as well as the Top 100 Asian Tech Stars in the UK. With over 20 years of hands-on experience creating and growing startups, he has consulted, advised, and invested in hundreds of startups at various funding stages. Ash is a highly sought-after international speaker and expert on digital disruption and tech transformation, and has spoken at numerous global organizations and conferences, including Salesforce, Ernst & Young, and TEDx. He is currently co-founder of Uhubs, a new skills training platform that helps entrepreneurs and professionals upskill.

Hasan Kubba is an author, entrepreneur, and startup strategist. Hasan is a specialist in technology startups, marketing, and fundraising. With his own London-based digital marketing business and startup investment experience, Hasan is particularly strong at breaking down complex business concepts into simple and effective strategies and tactics. His recent TEDx talk titled Startups, Entrepreneurship, and Unfair Advantages was voted the highest ever on the official TED subreddit. He is passionate about the future of entrepreneurship and digital disruption globally and is an in-demand startup mentor to early-stage entrepreneurs, workshop trainer, and international speaker.

Get Ash & Hasan’s book here:

The Unfair Advantage: How You Already Have What It Takes to Succeed. Ash Ali and Hasan Kubba: https://amzn.to/3Q8ctPD

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 263, an episode with an artist, researcher, author, and educator at Northwestern University, Julio Mario Ottino. Get Julio’s book here: https://amzn.to/3b4390g

Individuals and organizations face complex problems and challenges today that demand a new way of thinking to grasp underlying solutions and opportunities. In this episode, Julio shares the beauty of the coexistence of art, science, and technology – rather than being separate disciplines – to navigate the complex world.

Julio was born in Argentina and grew up with twin interests in physical sciences and visual arts, finding beauty in math and art, and seeing creativity as being one thing, rather than something that lives in compartments. Art provided a cathartic means of expression while he grew up in turbulent times. He managed to create a solo art exhibit while drafted as an officer in the Argentinian Navy. When he moved to the United States to pursue a doctorate, his research achievements followed.

Most of the early attention Ottino received stemmed from pioneering work in chaos theory and a combination of scientific insight and visualization. His research work has been featured on the covers of Nature, Science, Scientific American, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, and other publications. He has supervised more than 65 Ph.D. theses, written over 250 papers and two books, and has given invited presentations at over 200 universities in the United States and around the world, as well as at organizations such as Accenture, Boeing, Google, 3M, and Unilever.

An academic entrepreneur, Ottino was the founding co-director of the Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems and educational and research initiatives in design, entrepreneurship, and energy and sustainability. As dean of the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, he founded educational and research partnerships with Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, Pritzker School of Law, Medill School of Journalism, Feinberg School of Medicine, School of Communication, and School of Education and Social Policy, as well as with external partners ranging from the Art Institute of Chicago to Argonne National Lab. In 2008, he was selected by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers as one of the “One Hundred Engineers of the Modern Era.” In 2017, Ottino was awarded the Bernard M. Gordon Prize for Innovation in Engineering and Technology Education from the National Academy of Engineering for the concept of whole-brain engineering. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow and is a member of both the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Sciences as well as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Get Julio’s book here:

The Nexus: Augmented Thinking for a Complex World–The New Convergence of Art, Technology, and Science. Julio Mario Ottino. https://amzn.to/3b4390g

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 262, an episode with a professor at Queensland University of Technology, Amanda Lotz.

In this episode, Amanda shares her insights as a media expert about Netflix’s recent announcement that they are introducing an ad-supported version of their streaming service. She spoke about the challenges that Netflix may face as it goes down the advertising route. Amanda discussed the pros and cons of a subscription-based model versus an advertisement-based model and what it will be for Netflix as it launches its new strategy.

Amanda Lotz is a media scholar, professor, and industry consultant. Her expertise includes media industries, digital distribution, the future of television, the business of media, and net neutrality.

Amanda leads the Transforming Media Industries research project in the Digital Media Research Centre at Queensland University of Technology. She is the author, coauthor, or editor of eleven books that explore television and media industries, including Netflix and Streaming Video: The Business of Subscriber-Funded Video on Demand, Media Disrupted: Surviving Cannibals, Pirates and Streaming Wars, We Now Disrupt This Broadcast: How Cable Transformed Television and the Internet Revolutionized It All, The Television Will Be Revolutionized, and Portals: A Treatise on Internet-Distributed Television.

Her most recent books explore the connections between internet-distributed services such as Netflix and the legacy television industry, as well as the business strategies and revenue models that differ. Her award-winning book, The Television Will Be Revolutionized, now in its second edition, has been translated into Mandarin, Korean, Italian, and Polish. She is frequently interviewed by NPR’s Marketplace, has appeared on BBC, CNN's The Nineties, HuffPost Live, and ZDF (German television network), and has been interviewed for articles in the Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, The Atlantic, Christian Science Monitor, the Associated Press, Wired, and Men’s Health among many others. She publishes articles about the business of television at Quartz, Salon, The New Republic, hosts the Media Business Matters podcast, and tweets about television and media @DrTVLotz.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 261, an episode with the Blue and Gold Distinguished Professor of Energy and the Environment at the University of Delaware, Saleem Ali. Get Ali’s book here: https://amzn.to/3aOWwie

In this conversation, we discussed numerous examples of major problems around the world, from the resources industry, environmental conflicts, culture, and the system of order and control of many organizations, and how these issues come down to the need for literacy and proper education.

Environmental awareness is present today, however, we are lacking science or environmental literacy. Education is not an elite enterprise and someone even without formal education can be a citizen scientist who is seeing and observing the world and continuously gaining much more depth of knowledge and understanding to contribute to solving the problems of the world.

Prof. Ali previously served as chair in Sustainable Resource Development and professor of sustainability science and policy at University of Queensland in Australia. He also was a professor of environmental studies at the University of Vermont's Rubenstein School of Natural Resources and founding director of the Institute for Environmental Diplomacy and Security. He was also formerly on the adjunct faculty of Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies and the visiting faculty for the United Nations mandated University for Peace (Costa Rica).

Prof. Ali's primary research interests have been in the causes and consequences of environmental conflicts in the mineral sector, and the process of using ecological factors to promote peace. Some of Prof. Ali’s former research appointments include a visiting fellowship at the Brookings Institution's research center in Doha, Qatar; a Public Policy Fellowship at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia; a Baker Foundation Research Fellowship at Harvard Business School; and a parliamentary internship at the U.K. House of Commons. He has teaching experience in courses on environmental planning, conflict resolution, industrial ecology, research methods, and technical writing.

Before embarking on an academic career, Prof. Ali worked as an environmental health and safety professional at General Electric, an Associate at the Boston-based consulting firm Industrial Economics Inc., as well as a consultant for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Health Canada.

Prof. Ali is a citizen of the United States of America by birth; Pakistan by parental lineage; and Australian by naturalization. He received his doctorate in Environmental Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), an M.E.S. in environmental law and policy from Yale University, and his Bachelors in Chemistry from Tufts University.

Get Ali’s Book here:

Earthly Order: How Natural Laws Define Human Life. Saleem Ali. https://amzn.to/3aOWwie

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 260, an episode with bestselling author, keynote speaker, workplace expert, and resilience researcher, Adam Markel. Get Adam's Book here: https://amzn.to/3PwE6l6

In this episode, Adam speaks about how he reinvented his career path through valuable lessons and eye-opening life events. He shares his experience as a Jones Beach lifeguard in New York. As a first responder in a life-and-death environment, he learned the importance of cultivating a high-performance capacity and impeccable teamwork. He learned to never let anyone go under the water, not to quit, and to keep going no matter what the conditions were. Years later, after experiencing a panic attack due to stress and exhaustion, he was reminded of another important lesson that he learned at the beach: the importance of taking intermittent breaks. Rest, recover, and recuperate, or you cannot perform well.

Lots of people think of resilience as getting up after taking a blow, moving forward after getting knocked down, and bouncing back from setbacks. Resilience is more than that. As Adam mentioned in this episode, “Resilience is not about how we bounce back. It's actually about how we bounce forward. It's not about how we endure life's challenges, adversities, and uncertainties. But actually how it is that we leverage that uncertainty for our growth.”

Adam is the author of the #1 Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, and Publisher’s Weekly bestseller, Pivot: The Art & Science of Reinventing Your Career and Life. A leading international keynote speaker, he has reached tens of thousands worldwide with his message of resilience as the competitive edge in today’s complex markets. An attorney, entrepreneur, and transformational trainer, Adam is a sought-after business culture catalyst who inspires, empowers, and guides organizations and individuals to create sustainable, high-performance strategies.

Adam is also the CEO of More Love Media and host of The Change Proof podcast, where he shares his insights on pivoting and resilience in today's fast-paced market and interviews experts, innovators, and influencers in the areas of business and life.

Adam credits much of his success to the principles he learned during his eight years as a Jones Beach lifeguard in New York. He’s found that the principles of this type of culture and leadership equally apply to any business that wants to build a competitive advantage to win.

After building a multi-million-dollar law firm, Adam pivoted his own career path to become CEO of one of the largest business and personal growth training companies in the world. Here he learned that motivation and inspiration alone are not enough to effectively utilize change. It's about providing leaders, teams, and audiences with effective takeaways to sustain them over time.

Get Adam’s Book here:

Change Proof: Leveraging the Power of Uncertainty to Build Long-Term Resilience. Adam Markel. https://amzn.to/3PwE6l6

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For this episode, let's revisit the 47th podcast on the Corporate Strategy & Transformation study. As I mentioned in previous posts, the reason we spend so much time on visioning workshop is because if you ever take a senior role in strategy in any company, or if you ever serve as a corporate strategy consultant, running a visioning workshop or corporate strategy workshop, in general, is the skill you must have. And scenario planning is something used extensively in visioning workshops.

In this podcast and related article, we discuss what is scenario planning and how to run a scenario planning session during a visioning workshop as part of a consulting engagement. There is also a very elegant way to combine corporate finance and corporate strategy to help companies develop effective strategies under extreme uncertainty.

Click here to see the full study and here to see the merger study and market entry study.

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For this episode, let's revisit the 42nd podcast on the Corporate Strategy & Transformation study.

What I noticed on this, and other studies is that the associates and business analysts are very competitive, in a way that is damaging to clients, to the firm and to their own careers.

I am fine with consultants being competitive but I think they go about it the wrong way. You can be competitive and work long hours but you should not seem to be competitive when you are working long hours.

I am not saying don't work long hours. Yet, don't make it sound like you are competitive and that is why you are working long hours. Cause and effect matters. If you work hard to be competitive, people see you as someone who is working hard only because you want to get promoted and only because you want to stand out from everyone else.

These consultants tend to be so obsessed with telling people how committed they are that they are moving away from the objective of getting the right work done.

No one likes someone who is competitive for the sake of being competitive. Because this is just wasted energy. If you are being competitive for the sake of being competitive, versus focusing on the client and working hard to solve a problem resulting in the by-product of you being competitive, you are basically just wasting valuable time that you could use much more productively.

If people just think you are competing with them they don't want to help you, they don't want to work with you.

Yet, if they see you as someone who is like them but for whatever reason needs to work harder because the client needs it they tend to like you more. They tend to relate to you better. And that dynamic becomes good for your career.

In this podcast, we discuss in detail how to go about being competitive on consulting projects while projecting the proper image and maintaining the right mindset to deliver the best value for the client and the firm.

Click here to see the full study and here to see the merger study and market entry study.

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we will talk about general professional values or etiquette that consultants should apply during an engagement. We specifically discuss things that consultants sometimes do on studies that may alienate the client. And rather than talking about every single thing you need to avoid, we will talk about some principles. And these principles apply across every issue.

We also discuss how to address a situation where a consultant’s behavior is incompatible with the firm’s professional values.

Click here to see the full study and here to see the merger study and market entry study.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 256, an episode with an expert in business law and business ethics, J.S. Nelson. Get J.S’s book here: https://amzn.to/3ny1z9B

Managing business ethics has always been a challenge for many organizations. As unethical business conduct rises, the struggle of implementing ethics and compliance programs in organizations also increases. Business ethics can make or break your business or career. But it can be used as a competitive advantage if managed correctly and can build the most valuable asset: your reputation.

The key is to articulate your organization's values – defining who you are, what you stand for, and extending it toward every inch of your organization. It’s very important for management to cultivate a culture of openness, where people feel safe to speak up and where ethical misconduct is not tolerated. As J.S. mentioned in this episode, “the way to get the behavior that you want is to intervene early and often.”

In this episode, J.S speaks about the value of business ethics, the major schools of philosophical ethical thought, and how understanding it can help people become better at being ethical. She discusses the ways an organization can cultivate ethical behavior and how to get away from situations involving ethical traps in the modern business world.

Nelson is an expert in business law and business ethics. She is a visiting professor at Harvard Business School. Nelson was the first tenure-track appointment in a U.S. law school, specifically to teach business ethics and to develop law-school curricula around the subject.

Nelson has spent nearly fifteen years teaching at top universities across the country, including Villanova Law School, the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Haas Business School of the University of California at Berkeley, Drucker School at Claremont Graduate University, and the Mihaylo School at Cal State Fullerton.

Prior to her work in academia, Professor Nelson served as staff counsel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, and she clerked for the Honorable David M. Ebel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit and the Honorable William H. Yohn Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. She also worked as a deputy district attorney and as a business litigator in Denver, Colorado. Nelson graduated from Harvard Law School, where she was the Supreme Court Co-Chair of the Harvard Law Review. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science with honors and distinction in the major from Yale.

Get J.S’s book here:

Business Ethics: What Everyone Needs to Know, J.S. Nelson & Lynn A. Stout: https://amzn.to/3ny1z9B

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 255, an episode with the CEO and managing partner at Velocity Group, Edward Sullivan. Get Edward’s book here: https://amzn.to/3HT2Hy4

In this episode, Edward discussed the best practices that leaders and companies do to address mental health issues and the real cause of the great resignation. He spoke about the gravity of work-life balance, care, and understanding as part of an employee retention strategy.

For decades, we have avoided discussing the topic of mental health around the workplace. It was considered a weakness and could greatly derail one’s career. We operated under the assumption of manifesting the “executive presence,” which covertly added up to pressure and stress on the employees.

As companies have responded to the challenges brought by Covid in recent years, they are learning to consider mental health as a common issue in the workplace and taking employees’ well-being in a serious manner. The great resignation caused a stir in how companies view and treat their employees. As Edward mentioned in this episode, “employees are not leaving in the great resignation because of company benefits, they are fleeing from toxic work cultures.”

Edward Sullivan holds an MBA from the Wharton School and an MPA from the Harvard Kennedy School. His 25-year career as an executive coach and political consultant has taken him around the globe coaching and advising start-up founders, Fortune 500 executives, and heads of state of foreign nations. His work has been featured in the New York Times, The Washington Post, Forbes, Fast Company, USA Today, and Nasdaq, among others.

Get Edward’s book here:

Leading with Heart: 5 Conversations That Unlock Creativity, Purpose, and Results, Edward Sullivan and John Baird: https://amzn.to/3HT2Hy4

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 254, an episode with the Founder and visionary Managing Director of Bandelli & Associates, Dr. Adam C. Bandelli. Get Adam’s book here: https://amzn.to/3nhGgsC

“It is very important for leaders to not only surround themselves with great talent but build really strong partnerships with their people.” - Adam Bandelli

In this episode, Adam speaks about how reliance on technology has kept people technologically connected but has prevented them from building genuine and sustainable relationships. Covid has exacerbated this problem, especially when organizations started hybrid work models. In order to improve the level of connectivity and build strong long-lasting personal and professional relationships, Adam laid out the five key skills that make up relational intelligence: Establishing Rapport, Understanding Others, Embracing Individual Differences, Developing Trust, and Cultivating Influence.

Dr. Adam C. Bandelli has 20 years of management and leadership advisory consulting experience in the firm’s service offerings, including board consultation, senior executive selection, leadership development, CEO succession, organizational culture, and transformational change. Adam is an expert on communication, relational intelligence, and leadership effectiveness having worked with CEOs and senior executives to strengthen their abilities to inspire and influence their people, teams, and organizations. The mission of his firm is to help leaders identify, unlock, and unleash their true potential. Adam has worked with executives around the world in organizations ranging from small start-up firms through global Fortune 100 companies.

Prior to founding Bandelli & Associates, Adam was a Partner at Korn Ferry, where he led the Private Equity assessment practice for North America. Earlier in his career, he was a Partner at RHR International, where he served as one of the firm’s leaders on Board and CEO Succession, High Potential Development, Senior Team Effectiveness, and Executive Assessments.

Adam is the author of the books Relational Intelligence: The Five Essential Skills You Need to Build Life-Changing Relationships, and What Every Leader Needs: The Ten Universal and Indisputable Competencies of Leadership Effectiveness, which have received strong reviews from prominent business leaders.

Adam received his Ph.D. and master’s degrees from the University of South Florida in Industrial-Organizational Psychology, and a bachelor’s degree concentrating in Psychology and Business Management from Fairleigh Dickinson University. Acknowledged as an expert on leadership, relational intelligence, and organizational culture, he is a frequent speaker at business and professional meetings including the Society of Consulting Psychology and the Society of Industrial-Organizational Psychology.

Relational Intelligence: The Five Essential Skills You Need to Build Life-Changing Relationships. Dr. Adam C. Bandelli: https://amzn.to/3nhGgsC

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 253, an episode with Emeritus Professor at UCLA Anderson, Richard Rumelt.

Get Richard’s book here: https://amzn.to/3OrNfuK

In this episode, Richard iterated the real meaning of strategy, which many companies today confuse with a list of their goals and ambitions. Strategy is problem-solving – a clever way of dealing with a challenge, opponent, or problem. It also involves selecting which battle you fight because you cannot fight them all. As a great strategist, you need to select battles that you can win.

