Miri Rodriguez about her book Brand Storytelling: Put Customers at the Heart of Your Brand Story (Kogan Page, 2023). Miri Rodriguez began her career at Microsoft by leading social media support channels. That assignment made it obvious to Rodriguez that customers tell their own (often very emotional) stories about their brand experiences, making it natural for her to transition to then becoming an expert at how a company wants to craft its stories and ensure as much customer-brand alignment as p...
Sep 07, 2023•28 min•Ep. 141
Today I talked to Jennifer Moss about her new book The Burnout Epidemic: The Rise of Chronic Stress and How We Can Fix It (HBRP, 2021). Workplace burnout is such an urgent issue that up to 700,000 people are believed to have died primarily due to workload stress – and yet many company leaders remain in denial. Their stance is that self-care will provide the solution when, in fact, it’s the workplace eco-system in which these victims are operating that so often drives their unfair fate. From work...
Aug 24, 2023•29 min•Ep. 140
Today I talked to Yael Schonbrun about her book Work, Parent, Thrive: 12 Science-Backed Strategies to Ditch Guilt, Manage Overwhelm, and Grow Connection (Shambhala, 2022). The positive psychology movement and Buddhism have more than a little in common, as confirmed by Yael Schonbrun during this discussion of how to find synergy and richness in what might seem at times to be the utterly conflicting roles we play in life. Underlying this book’s twelve strategies is ACT (Acceptance and Commitment T...
Aug 10, 2023•28 min•Ep. 139
Behavioral science recognizes that human beings aren’t so much pro-active decision-makers as they are people seeking to take short-cuts and operate in default mode to save mental energy. This book covers a range of behavioral science principles and biases, applied in this case in terms of six emotional markets: a desire for Self-Expression, Exploration, Interpersonal (relationships), dedication to Causes and Nurturing, while also seeking Affirmation. In Using Behavioral Science in Marketing: Dri...
Jul 27, 2023•27 min•Ep. 138
Today I talked to Charlotte Fox Weber about her book Tell Me What You Want: A Therapist and Her Clients Explore Our 12 Deepest Desires (Atria Book, 2023). What we often want most is what we shouldn’t want or at least don’t dare admit to wanting. That’s but one point Charlotte Fox Weber is keen on exploring. Aren’t we always (especially in therapy, perhaps) like little kids still, playing games of (emotional) hide-and-seek? We long for attention, for ego gratification but also know it’s not “poli...
Jul 13, 2023•27 min•Ep. 137
In some ways, Hackman’s Emotional Labor: The Invisible Work Shaping Our Lives and How to Claim Our Power (Flatiron Books, 2023) serves as a natural update to Arlie Hochschild’s classic, The Managed Heart . After all, in public life it’s most often the women members of the service economy—in retail, in nursing, teaching, and elsewhere—who are asked to exercise emotional skills that often go undervalued and, therefore, also under-compensated. Hackman goes further, however, by also exploring the pr...
Jun 29, 2023•24 min•Ep. 136
Today I talked to Mark Staff Brandl about his new book A Philosophy of Visual Metaphor in Contemporary Art (Bloomsbury, 2023). Brandl is an artist and art historian with a PhD from the University of Zurich. He is an Associate Professor of Art History Emeritus at the Art Academy of Liechtenstein and Higher Professional College for Art in St. Gallen, Switzerland. His work has been shown in galleries and museums in America, Europe, Egypt and elsewhere. Brandl is by his own admission an iconoclast, ...
Jun 15, 2023•32 min•Ep. 135
Today I talked to Adam Kingl about his new book Sparking Success: Why Every Leader Needs to Develop a Creative Mindset (Kogan Page, 2023). Most or, indeed, basically all of us start out being highly creative kids filled with wonderment, only to often have that spark “knocked out” of us by the straight jacket of the status quo. This guest aims to change that scenario by drawing on his theater and general, artistic background. The bulk of this episode explores a variety of exercises to stimulate i...
Jun 01, 2023•25 min•Ep. 134
Today I talked to Eugene Lipov about his new book (co-authored with Jamie Mustard), The Invisible Machine: The Startling Truth About Trauma and the Scientific Breakthrough That Can Transform Your Life (BenBella Books, 2023) Human beings aren’t biologically build to endure sustained stress. A 30-second blast of anxiety in dealing with a threat isn’t anything likely the ongoing suffering taking place in society today. From soldiers who are returning from overseas combat to poverty-ridden inner-cit...
May 18, 2023•42 min•Ep. 133
Today I talked to Andrew Small about his book No Limits: The Inside Story of China's War with the West (Melville House, 2022). Winston Churchill famously described Russia in 1939 as “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.” But as Andrew Small correctly argues here, China’s path forward has often been laid out quite explicitly by its authoritarian leader Xi Jinping in speeches to the Community Party and elsewhere. The totality of those proclamations is that a real battle lies ahead, pe...
