Ritu Bhasin is on a mission to create a more empowered and inclusive world. As an inclusion professional, advisor, public speaker, and now author. She works with senior leaders from around the world to help them improve their approaches to talent management and leadership development. Her main job is to help her clients do a better job at inclusion. In some ways, her work is about helping the underdog. Ritu’s story is powerful. She started her career as lawyer, but found that her lack of being a...
Sep 10, 2017•36 min
In this thoughtful episode, I speak with Nick Scott the Director of Open Government and Innovation in New Brunswick, Canada. In this episode, referencing Zaid Hassan, Nick makes the point that the original sin of complex challenges is the belief that you can change things without changing yourself. This is a wonderful and insightful episode on innovation within government. A word that is not usually associated with the public sector, but Nick break some myths and misconceptions here. One of the ...
Sep 03, 2017•42 min
Huda Idrees describes herself as a writer, entrepreneur, engineer and product designer. In this episode, Huda describes how path to entrepreneurship started when she was twelve years old. In the story she shares, she describes how this early experience taught her that something she loved doing, programming. She learned that her skills as a programmer can create value and she happened to enjoy building things on the internet. Today, Huda is a taking a bold step to redefine healthcare in Canada. S...
Aug 27, 2017•39 min
John Richardson is a very bold entrepreneur. John is working to disrupt or rethink decision-making. He is building technology, Ethelo, that helps large groups improve the way they make decisions. At the heart of his work, he is asking two key questions: •How do we improve large group decision making? •How do we improve governance? In this episode, John argues that although many of us rightly assume technology will help us address many of the most challenge issues of our time, there is another po...
Aug 20, 2017•35 min
In this episode, Daniel Egger and I discuss how many organization want to disrupt because they have not sufficiently prepared for the future. Daniel is a Human Centered Disruptive Innovation consultant and is the author of the book Future Value Generation: Do you need to create new Business Logics? Daniel has a slightly different take on how we generate innovation. For him, innovation, foresight and strategy should start from the perspective of human emotions. One of his most interesting argumen...
Aug 13, 2017•45 min
For many people who grow up in small towns, it is almost a race to try to get out and move to a big city. For Amanda, her experiences abroad gave her insight into the tremendous potential that New Brunswick had to offer. She is the Director at NouLAB and in this episode, we discuss her audacious goal to redefine New Brunswick. She is working to disrupt the way decisions are made. She is working to help people see problems form many different perspectives. Quoting Peter Senge, she remind us that ...
Aug 06, 2017•39 min
In part two of my conversation with Chuck Marohn we diver deeper into how he and his team are building a movement of one million people who care. We even explore a very interesting concept called temporal discounting, where we highly value things that valuable today, but discount things that are valuable in the future. We are biased to pay attention to things in the short term. The bottom line with the mess that we are today is that we created the mess that we are trying to disrupt. In the first...
Jul 30, 2017•38 min
In part one of this very deep conversation with Charles (Chuck) Marohn, we explore his the deep insight has had from is media outlet Strong Town. Strong Town’s mission is to support a model of development that allows America’s cities, towns and neighborhoods to become financially strong and resilient. Strong Towns even has a few principles: •Strong cities, towns and neighborhoods cannot happen without strong citizens (people who care). •Local government is a platform for strong citizens to colla...
Jul 21, 2017•30 min
Within the rise of the shared economy, there is increasing need for an approach to insurance that meets these emerging ways of working. Tim Attia and his colleagues have built a product for the shared economy. In this episode, we discuss how they built an insurance product from the ground up. One that meets the needs of the new ways people are working. He tells the story of how existing thinking and practices in industry saw insurance in the shared economy as too risky to invest. One practice fo...
Jul 17, 2017•44 min
In this podcast episode, I talk with Sharon Avery the CEO of Toronto Foundation. Sharon is excited about being at the heart of philanthropy. In the show we talk about how she got into philanthropy. She tells the story of headed off to university thinking she would get into media. Instead, she became a fundraiser. She shares a powerful work experience, related to a past crush and how that experience changed her perspective on what she wanted to do with the rest of her life. We joke about how foll...