Richard also explained the crux or the biggest challenge that companies need to identify, emphasize, and concentrate their resources on until it is fixed or solved. As Richard mentioned in this episode, “the primary thing about strategy is that it is about a concentration of resources. It is about focus.”

Richard Rumelt received his doctorate from the Harvard Business School in 1972, having previously earned a Master of Science in electrical engineering from UC Berkeley. He worked as a systems engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratories and served on the faculty of the Harvard Business School. He joined the UCLA faculty in 1976. He also served as a faculty at INSEAD, France for three years. At INSEAD, Rumelt headed the Corporate Renewal Initiative, a research-intervention center devoted to the study and practice of corporate transformation.

Rumelt was president of the Strategic Management Society from 1995 to 1998. He received the Irwin Prize for his book Strategy, Structure, and Economic Performance. In 1997, he was appointed Telecom Italia Strategy Fellow, a position he held until April 2000. He has won teaching awards at UCLA and received a best paper prize in 1997 from the Strategic Management Journal.

Get Richard’s book here:

The Crux: How Leaders Become Strategists, Richard Rumelt: https://amzn.to/3OrNfuK

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 252, an episode with a thought leader and global expert on infectious diseases and vaccine safety, Jan Bonhoeffer M.D. Get Jan’s book here: https://amzn.to/3y2x4hZ

In this episode, Jan spoke about his medical career journey, working with different interesting organizations, and how he realized there was a missing piece: care. He spoke about how we often become so focused on solving a problem that we forget to give attention to what we care about – what gives us joy and fulfillment.

In any business or profession, the key is to serve a much bigger purpose, taking your identity into account. As Michael mentioned in this conversation, “True leadership is about understanding who you are.” Leading with empathy requires understanding who you are to resonate and connect with the people you interact with.

Bonhoeffer serves as professor of pediatrics, infectious diseases, and vaccines at the University of Basel Children’s Hospital, Switzerland. As a former consultant with the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control, he co-authored more than 120 peer-reviewed articles in medical journals and led epidemiological pediatric infectious disease and vaccine studies, including international research consortia. For 18 years, he led the Brighton Collaboration, a global leader in not-for-profit vaccine safety research setting research standards, conducting large internationally collaborative research, and investigating vaccine safety concerns. He was a Strategic Advisory Group Member of the WHO Global Vaccine Safety Initiative (GVSI) implementing the vaccine safety strategy of the Global Vaccine Action Plan.

Bonhoeffer graduated from the University of Basel Medical School, Switzerland, and worked in the U.S., the UK, India, and Switzerland. In 2015, he underwent a significant shift in the way that he thought about medicine. He realized that most of the significant moments in his work as a doctor happened when he wasn’t simply executing what he learned in medical school, but when he was participating in a healing event with the patient. He realized that central to this is the quality of the interaction between the health care provider and the patient. It is in this space that innovation, healing, and creativity happens, but he realized that almost everything he had learned in medical school had taught him to skip over what happens in this space.

This realization prompted Bonhoeffer to start Heart-Based Medicine, a global network of health care professionals and patients exploring the natural healing potential of the health care provider and the patient, and to co-create his new book Dare to Care. His mission is to inspire medical professionals to reclaim empathy and compassion as primary facets of healing to overcome the disillusion and burnout they often encounter in today’s mechanized medical culture.

Bonhoeffer is married to Jessica Templeton-Bonhoeffer, a developmental pediatrician and co-founder of Youkidoc Kindergesundheit, a heart-based medical center for children and their families in Basel, Switzerland. They have three children.

Dare to Care: How to Survive and Thrive in Today's Medical World. Jan Bonhoeffer M.D.: https://amzn.to/3y2x4hZ

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 251, an episode with a leading Yale expert and serial entrepreneur, Barry Nalebuff. Get Barry’s book here: https://amzn.to/3OiNiJs

For thirty years, Barry has taught negotiation, innovation, strategy, and game theory at Yale School of Management, which led him to develop a new approach toward negotiation. This approach is vastly different from how most people think about negotiation, which usually involves having the best tactic to out-smart the other party and get the best deal.

This podcast explains the concept of the negotiation pie, which is the additional value created through an agreement to work together. It exhibits fairness and identifies what’s really at stake in any negotiation. We share examples that showcase negotiation principles and a different mindset about creating value that benefits both parties involved – more importantly, understanding the views of each party as if they are solving problems rather than making the most out of the negotiation.

Barry is the co-author of seven books and an online course. Thinking Strategically and The Art of Strategy are two crossover books on game theory with more than 400,000 copies in print. Co-opetition looks beyond zero-sum games to emphasize the potential for cooperating while competing. Why Not? offers a framework for problem-solving and ingenuity. Lifecycle Investing provides a new strategy for retirement investing. Mission in a Bottle tells the story of Honest Tea. His most recent book is Split the Pie, which is based on his negotiation course at SOM. An online version of the negotiation course is available for free on Coursera. It has 400,000 active learners and is the second-highest rating on the Coursera platform.

In 1998, Barry—together with his former student Seth Goldman—co-founded Honest Tea. In 2011, the company was purchased by Coca-Cola. His second venture, Kombrewcha, is a slightly alcoholic version of kombucha. The company was acquired in 2016 by AB-Inbev. He is currently working to build Real Made Foods.

He works with many entrepreneurial firms. He serves on the board of Q Drinks (started by his former student Jordan Silbert), Calicraft Beer, and AGP Glass. Alongside startups, he has extensive experience consulting with multinational firms. He advised the NBA in their prior negotiations with the National Basketball Players Association and served on the board of Nationwide Insurance. A graduate of MIT, a Rhodes Scholar, and a Junior Fellow at Harvard’s Society of Fellows, Nalebuff earned his doctorate at Oxford University.

Get Barry's book here:

Split the Pie: A Radical New Way to Negotiate. Barry Nalebuff: https://amzn.to/3OiNiJs

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 250, an episode with one of Silicon Valley’s most renowned business advisors and coaches, Tom Eddington.

“There's always a challenge, and there's always an opportunity.” - Tom Eddington

In this episode with Tom, we discussed how the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a multitude of issues today – not only for individuals but also for most organizations. One of the biggest problems that every organization has faced because of COVID is retaining employees. Over the last couple of years, we've seen the mass resignation, and it's been a challenge across all industries to attract and retain talent.

Organizations adapted to a virtual workforce, and people have spent the last two years working remotely; the idea of moving back to a physical location has required a lot of reconsideration. Some companies exhibited higher productivity rates with a reduced workforce during that time. They delivered more financial results but took a tremendous toll as leadership teams are extremely stressed and exhausted. The long-term effects of COVID continue, impacting individuals and organizations.

COVID has delivered a message to the world – a warning sign. COVID is a knock-on effect of climate change, as opposed to being an epidemic. Climate change is by far the biggest issue we face. As we destroy the ecosystem, we lose biodiversity. This results in bacterial infections and viral infections, which become pandemics such as COVID. We are seeing the impact of climate change, and we are at the most critical decade in human history where we need to do something fundamentally different.

“Business talks about how we become climate-conscious from today, but I've never heard a business leader talk about what we are going to do about what's already out there.” - Michael

Tom Eddington works with some of the most influential CEOs and non-profit leaders, advising them on everything from global mergers and organizational change to conscious leadership and work/life integration. He understands the pressures business leaders face. Having spent the last three decades as a consultant, educator, entrepreneur, and strategic advisor, he has dedicated his life to studying and teaching board, leadership, and organization effectiveness – focusing on how they grow, achieve, and sustain effectiveness while remaining stewards for their stakeholders.

Tom has lived, worked, and studied on six continents, working with leaders across all industry sectors and organization stages of development. His work as a student, mentor, coach, and advisor focuses on conscious leadership. His motto: Take care of matters within yourself to make the most possible impact in the outside world. Tom has sought out opportunities to teach and work in the private, public, academic, and non-profit sectors working with industry leaders and most-admired organizations, including HP, W.L. Gore, MBNA Corporation, Royal Dutch/Shell, and Taproot Foundation. He assists organizations in fostering leadership on all levels.

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we discuss how to identify a corporate strategy.

It is actually very simple to know if a study qualifies as a corporate strategy study. Irrespective of what anyone tells you, if you go into a strategy study where the key question – or what we call an objective function – is known to you, then it is not a corporate strategy.

This is because corporate strategy is not about knowing how to maximize an objective function. It is about choosing the objective function you want to maximize. That is the key difference between corporate strategy and every other kind of strategy.

So, if you are in consulting, in an internal consulting role, or interested in strategy consulting, you should know there is a significant difference between corporate strategy and the other types of strategy analyses like business unit strategy, market entry strategy, etc. And in this podcast, we explain the two requirements that must exist for an engagement to be a corporate strategy study.

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we explain what it means to be a conceptual thinker and how to demonstrate this skill.

If you work at any major consulting firm – and especially if you want to be promoted – you must prove you are a conceptual thinker. The only problem is that it is hard to define the word conceptual.

In this podcast, we explain a similar problem experienced by a consultant on the Corporate Strategy & Transformation Study and how I helped them improve. The definition also explains why a conceptual thinker is a functional specialist (in strategy, operations, corporate finance, etc.) and almost never a specialist in sectors.

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For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we discuss how to communicate recommendations that are radical in nature.

If the recommendations are presented too early, they are hypotheses with little data backing them and they can be easily challenged.

If the recommendations are presented at the end, it shocks the client and there likely will be little agreement from the client.

The solution is to present early but to present them as hypotheses. That seems easy, but this podcast explains the communication mistakes that occur when most consultants present complex hypotheses very early, and how to fix them.

You will learn that communication, your choice of words, and the way you emphasize them can dramatically alter the way the client interprets what you are saying. In fact, the emphasis will radically alter the meaning.

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For this episode, let's revisit one of Strategy Skills classics where we spoke about the approach and philosophy used by the study leadership team in a power sector corporate strategy study as they guide and mentor corporate leaders at the client.

We discuss the four pillars on which our leadership philosophy is built and use practical examples to demonstrate how we help clients adopt these principles.

The four pillars are:

1. Sincere authenticity matters.
2. Embrace – don’t hide – leadership flaws.
3. Forget about image.
4. Focus on results.

This approach is about helping corporate leaders be successful in the short term. If you would like to learn more about this leadership work, please read this article.

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For this episode, let's revisit one of Strategy Skills classics where we discuss something that affects every consultant in the world: the issue of confidence – or even arrogance – and its role in getting results on a consulting engagement.

We discuss the role that confidence plays in your career and look at what actually creates a competitive advantage in your career. We also look at an example that showcases the limited value of confidence in a consulting engagement.

Click here to see the full study and here to see the merger study and market entry study.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 244, an interview with globally recognized academic thought-leader on digital transformation and innovation management, Satish Nambisan.

In this episode, Satish spoke about real-world examples of companies that use digital technology as their unique competency to move and globalize faster. He defined “globalization” and “digital” in a broader perspective, and elaborated on their role in a company to thrive through an emotional connection with customers. Satish also explained the idea of tight and loose coupling and how it allows companies to continuously adapt to disturbances that happen in different parts of the world without reinventing the business model, processes, or operations.

Satish Nambisan, Ph.D. is the Nancy and Joseph Keithley Professor of Technology Management at the Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University. His current work focuses on how digital technologies, platforms, and ecosystems shape innovation, entrepreneurship, and international business. His publications have appeared in journals such as Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, Management Science, Journal of International Business Studies, Organization Science, Academy of Management Review, and Stanford Social Innovation Review. He is the co-author of The Global Brain: Your Roadmap for Innovating Faster and Smarter in a Networked World (Wharton School Publishing). His latest book is The Digital Multinational: Navigating the New Normal in Global Business (MIT Press, 2022).

Get Satish's book here:

The Digital Multinational: Navigating the New Normal in Global Business (Management on the Cutting Edge). Satish Nambisan & Yadong Luo

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 243, an interview with a business coach and change leadership expert, Richard Hawkes.

In this session, Richard shared his experiences with building a consultancy, working shoulder to shoulder with leaders and teams to grow and scale all kinds of companies – in the US and in countries all over the world, but especially in Germany. He shared a little bit about how his worldview has changed throughout his journey from thinking of companies in a fragmented way – with different kinds of views, cultures, leadership, strategies, and processes – to thinking in an integrated way. He laid out a powerful framework that any team can apply to overcome the most common leadership challenges.

Richard S. Hawkes is the author of Navigate the Swirl and the CEO and Founder of Growth River, an international consultancy that guides leaders and teams to create higher performance in businesses and organizations. Hawkes helps companies identify and resolve constraints to success. Clients include Edward Jones, GENEWIZ, Hitachi, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and Mars. Hawkes received a B.A. in Computer Science and German Literature from Hamilton College and an M.B.A. in Marketing and Organizational Development from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Get Richard's book here:

Navigate the Swirl: 7 Crucial Conversations for Business Transformation. Richard S. Hawkes Enjoying this episode? Get access to sample advanced training episodes here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 242, an interview with the CEO of YSC Consulting, Eric Pliner.

In this video, Eric shared his career journey, experience with adjusting to consulting, and how to become a successful consultant while maintaining a healthy life balance. He discussed the reasons why his company survived and thrived during the pandemic.

As a CEO, he spoke about the top things that he looks for when promoting an employee and the red flags that employees must be aware of to avoid or eliminate.

Eric shared the realizations that made him a stronger leader over the course of his journey to the top of his company. He emphasized the importance of constant learning and listening to other people, and that as a leader, you have to get over the idea that your job is to make everyone happy. You will disappoint people down the road, but how you handle that disappointment will make the difference between being a long-term leader or a short-term leader. Eric shared his advice on how to better make difficult decisions and how to build confidence when facing challenging decision-making situations.

For more than twenty-five years, Eric Pliner has been a recognized leader in the fields of leadership development, organizational culture, education and training, and strategic diversity and inclusion. He is Chief Executive Officer of YSC Consulting, a global leadership strategy consultancy headquartered in London.

Eric's writing on leadership has been featured in Harvard Business Review, Fortune, Forbes, Fast Company, and a host of other business and industry publications. He is a Board Director with Hip Hop Public Health, a member of the Dramatists’ Guild of America, and an author/co-author of a wide variety of published academic, creative, and professional works, including award-winning case studies on leadership; the U.S. National Standards for Health Education; and an off-Broadway theatrical parody of television cartoons for adults (with Amy Rhodes). He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Get Eric's book here:

Difficult Decisions: How Leaders Make the Right Call with Insight, Integrity, and Empathy. Eric Pliner

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 241, an episode with scientist, inventor, writer, speaker, and entrepreneur, Alex Bäcker.

In this episode, Alex spoke about the main ingredients of a successful life and the key to happiness. He discussed why he wrote his book, 101 Clues to a Happy Life, and shared how having children exponentially changed his life and perspective. Alex also elaborated on the role of sunlight in the prevention and treatment of COVID-19 and the potential role of vitamin D. In this conversation, he shared valuable advice related to business, finding business partners and investors, and the practical steps that should be implemented to attain success and happiness.

Alex Bäcker is the founder and CEO of QLess and co-founder at Drisit. He holds 11 patents and in 2021 was named among the top 100 MIT alumni in technology. His seminal papers on COVID and sunlight were picked up by the press around the world.

Alex is a National Champion of Informatics and holds a degree in Biology and Economics from MIT, and a M.S. and Ph.D. in Computation and Neural Systems and Biology from the California Institute of Technology, where he was awarded the Dean’s Award for “great contributions and outstanding qualities of Leadership and Responsibility.”

He has held positions at McKinsey & Co.; the Center for Computation, Computers, Information and Mathematics of Sandia National Labs; and Caltech. Alex devised the idea of QLess while standing in a line.

Prior to starting QLess, Alex was also the founder of a pioneer of search engine marketing technology, the invention factory, that has boosted the reach of search engine marketing campaigns by up to 580% while simultaneously reducing their cost per action by up to 78%. It is a semantic people search engine with machine vision, which beat Google and every other search engine tested 3 to 1 or more in results relevance in a blind people search comparison, and the first resume- or file-based search engine. Alex was appointed by the President to serve in the California Institute of Technology’s Information Sciences and Technology Board of Advisors.

In 2013, Alex was named the Gold Stevie Winner of IT Executive of the Year and Silver Stevie Winner of Innovator of the Year by the International Business Awards. In 2011, Alex was honored as the keynote speaker at LA County’s Tech Week, an honor that was previously accorded a Nobel Prize winner, the CEO of Cisco, the CEO of Adobe, the Chairman of Deloitte, and an astronaut.

In 2010, Alex was honored as one of “40 under 40” for the inaugural 40 Under 40 M&A Advisor Recognition Awards. Alex’s research on neural coding and artificial intelligence has been published in the world’s leading publications such as Nature and Neural Computation.

Get Alex’s book here:

101 Clues to a Happy Life. Alex Bäcker

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 240, an episode with best-selling author, lawyer, and art historian, Amy Herman.

In this episode, Amy spoke about how art can renew our sense of vision and approach to problem solving. This method proves that everyone sees and interprets things differently, which shows that we need to become better communicators to solve our problems. She stressed that effective communication has a renewed significance now because we are communicating with our stakeholders in a virtual environment. For leaders of organizations, the most difficult thing for them to do is rethink their communication skills and make them as effective as they were before, which involves agility. Amy also spoke about confirmation bias – wherein people only hear what they want to hear – and how to realize that we are trapped in this way of looking at information. Building on the conversation, Amy spoke about well-known artists who reflect characteristics that a great leader can impersonate.

Amy E. Herman is the founder and president of The Art of Perception, Inc., a New York-based organization that conducts professional development courses to leaders around the world, including at the FBI, CIA, Scotland Yard, and the Peace Corps. Herman was also the Director of Educational Development at Thirteen/WNET, the educational public television station serving New York and New Jersey, and the Head of Education at The Frick Collection for over ten years, where she oversaw all of the Collection's educational collaborations and community initiatives.