May 04, 2023•27 min•Ep. 137
Today I talked to Matt Johnson about his book (co-authored with Tessa Misiaszek) Branding That Means Business: How to Build Enduring Bonds Between Brands, Consumers & Markets (PublicAffairs, 2022) Too often companies look down the road, trying to future-proof their business when it fact they should be clueing-in on the fundamentals of human nature to stay aligned with the eternal verities of their consumers. So argues Matt Johnson, pointing out for instance our desire to belong (leveraged by...
Apr 20, 2023•30 min•Ep. 131
Today I talked to Tessa West about her book Jerks at Work: Toxic Coworkers and What to Do About Them (Portfolio, 2022). This conversation explores the seven types of jerks that West has diagnosed: the kiss-up / kiss downer, the credit stealer, the bulldozer, the free rider, the micromanager, the neglectful (boss) and the gaslighter. The last type is, in West’s words, almost “clinically” an evil spirit, even more cleaver and intent on doing harm than the kiss up / kick downer, both of whom are un...
Apr 06, 2023•23 min•Ep. 130
Today I talked to Sarah L Kaufman about her book The Art of Grace: On Moving Well Through Life (Norton, 2016). Grace as a word comes from Greek, conveying a sense of giving a favor as a gift or act or kindness. It’s related to Hebrew and Muslim words for compassion, and is something today’s society could use more of notes today’s guest. Instead, we have reality TV that thrives on dis-grace. This book began as the author confesses, with her writing an appreciation of how well Cary Grant moves on ...
Mar 23, 2023•25 min•Ep. 129
Today I talked to Ayelet Fishbach about her book Get It Done: Surprising Lessons from the Science of Motivation (Little, Brown Spark, 2022) The key to motivating yourself is to change your circumstances. You can do so by the goals you set, how you accept feedback in pursuing them, the flexibility you show in making progress, and how well you leverage social support. Each of those four aspects has its own pitfalls, and today’s interview explores in depth a number of challenges. To harness the val...
Mar 09, 2023•25 min•Ep. 128
Today I talked to Jerry Pannone about his new book Survive: Why We Do What We Do (John Hunt, 2022) Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs model is famous, but more so the 5-layer model than the 8-layer model he eventually arrived at. Why the later addition of knowledge and understanding, aesthetics and transcendence as needs in Maslow’s model? The answer is that balanced out the 4 of the 5 original needs more focused on overcoming deficiencies, with four needs focused on personal growth. Indeed, a ...
Feb 23, 2023•24 min•Ep. 127
Today I talked to Max Bazerman about his book Complicit: How We Enable the Unethical and How to Stop (Princeton UP, 2022). Remember Saturday Night Live’s satirical TV spot for Ivanka Trump’s perfume, Complicit? Talk about a timely topic. In what is Bazerman’s third book on ethics, the focus is on the people who surround an “evil” doer and enable or allow harmful behavior to occur. From the implosion of FTX under the funky leadership of Sam Bankman-Fried, to Elizabeth Holes at Theranos or Purdue ...
Feb 09, 2023•27 min•Ep. 126
Today I talked to Batja Mesquita about her book Between Us: How Cultures Create Emotions (Norton, 2022). To a degree sometimes not realized, we discuss emotions through the lens of what have been called WEIRD cultures, i.e. Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic. As a result, the perspective taken tends to be inside/out, privileging one’s private feelings: a Mine approach. Yet in much of the world, more of an Ours approach prevails, with an understanding of emotions as being impo...
Jan 26, 2023•31 min•Ep. 125
Today I talked to Dr. Heidi K. Gardner about her new book (co-authored with Ivan A. Matviak) Smarter Collaboration: A New Approach to Breaking Down Barriers and Transforming Work (HBR Press, 2022) Diversity doesn’t mean much if a range of people are in the room but not really a part of the conversation taking place there. To counter that all-together too frequent shortcoming, today’s guest has focused on a variety of ways to achieve better collaboration where multiple viewpoints enrich the outco...
Jan 12, 2023•30 min•Ep. 124
Today I talked to Roger Blackwell about his new book Objective Prosperity: How Behavioral Economics Can Improve Outcomes for You, Your Business, and Your Nation (Rothstein Publishing, 2022) Contrary to conventional wisdom, about 90% of billionaires are self-made as opposed to people who inherited their wealth. Why did they succeed? That’s the question this book explores at both the individual and at the countrywide level. Values and skills revolving around knowledge, a strong work ethic, delayed...
Dec 29, 2022•36 min•Ep. 123
Today I talked to James Hurman about his new book Future Demand: Why Building Your Brand among Tomorrow’s Customers Is the Key to Start-Up Success (Previously Unavailable, 2022). Marketers aren’t always very good at marketing, ironically enough, as today’s guest candidly admits. Among the most amorphous terms tends to be branding, for which James Hurman has a pithy, memorable and very practical definition: “The simple idea at the heart of a company,” an idea that informs all the decisions the co...