Jul 09, 2017•48 min
This episode explores how the leader of America’s deadliest neo-Nazi gang, Christian Picciolini, became the co-founder of a nonprofit, Life After Hate. His nonprofit is dedicated to peace, inclusion, and racial diversity. In this show, we talk about how in owning a record store that sold not only white power music but music that was popular with groups he was taught to hate, he unintentionally befriended people who were supposed to be his enemy. Christian is a testament to people's capacity for ...
Jul 02, 2017•28 min
In the same way that some people might dismantle a washing machine, Jeff dismantles social systems. He describes himself has having a pathology for dismantling social systems. Jeff argues that social norms, the unwritten rules of how people behave, are at the root of addressing complex challenges. We have a rich discussion about how we change social systems by using a scales metaphor. For Jeff and his colleagues, social norms are the key to addressing complex problems. For Jeff and his colleague...
Jun 25, 2017•40 min
Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world - Arthur Schopenhauer In his TEDTalk titled, I am the son of a terrorist, here’s how I chose peace, Zak Ebrahim outlines his experience growing up with a father who taught him to hate. His book, The Terrorist's Son: A Story of Choice takes a deeper dive into his story of becoming a peace activist. In this Disruptive Conversation, Zak and I explore several powerful lessons he has learned along his journey. He p...
Jun 18, 2017•24 min
Jonathan Levy describes himself as the Zero Waste Guy. In this episode, we explore his perspectives on how he helps organizations reduce their waste. When he first started consulting he called his business Disruptive Consulting and quickly learned that few people want work with a disruptor. In his work, Jonathan is trying to make businesses as green as they allow him to. He has learned that organizations are not always ready to go commit to zero waste, but he has adopted the approach that it is ...
Jun 11, 2017•35 min
In this episode of Disruptive Conversations, I talk to Zaid Hassan, the author of the book, "The Social Labs Revolution: A new approach to solving our most complex challenges" (Berret-Koehler, 2014). In this episode, we explore the notion that our dominant approach to problem-solving, aka strategic planning, does not work. In much of the conversation, we describe complex problem-solving as a practice. One that demands a different lens than that of the dominant culture we call strategic planning....
Jun 04, 2017•29 min
This episode, features SiG Director, Cheryl Rose. Cheryl is a Senior Fellow with The J.W. McConnell Family Foundation and has spent many years working to support social change agents through education and training that helps them to have more impact. Cheryl shares a wealth of knowledge in how we can think about changing systems and sectors. Having been a mentor and coach to many disruptors, she reminds us to hold a systems lens or a complexity lens when thinking about generating change. For her,...
May 28, 2017•41 min
This disruptive conversations episode highlights how even with the best of intentions, we can sometimes betray ourselves and our loved ones when are not able to step into authenticity and vulnerability. This episode gets very personal, honest and intimate about disruption, death and cancer. In this episode, I talk with Brielle Morgan who is a daring and innovative journalist. Brielle and I share some very intimate moments in this episode. Through their startup media agency, Brielle and her colle...
May 21, 2017•35 min
In this episode, I interview John Ruffolo Chief Executive Officer, OMERS Ventures. We explore how many of the entrepreneurs they invest in have a passion for solving a problem. He tells the story of Shopify. One of Canada's great entrepreneurial stories. John and his team look for founders who care deeply about the problem to be solved. He explains that there is a confusion between invention and innovation. For John, he doesn't see a lot of new invention, but rather interesting applications of t...
May 14, 2017•30 min
Greg Tehvan is trying to reimage his hometown of Fargo, North Dakota. He describes Fargo as the last place someone visits when they try to visit every state in the United States. It is referred to as flyover country. For him, Fargo is a victim of Geographical bias or Geographical bullying. For example, if people say they are going to New York most of us might think they are going there to do business. If you are going to Los Angeles we might think you are joining the entertainment industry. If y...
May 07, 2017•31 min
Thordis Elva is disrupting patriarchy. In her forthcoming book, South of Forgiveness, she and her coauthor are challenging the world to rethink our approaches and assumptions on how we address sexual violence and gender stereotypes. I first learnt about her work when I saw her give a TEDTalk at TEDWomen 2015. In the talk, she, the survivor of rape, gave a talk with the perpetrator of rape, Tom Stranger. They stood side-by-side and delivered one of the most thought-provoking talks of the day. The...