An art historian and attorney, Herman holds a BA in International Affairs from Lafayette College, a JD from the National Law Center at George Washington University, and an MA in Art History from Hunter College. She is a member of the New Jersey and Pennsylvania Bar Associations. Herman channeled her dual degrees in art and law to create the successful Art of Perception program, and now trains thousands of professionals from Secret Service agents to church fundraisers. Herman is a world-renowned speaker who frequently presents at national and international conventions. She has been featured on the CBS Evening News, the BBC, and in countless print publications including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The London Times, New York Daily News, Smithsonian Magazine, and The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Get Amy’s book here:

Fixed.: How to Perfect the Fine Art of Problem Solving. Amy Herman

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 239, an episode with a renowned food journalist, Dan Saladino.

In this episode, Dan talks us through a very interesting topic: food extinction. He elaborated on the value of food diversity through factual examples and stories, and he explained the risks of homogeneity or genetic uniformity of crops, livestock, poultry, or other food supply, which adds more vulnerability to preserving these resources during a crisis.

Dan Saladino is a renowned food journalist who has worked at the BBC for 25 years. For more than a decade, he has traveled the world recording stories of foods at risk of extinction—from cheeses made in the foothills of a remote Balkan mountain range to unique varieties of rice grown in southern China. His work has been recognized by the James Beard Foundation, the Guild of Food Writers, and the Fortnum & Mason Food and Drink Awards.

Get Dan’s book here:

Eating to Extinction: The World's Rarest Foods and Why We Need to Save Them. Dan Saladino

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 238, an episode with a sought-after strategist and advisor, Kian Gohar.

Many organizations have been caught flat-footed by disruptive changes – especially in the pandemic era – which has forced a lot of businesses to rethink their priorities to stay competitive in the post-pandemic world. Having the ability to identify trends that allow organizations to leverage potential threats and changes in the future will turn into great opportunities. But many organizations don't think this way and instead focus on what there is today and react to the changes later.

In this episode, we discussed with Kian the key things that the pandemic taught us individually and as an organization. He spoke about the mindset and best practices of leaders and teams who were able to keep up, adapt, and remain competitive and advantageous during disruptions and continuous change. Kian also pointed out the key steps that leaders and organizations need to take and implement to build a competitive and thriving business.

Kian Gohar is the CEO of innovation advisory firm Geolab and the former executive director of the XPRIZE Foundation and Singularity University. Kian has coached the C-suite of over 50 companies in the Fortune 500 and regularly keynotes, facilitates, and emcees major business conferences like the World Economic Forum, SXSW, the Tokyo Motor Show, and many others. His research on the Future of Work and innovation has been featured on CNBC, Axios, HBR, and other media.

He inspires the world's leading organizations to harness innovation and moonshots to solve complex problems. He coaches entrepreneurs, executives, and leaders to make their impossible, possible.

He is the co-author of Competing in the New World of Work with Keith Ferrazzi, published by Harvard Business Review in 2022, which is based on a global research project with 2,000+ global leaders to reveal the best leadership practices that helped the most successful teams thrive in the pandemic, and is a roadmap for any team at any organization to future-proof their way to success in the post-pandemic era.

He is passionate about the intersection of innovation and impact, and his career spans venture capital, academia, and startups around the world. He is a member of the Transformational Leadership Council.

Get Kian’s book here:

Competing in the New World of Work: How Radical Adaptability Separates the Best from the Rest. Kian Gohar & Keith Ferrazzi

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 237, an episode with workplace loneliness experts and thought leaders, Ryan Jenkins and Steven Van Cohen.

In this episode, Ryan and Steven discuss a vital, sensitive, and very interesting topic: loneliness. Oftentimes, loneliness and emotional pain is taken lightly compared to physical pain. But physiologically, the effect is nearly the same.

The conversation revolved around answering why do we feel lonely and how we can battle and address this issue. Ryan and Steven talked about the significance of awareness, connection, a sense of safety and belonging, and mental health, which largely contributes to resolving loneliness and is the key to developing a healthy personal and professional environment.

Ryan Jenkins CSP® (Certified Speaking Professional™) is an internationally recognized keynote speaker and three-time published author. He speaks all over the world to companies such as State Farm, Salesforce, Wells Fargo, FedEx, Liberty Mutual, and John Deere.

For a decade, he has been helping organizations create engaged, inclusive, and high-performing teams by lessening worker loneliness and closing generational gaps. Ryan’s top-ranked insights have been featured in Forbes, Fast Company, and The Wall Street Journal.

He is also co-founder of LessLonely.com, the world’s first resource fully dedicated to reducing worker isolation and strengthening team connections. Ryan lives in Atlanta, GA with his wife, three children, and yellow Labrador.

Steven Van Cohen is a global leadership consultant, author, and executive coach. Steven has spent 12 years working with hundreds of leaders from organizations like Salesforce, The Home Depot, Komatsu, and Bridgestone, helping them improve worker well-being, reduce employee isolation, and boost team belonging.

Dubbed "The Leadership Whisperer," Steven has inspired thousands through his workshops, keynotes, and virtual events. He is co-founder of LessLonely.com (the world's first resource for addressing loneliness at work) and CEO of SyncLX (a consultancy that works with many Fortune 500 companies.)

Steven holds a Master of Science in Organizational Development from Pepperdine University and a BA from The University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana. Steven lives in San Juan Capistrano, CA with his wife and two daughters.

Get Ryan & Steven’s book here:

Connectable: How Leaders Can Move Teams From Isolated to All In. Ryan Jenkins & Steven Van Cohen

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 236, an episode with the CEO of Meetup, David Siegel.

In this episode, David talks us through his epic journey of becoming and remaining the CEO of Meetup in spite of the challenges that the organization faced and, later on, conquered. He also spoke about Investopedia – which he was the CEO of prior to joining Meetup. David also highlighted and elaborated on what a community is, how it works, and the value that it brings.

David Siegel is the CEO of Meetup, the largest platform for finding and building local community. He has over 20 years of experience as a technology and digital media executive leading organizations through innovative product development, rapid revenue growth, and digital traffic acceleration. Prior to joining Meetup, David was CEO of Investopedia. Before that, he was president of Seeking Alpha. He hosts the podcast Keep Connected, which is dedicated to the power of community.

David holds a BA in Philosophy, Politics & Economics and an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania. He is an adjunct professor at Columbia University where he teaches strategic planning and entrepreneurship. He lives in White Plains, New York with his wife and three teenage children. In his spare time, he likes to pop in on Meetup events.

Get David’s book here:

Decide and Conquer: 44 Decisions That Will Make or Break All Leaders. David Siegel

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 235, an episode with Ravin Jesuthasan, a global thought leader and best-selling author, and John Boudreau, a Professor Emeritus of Management and Organization at the University of Southern California.

In this episode, John and Ravin lay out the core principles of work operating systems, and their views about the future of work and jobs that are rapidly evolving through the emergence of alternative work arrangements, diversity, accelerating automation, and the underlying challenges and opportunities that leaders and organizations are battling to overcome.

Ravin Jesuthasan is the global leader of Mercer’s Transformation Services business. He is a recognized global thought leader, futurist, and author on the future of work and workforce transformation. He has led multiple research efforts on the global workforce, the emerging digital economy, the rise of artificial intelligence, and the transformation of work. Ravin has led numerous research projects for the World Economic Forum, including many of its ground-breaking studies on the transformation of work and the global workforce. He is a regular participant and presenter at the World Economic Forum’s annual meetings in Davos and Dalian/Tianjin and is a member of the forum’s Steering Committee on Work and Employment.

Ravin has been a featured speaker at conferences in North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, the Middle East, and Latin America. He has also been featured and quoted extensively by leading business media, including CNN, BBC, The Wall Street Journal, CNBC, Fortune, FT, The Nikkei (Japan), Les Echoes (France), De Telegraaf (Netherlands), South China Morning Post, and Dubai One TV among others. Ravin was also an advisor to and featured prominently on PBS’s widely acclaimed documentary series The Future of Work. Ravin is a frequent guest lecturer at universities around the world, including Oxford University, Northwestern University, New York University, and the University of Southern California.

John Boudreau is recognized worldwide as one of the leading evidence-based visionaries on the future of work and organization. Through breakthrough research on the bridge between work, superior human capital, leadership, and sustainable competitive advantage, John W. Boudreau, Ph.D. is much sought after by organizations, businesses, and the academic world for his insight and innovation in the fields of Human Resources, Human Capital Management, and Executive Development.

Dr. Boudreau is Professor Emeritus of Management and Organization and a Senior Research Scientist with the Center for Effective Organizations at the Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California. His large-scale research studies and focused field research addresses the future of work and the global HR profession, work automation, HR measurement and analytics, decision-based HR, executive mobility, HR information systems, and organizational staffing and development.

A strong proponent of corporate/academic partnerships, Dr. Boudreau helped to establish and then directed the Center for Advanced Human Resource Studies (CAHRS) at Cornell University, where he was a professor for more than 20 years.

Get John and Ravin’s book here:

Work without Jobs: How to Reboot Your Organization’s Work Operating System (Management on the Cutting Edge). John Boudreau & Ravin Jesuthasan

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 234, an episode with a highly regarded economist and best-selling author, John A. List.

In this episode, John defined scaling – an overused yet often confused word in the startup world today – and elaborated the term. He also spoke about the voltage effect and how it relates to scaling. The discussion revolved around the five vital signs that every scalable idea must possess to avoid voltage drops and gave numerous realistic examples to help us visualize each sign. John also shared the top things that we must keep in mind when making decisions related to scaling.

Professor John A. List is the Kenneth C. Griffin Distinguished Service Professor in Economics at the University of Chicago. His research focuses on combining field experiments with economic theory to deepen our understanding of the economic science.

In the early 1990s, List pioneered field experiments as a methodology for testing behavioral theories and learning about behavioral principles that are shared across different domains. He co-authored the international best seller, The Why Axis, in 2013.

List was elected a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2011, and a Fellow of the Econometric Society in 2015. List received the 2010 Kenneth Galbraith Award, the 2008 Arrow Prize for Senior Economists for his research in behavioral economics in the field, and was the 2012 Yrjo Jahnsson Lecture Prize recipient. He is a current Editor of the Journal of Political Economy.

Get John's book here:

The Voltage Effect: How to Make Good Ideas Great and Great Ideas Scale. John A. List

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 233, an episode with a highly regarded leadership well-being coach, relationship expert, author, and speaker, Susan MacKenty Brady.

In this episode, Susan articulated the upside of the global pandemic, specifically the norms about how women manage, lead, communicate, and show up. She also discussed the definition of diversity and inclusiveness and the signs that companies are embracing it versus drifting away from the path of empathy and inclusive leadership. We discussed how to find the best version of yourself and how crucial it is to focus on your strengths and building from there.

Susan Mackenty Brady is the Deloitte Ellen Gabriel Chair for Women and Leadership at Simmons University and the first Chief Executive Officer of The Simmons University Institute for Inclusive Leadership. The Institute develops the mindset and skills of leaders at all stages of life so they can foster gender parity and cultures of inclusion.

As a relationship expert, leadership well-being coach, author, and speaker, Susan educates leaders and executives globally on fostering self-awareness for optimal leadership. Susan advises executive teams on how to work together effectively and create inclusion and gender parity in organizations. She is passionate about working with women at all levels of organizational leadership to fully realize—and manifest—their leadership potential.

Featured on ABC’s Good Morning America, Susan is the author of Arrive & Thrive: 7 Essential Practices of Women Navigating Leadership (McGraw-Hill, April 2022); The Inclusive Leader's Playbook (Simmons University); Mastering Your Inner Critic and 7 Other High Hurdles to Advancement: How the Best Women Leaders Practice Self-Awareness to Change What Really Matters (McGraw-Hill); and The 30-Second Guide to Coaching Your Inner Critic. A celebrated speaker, Susan has keynoted or consulted at over 500 organizations around the world.

Prior to joining Simmons, Susan was Executive Vice President at Linkage, Inc. a global leadership development consulting and training firm. She founded Linkage's Women in Leadership Institute™ and launched Linkage’s global practice on Advancing Women Leaders and Inclusive Leadership, and led the field research behind the 7 Leadership Hurdles Women Leaders Face in the Workforce™. Dedicated to inclusively and collaboratively inspiring every girl to realize her full potential, Susan serves as emeritus board member of the not-for-profit Strong Women, Strong Girls.

Get Susan's book here:

Arrive & Thrive: 7 Essential Practices of Women Navigating Leadership. Janet Foutty, Lynn Perry Wooten, Ph.D., Susan MacKenty Brady.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 232, an episode with best-selling author and Customer and Employee Experience Strategist, Dr. Natalie Petouhoff.

In this episode, Natalie spoke about the need for empathy today and the shift we need to make from focusing on company-centric business strategies to creating employee and customer-centric experiences. She also discussed the importance of customer feedback and how Amazon has used it to thrive. Listening from the other person’s point of view and putting yourself in the shoes of your customers and employees is the key to better human connection and success.

Natalie is a Senior Customer Experience Strategist and Business Consultant at Genesys®. Her career spans many years in technology and customer and employee experience, holding positions in and consulting at companies including Salesforce, Hulu, Marriott, General Motors, General Electric, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Weber Shandwick, Forrester Research, PWC Consulting, Hughes Electronics, Pepsi, Verizon, Best Buy, Procter & Gamble, Chevrolet, and Electrolux.

Her Ph.D. in Material Science and Engineering from the University of California and years as a “rocket scientist” provide her with the left-brain skills to strategically analyze how things work and redesign the world for a better future.

In her endeavors, Natalie has focused on the interplay between the evolution of technology and who we are as humans. From her early days as an engineer, she remains a true believer in “what is good for employees and customers is ultimately what is also good for companies.” As a speaker and participant at Singularity University, she’s captivated by the rapid advancement and impact of exponential technologies and how they are reshaping our lives and businesses.

Natalie’s current passion is shifting outdated paradigms by juxtaposing current beliefs with seemingly contradictory ones to reveal insights to drive the future of work, customer’s experiences, businesses and humanity forward. She believes we can imbue technology with our hopes and dreams for a future focused on bettering humanity. We just need to understand what we are optimizing for and why.

Dr. Natalie is often quoted in NYTimes, USA Today, Bloomberg Businessweek, CRM Magazine, and Peppers and Rogers 1-to-1 Magazine and is also a featured commentator on TV and radio. As an accomplished public speaker, Dr. Natalie is keynote speaker at conferences, both virtual and in-person.

Get Natalie’s book here:

Empathy In Action: How to Deliver Great Customer Experiences at Scale. Tony Bates, Dr. Natalie Petouhoff

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 231, an episode with the Chairman of The Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet (GEAPP), Ravi Venkatesan.

In this episode, Ravi shared how he started believing in himself and his capabilities, which led to where he is today. He also spoke about the opportunities laying around challenges and the preparations we need to navigate these changes. The conversation revolved around the importance of perspective and mindset, how it contributes to the way we interact with other people, and how it shapes our reality.

Ravi Venkatesan is the Chairman of The Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet (GEAPP) launched at COP26 with USD10 billion of committed capital to accelerate investment in green energy transitions and renewable energy solutions. He is also UNICEF’s Special Representative for Young People and Innovation, and the Founder of the Global Alliance for Mass Entrepreneurship (GAME). He serves on the Boards of Rockefeller Foundation, Hitachi Ltd.

Ravi was the Chairman of Microsoft India, Bank of Baroda and Cummins India, and served as a co-chairman of Infosys Ltd. He is an alum of IIT Bombay and Harvard Business School. Ravi is the author of What The Heck Do I Do With My Life: How To Flourish In Our Turbulent Times and Conquering the Chaos: Win in India, Win Everywhere. He was voted as one of India’s best management thinkers by Thinkers50 and as Microsoft’s Alumni Hero 2020.

Under Venkatesan's leadership between 2004 and 2011, India became Microsoft's second-largest geographic area and one of its fastest growing markets. Microsoft India was rated one of the country's most respected companies, among the most admired brands, and one of India's best employers.

Get Ravi’s new book here:

What The Heck Do I Do With My Life: How To Flourish In Our Turbulent Times. Ravi Venkatesan

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 230, an episode with best-selling author and dynamic keynote speaker, Don Schmincke.

In this episode, Don spoke about the counterintuitive insights of successful companies, why some organizations have a lack of performance, and the challenges that CEOs today need to address. He also shared his journey and discovery of Biological Leadership and how it relates to the leadership that organizations apply today.

Don has been accused by a NY press agency of providing “the most provocative and sensational view of business than any other speaker today.”

What else would you expect from an MIT and Johns Hopkins researcher who was nearly arrested as a capitalist spy in the Soviet Bloc, got shot off an aircraft carrier, survived in the Kurdish capital as the Ayatollah held hostages in Tehran, and developed missile inertial guidance systems while his frat brothers took Vegas (later portrayed in the movie “21”)?

Don Schmincke’s irreverent humor and unconventional methods provide audiences with such a refreshing change compared to other status-quo topics that he’s been called the world’s “management renegade.” His patent-pending offerings transcend typical programs via refreshing alternatives to trendy theories, unproven methods, and phony “experts.” The industry agrees.

Don’s renowned books are The Code of the Executive and High Altitude Leadership (with NBC Emmy-nominated climber Chris Warner), which has been published in over 10 languages, endorsed by leading authorities, and recommended by top business schools and featured by CNN, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, MSNBC.com, and more than 60 industry publications annually.

Don has been the host of the Executive Insights TV series and The Leader’s Code radio program, and he has been acclaimed as a Top 10 speaker for the world’s largest CEO organization.