Dec 15, 2022•33 min•Ep. 122
Today I talked to Chris De Santis about his new book Why I Find You Irritating: Navigating Generational Friction at Work (Ampify, 2022). Soon, those who qualify as Millennials or part of Gen Z will constitute 70% of the workplace in America. What kinds of work environments and interactive styles will appeal or repel them most? Among the suggestions that Chris De Santis makes is to have a mentor or mentors with whom you feel an organic connection help you “interpret” your latest performance revie...
Dec 01, 2022•29 min•Ep. 121
Today I talked to Victoria Grady about her book (co-authored with Patrick McCreesh) Stuck: How to WIN at Work by Understanding LOSS (Productivity Press, 2022) The attachment styles we form by eight months of age can endure our entire lives, with an appreciable impact on how we relate to both our boss and the physical environment at work. A case in point is the famous Peanuts character Linus Van Pelt, as he lugs around his “security blanket.” Grady has made the importance of connection her missio...
Nov 17, 2022•30 min•Ep. 120
Today I talked to Richard Reeves about his important new book Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It (Brookings Institution, 2022). The statistics are stunning. Men have a 9% lower graduation rate from college. One in three men without a completed high school education are now out of the workforce. About 40% of births take place outside of marriage (up from 11% in 1970). And men are 50% more likely to die from Covid-19 than women after contrac...
Nov 03, 2022•34 min•Ep. 119
Today I talked to Jim Wilson about his book (co-authored with Paul Daugherty) Radically Human: How New Technology Is Transforming Business and Shaping Our Future (HBR Press, 2022). Technology has evolved from device intelligence to data intelligence (big data) to now the new stage of a more human-centric approach where the user/worker’s needs, wants and biases are being taken into account to make technology easier to deploy and more of an equal partner. That’s the progression Jim Wilson champion...
Oct 20, 2022•37 min•Ep. 118
Today I talked to David Livermore about his book Digital, Diverse & Divided: How to Talk to Racists, Compete with Robots, and Overcome Polarization (Berrett-Koehler, 2022). While the author argues that cultural intelligence (CQ) begins where EQ leaves off, in truth key attributes of EQ like understanding another person’s motivations and figuring out how to address them matter in both cases. Nowadays the challenge of connecting well only becomes harder, of course, given how social media means...
Oct 06, 2022•31 min•Ep. 117
Today I talked to Jamie Fahey about his book Futsal: The Indoor Game That Is Revolutionizing World Soccer (Melville House, 2021). Some 60 million people player futsal worldwide, as this five-a-side version of football (soccer) is both a fast-moving, highly-entertaining sport in its own right as well as a breeding ground for great footballers on the world stage. Played on a field somewhere between the size of a basketball and handball court, futsal is a game with “no time, no space,” requiring me...
Sep 22, 2022•32 min•Ep. 116
Today I talked to Eric Posner about his book How Antitrust Failed Workers (Oxford UP, 2021). When anti-trust cases are brought forward, typically they involve monopolies exercising undue power in regards to products or services. Rarely do labor issues get the same treatment. Reasons vary from the previous power of unions, to the expense and risk of going to trial, to whether the potential for unfair, uncompetitive practices get scrutinized at all. Posner points in this episode to why the laws ma...
Sep 08, 2022•39 min•Ep. 115
Today I talked to John List about his book The Voltage Effect: How to Make Good Ideas Great and Great Ideas Scale (Currency, 2022). Want to go on an exuberant, incisive ride through why so many initiatives flounder and how, conversely, you can increase the odds of success? Then listening to John List will be for you. List takes us through his favorite, highly relevant behavior economic principles: loss aversion, confirmation bias and framing among them. Then this episode digs into why 50 to 90% ...
Aug 25, 2022•43 min•Ep. 114
Andrea Karnes' book Women Painting Women (Delmonico Books, 2022) documents a wide-ranging exhibit inclusive of women as both the makers and subjects of paintings. The artists hail from around the world, and over the past half-century. Our conversation took several directions. One was to discuss the power of the gaze; who’s looking, who’s being seen, and the poses evident more a matter of self-agency or passivity. Another angle was the body itself, with these female images being more realistic an...
Aug 11, 2022•33 min•Ep. 111
Today I talked to Melina Palmer about her book What Your Customer Wants and Can’t Tell You: Unlocking Consumer Decisions with the Science of Behavioral Economics (Mango, 2021) Once you realize that the average person makes 35,000 decisions a day, it makes total sense that habits drive 95% of our behavior. Otherwise, we’d become paralyzed with analysis paralysis in trying to choose what to do next. As Melina Palmer fully recognizes, behavioral economic principles help to unlock the mystery of why...
Jul 28, 2022•32 min•Ep. 112