Apr 30, 2017•50 min
Sarah Schulman and her colleagues describe their work as turning social safety nets into trampolines. In the show, she describes her work as trying to disrupt the social welfare state. She and her team often find themselves working within the tensions of traditional approaches to structuring institutions and more iterative approaches to working. They generate insight using ethnography and other research development methods to ensure that people flourish in the work that they do. Visit their soci...
Apr 23, 2017•28 min
When I asked Jim Gibbs, co-founder of MeterFeeder, his favourite quote, he replied, "my dad always said, nothing beats a failure than a try". Jim and his business partner have built a disruptive App by focusing on the pain point of so many people around the world. If you hate getting parking tickets, then you can finally feel comfort knowing that MeterFeeder is working on making your life easier. Most of us hate receiving parking tickets. We also find paying for parking annoying and difficult. J...
Apr 16, 2017•35 min
Privacy does not have to be a zero-sum game. Dr Ann Cavoukian is a three-term Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, Canada. Dr Cavoukian does not think that we have to choose between privacy and everything else. We can have privacy and meet business interests, security and public safety. She argues that is easier to take a privacy by design approach, taking privacy into account from the beginning than to try to think about privacy after the fact. She argues that is easier to take a Pr...
Apr 09, 2017•22 min
We live in an incredibly complex world and there are a group of people who are developing a process called Labs. Labs are an approach to solving complex public challenges. These labs are taking an intentional approach to addressing societies most complex challenges. I have interviewed a number of people who fall into the category of working in the labs. In this podcast I interview Claire Bure from MaRS Solutions Lab. MaRs Solutions Lab is a public and social innovation lab that helps to solve co...
Apr 02, 2017•30 min
Mark Brand is a serial entrepreneur who is also a social entrepreneur. In this podcast, we talk about a number of things that inform Mark's approach to building Beautiful Businesses. Mark has reframed being a restauranteur into a career of service. In the show, he asks, what are you going to wake up every day and do, and do in service to others. The distinction he makes is that being is service to those who need us or being in service to a greater cause is not the same as being in servitude. For...
Mar 26, 2017•49 min
Growing North is a disruptive social venture. They are also a finalist in the Google.org Impact Challenge. Growing North has the seeds of disruption and reminds me of the work of Wangari Maathai. Wangari Maathai was the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Maathai started a movement that encouraged women to plant trees as and approach to mitigating deforestation and food security within their communities. This grassroots group became a movement known as the Green Belt movement. What...
Mar 19, 2017•27 min
Jeff Speck is an unlikely disruptor. He is an urban planner, which is probably also the least likely candidate for a conversation about disruption. In the podcast we explore three things he and others in his field are working to disrupt. No city has become great by trying to solve a parking problem. So he is disrupting the idea that addressing traffic and parking will help to make for a great city. Much of his work is make cities walkable. Jeff is the author of the book, “Walkable City: How Down...
Mar 12, 2017•43 min
I attended Podcamp Toronto recently and did my first live recording. I usually do my podcasts via Skype and rarely do I get so personal in my show. Dhani and I shared a lot around walking on bridges that have never been built. We talk about the desire and drive it takes to build beautiful organizations. We cover a range of topics in the show. In this podcast, I interview Dhani Oks. Dhani cofounded the Academy of Lions which could be thought of as being just a CrossFit gym in Toronto, but for man...
Mar 05, 2017•34 min
In this podcast, I interview Piper Anderson from Mass Story Lab. Piper describes herself as a prison abolitionist. For her, the prison does not work and has never worked. She uses Mass Story Lab to imagine the world beyond prisons. She shares her approach to criminal justice reform from the bottom up and story driven. Mass incarceration disrupts lives, and we need to take an approach that is not compartmentalized. She believes that we need to spend more time talking to the people who have been m...
Feb 26, 2017•34 min
Ideas are a dime a dozen, but for Steve and his colleagues, having a bias towards action helps us make things happen in the world. In this podcast we talk about his new book, Surge: Your guide to put any idea into action. In their book, they outline their "Action Surge Blueprint." In this podcast, we talk through how Steve and his colleagues help people strengthen their action muscle or build a bias towards action. They work with groups to help people make their ideas into reality. The goal of t...
Feb 19, 2017•28 min