The high failure rates of pop-management theories drove Don’s research using anthropology, evolutionary genetics, and biology to dispel the “program-of-the-month” syndrome that has frustrated CEOs and HR managers for so long. By using Don’s science-driven leadership methods, companies experience accelerated results in sales, employee satisfaction, and cultural alignment. He admits, “Our work is politically incorrect but scientifically accurate.”

Get Don’s Books Here:

High Altitude Leadership: What the World's Most Forbidding Peaks Teach Us About Success

The Code of the Executive: Forty-seven Ancient Samurai Principles Essential for Twenty-first Century Leadership Success

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 229, an episode with a Certified Forensic Interviewer, Michael Reddington.

In this episode, Michael shares his knowledge as a CFI and how interviewing skills can be translated to the business world with the Disciplined Listening Method, an approach which he developed. He also spoke about the mindset shift that leaders and organizations need to take to gain a better understanding and awareness of other people's perspectives and reasoning.

Michael Reddington CFI, is a certified forensic interviewer and the president of InQuasive Inc., a company that integrates the key components of effective nonconfrontational interview techniques with current business research for executives.

As a Certified Forensic Interviewer, Michael achieved the highest professional designation available in the field of interview and interrogation and spent over a decade training investigators around the world on the successful application of nonconfrontational interview and interrogation techniques. Never one to be satisfied with his achievements, Michael arrived at two key realizations while expanding his observation and persuasive skill sets. First, the very best leaders and interrogators capitalize on the same two core skills - vision and influence. Second, the cognitive processes that lead customers to commit to saying, "I'll buy it," employees to commit to saying, "I'll do it," and suspects to commit to truthfully saying, "I did it" are all nearly identical. These realizations caused Michael to recognize he could teach executives how to reduce missed opportunities and increase commitments to action. As a result, he developed the Disciplined Listening Method, transitioned to serving as an executive resource, and founded InQuasive, Inc. Michael created the Disciplined Listening Method by integrating current business communication research and best practices with components of four nonconfrontational interview and interrogation techniques. The resulting educational content represents a new and in-depth approach to applying strategic, ethical observation and persuasion techniques across the spectrum of business conversations.

Companies have invited Michael, government agencies, and executive groups to facilitate his programs across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. He has led over one thousand programs and educated over ten thousand participants from over 50 countries. He leads programs and advisory sessions designed to teach participants to activate the truth in the areas of leadership communication, sales, negotiation, conflict resolution, customer service, candidate interviews, family conversations, and public speaking/influential instruction.

Michael goes well beyond facilitating and advising. He applies customized content specifically designed to meet the needs of each participant with a humorous and intelligent delivery style. His diligent preparation, attention to each participant's concerns, and added context coalesce to drive home the learning objectives. With Michael, it's never a presentation, seminar, or advisory session; it's always an experience.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 228, an interview with former Indiana University athletic director, Fred Glass.

In this episode, Fred discussed how Indianapolis managed to keep the Colts, its strategy to sustain it, and the impact and advantages that the team provides to the city. This podcast will make you think about the economics of business in sports and understand the deep thinking behind the scenes that makes it all possible.

Fred served as a law clerk for U.S. District Court Judge S. Hugh Dillin, also an IU alumnus. From 1989 to 1993, he was chief of staff to former Indiana Gov. Evan Bayh, and, in 2000, helmed the transition team chief for former Indianapolis Mayor Bart Peterson.

Peterson appointed Fred, then a partner in the law firm of Baker & Daniels (now Faegre Baker Daniels), to the city's Capital Improvement Board, which oversees Lucas Oil Stadium, the Indiana Convention Center, Conseco Fieldhouse, and Victory Field.

Fred negotiated a number of sports-related wins for the city, including: adding Indianapolis to the permanent hosting rotation for the NCAA Final Four Tournament; laying the groundwork for the city's successful 2012 Super Bowl bid; and putting together the strategy and plans for development of Lucas Oil Stadium.

In 2008, President McRobbie appointed Fred as Indiana University's vice president and director of athletics. Since assuming the role, Fred has worked tirelessly to ensure IU returns to its rightful place as one of the premier athletic departments in the country. His tenure has been marked, in part, by a deep commitment to the wellness, development, and achievement of the students under his charge.

His 24 Sports, One Team philosophy has brought together student athletes from all IU sports, encouraging them to attend each other's games, support one another, and function as an extended IU family.

Get Fred’s Book here:

Making Your Own Luck: From a Skid Row Bar to Rebuilding Indiana University Athletics by Fred Glass

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 227, an episode with a well-recognized professor, Ben M. Bensaou.

Many people think that you need a genius leader or need to become a start-up to innovate. But we all have the potential to innovate.

In this episode, Ben speaks about everyone's role in innovation and how it can be performed like a habit in our everyday lives. He also discussed the need to develop a deeper understanding of customers and create a culture of collaborating with customers to offer the ideal combination of performance, attributes, price, and other characteristics that customers need and want, or produce a product and service with a powerful market appeal.

Ben M. Bensaou is a Professor of Technology Management and Professor of Asian Business and Comparative Management at INSEAD, Fontainebleau, France. He served as Dean of Executive Education in 2018–2020. He was a Visiting Associate Professor at Harvard Business School in 1998-1999, a Senior Fellow at the Wharton School of Management in 2007-2008, and a Visiting Scholar at the Haas School of Business at the University of California Berkeley in 2013-2015.

He received his PhD in Management from MIT Sloan School of Management, Cambridge, US, and his MA in Management Science from Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo, Japan; his Diplôme d’Ingénieur (MSc) in Civil Engineering and DEA in Mechanical Engineering from respectively the Ecole Nationale des TPE, Lyon and the Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble, two Grandes Ecoles in France.

His research and teaching activities focus on: (1) how to create innovating capabilities and competencies as a way to build an innovating organization and culture; (2) Blue Ocean Strategy and value innovation implementation, and roll out processes across the whole organization; (3) how to build social capital within firms; (4) new forms of organizations, in particular networked corporations, strategic alliances, joint ventures, and value-adding partnerships; and (5) the impact of information technology on innovation. Professor Bensaou addresses these issues from an international comparative perspective, with a special focus on Japanese organizations. Professor Bensaou's research on buyer-supplier relations in the US and Japanese auto industries won him the Best Doctoral Dissertation Award in the field of information systems and a finalist nomination for the Free Press Award for outstanding dissertation research in the field of business policy and strategy. His case studies on innovation won the 2006, 2008 and 2009 ECCH Best Case Awards (with Kim & Mauborgne). His publications include papers in Academy of Management Journal, Management Science, Information Systems Research, Organization Science, Strategic Management Journal, Journal of International Business Studies, Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, book chapters and conference proceedings. He has been a member of the Editorial Board of Information Systems Research, MIS Quarterly and MISQ Executive. He has been listed in the Who’s Who in the World since 1998.

He has been consulting for Asian, European and US corporations since 1993. At INSEAD, Professor Bensaou developed two new MBA courses: 'Managing Networked Organisations' and 'Understanding Japanese Business.' He also teaches courses on Competitive Strategy, Innovation, Blue Ocean Strategy and Value Innovation, Information Technology and Comparative Management (in English and French). He was a Visiting Professor at Aoyama Gakuin University, Tokyo, where he taught his 'Information Technology and Corporate Transformation' course. He has also been teaching (in Japanese) in Executive Education programs at Keio Business School, Tokyo, Japan.

Get Ben's book here:

Built to Innovate: Essential Practices to Wire Innovation into Your Company’s DNA. Ben M. Bensaou

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 226, an episode with the CEO of Tournesol, Alicia Hare.

In this episode, Alicia spoke about a new and unique approach of leadership calledthe lead brighter approach, which focuses on improving the quality of people's lives through things that really matter and make a difference. A brighter future is about shared prosperity, quality, connection, discovery, and joy.

Alicia is the founder and CEO of Tournesol, a leadership consulting firm that partners with CEOs, senior leaders, and their teams in times of significant change. Tournesol's unique lead brighter approach helps leaders harness the full power of their platform to elevate performance and improve the quality of people's lives.

Alicia's clients include CEOs and senior leaders at Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 companies. Among others, she's worked with: the CEO of a multibillion-dollar healthcare company to use his platform to transform health and healthcare in America, improving the health of millions; the CEO of one of the world's largest global hospitality companies to address social isolation, bettering the lives of millions of customers while driving business performance; and the President and COO of a global entertainment company to reset the company's strategy for worldwide growth and impact. Her efforts have resulted in large-scale organizational transformation, sustainable business results, and meaningful social change.

Before founding Tournesol, Alicia was a president at SYPartners; strategy executive at Target; head of business transformation for Sensis, an Australian media company; and principal at Destra Consulting Group, an organizational effectiveness consulting firm. She earned her B.A. from Rice, M.Ed. from Harvard, MBA from The Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, and Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

Alicia is the author of The Unfolding Path: A Way to Live and Lead in Our Times, which inspires and guides leaders to do the deep inner work required to step up and lead others to a brighter future.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 225, an interview with expert M&A advisor and best-selling author, Mark Sirower.

In this episode, Mark elaborated on the meaning of synergy and how it impacts businesses. He also spoke about strategies to maximize the chances of success in M&A and how to deal with its common challenges.

Mark Sirower is an internationally recognized expert on M&A and the author of the best-selling book, The Synergy Trap: How Companies Lose the Acquisition Game (Simon & Schuster, 1997) and co-author of The Synergy Solution: How Companies Win the Mergers & Acquisitions Game (Harvard Business Review Press, February 2022).

He is a U.S. leader in Deloitte's M&A and Restructuring practice, where he joined in 2008 to launch the M&A Strategy practice. Mark has advised senior executive teams on hundreds of transactions over the past 25 years from strategy and diligence through post-merger integration. Previously, he built the Deals Strategy Group at PwC and was the global leader of the M&A practice at the Boston Consulting Group, where he developed innovative approaches to crafting M&A strategies, planning integrations, delivering synergies, and creating shareholder value. Mark has taught M&A at the Wharton School, and has taught at the NYU Stern School Executive MBA program for 30 years.

Get Mark's book here:

The Synergy Solution: How Companies Win the Mergers & Acquisitions Game. Mark Sirower

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 224, an episode with sought-after keynote speaker and coach, Patricia Stark.

In this episode, Patricia spoke about the importance of building a genuine connection with other people, and thoughts about self-belief. She also discussed the factors that restrict us from communicating effectively and how we can deal with them.

Patricia Stark is a Certified Personal and Executive Coach (CPEC of the CaPP Institute - Coaching and Positive Psychology) and a Certified Body Language Trainer (Body Language Institute, Washington DC) and holds certificates in Eclectic Cognitive Behavior Therapy and Visualization/Guided Imagery (LIU). She heads Patricia Stark Communications and specializes in helping clients build their Calmfidence® in interviews, on-camera, and in daily life with tangible strategies for powerful communication skills, mastering self-talk, and stress and anxiety relievers used by the pros.

Patricia has extensive experience as a health and medical news anchor, radio interview host, and appears regularly as a TV guest expert on the topics of communication and confidence. Her new book, Calmfidence: How to Trust Yourself, Tame Your Inner Critic, and Shine in Any Spotlight, was published in September 2021 by Sounds True/Macmillan Publishers.

With over 20 years of first-hand experience in front of the camera and on stage, Patricia is one of the few trainers in the country who has worked extensively in front of the camera in both broadcast and corporate media. Patricia has appeared in over 2,000 Fortune 500 corporate media productions in just about every sector of industry as a moderator, trainer, host, and corporate spokesperson, and has anchored national and international news. She is a member of SAG/AFTRA, has appeared in numerous television commercials and programs, and has held a recurring role on Law & Order: Criminal Intent.

Get Patricia's book here:

Calmfidence: How to Trust Yourself, Tame Your Inner Critic, and Shine in Any Spotlight by Patricia Stark

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For this episode, let's revisit one of Strategy Skills classics where we take a brief look at how to conduct a value chain analysis. 

Click here to see the full study and here to see the merger study and market entry study.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 222, an episode with bestselling author and award-winning consultant Stan Bernard, MD, M.B.A.

In this episode, Stan spoke about the transcender system and how it has changed the game for many companies that are globally known today. He discussed how we can use this approach to communicate, inspire, and influence people. We will learn why top executives consider the transcender system the most powerful winning system for companies and their products.

Stan Bernard, MD, M.B.A., is an internationally recognized, award-winning global competition consultant, keynote speaker, and bestselling author. He is the president of Bernard Associates, L.L.C. and the creator of the Transcender System™. Dr. Bernard is a former Senior Fellow at the Wharton School of Business, where he taught marketing to M.B.A. students for 14 years. He has been featured on television and in leading publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Bloomberg Businessweek.

For nearly four decades, Dr. Bernard has consulted with over a dozen Fortune 500 firms and 150 other leading companies spanning six continents. He has been involved in more than 300 product launches involving over 60 countries. Over 15,000 professionals have participated in his firm's Competitive Simulations ("business war games"), Transcender System Training Workshops, Transcender System Seminars, and speaking engagements.

Dr. Bernard received his M.B.A. from The Wharton School of Business and his medical degree from Baylor College of Medicine.

Brands Don't Win: How Transcenders Change the Game. Stan Bernard, MD, M.B.A.

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For this episode, let's revisit one of Strategy Skills classics where we discuss corporate strategy. In this episode, we explain why conventional and step-by-step strategy analysis will always yield the incorrect answers in any corporate strategy study.

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For this episode, let's revisit one of Strategy Skills classics, where we discuss when a consultant must dissent and how it should be done.

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For this episode, let's revisit one of Strategy Skills classics where we shared five tips to fight fatigue.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 218, an episode with a sought-after keynote speaker and a National Champion storyteller, Kindra Hall. Get Kindra's book here: https://amzn.to/3sRmOp3 In this episode, Kindra spoke about the importance of understanding the power of stories that an individual tells and believes and how it impacts our daily lives. She discussed how self-stories influence everything you do, everything you say, and everything you are.

Kindra Hall is President and Chief Storytelling Officer at Steller Collective, a consulting firm focused on the strategic application of storytelling to today’s communication challenges. Kindra is one of the most sought-after keynote speakers trusted by global brands to deliver presentations and training that inspire teams and individuals to better communicate the value of their company, their products and their individuality through strategic storytelling.

What began as a chance encounter at age 13 with a storytelling cassette tape grew into a passion for not only telling stories, but a mastery for teaching others the methods and science of storytelling so they can better tell their own.

Kindra was a National Champion storyteller, a member of the Board of Directors of the National Storytelling Network and has her master’s degree in communications where she conducted original research studying the role of storytelling in defining and revealing organizational culture.

She is a former Director of Marketing and VP of Sales. Today, Kindra’s work can be seen at Inc.com, Entrepreneur.com and as a contributing editor for SUCCESS Magazine. Kindra’s message spans all industries and her clients include Facebook, Hilton Hotels, Tyson Foods, Target, Berkshire Hathaway and the Harvard Medical School. Her much anticipated book will be released by Harper Leadership in the fall of 2019.

Regardless of the industry, Kindra has become a conference favorite for her clients. The blend of inspiration and education in her keynotes mean that audiences leave feeling excited and equipped to finally put their stories to work in a tangible way.

Choose Your Story, Change Your Life: Silence Your Inner Critic and Rewrite Your Life from the Inside Out. Kindra Hall: https://amzn.to/3sRmOp3

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For this episode, let's revisit one of Strategy Skills classics where we discuss a special type of case study called a period case study which is significantly harder to do, but incredibly useful.

Most consultants prefer case studying the latest and greatest fad, which is extremely misleading, as explained in this podcast.

Click here to see the full study and here to see the merger study and market entry study.

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For this episode, let's revisit one of Strategy Skills classics where we discuss the tough work being done by the Organizational Design team. We discuss the three tensions which drive all Organizational Design recommendations and the trade-offs required. We also spoke about the most important requirement to implement a new culture and structure at any company, and it is quite simple to do. As you will see, the Organizational Design stream is struggling in the study.

Click here to see the full Corporate Strategy & Transformation study and here to see the merger study and market entry study.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 215, an episode with an award-winning entrepreneur, business leader, and best-selling business author, Catherine Bell. Get Catherine's book here: https://amzn.to/3Gzdqvf

In this episode, Catherine spoke about the importance of humanity and trust in every organization. She highlighted that as a leader, we need to pause and understand where we are as a person, which allows us the discretionary space to make the best decisions. Mindful and self-aware leaders are higher performers compared to those who are not.

Catherine Bell focuses on awakening and sustaining the fire within as Founder of The Awakened Company with passion, purpose, and play. Catherine founded BluEra, a Profit 500 executive search firm. She now helps organizations develop healthy culture strategies and hosts webinars on leadership and the Enneagram.

She also started The Awakened Project, a jewelry line that helps females get out of poverty by starting their businesses with microloans. Catherine has also been a Board Member of the Distress Centre and Open to Grow. She is currently an Advisor to the Impact Society and Telus Spark. Catherine teaches at the Queen's (Smith) School of Business in their Masters of Innovation and Entrepreneurship Program. She has completed the Institute of Corporate Directors Not for Profit Essentials Program, is Certified in the Enneagram and Yoga Teacher Training, and has an MBA from Queen's University.

The Awakened Company. Catherine Bell: https://amzn.to/3Gzdqvf

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 214, an episode with CEO and executive coach, Emily Bermes. Get Emily's book here: https://amzn.to/3B2vZXD In this episode, Emily spoke about the challenges that new generation executives are facing, particularly during the trying times of the pandemic. She discussed how having no physical role model or person to look up to impacts how an executive behaves and performs, and how executives cope up with that. Emily Bermes is the CEO of a human capital consulting firm. She has devoted her career to helping executives—from Fortune 100 companies to industry-shifting startups—successfully assimilate into new roles, create strong teams, and develop cultures that attract and retain the best talent.

Combining more than 20 years of experience as a partner-level management consultant and executive coach with her background as a quantitative researcher, Emily is a master at creating customized, elegant solutions for the toughest organizational and human capital challenges. She has successfully assimilated nearly 100 executives across multiple industries.

Bombproof: A Field Proven Guide for the New-to-Role Executive. Emily Bermes: https://amzn.to/3B2vZXD

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For this episode, let's revisit one of Strategy Skills classics where we discuss why you should avoid the strategy echo chamber.

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For this episode, let's revisit one of the classics by Strategy Skills where we discuss what makes a study a "transformation study" and how to determine if an organization is going through a transformation or something else, such as restructuring.

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For this episode, let's revisit one of the classics by Strategy Skills where we discuss how to complete logical case studies.

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For this episode, let's revisit one of the classics by Strategy Skills where we discuss the 3 career path options that consultants face once they become partners. We discuss each career path and what it means for a consultant's career. These are differences that are crucial to know and understand because partner career paths that appear to be more attractive often lead to disappointing results. For example, did you know it is a really bad idea to emulate the career path of all the McKinsey and BCG partners who appear in the McKinsey Quarterly, BCG perspectives, and HBR? This counter-intuitive podcast will explain why.

Many consultants don't spend enough time analyzing and considering the implications of following each career path. They take a superficial look at who are the partners most known and respected within the firm and try to emulate those partners. Yet, down the road, they often end up at a dead end.

We further address which partner career path you should follow if your goal is to become a CEO one day.

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For this episode, let's revisit one of the classics by Strategy Skills where we talk about one of the issues that we deal with at Firmsconsulting and which many ex employees of major consulting firms (e.g. ex McKinsey and ex BCG consultants) encounter as they embark on building their own boutique consulting firms or even when they join other consulting firm as employees.

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How do you become an outstanding management consultant? Should you excel at analysis? Should you master problem-solving? Should you become the world's most gifted communicator?

You could master all of the aforementioned items and still be an average management consultant at best. Great management consultants have all these skills but they have one more quality that makes them great, they are not just competent business people but they are also artists.

For this episode, let's revisit one of the classics by Strategy Skills where we explain the mindset we encourage teams to use on the study. This is the mindset I used in my career and it is very different from what you would expect.

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For this episode, let's revisit one of the classics by Strategy Skills with Bill Matassoni, where we discussed a topic about Tesla's strategy.

Every now and then, someone comes along and makes the subject of management both fun and insightful. That’s what Bill Matassoni has done in his memoir—a combination of compelling stories and contrarian substance—that covers his forty-year career selling what he calls “ephemeral things.” In addition to the memoir, Bill plays host to a series of videos that are entertaining, irreverent, and filled with his conviction that marketing is the primary driver of progress in both commercial and social markets. We will soon release Bill Matassoni's memoir and documentary series. If you would like to read a bonus chapter, view advance content and receive other exclusive strategy material, please sign up below.

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For this episode, let's revisit one of the classics by Strategy Skills, where we discuss whether a strategy (functional) partner can/should lead the workshop over an energy (sector) partner. There is a difference, and the answer is not obvious.

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For this episode, let's revisit one of the classics by Strategy Skills, where we answer a question, "Does the strategy workshop offer precise answers?"

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 204, an episode with a recognized expert on cybersecurity, privacy, identity theft, fraud, and personal finance, Adam Levin.

In this episode, Adam speaks about various digital threats that individuals and organizations face today. He shares that anyone can be a cyber-crime target: consumers, businesses, companies, or the government. He shares valuable insights about cybersecurity and ways to protect yourself and your organization from cyber-crimes.

Adam K. Levin is the Former Director of the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs, the founder of CyberScout, and co-founder of Credit.com. He is a graduate of Stanford University and the University of Michigan School of Law. Levin is a sought-after speaker who, during his career in the public and private sectors, has shared his expertise with numerous state and federal regulators and legislative committees, and appeared before a wide variety of organizations—government, law enforcement, public interest, education, human resources, insurance and financial services—throughout the United States and Europe.

Levin's mission is to educate consumers, businesses, law enforcement officials, and lawmakers on identity management and protection, privacy, credit, and election security issues. He has appeared on The Today Show, Good Morning America, CBS Evening News, CNBC Closing Bell, MSNBC, Fox Business, Fox & Friends, ABC World News Tonight, ABC News Nightline, PBS Nightly Business Report, and many others. His radio appearances include NPR, ABC News Radio, Bloomberg Radio, the Associated Press Radio, CBS News Radio, 1010 Wins, WTOP and SiriusXM. Levin is also a regular commentator for print and digital journalism, including the New York Times, Associated Press, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and the Chicago Tribune.

Check out a fun cybersecurity podcast with Adam Levin:

"What the Hack with Adam Levin" is true cybercrime with dad jokes. It’s a no-shame zone for anyone who’s ever been scammed, hacked, phished or cyber-bushwhacked. Every week, it features fascinating people talking about the terrifying, annoying, embarrassing, or infuriating things they’ve experienced online. Join consumer affairs veteran Adam Levin with co-hosts Beau “Hack Me” Friedlander and Travis “Here's What Actually Happened” Taylor for a good story and tips on how to make yourself a little harder to hack.

Get Adam's book here:

Swiped: How to Protect Yourself in a World Full of Scammers, Phishers, and Identity Thieves. Adam Levin: https://amzn.to/3sKTO42

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For this episode, let's revisit one of the classics by Strategy Skills, where we answer a question, "Should I email the full deck to participants before the strategy workshop?"

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 202, an episode with one of the leading innovators in digital marketing, Jeff Rosenblum.

In this episode, Jeff speaks about effective marketing and advertising that both informs and inspires. He shares how businesses can help customers feel empowered to solve their problems and create a better customer experience.

We will learn why businesses that embrace empowerment, transparency, and authenticity are essential in today's marketing world.

Jeff Rosenblum is an author, a documentary filmmaker, and an advertising agency founder. He is widely regarded as one of the leading innovators in the field of digital marketing and has worked on teams that have helped revolutionize dozens of industries. Jeff is the co-writer and director of a groundbreaking documentary about the advertising industry's future, The Naked Brand. It reveals the surprising story about corporations' ability to improve the world, one small step at a time.

Jeff is the Founding Partner of Questus, a digital marketing agency that has worked with some of the world's most influential brands, including American Express, Apple, Bloomberg, Capital One, Discovery Channel, Disney, Driscoll's, General Mills, Ford, ESPN, The New York Times, Suzuki Motorcycles, The NFL, The Wall Street Journal, Universal Orlando, Verizon and more. When he's not driving his team and his clients crazy, Jeff is on an Advisory Board for the Make-A-Wish Foundation as well as Special Spectators. Jeff and his family built a school in a remote village in Nepal while working with the BuildOn organization. Despite barely graduating college, he has lectured at some of the world's top universities and presented at some of the marketing industry's most influential conferences.

Get Jeff's book here:

Exponential: Transform Your Brand by Empowering Instead of Interrupting. Jeff Rosenblum: https://amzn.to/3EmxAr5

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For this episode, let's revisit one of the classics by Strategy Skills, where we cover a topic about how to handle a difficult client situation and what happens when a strategy firm overbills a client.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 200, an episode with a globally recognized performance coach, Jason Goldsmith. Get Jason's book here: https://amzn.to/3GVf3ny

In this episode, Jason speaks about his experience shifting careers: from running a boat company to becoming a highly sought-after performance coach. We will learn how self-coaching, awareness, and identifying one's purpose can change your perspective, and eventually, your life.

For people who always see things in a negative light, constantly doubt themselves, hold themselves back, and make decisions out of fear, this is for you.

Jason Goldsmith is the founder of Goldsmith Performance and has coached multiple Major champions and numerous top-fifty golfers. Jason emphasizes combining the mental and physical aspects of optimal performance in high-pressure environments. His accomplishments in golf include assisting Jason Day and Justin Rose in achieving the number-one world ranking and helping Rose win both the Gold Medal at the 2016 Olympics and the 2018 FedEx Cup.

Jason is also the president and founder of Mustard, a computer-vision-enabled social platform that is revolutionizing performance coaching by creating proprietary CV/AI technology in partnership with legends Dr. Tom House, Mia Hamm, Drew Brees, Nolan Ryan, Anson Dorrance and several other hall-of-fame coaches and athletes. His practice has expanded into other sports in recent years, including the NBA, MLB, NFL, USTA, Olympic athletes and coaches, Division I and II college athletes, nationally ranked juniors, Fortune 500 executives, and professionals.

Take Charge of You: How Self Coaching Can Transform Your Life and Career. Jason Goldsmith. https://amzn.to/3GVf3ny

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For this episode, let's revisit one of the classics by Strategy Skills, where we covered a topic about analyses.

• Are the analyses always the same for a strategy workshop? In other words, what determines the analyses you should undertake for a strategy workshop?
• How does one set objectives for the workshop? 
• How many strategy workshops should be completed during an engagement? 
• Why are top-down analyses so important? 

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For this episode, let's revisit one of the classics by Strategy Skills, where we cover a topic about what to do if the client demands more analyses.

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For this episode, let's revisit one of the classics by Strategy Skills, where we cover a topic about what happens if the client asks for proof of the strategy.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 196, an episode with an inspiring speaker, author, and coach, Kay Formanek. Get Kay's book here: https://amzn.to/3EgXNYP

Kay Formanek is the Founder and CEO of Diversity and Performance, a company committed to creating new insights and more conscious diversity leaders. She is the author of Beyond D&I, a book that equips leaders with strategic models and practical tools for advancing Diversity Performance in their organization.

Kay is a leading authority on diversity and inclusion, a global speaker, board member, contributor to leading business schools, and advisor and expert to various top advisory organizations. She brings over 30 years of experience of navigating diversity journeys and cultural transformations in over 50 organizations spread across the world. She was Partner and Managing Director in Accenture, where she played a crucial role in advancing diversity and inclusion for 25 years. She also assumes the role of Inclusive Leadership Coach and Expert in Aberkyn and McKinsey.

Within the framework of her own company, Diversity and Performance BV, Kay has spent the last six years undertaking extensive study and research in the areas of diversity, inclusion, equity, leadership, and purpose. She has collaborated with multiple organizations to develop and test her thinking. Her experience and research led to the development of the anchor diversity models: The Virtuous Circle and the Integrated Diversity Model.

Kay believes in the importance of knowledge and personal learning to overcome personal and systemic bias and that personal learning is at the heart of becoming a courageous and inclusive leader of diversity. She has developed the global certification program for corporates, government institutions, professional services organizations, and NGO's entitled "Inclusive Leadership and Mitigating Bias" Certification. Diplomats, ambassadors, D&I practitioners, leaders, professors, and many individuals who wish to play a role in advancing inclusive diversity have attended certifications around the world: Dubai, Singapore, South Africa, Boston, London, Brussels, Amsterdam, and more than 30 other locations.

In this episode, Kay spoke about the importance of diversity, inclusion, and equity in an organization. We will learn more about the underlying reason behind why people discriminate, stereotype, and why people have unconscious bias.

Beyond D&I: Leading Diversity with Purpose and Inclusiveness. Kay Formanek: https://amzn.to/3EgXNYP

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For this episode, let's revisit one of the classics by Strategy Skills, where we cover a topic about understanding the readiness and level of confidence required to go out there and lead.

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For this episode, let's revisit one of the classics by Strategy Skills where we cover a topic which we believe is very important and we think will resonate with everyone. As always, we focus on critical yet overlooked insights. 

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 193, an episode with a master executive coach, Shir Nir. Shir Nir is the CEO & Partner at Handel Group an executive life coaching & corporate consulting company dedicated to teaching people how to realize their personal and professional visions. Shir brings more than 20 years of experience working with executives, teams, and organizations to increase performance and create organizational, personal, and financial growth. Shir is an expert in designing and implementing wide cultural initiatives that evolve an organization and its people. He works with and leads executive teams to impact the results of their organizations and enhance organizational alignment and productivity. He is currently advising several executive teams and senior leaders on topics such as building honest cultures, enhancing organizational success, organizational alignment, leadership development, mergers and acquisitions, strategy, and talent management & development.

Prior to working at the Handel Group, Shir was a management consultant as well as a partner and owner of a knowledge management consulting firm where he worked to enable organizations such as UNFPA, Head Start, and PSEG to name a few, to design, develop, and implement knowledge sharing cultures and structures as well as enhance leadership and collaboration.

In this episode, Shir talked about the importance of a balanced lifestyle for people, the value of integrity, and how to improve through self-assessment.

The Current Reality Quiz https://iu.coach/STRATEGY-CRQ

This quiz is the first step in truly designing your dream life when it comes to your career. It breaks out your life into different areas to help you get a better handle (or Handel) on what needs attention, love, and a figurative swift kick.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 192, an episode with an award-winning CEO, communications expert and advisor, Sabrina Horn. Get Sabrina’s book here: https://amzn.to/3oNDHz9

Sabrina Horn is currently CEO of HORN Strategy, LLC, a consultancy focused on helping entrepreneurs and CEOs navigate the early stages of their businesses. She serves as an advisor and board member for a number of organizations and is a frequent speaker at industry forums and leadership conferences. She founded Horn Group, a public relations firm, with $500 and five years’ job experience, becoming one of few female CEOs in Silicon Valley in the early 1990s. Over a quarter century, her firm advised thousands of executives and their companies—from the hottest startups to the Fortune 500—doing so with a special focus on authenticity. Horn Group received national acclaim as Best US Employer and Best US Tech Agency. In 2015, Horn oversaw her firm’s successful acquisition by Finn Partners, a global marketing company.

Horn, as a young executive, learned about leadership on the job through two lenses: one, as CEO growing and running her firm, the other, as strategic advisor guiding her clients through their own unique business challenges. Through her journey, she learned that there are no shortcuts to achieving long term business success. Still, she confesses to having made many mistakes, and now in her first book, she shares what she learned about how to make it without faking it.

In this episode, Horn talked about the importance of honesty, humility and authenticity for business and humanity, and how leaders find the righteous path forward through this.

For leaders or individuals who believe in integrity as success’ recipe, this is for you.

Make It, Don’t Fake It: Leading with Authenticity for Real Business Success. Sabrina Horn: https://amzn.to/3oNDHz9

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 191, an episode with a highly regarded lecturer, Carole Robin. Get Carole’s book here: https://amzn.to/3lAmUhi

Carole Robin, Ph.D. was known as the Queen of Touchy Feely and received the MBA Distinguished Teaching Award and the Silver Apple award for contributions to alumni programming. She was the Dorothy J. King Lecturer in Leadership at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business where she helped to further develop the Interpersonal Dynamics Course including co-developing the Executive version. She also became the Director of the Arbuckle Leadership Fellows Program. When she retired in 2017, a scholarship was established in her name. Subsequently, she co-founded Leaders in Tech, a nonprofit which brings two decades of lessons to Silicon Valley startups.

Carole was a partner in an international consulting firm and a senior manager in a Fortune 500 company. She has provided executive coaching, leadership development and executive team building to a wide range of business, government, and nonprofit clients ranging in size from startups to global and Fortune 500 organizations and is currently an advisor on several boards. She is the recipient of two Congressional Awards for Community Service.

In this episode, Carole discussed more about “Touchy Feely” and the importance of connecting to people and how it greatly affects an individual real time, or in the future.

CONNECT: Building Exceptional Relationships with Family, Friends, and Colleagues. Carole Robin & David Bradford: https://amzn.to/3lAmUhi

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Welcome to the bonus episode of Strategy Skills with a sought after international speaker and leader, Simon Mainwaring. Get Simon’s new book here: https://amzn.to/3wxrEZX

Simon Mainwaring is the founder/CEO of We First, a strategic consultancy accelerating growth and impact for purpose-driven brands. He’s a member of the Steering Committee of Sustainable Brands, the Forbes Business Council, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in London.

His company We First was included in Real Leaders list for the Top 100 Impact Companies in the US for 2018 and We First was a B Corps ‘Best for The World’ Honoree in 2019. He is a Jury Member at the Cannes Lions Festival for the Sustainable Development Goals in 2021 and a Jury Member of PRWeek’s ‘Purpose Awards’ in 2020.

Simon’s first book, We First was named as Best Marketing Book of the Year by strategy+business, was a New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Amazon bestseller. Simon was a Real Leaders Top 50 Keynote Speakers in the World in 2020, and he has been featured on the cover of the National Speaker’s Magazine (U.S.).

Prior to starting We First, Simon spent 15 years as a writer, Creative Director and Worldwide Creative Director at the world’s top creative advertising agencies including Saatchi & Saatchi, Wieden & Kennedy, and Ogilvy working on brands such a Nike, Toyota, and Motorola, receiving over 60 awards at major advertising festivals including the Cannes Advertising Festival, the One Show, the British Design & Art Direction Awards.

In this episode, Simon spoke about the importance of the role that everyone plays in solving the challenges we face today and how leaders can extraordinarily grow their business while solving social and environmental crisis to bring forth a better future.

For leaders and individuals who wants to take part in building a better future for the world, this is for you.

Lead with We: The Business Revolution That Will Save Our Future. Simon Mainwaring: https://amzn.to/3wxrEZX

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 189, an episode with Rocketship.FM hosts, Michael Sacca and Mike Belsito.

Michael Sacca is the General Manager at Dribbble.com and co-founder of Rocketship.FM. He was the President at Crew, the freelance design and development marketplace, and former parent company of Unsplash, the popular stock photo website. At Crew he secured key partnerships with Squarespace and the BDC before leading the company through it's acquisition by Dribbble in 2017. His writing has been featured in the Harvard Business Review and his popular product management podcast has been written about in Inc, Forbes, The Huffington Post and Entrepreneur respectively.

Mike Belsito is the author of Startup Seed Funding for the Rest of Us and co-founder of Product Collective which organizes INDUSTRY: The Product Conference, one of the largest and top-rated product management conference series anywhere in the world. Mike has been named one of the Top 40 influencers in the field of Product Management on several occasions. Mike also serves as a Faculty member of Case Western Reserve University in the department of Design and Innovation, and is Co-Host of Rocketship.FM.

Rocketship.FM is a podcast for entrepreneurs and is part of the Podglomerate network, a podcast company that produces and distributes exciting new shows.

In this episode, Michael and Mike spoke about their career journey and how Rocketship.FM and Product Collective started. We will learn more about user personas and jobs to be done framework that most product people apply to better understand their users.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 188, an episode with a sought after international speaker and leader, Simon Mainwaring. Get Simon’s new book here: https://amzn.to/3wxrEZX

Simon Mainwaring is the founder/CEO of We First, a strategic consultancy accelerating growth and impact for purpose-driven brands. He’s a member of the Steering Committee of Sustainable Brands, the Forbes Business Council, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in London.

His company We First was included in Real Leaders list for the Top 100 Impact Companies in the US for 2018 and We First was a B Corps ‘Best for The World’ Honoree in 2019. He is a Jury Member at the Cannes Lions Festival for the Sustainable Development Goals in 2021 and a Jury Member of PRWeek’s ‘Purpose Awards’ in 2020.

Simon’s first book, We First was named as Best Marketing Book of the Year by strategy+business, was a New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Amazon bestseller. Simon was a Real Leaders Top 50 Keynote Speakers in the World in 2020, and he has been featured on the cover of the National Speaker’s Magazine (U.S.).

Prior to starting We First, Simon spent 15 years as a writer, Creative Director and Worldwide Creative Director at the world’s top creative advertising agencies including Saatchi & Saatchi, Wieden & Kennedy, and Ogilvy working on brands such a Nike, Toyota, and Motorola, receiving over 60 awards at major advertising festivals including the Cannes Advertising Festival, the One Show, the British Design & Art Direction Awards.

In this episode, Simon talked about the future of business, how leadership is changing and what leaders need to do today to make a difference and be part of a better future.

For leaders and individuals who wants to raise their awareness of the challenges we face today, and how we solve it, this is for you.

Lead with We: The Business Revolution That Will Save Our Future. Simon Mainwaring: https://amzn.to/3wxrEZX

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 187, an episode with a sought-after business advisor and speaker, Jon Picoult. Get Jon’s new book here: https://amzn.to/3H9SM6y

Jon Picoult is the founder of Watermark Consulting and a noted authority on customer and employee experience. He helps companies impress their customers and inspire their employees, creating “raving fans” that drive business growth. He worked with some of the world’s foremost brands, personally advising CEOs and other members of the C-Suite and helps organizations capitalize on the power of loyalty, both in the marketplace and in the workplace. His insights have been featured by dozens of media outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today, The Economist, Inc., NBC News and Forbes.

Jon held senior executive roles at Fortune 100 companies – leading service, operations, distribution, technology, sales and marketing. Early in his career, at the age of 29, Jon earned the distinction of becoming the youngest executive officer in the over 150-year history of a leading, global financial services company.

In this episode, Jon talked about how his career led to understanding customer experience and how to deliver value that will provide customer satisfaction in any kind of business or industry.

For individuals and businesses who want to understand more about providing better customer experience and why it matters, this is for you.

From Impressed to Obsessed: 12 Principles for Turning Customers and Employees into Lifelong Fans. Jon Picoult: https://amzn.to/3H9SM6y

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 186, an episode with a professor at Queensland University of Technology, Amanda Lotz. Get Amanda’s new book here: https://amzn.to/3jzSLhK

Amanda Lotz is an educator, media scholar, and industry consultant. She is known for her expertise in media industries, television studies, digital distribution, the business of media, net neutrality and other aspects of digital media policy.

Amanda is a professor at Queensland University of Technology and leads the Transforming Media Industries research project. She is the author, coauthor, or editor of ten books that explore television and media industries including We Now Disrupt This Broadcast: How Cable Transformed Television and the Internet Revolutionized It All, The Television Will Be Revolutionized and Portals: A Treatise on Internet-Distributed Television. Media Disrupted: Surviving Cannibals, Pirates and Streaming Wars (MIT Press, 2021). Her books explore the connections between internet-distributed services as well as the business strategies and revenue models that differ.

Her award-winning book, The Television Will Be Revolutionized, now in its second edition, has been translated into Mandarin, Korean, Italian, and Polish. She is frequently interviewed by NPR’s Marketplace, has appeared on BBC, CNN's The Nineties, HuffPost Live, and ZDF (German television network) and been interviewed for articles in the Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, The Atlantic, Christian Science Monitor, the Associated Press, Wired, and Men’s Health among many others. She publishes articles about the business of television at Quartz, Salon, The New Republic, hosted the Media Business Matters podcast, and tweets about television and media @DrTVLotz.

In this episode, Amanda talked about the effect of internet and digital technologies to media industries such as television, recorded music, newspaper, and film.

For individuals and media practitioners who want to understand more about the impact of internet disruption in media industries and determine its relevance to their organization, this is for you.

Media Disrupted: Surviving Pirates, Cannibals, and Streaming Wars. Amanda Lotz: https://amzn.to/3jzSLhK

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For this episode, let's revisit one of the classics by Strategy Skills where we discuss why everyone should read Bill Matassoni's book.

Every now and then, someone comes along and makes the subject of management both fun and insightful. That’s what Bill Matassoni has done in his memoir—a combination of compelling stories and contrarian substance—that covers his forty-year career selling what he calls “ephemeral things.” In addition to the memoir, Bill plays host to a series of videos that are entertaining, irreverent, and filled with his conviction that marketing is the primary driver of progress in both commercial and social markets.

MARKETING SAVES THE WORLD: Stories Why Capitalism Works. Bill Matassoni

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 184, an episode with the Vice President for Communications of Texas Roadhouse and Kent Taylor's close friend, Travis Doster. Get Kent's new book here: https://amzn.to/30Q9SW7

Kent Taylor was the Founder and CEO of Texas Roadhouse, one of the most successful restaurant chains in America. It was founded in 1993 and is currently operating 647 restaurants in 49 states and 10 foreign countries. In 2016 and 2018, it was recognized by Forbes as America’s Best Large Employer.

On the 18th of March 2021, Kent died at the age of 65; just a few months before his book was finally released in the market.

In this episode, Travis Doster talks about the humble beginnings of the iconic Casual Dining food chain. He talked about how Kent made out-of-the-box strategies that contributed to the company's legendary success. He also talked about how Kent handled more than 80 rejections as he pitched the idea for his business.

For business owners who are facing difficulties during these trying times, this is for you.

MADE FROM SCRATCH: The Legendary Success Story of Texas Roadhouse. Kent Taylor: https://amzn.to/30Q9SW7

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Learn more and see the application guidelines: https://www.firmsconsulting.com/experts-published-author-program/
Apply: email team@firmsconsulting.com

This is a part of a 10-episode program to help our clients and customers measurably and radically transform their careers through The Author Program.

How would your career, reputation, and earnings change as a published author?

Imagine your client interactions when potential and current clients saw your thinking in a published book before they met you? Imagine the time you would save not having to explain your ideas and the value you could add to them? Imagine the fee premium you could earn? Imagine avoiding awkward meetings trying to establish your credibility? Imagine how many potential clients would find you and reach out to you?

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For this episode, let's revisit one of the classics by Strategy Skills where we discuss the most important concepts you need to understand in order to advance your career.

Be reminded about what is Corporate Strategy and how is it different from the other types of strategies.

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For this episode, let's revisit one of the classics by Strategy Skills where we answer a question from our audience.

Facing a "horrible" client is a common experience in the business world. You could say that it is part of the journey. It can be hard to know what you should do during this situation. But it is exactly in these types of situations that we learn a lot.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 180, an episode with the former Global Futurist at Hewlett Packard, Jonathan Brill. Get Jonathan's new book here: https://amzn.to/3uG0m2F

Jonathan Brill is an expert on resilient growth, innovation, and decision-making during uncertainty. He helps organizations by preparing them to profit from radical change. As a former senior leader in HP, he directed the company's long-term strategy programs. He was also a creative director at Frog Design and the managing partner of innovation firms that created over 350 products.

He is currently the managing director at Resilient Growth Partners and a board member at Frost & Sullivan, a major market intelligence firm with offices in 46 countries. He also develops products for both fictional heroes and real people as the Futurist-in-Residence at Territory Studio, the creative visionaries behind the sci-fi tech in Steven Spielberg's Ready Player One, Ghost in the Shell, and Blade Runner 2049.

He advises globally on product innovation and resilient growth strategy with clients, including Samsung, Microsoft, Verizon, PepsiCo, the United States government, and the MIT Media Lab. He is an in-demand thought leader, speaker, and contributor to TED, Singularity University, Korn Ferry, JP Morgan, Forbes, and Harvard Business Review. He holds a degree in industrial design from Pratt Institute and has done extensive management training at Stanford University.

In this episode, Jonathan talked about how companies could prepare for uncertain times and what they could do to turn these into opportunities for profit and growth.

For business owners who want to have a more secure future for their companies, this is for you.

ROGUE WAVES: Future-Proof Your Business to Survive and Profit from Radical Change. Jonathan Brill: https://amzn.to/3uG0m2F

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Learn more and see the application guidelines: https://www.firmsconsulting.com/experts-published-author-program/
Apply: email team@firmsconsulting.com

This is a part of a 10-episode program to help our clients and customers measurably and radically transform their careers through The Author Program.

How would your career, reputation, and earnings change as a published author?

Imagine your client interactions when potential and current clients saw your thinking in a published book before they met you? Imagine the time you would save not having to explain your ideas and the value you could add to them? Imagine the fee premium you could earn? Imagine avoiding awkward meetings trying to establish your credibility? Imagine how many potential clients would find you and reach out to you?

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Learn more and see the application guidelines: https://www.firmsconsulting.com/experts-published-author-program/
Apply: email team@firmsconsulting.com

This is a part of a 10-episode program to help our clients and customers measurably and radically transform their careers through The Author Program.

How would your career, reputation, and earnings change as a published author?

Imagine your client interactions when potential and current clients saw your thinking in a published book before they met you? Imagine the time you would save not having to explain your ideas and the value you could add to them? Imagine the fee premium you could earn? Imagine avoiding awkward meetings trying to establish your credibility? Imagine how many potential clients would find you and reach out to you?

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 177, an episode with the CEO and Co-Founder of Bolster, Matt Blumberg together with his Co-Founder Jack Sinclair. Get Matt's book here: https://amzn.to/3oqmBsv

Matt Blumberg is a technology entrepreneur. He spent his entire career creating startups, scaling them, and sharing best practices of what works and what doesn't work for other CEOs and team members in the entrepreneurial community. His innovative email marketing company, Return Path, grew to $100mm in revenues and helped it to a successful exit in a strategic sale to Validity in 2019.

Blumberg's company Bolster, an on-demand executive talent marketplace, helps accelerate companies' growth by connecting them with experienced, highly-vetted executives for various roles. It recently conducted a study on Independent Board Members and Board Diversity, which revealed that most early-stage startup boards lack racial and gender diversity as much as boards of more established startups.

In this episode, Matt and Jack talked about what is really needed to build a successful startup and maintain a good business to prepare it for scaling up.

For those who are thinking of venturing into the world of entrepreneurship and planning to start a company/business, this is for you.

STARTUP CXO: A Field Guide to Scaling Up Your Company's Critical Functions and Teams. Matt Blumberg: https://amzn.to/3oqmBsv

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 176, an episode with a Senior Advisor to McKinsey & Company (Amsterdam), Kayvan Kian. Get Kayvan's book here: https://amzn.to/3kntLLF

Kayvan Kian is the founder of the Young Leaders Forum, a program that helps high potential future leaders with the necessary skills, ways of thinking, and insights to become better leaders in a world of constant change. He also has given guest lectures at Harvard Business School, HEC, Sciences Po, and other leading institutions.

He believes that we can make this world a better place by sharing hard-fought lessons with each other, that we gained through the most challenging times in our lives.

In this episode, Kayvan talked about how to move forward by taking a step back and identifying the things we can control.

For those leaders who feel stuck, this is for you.

WHAT IS WATER?: How Young Leaders Can Thrive in an Uncertain World. Kayvan Kian: https://amzn.to/3kntLLF

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 175, an episode with the Eugene O'Kelly II Senior Lecturer Emeritus in Leadership at Stanford Graduate School of Business, David Bradford. Get David's new book here: https://amzn.to/3lAmUhi

David Bradford is one of the two researchers behind Stanford's most popular class: Interpersonal Dynamics, where students and leaders learn how to greatly improve personal and professional relationships. He has produced six books, numerous articles, three training programs, and a massive open online course on leadership, team performance, and the influence process. He has worked with and helped some of the biggest companies in the world including Hewlett-Packard, Cisco Systems, IBM, Levi Strauss, Raychem, etc.

He is currently a member of the Editorial Boards of the Academy of Management Learning & Education, the Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, and the Journal of Management Education.

In this episode, David talked about how leaders can shift their way of thinking and have a better approach to managing their organizations.

For those leaders who want to learn how to solve their companies' biggest problems, this is for you.

CONNECT: Building Exceptional Relationships with Family, Friends, and Colleagues. David Bradford & Carole Robin: https://amzn.to/3lAmUhi

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This is a part of a 10-episode program to help our clients and customers measurably and radically transform their careers through The Author Program.

How would your career, reputation, and earnings change as a published author?

Imagine your client interactions when potential and current clients saw your thinking in a published book before they met you? Imagine the time you would save not having to explain your ideas and the value you could add to them? Imagine the fee premium you could earn? Imagine avoiding awkward meetings trying to establish your credibility? Imagine how many potential clients would find you and reach out to you?

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 172, an episode with a sought-after public speaker and an influential thought-leader, Charlene Li. Get Charlene's new book here: https://amzn.to/2XhSdFv

Charlene Li is a guide on digital transformation, leadership, customer experience, and the future of work. Her career is focused on helping people see the future and thrive with disruption. She is currently a Senior Fellow at Altimeter, a Prophet company.

In this episode, Charlene talked about how disruption serves as a key element in order for a company to determine their future and set their path to growth.

For those who wants to learn more on how to advance through the future, this is for you.

THE DISRUPTION MINDSET: Why Some Organizations Transform While Others Fail. Charlene Li: https://amzn.to/2XhSdFv

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 171, an episode with one of the world's leading female futurists, April Rinne. Get April's new book here: https://amzn.to/38iGhFp

April Rinne is a navigator in a world of flux. She is guiding individuals and organization operate in these fast-paced changing times. Her solo travels to over 100 countries in a span of 25 years has developed her to see how the world changes and how the trends will be set in the future. April is a well-known advisor of startups, companies, financial institutions, non-profits, think tanks and government agencies around the globe.

In this episode, April talked about a few key points that would make us rethink our views and help us be prepared for what's coming in the future.

For those who wants to better understand uncertainties in order to anticipate and adapt to what's ahead of us, this is for you.

FLUX: 8 Superpowers for Thriving in Constant Change. April Rinne: https://amzn.to/38iGhFp

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 170, an episode with one of the world's most influential and innovative business thinkers, Gary Hammel. Get Gary's new book here: https://amzn.to/3DkAvRZ

Gary Hammel is the founder of the international consulting firm Strategos and the Director of the Woodside Institute. He has worked with top companies around the world and is a sought-after management speaker. Throughout his career, he has helped numerous companies in designing and building innovation-friendly management practices, tools and platforms. His concepts of "strategic intent", "core competence", "industry revolution" and "management innovation" have changed the management of organizations worldwide.

He's been teaching at the London Business School for over 30 years now as a Visiting Professor.

In this episode, Gary talked about how some of the largest companies in the world has gone ahead of their competition by implementing radical changes inside their respective organizations.

For those leaders who also want to have a drastic improvement in their companies, this is for you.

HUMANOCRACY: Creating Organizations as Amazing as the People Inside Them. Gary Hammel: https://amzn.to/3DkAvRZ

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 169, an episode with the Howard Stevenson Professor of Business Administration of Harvard Business School, Tom Eisenmann. Get Tom's new book here: https://amzn.to/3Dmxqkl

Tom Eisenmann, as a Harvard Business School professor for the past 24 years, has guided over a thousand Harvard Business students and alumni as they launch new ventures up to their success. But not every startup story is like this.

In this episode, Tom talked about a glimpse of his new book  where he carried out numerous case studies about failed startups. And from these, he found 6 patterns why a lot of startups fail.

For those founders, at any stage of their entrepreneurial journey, this is for you.

WHY STARTUPS FAIL: A New Roadmap for Entrepreneurial Success. Tom Eisenmann: https://amzn.to/3Dmxqkl

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 168, an episode with Jeff Kavanaugh. Get Jeff's new book here: https://amzn.to/3Bfd8Hr

Jeff Kavanaugh is the global head for Infosys Knowledge Institute - the research and thought leadership arm of global IT powerhouse Infosys, a leader in digital services and consulting. Aside from speaking on conferences, he also teaches at the Business School of University of Texas at Dallas as an adjunct professor. He serves on boards of the Institute of Business Analytics at Indiana University, and the Marketing Analytics Advisory Board at the University of Texas at Dallas. He is the author of the best-selling book Consulting Essentials.

THE LIVE ENTERPRISE: Create a Continuously Evolving and Learning Organization. Jeff Kavanaugh: https://amzn.to/3Bfd8Hr

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 167, an episode with Mike Zani. Get Mike's new book here: https://amzn.to/3kskiBp

Mike Zani is the CEO of The Predictive Index, a platform that is dedicated to talent optimization using over 60 years of proven science and software. They help businesses in creating high-performing teams, making objective hiring decisions, and inspiring greatness in people. They have 8,000+ clients that includes Bain Capital, Blue Cross Blue Shield, DoorDash, LVMH, Nissan, Omni Hotels, and VMware.

In this episode, Mike talks about building effective teams, preparing companies for the future of work, developing strategies for long-term success, and more.

THE SCIENCE OF DREAM TEAMS: How Talent Optimization Can Drive Engagement, Productivity, and Happinessby Mike Zani.

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 166, an episode with Tim Higgins. Get Tim's new book here: https://amzn.to/3BiHWai

Tim Higgins is a reporter for The Wall Street Journal. He writes about tech and auto companies, mostly about Apple and Tesla. You can see him regularly on CNBC as an on-air contributor. Prior to this, he worked for Bloomberg News as writer for the Businessweek magazine. Throughout his career of covering big businesses and US Politics, he has won multiple Society of American Business Editors and Writers, Inc. (SABEW) Awards, has received honorable mention from Loeb Awards, and has been a five-time finalist for the Livingston Awards.

POWER PLAY: Tesla, Elon Musk, and the Bet of the Century. Tim Higgins: https://amzn.to/3BiHWai

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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 165, an episode with Rob Lachenauer. Get Rob's new book here: https://amzn.to/3iRZ531

Rob Lachenauer is a Managing Partner and the founding CEO of BanyanGlobal. He has been both a consultant and entrepreneur throughout his career. He was a Vice President and Director of BCG for 9 years where he helped multi-national companies plan and implement strategies. He has also worked with family businesses throughout the world by helping them with decision-making while strengthening family relationships. Rob has frequently contributed to the Harvard Business Review, which includes “Making Better Decisions in Your Family Business,” “What Happens When You Lose Your Mentor,” and “Why I Hired an Executive with a Mental Illness.” He also co-authored Hardball: Are You Playing to Play or Playing to Win? with George Stalk.

HBR FAMILY BUSINESS HANDBOOK: How to Build and Sustain a Successful, Enduring Enterprise. Rob Lachenauer: https://amzn.to/3iRZ531

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Welcome to. Strategy Skills episode 164, an episode with Josh Baron. Get Josh's new book here: https://amzn.to/3iRZ531

Josh Baron is a partner and co-founder of BanyanGlobal, a professor at Columbia Business School, a thought leader and author of Harvard Business Review Family Business Handbook: How to Build and Sustain a Successful, Enduring Enterprise (HBR Handbooks). He has worked closely with family-owned companies, foundations and offices for over a decade now. He has been helping these families define their purpose as owners and establish strategies to accomplish their goals. He is also teaching MBA courses on Family Business Management and Managing Conflict in Family Business. He has also written articles for The Huffington Post, Trust & Estates Magazine, and Family Business Magazine, among others.

HBR FAMILY BUSINESS HANDBOOK: How to Build and Sustain a Successful, Enduring Enterprise. Josh Baron: https://amzn.to/3iRZ531

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This is the 1st of a 10 episode program to help our clients and customers measurably, radically transform their careers through The Author Program.

How would your career, reputation, and earnings change as a published author?

Imagine your client interactions when potential and current clients saw your thinking in a published book before they met you? Imagine the time you would save not having to explain your ideas and the value you could add to them? Imagine the fee premium you could earn? Imagine avoiding awkward meetings trying to establish your credibility? Imagine how many potential clients would find you and reach out to you?

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Learn more and see the application guidelines: https://www.firmsconsulting.com/experts-published-author-program/
Apply: email team@firmsconsulting.com

This is the 1st of a 10 episode program to help our clients and customers measurably, radically transform their careers through The Author Program.

How would your career, reputation, and earnings change as a published author?

Imagine your client interactions when potential and current clients saw your thinking in a published book before they met you? Imagine the time you would save not having to explain your ideas and the value you could add to them? Imagine the fee premium you could earn? Imagine avoiding awkward meetings trying to establish your credibility? Imagine how many potential clients would find you and reach out to you?

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Learn more and see the application guidelines: https://www.firmsconsulting.com/experts-published-author-program/
Apply: email team@firmsconsulting.com

This is the 1st of a 10 episode program to help our clients and customers measurably, radically transform their careers through The Author Program.

How would your career, reputation, and earnings change as a published author?

Imagine your client interactions when potential and current clients saw your thinking in a published book before they met you? Imagine the time you would save not having to explain your ideas and the value you could add to them? Imagine the fee premium you could earn? Imagine avoiding awkward meetings trying to establish your credibility? Imagine how many potential clients would find you and reach out to you?

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Welcome to. Strategy Skills episode 160, an episode with Rob Barnett. Get Rob's new book here: https://amzn.to/3i9rMbo

Rob Barnett is a headhunter, management executive, podcaster, entrepreneur and author of NEXT JOB, BEST JOB: A Headhunter's 11 Strategies to Getting Hired Now (Citadel, June 29, 2021. He founded Rob Barnett Media in 2018, an inclusive platform for thousands of job-seeking professionals and industry leaders, placing the right people in the best jobs. Rob has discovered, hired, and led hundreds of talented creators and executives in senior management roles at MTV, VH1, and Audible/Amazon. He was President of Programming at CBS Radio. A digital pioneer, he founded My Damn Channel, one of the first original online studios and networks. Representing diverse careers, companies, and opportunities, Rob's multi-platform content and no-nonsense approach inspires people to define and sell their best professional brand. Visit RobBarnettMedia.com.

NEXT JOB, BEST JOB. Rob Barnett: https://amzn.to/3i9rMbo

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Welcome to. Strategy Skills episode 159, an episode with Ash Fontana on the future of AI. Ash just published a great book on AI, THE AI-FIRST COMPANY, please see a link below.

THE AI-FIRST COMPANY: https://amzn.to/3zRYW7o

Among other insights, Fontana shows readers how to:

• Make AI your company’s first priority.
• Identify the most valuable data.
• Build AI teams.
• Create AI budgets.
• Integrate AI with existing processes.
• Measure its effectiveness.
• Reinvest the profits from automation to build a competitive advantage.

About the Author

Ash Fontana became one of the most recognized startup investors in the world after launching online investing at AngelList. He then became a Managing Director of Zetta Venture Partners, the first investment fund that focused on AI. The firm was the lead investor in category-defining AI companies such as Kaggle, Domino, Tractable, Lilt and Invenia.

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Hello everyone! This is Monday Morning 8 a.m., a weekly newsletter where we distill the insights from all of the distractions, articles, and emails that you receive in your inbox every day. In this newsletter, we’re going to focus on four major themes from last week’s news.

To listen to the audio version of this newsletter, search for “Strategy Skills” in any podcast app. To get a written copy with links to mentioned articles sign up here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

To get a copy of some of the previous issues you might have missed, get the Strategy Insights book. If you love Strategy Insights and support it with reviews on Goodreads and Google Play (and support on Amazon is very much appreciated) by May 30th 2021, please email support@firmsconsulting.com as we will be sending 1-month access to the accompanying course as a gift to members who loved and supported the book with reviews.

P.S. If you want to support the Monday Morning 8 a.m. and our other work, there are many ways you can do that, including reviews on iTunes / Amazon / Goodreads / app, purchasing our memberships / books, applying to join our prelaunch team, or just spreading the word.

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Hello everyone! This is Monday Morning 8 a.m., a weekly newsletter where we distill the insights from all of the distractions, articles, and emails that you receive in your inbox every day. In this newsletter, we’re going to focus on four major themes from last week’s news.

To listen to the audio version of this newsletter, search for “Strategy Skills” in any podcast app. To get a written copy with links to mentioned articles sign up here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

To get a copy of some of the previous issues you might have missed, get the Strategy Insights book. If you love Strategy Insights and support it with reviews on Goodreads and Google Play (and support on Amazon is very much appreciated) by May 30th 2021, please email support@firmsconsulting.com as we will be sending 1-month access to the accompanying course as a gift to members who loved and supported the book with reviews.

P.S. If you want to support the Monday Morning 8 a.m. and our other work, there are many ways you can do that, including reviews on iTunes / Amazon / Goodreads / app, purchasing our memberships / books, applying to join our prelaunch team, or just spreading the word.

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Hello everyone! This is Monday Morning 8 a.m., a weekly newsletter where we distill the insights from all of the distractions, articles, and emails that you receive in your inbox every day. In this newsletter, we’re going to focus on four major themes from last week’s news.

To listen to the audio version of this newsletter, search for “Strategy Skills” in any podcast app. To get a written copy with links to mentioned articles sign up here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

To get a copy of some of the previous issues you might have missed, get the Strategy Insights book. If you love Strategy Insights and support it with reviews on Goodreads and Google Play (and support on Amazon is very much appreciated) by May 30th 2021, please email support@firmsconsulting.com as we will be sending 1-month access to the accompanying course as a gift to members who loved and supported the book with reviews.

P.S. If you want to support the Monday Morning 8 a.m. and our other work, there are many ways you can do that, including reviews on iTunes / Amazon / Goodreads / app, purchasing our memberships / books, applying to join our prelaunch team, or just spreading the word.

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How can we take back control of technology so it will shape the society we want for ourselves instead of becoming a monster we can no longer tame?

Monster: A Tough Love Letter On Taming the Machines that Rule our Jobs, Lives, and Future - https://amzn.to/3fAeX8T

Ben Pring co-founded and leads the Center for the Future of Work at Cognizant, an American multinational technology company that provides consulting, information technology and outsourcing services. Ben sits on the advisory board of the Labor and Work Life program at Harvard Law School. In 2018 Ben was a Bilderberg Meeting participant. Ben was named as one of 30 management thinkers to watch in 2020 by Thinkers 50. He was recently named a leading influencer on the future of work by Onalytica. In 2007, Ben won Gartner's prestigious Thought Leader Award. His work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, the London Times, the Drucker Forum Report, Business Insider, Forbes, and Fortune. Based near Boston since 2000, Ben graduated with a degree in Philosophy from Manchester University, in the UK where he grew up.

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"The book demystifies what managers expect but never explain and what top performers do subconsciously. These unspoken rules create an unlevel playing field between insiders and outsiders. My book bridges the divide by giving all early-career professionals the concrete, tactical advice they need to excel."

The Unspoken Rules: https://amzn.to/2Rwzx1L

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Hello everyone! This is Monday Morning 8 a.m., a weekly newsletter where we distill the insights from all of the distractions, articles, and emails that you receive in your inbox every day. In this newsletter, we’re going to focus on four major themes from last week’s news.

To listen to the audio version of this newsletter, search for “Strategy Skills” in any podcast app. To get a written copy with links to mentioned articles sign up here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

To get a copy of some of the previous issues you might have missed, get the Strategy Insights book. If you love Strategy Insights and support it with reviews on Goodreads and Google Play (and support on Amazon is very much appreciated) by May 30th 2021, please email support@firmsconsulting.com as we will be sending 1-month access to the accompanying course as a gift to members who loved and supported the book with reviews.

P.S. If you want to support the Monday Morning 8 a.m. and our other work, there are many ways you can do that, including reviews on iTunes / Amazon / Goodreads / app, purchasing our memberships / books, applying to join our prelaunch team, or just spreading the word.

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Hello everyone! This is Monday Morning 8 a.m., a weekly newsletter where we distill the insights from all of the distractions, articles, and emails that you receive in your inbox every day. In this newsletter, we’re going to focus on four major themes from last week’s news.

To listen to the audio version of this newsletter, search for “Strategy Skills” in any podcast app. To get a written copy with links to mentioned articles sign up here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

To get a copy of some of the previous issues you might have missed, get the Strategy Insights book. If you love Strategy Insights and support it with reviews on Goodreads and Google Play (and support on Amazon is very much appreciated) by May 30th 2021, please email support@firmsconsulting.com as we will be sending 1-month access to the accompanying course as a gift to members who loved and supported the book with reviews.

P.S. If you want to support the Monday Morning 8 a.m. and our other work, there are many ways you can do that, including reviews on iTunes / Amazon / Goodreads / app, purchasing our memberships / books, applying to join our prelaunch team, or just spreading the word.

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Every year, managers at companies large and small are finding it harder to compete with the likes of Google and Amazon, who are muscling into their businesses, stealing their customers, and cornering every conceivable market and service.

Jonathan Byrnes, MIT-based expert on profits, pricing, and strategy, is a co-author of CHOOSE YOUR CUSTOMER: How to Compete Against the Digital Giants and Thrive (McGraw-Hill, May 11, 2021).

The book illustrates how companies can survive—and win.

CHOOSE YOUR CUSTOMER is a powerful and timely guide for managers to level the playing field against their biggest competitors by choosing and providing value to the right customers by:

• Identifying and focusing on the customers who are the most profitable.
• Providing services and experiences that can’t be replicated by the tech giants, no matter how much data they have, or how much automation they use.
• Supporting your chosen customers’ diverse and rapidly evolving needs to accelerate profitability and growth.

These customer-driven strategies enable leaders to build a uniquely targeted business that the digital giants just can’t match. From unbeatable customer service to superior pricing and product selection, CHOOSE YOUR CUSTOMER provides detailed and actionable advice on how to compete successfully with the aggressive giants and how to increase profits as a result.

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Hello everyone! This is Monday Morning 8 a.m., a weekly newsletter where we distill the insights from all of the distractions, articles, and emails that you receive in your inbox every day. In this newsletter, we’re going to focus on four major themes from last week’s news.

To listen to the audio version of this newsletter, search for “Strategy Skills” in any podcast app. To get a written copy with links to mentioned articles sign up here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

To get a copy of some of the previous issues you might have missed, get the Strategy Insights book. If you love Strategy Insights and support it with reviews on Goodreads and Google Play (and support on Amazon is very much appreciated) by May 30th 2021, please email support@firmsconsulting.com as we will be sending 1-month access to the accompanying course as a gift to members who loved and supported the book with reviews.

P.S. If you want to support the Monday Morning 8 a.m. and our other work, there are many ways you can do that, including reviews on iTunes / Amazon / Goodreads / app, purchasing our memberships / books, applying to join our prelaunch team, or just spreading the word.

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Hello everyone! This is Monday Morning 8 a.m., a weekly newsletter where we distill the insights from all of the distractions, articles, and emails that you receive in your inbox every day. In this newsletter, we’re going to focus on four major themes from last week’s news.

To listen to the audio version of this newsletter, search for “Strategy Skills” in any podcast app. To get a written copy with links to mentioned articles sign up here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

To get a copy of some of the previous issues you might have missed, get the Strategy Insights book. If you love Strategy Insights and support it with reviews on Goodreads and Google Play (and support on Amazon is very much appreciated) by May 30th 2021, please email support@firmsconsulting.com as we will be sending 1-month access to the accompanying course as a gift to members who loved and supported the book with reviews.

P.S. If you want to support the Monday Morning 8 a.m. and our other work, there are many ways you can do that, including reviews on iTunes / Amazon / Goodreads / app, purchasing our memberships / books, applying to join our prelaunch team, or just spreading the word.

Some links above are affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.

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Hello everyone! This is Monday Morning 8 a.m., a weekly newsletter where we distill the insights from all of the distractions, articles, and emails that you receive in your inbox every day. In this newsletter, we’re going to focus on four major themes from last week’s news.

To listen to the audio version of this newsletter, search for “Strategy Skills” in any podcast app. To get a written copy with links to mentioned articles sign up here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

To get a copy of some of the previous issues you might have missed, get the Strategy Insights book. If you love Strategy Insights and support it with reviews on Goodreads and Google Play (and support on Amazon is very much appreciated) by May 30th 2021, please email support@firmsconsulting.com as we will be sending 1-month access to the accompanying course as a gift to members who loved and supported the book with reviews.

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Hello everyone! This is Monday Morning 8 a.m., a weekly newsletter where we distill the insights from all of the distractions, articles, and emails that you receive in your inbox every day. In this newsletter, we’re going to focus on four major themes from last week’s news. 

To listen to the audio version of this newsletter, search for “Strategy Skills” in any podcast app. To get a written copy with links to mentioned articles sign up here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

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In an era of dizzying speed, complexity, and competition, harnessing innovation is the only way to fuel growth and beat the old guard. Linkner’s newest book, BIG LITTLE BREAKTHROUGHS, reveals the creative thinking behind the world’s most successful entrepreneurs and why they focus on small, daily creative acts to topple industry giants. Drawing on his three decades of experience as a tech entrepreneur, his investments in over 100 startups (including a “unicorn”), and interviews with innovative leaders around the globe, Linkner provides proven tools to accelerate growth, gain competitive advantage, and drive meaningful results.

BIG LITTLE BREAKTHROUGHS by Josh Linkner: https://amzn.to/337W4UV

BIO

Josh Linkner is a creative troublemaker. He started his career as a jazz guitarist and then went on to become the founder and CEO of five tech companies, which sold for a combined value of over $200 million. He is also a deeply experienced business leader, venture capitalist, top-rated keynote speaker, New York Times bestselling author, and professional jazz guitarist. He is a world-renown expert on innovation, disruption, and hyper-growth leadership and has delivered over 1,000 keynotes to companies and organizations across sectors, including ABC, Heineken, American Express, Mercedes Benz, and the U.S. State Department.

Enjoying our podcast? Get access to sample advanced training episodes here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

We use affiliate links whenever possible (if you purchase items listed above using our affiliate links, we will get a bonus).

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Hello everyone! This is Monday Morning 8 a.m., a weekly newsletter where we distill the insights from all of the distractions, articles, and emails that you receive in your inbox every day. In this newsletter, we’re going to focus on four major themes from last week’s news. 

To listen to the audio version of this newsletter, search for “Strategy Skills” in any podcast app. To get a written copy with links to mentioned articles sign up here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

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Hello everyone! This is Monday Morning 8 a.m., a weekly newsletter where we distill the insights from all of the distractions, articles, and emails that you receive in your inbox every day. In this newsletter, we’re going to focus on four major themes from last week’s news. 

To listen to the audio version of this newsletter, search for “Strategy Skills” in any podcast app. To get a written copy with links to mentioned articles sign up here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

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Jim Hemerling is Senior Partner at Boston Consulting Group’s San Francisco office and a leader in the firm’s People & Organization and Transformation Practices. He has been the leader of BCG Greater China and is a Fellow of the BCG Henderson Institute. His work with clients and his research focuses on holistic human-centric approaches to organizational transformation. Jim is a co-author of BCG's new book - Beyond Great: Nine Strategies for Thriving in an Era of Social Tension, Economic Nationalism, and Technological Revolution.

Global companies remain hamstrung by organizational forms that leave them mired in bureaucracy and slow to respond to changing needs. To grow in the volatility of the 21st century, firms must go beyond the familiar matrix structure and reconfigure themselves in more flexible ways. COVID-19 and its myriad effects on ways of working will force leaders to rethink how they build teams and acquire, upskill, and retain talent.

Hemerling and his colleagues launched a study of dozens of global companies to determine successful leadership strategies and found that, though seemingly obvious, the best leaders put people and their needs first, rather than regarding them as resources to exploit.

Hemerling and coauthors write about these topics in Beyond Great: Nine Strategies for Thriving in an Era of Social Tension, Economic Nationalism, and Technological Revolution (October 6, PublicAffairs). BCG’s first major book in years, it will redefine strategy in the post-COVID era.

Extending their research far beyond the expected Silicon Valley players, Hemerling and his coauthors at BCG looked at over fifty companies and interviewed hundreds of CEOs across sectors and geographies.

The trends:

• By 2030, companies around the world will have some eight-five million skilled jobs unfilled—a gap that will exact a severe economic toll;
• In a 2018 BCG survey of 366,000 people from two hundred countries, ranked “good work-life balance” as much more important than “financial compensation”
• Over 40 percent of hiring managers anticipated that nontraditional educational criteria—like a coding “boot camp”—would soon be just as good a credential as a college degree when evaluating candidates.

For incumbents to thrive amidst these challenges, they must deploy new strategies that touch every part of their business, from value propositions and global supply chains to leadership and social responsibility goals. A huge part of this is leadership and the future of work—how to retain employees, attract top talent, and navigate tension when global forces are changing attitudes about work and life.

Examples of innovative leadership:

• Deemphasizing hierarchy encourages employees to take ownership of projects and propel them forward without bothering to seek approval from bosses;
• Exploiting the gray area of informal conversations that typically take place between colleagues allows employees to break free from their daily work and innovate;
• Gamifying candidate screening and identifying talent via online competitions and hackathons to appeal to a new generation.

Enjoying our podcast? Get access to sample advanced training episodes here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

We use affiliate links whenever possible (if you purchase items listed above using our affiliate links, we will get a bonus).

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Hello everyone! This is Monday Morning 8 a.m., a weekly newsletter where we distill the insights from all of the distractions, articles, and emails that you receive in your inbox every day. In this newsletter, we’re going to focus on four major themes from last week’s news. 

To listen to the audio version of this newsletter, search for “Strategy Skills” in any podcast app. To get a written copy with links to mentioned articles sign up here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

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Hello everyone! This is Monday Morning 8 a.m., a weekly newsletter where we distill the insights from all of the distractions, articles, and emails that you receive in your inbox every day. In this newsletter, we’re going to focus on four major themes from last week’s news.    To listen to the audio version of this newsletter, search for “Strategy Skills” in any podcast app. To get a written copy with links to mentioned articles sign up here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

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Hello everyone! This is Monday Morning 8 a.m., a weekly newsletter where we distill the insights from all of the distractions, articles, and emails that you receive in your inbox every day. In this newsletter, we’re going to focus on four major themes from last week’s news.    To listen to the audio version of this newsletter, search for “Strategy Skills” in any podcast app. To get a written copy with links to mentioned articles sign up here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

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Hello everyone! This is Monday Morning 8 a.m., a weekly newsletter where we distill the insights from all of the distractions, articles, and emails that you receive in your inbox every day. In this newsletter, we’re going to focus on four major themes from last week’s news.    To listen to the audio version of this newsletter, search for “Strategy Skills” in any podcast app. To get a written copy with links to mentioned articles sign up here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

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Hello everyone! This is Monday Morning 8 a.m., a weekly newsletter where we distill the insights from all of the distractions, articles, and emails that you receive in your inbox every day. In this newsletter, we’re going to focus on four major themes from last week’s news.    To listen to the audio version of this newsletter, search for “Strategy Skills” in any podcast app. To get a written copy with links to mentioned articles sign up here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

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In today's episode of the Strategy Skills podcast, we have a conversation with Blair Sheppard, Global Head of Strategy and Leadership for PWC. Blair shares his views of looming global crises driven by wealth disparity, technological disruption, the polarization of people, and declining trust in society’s institutions.

Blair Sheppard is also the Dean Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, where he taught for thirty-three years. He was the principal force behind opening Duke's campus in China, and the founder and CEO of Duke Corporate Education. Blair is a regular speaker at high-caliber international forums including the Global Solutions Summit, the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, and Slush. He was born in Hamilton, Ontario (Canada) and lives in Durham, North Carolina (US).

In his new book, TEN YEARS TO MIDNIGHT: Four Urgent Global Crises and Their Strategic Solutions, Blair sets out why that timeline is so crucial, what the most urgent challenges are and the key elements of a solution.

The world faces four crises:

1. A crisis of prosperity, with rising inequality, poor life choices for young people, the squeezed middle class and a mass of people on the brink of retirement but lacking the savings to sustain them;
2. A crisis of technology, as our economic system drives innovation but fails to manage unintended negative consequences which pollute key elements of life support, from our atmosphere to our news;
3. A crisis of institutional legitimacy, as traditional institutions try to maintain their existing structures in the face of major global forces, and find themselves buckling and warping rather than adapting; and,
4. A crisis of leadership, as those who should help us manage these crises instead focus on narrow priorities rather than leading the world towards holistic solutions.

Get access to sample training from our advanced programs here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

We use affiliate links whenever possible (if you purchase items listed above using our affiliate links, we will get a bonus).

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Hello everyone! This is Monday Morning 8 a.m., a weekly newsletter where we distill the insights from all of the distractions, articles, and emails that you receive in your inbox every day. In this newsletter, we’re going to focus on four major themes from last week’s news.    To listen to the audio version of this newsletter, search for “Strategy Skills” in any podcast app. To get a written copy with links to mentioned articles sign up here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

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Hello everyone! This is Monday Morning 8 a.m. (#17), a weekly newsletter where we distill the insights from all of the distractions, articles, and emails that you receive in your inbox every day. In this newsletter, we’re going to focus on four major themes from last week’s news.    To listen to the audio version of this newsletter, search for “Strategy Skills” in any podcast app. To get a written copy with links to mentioned articles sign up here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

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Welcome to the Strategy Skills podcast, from FIRMSconsulting.com. Today we have a very interesting guest, Kent Billingsley, who is going to talk about sales and the revenue side of management consulting. And about using the tools and techniques that he developed in his consulting career which he now applies in almost any kind of industry.

We rarely talk about sales. So we thought it will be nice to do a podcast where we dive into this topic.

Get Kent's book "ENTREPRENEUR TO MILLIONAIRE: How to Build a Highly Profitable, Fast-Growth Company and Become Embarrassingly Rich Doing It": https://amzn.to/3dU6aPN

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Hello everyone! This is Monday Morning 8 a.m. (#16), a weekly newsletter where we distill the insights from all of the distractions, articles, and emails that you receive in your inbox every day. In this newsletter, we’re going to focus on four major themes from last week’s news.    To listen to the audio version of this newsletter, search for “Strategy Skills” in any podcast app. To get a written copy with links to mentioned articles sign up here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

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Hello everyone! This is Monday Morning 8 a.m. (#15), a weekly newsletter where we distill the insights from all of the distractions, articles, and emails that you receive in your inbox every day. In this newsletter, we’re going to focus on four major themes from last week’s news.    To listen to the audio version of this newsletter, search for “Strategy Skills” in any podcast app. To get a written copy with links to mentioned articles sign up here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

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Hello everyone! This is Monday Morning 8 a.m. (#14), a weekly newsletter where we distill the insights from all of the distractions, articles, and emails that you receive in your inbox every day. In this newsletter, we’re going to focus on four major themes from last week’s news.    To listen to the audio version of this newsletter, search for “Strategy Skills” in any podcast app. To get a written copy with links to mentioned articles sign up here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

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Hello everyone! This is Monday Morning 8 a.m. (#13), a weekly newsletter where we distill the insights from all of the distractions, articles, and emails that you receive in your inbox every day. In this newsletter, we’re going to focus on four major themes from last week’s news.    To listen to the audio version of this newsletter, search for “Strategy Skills” in any podcast app. To get a written copy with links to mentioned articles sign up here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

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Hello everyone! This is Monday Morning 8 a.m., a weekly newsletter where we distill the insights from all of the distractions, articles, and emails that you receive in your inbox every day. In this newsletter, we’re going to focus on four major themes from last week’s news.    To listen to the audio version of this newsletter, search for “Strategy Skills” in any podcast app. To get a written copy with links to mentioned articles sign up here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

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Martin's book THE MINISTRY OF COMMON SENSE: https://amzn.to/3962pE9

Meet New York Times bestselling author Martin Lindstrom (one of TIME magazine’s 100 Most Influential People).

We interviewed Martin about his new book THE MINISTRY OF COMMON SENSE: How to Eliminate Bureaucratic Red Tape, Bad Excuses, and Corporate BS.

Doesn’t your workplace drive you crazy when you get cc’ed on irrelevant email chains, invited to unnecessary meetings, or forbidden by company policy to do the exact thing your boss commands you to do? These and many other frustrations stem from the same underlying cause: a lack of common sense! In an interview Martin discusses the most typical roadblocks to common sense:

• (Bad) customer experience
• Politics
• Technology
• Meetings and Power Points
• Rules, Regulations, and Policies
• Compliance and Legal

And has remedies for all.

Martin Lindstrom is the founder and chairman of Lindstrom Company, a global branding & culture transformation firm, operating across five continents and more than 30 countries. TIME Magazine has named Lindstrom one of the “World’s 100 Most Influential People,” and for three years running, Thinkers50, has selected Lindstrom to be among the world’s top 50 business thinkers. Among the companies he advises are Burger King, Lowes, Boar’s Head, Beverly Hills Hotels, Pepsi, Nestle and Google. Lindstrom is the author of seven books including several New York Times bestsellers that have been translated into 60 languages. The Wall-Street Journal praised his book Brand Sense as “one of the five best marketing books ever published,” and his book Small Data as “revolutionary,” and TIME called his book Buyology “a breakthrough in branding.”

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Martin's book THE MINISTRY OF COMMON SENSE: https://amzn.to/3962pE9

Meet New York Times bestselling author Martin Lindstrom (one of TIME magazine’s 100 Most Influential People).

We interviewed Martin about his new book THE MINISTRY OF COMMON SENSE: How to Eliminate Bureaucratic Red Tape, Bad Excuses, and Corporate BS.

Doesn’t your workplace drive you crazy when you get cc’ed on irrelevant email chains, invited to unnecessary meetings, or forbidden by company policy to do the exact thing your boss commands you to do? These and many other frustrations stem from the same underlying cause: a lack of common sense! In an interview Martin discusses the most typical roadblocks to common sense:

• (Bad) customer experience
• Politics
• Technology
• Meetings and Power Points
• Rules, Regulations, and Policies
• Compliance and Legal

And has remedies for all.

Martin Lindstrom is the founder and chairman of Lindstrom Company, a global branding & culture transformation firm, operating across five continents and more than 30 countries. TIME Magazine has named Lindstrom one of the “World’s 100 Most Influential People,” and for three years running, Thinkers50, has selected Lindstrom to be among the world’s top 50 business thinkers. Among the companies he advises are Burger King, Lowes, Boar’s Head, Beverly Hills Hotels, Pepsi, Nestle and Google. Lindstrom is the author of seven books including several New York Times bestsellers that have been translated into 60 languages. The Wall-Street Journal praised his book Brand Sense as “one of the five best marketing books ever published,” and his book Small Data as “revolutionary,” and TIME called his book Buyology “a breakthrough in branding.”

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Hello everyone! This is Monday Morning 8 a.m., a weekly newsletter where we distill the insights from all of the distractions, articles, and emails that you receive in your inbox every day. In this newsletter, we’re going to focus on four major themes from last week’s news.    To listen to the audio version of this newsletter, search for “Strategy Skills” in any podcast app. To get a written copy with links to mentioned articles sign up here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

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Hello everyone! This is Monday Morning 8 a.m., a weekly newsletter where we distill the insights from all of the distractions, articles, and emails that you receive in your inbox every day. In this newsletter, we’re going to focus on four major themes from last week’s news.    To listen to the audio version of this newsletter, search for “Strategy Skills” in any podcast app. To get a written copy with links to mentioned articles sign up here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

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Hello everyone! This is Monday Morning 8 a.m., a weekly newsletter where we distill the insights from all of the distractions, articles, and emails that you receive in your inbox every day. In this newsletter, we’re going to focus on four major themes from last week’s news.    To listen to the audio version of this newsletter, search for “Strategy Skills” in any podcast app. To get a written copy with links to mentioned articles sign up here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

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Hello everyone! This is Monday Morning 8 a.m., a weekly newsletter where we distill the insights from all of the distractions, articles, and emails that you receive in your inbox every day. In this newsletter, we’re going to focus on four major themes from last week’s news.    To listen to the audio version of this newsletter, search for “Strategy Skills” in any podcast app. To get a written copy with links to mentioned articles sign up here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

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Hello everyone! This is Monday Morning 8 a.m., a weekly newsletter where we distill the insights from all of the distractions, articles, and emails that you receive in your inbox every day. In this newsletter, we’re going to focus on four major themes from last week’s news.    To listen to the audio version of this newsletter, search for “Strategy Skills” in any podcast app. To get a written copy with links to mentioned articles sign up here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

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Joan Magretta, M.B.A (Harvard)., Ph. D., is an award-winning contributor to the HBR, where she was the strategy editor (1990s). Prior to that Joan was a partner at Bain & Company. As part of her distinguished career, Joan worked closely with Michael Porter and published number of important books, including her latest books:

What is Strategy: https://amzn.to/2Jp80LV

Understanding Michael Porter: https://amzn.to/39EECMj

Free training episodes here: https://www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

We use affiliate links whenever possible (if you purchase items listed above using our affiliate links, we will get a bonus).

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Hello everyone! This is Monday Morning 8 a.m., a weekly newsletter where we distill the insights from all of the distractions, articles, and emails that you receive in your inbox every day. In this newsletter, we’re going to focus on four major themes from last week’s news.    To listen to the audio version of this newsletter, search for “Strategy Skills” in any podcast app. To get a written copy with links to mentioned articles sign up here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

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Hello everyone! This is Monday Morning 8 a.m., a weekly newsletter where we distill the insights from all of the distractions, articles, and emails that you receive in your inbox every day. In this newsletter, we’re going to focus on four major themes from last week’s news.    To listen to the audio version of this newsletter, search for “Strategy Skills” in any podcast app. To get a written copy with links to mentioned articles sign up here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

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Hello everyone! This is Monday Morning 8 a.m., a weekly newsletter where we distill the insights from all of the distractions, articles, and emails that you receive in your inbox every day. In this newsletter, we’re going to focus on four major themes from last week’s news.    To listen to the audio version of this newsletter, search for “Strategy Skills” in any podcast app. To get a written copy with links to mentioned articles sign up here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

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Hello, everyone! This is Monday Morning 8 a.m., a weekly newsletter where we distill the insights from all of the distractions, articles, and emails that you receive in your inbox every day. In this week’s newsletter, we’re going to focus on one overarching theme—risk—and you’ll see that theme running through all of the big stories this week.

So let's see how this new Monday Morning 8 a.m. format goes. Every week we will look at 3-4 themes, or one theme and 3-4 subthemes. What are the big stories and what are the big implications. Let us know if you like or dislike the style.

If you're enjoying the Monday Morning 8 a.m., I'd love it if you shared it with a friend or two. You can send them here to sign up. We try to make it one of the best emails/podcasts you get each week, and we hope you're enjoying it.

Get written version of Monday Morning 8 a.m. with links to articles we mention: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

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Robert Rosenberg served as chief executive officer of Dunkin’ Donuts from 1963 until his retirement in 1998. For over 35 years!

Under Robert's leadership, Dunkin’ Donuts grew from a regional family business to one of America’s best known and loved brands.

Robert received his MBA from Harvard Business School, and just weeks after graduating at the age of 25, he assumed the position of chief executive officer.

Upon his retirement, Rosenberg had grown the Dunkin’ Donuts chain to over 4,000 stores worldwide with annual system-wide sales in excess of $2 billion.

In his book, Around The Corner To Around The World: A Dozen Lessons I Learned Running Dunkin’ Donuts, Robert shares many of the stories behind this historic company and actionable business advice.

Checkout out our newsletter "Monday Morning 8 a.m."

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Hi, everyone. This is Monday Morning 8 a.m., a newsletter that goes out—as you guessed it—every Monday. You can listen to the audio version of this Monday Morning 8 a.m. episode by searching “Strategy Skills” in any podcast app! If you want to receive a written version of this podcast, with links to mentioned articles, you can sign up for it on www.firmsconsulting.com/promo   In this newsletter, we have one goal: to help you distill the insights from the noise out there. So here are the big themes we’re noticing in the news this week and the deep insights you should be extracting from those themes.