One of my favourite episodes of all time. This genre-shattering attempt to answer the question of human behaviour by looking at it from every angle. Our guest starts by looking at the factors that bear on a person's reaction in the precise moment a behavior occurs, and then hops back in time from there, in stages, ultimately ending up at the deep history of our species and its genetic inheritance. And so the first category of explanation is the neurobiological one. What goes on in a person's bra...
Oct 22, 2020•1 hr 6 min•Season 3Ep. 244
One of my favourite episodes of all time. This genre-shattering attempt to answer the question of human behaviour by looking at it from every angle. Our guest starts by looking at the factors that bear on a person's reaction in the precise moment a behavior occurs, and then hops back in time from there, in stages, ultimately ending up at the deep history of our species and its genetic inheritance. And so the first category of explanation is the neurobiological one. What goes on in a person's bra...
Oct 22, 2020•1 hr 6 min•Season 3Ep. 244
Your business's success depends on how you prepare for the future. While business leaders of the past looked in the rear-view mirror to predict the road ahead, we must look at the greater forces affecting the social, business and economic world today—megatrends. Our guest today is here to share a fresh, holistic way to think about tomorrow by preparing for it today: He calls it DRIVE. The DRIVE framework examines five interrelated megatrends: • Demographic and social changes • Resource scarcity ...
Oct 14, 2020•55 min•Season 3Ep. 243
When facing a rhino that's about to charge, doing nothing is seldom the best option. Yet all too often that's exactly what happens. Danger rarely comes as a complete surprise; instead, it follows many missed opportunities for taking precautions, reading and responding to warning signals. The impulse to freeze is hard to overcome. Sometimes the grip of denial is so strong that we do nothing at all; or, even worse, as in many market booms leading to bust, we do more of what was dangerous in the fi...
Oct 08, 2020•1 hr 3 min•Season 3Ep. 242
The Nocturnal Brain: Tales of Nightmares and Neuroscience with Guy Leschziner You can survive longer without food than without sleep. The fact that sleep is fundamental to life is unarguable, but in modern society, at least until recently, we have taken for granted that sleep simply happens, and is a necessary evil to allow us to live our waking lives. Recently, however, there has been a shift in how we view sleep. Rather than being a hindrance to our working and social lives, a biological proce...
Oct 01, 2020•56 min•Season 3Ep. 241
The Digital Age will raise the question of how humans will stay relevant in the workplace. To stay relevant, we have to be able to excel cognitively, behaviourally, and emotionally in ways that technology can't. Our guest believes, this requires us to become Hyper-Learners: continuously learning, unlearning, and relearning at the speed of change. To do that, we have to overcome our reflexive ways of being: seeking confirmation of what we believe, emotionally defending our beliefs and our ego, an...
Sep 24, 2020•51 min•Season 3Ep. 240
Startups have changed the world. In the United States, many startups, such as Tesla, Apple, and Amazon, have become household names. The economic value of startups has doubled since 1992 and is projected to double again in the next fifteen years. For decades, the hot centre of this phenomenon has been Silicon Valley. This is changing fast. Thanks to technology, startups are now taking root everywhere, from Delhi to Detroit to Nairobi to Sao Paulo. Yet despite this globalisation of startup activi...
Sep 17, 2020•38 min•Season 3Ep. 239
There are two stories you hear about making a living as an artist in the digital age, and they are diametrically opposed. One comes from Silicon Valley and its boosters in the media. There's never been a better time to be an artist, it goes. If you've got a laptop, you've got a recording studio. If you've got an iPhone, you've got a movie camera. GarageBand, Final Cut Pro: all the tools are at your fingertips. And if production is cheap, distribution is free. It's called the Internet: YouTube, S...
Sep 10, 2020•47 min•Season 3Ep. 238
The context of business has changed so rapidly over the past few decades that it may be time for a new lexicon. At the very least, it's time to challenge some of the established thinking about strategy and competition that used to drive business advantage - but no longer does. In this episode, strategy expert and Columbia Business School professor Rita McGrath takes on one of most fundamental and recognised notions in strategy: that of sustainable competitive advantage. She argues this can no lo...
Sep 03, 2020•49 min•Season 3Ep. 237
Despite decades of research illustrating the benefits of enlightened leadership, the high-performance workplace is still not the norm. Our guest has spent 20 years investigating this paradox, and in this book she forms a penetrating critique of why such strong evidence has had limited impact, and provides an alternative practical approach that any employer can implement to overcome these challenges. She shows that there is a clear correlation between those companies that are good companies and t...
Aug 27, 2020•47 min•Season 3Ep. 236
Building a business requires more than just a good product and talented people; it requires you to take a hard look at how you show up as a leader. Open, Honest, and Direct helps you dive into the heart of your business and your people, identifying changes you can make to transform the way you and your managers lead. Part business book, part personal-development guide, this is a how-to full of practical ways to not only build and lead a high-performance team but also bring out the best in your p...
Aug 20, 2020•45 min•Season 3Ep. 235
Great ideas don't just happen. Innovation springs from creative thinking—a method of the human mind that we can study and learn. In The Art of Ideas, our guest brings together business concepts with stories of creativity in art, politics, and history to provide a visual and accessible guide to the art and science of new and useful ideas. He details how to spark your own ideas and what to do while waiting for inspiration to strike. He shows that regardless of the field, innovations happen in the ...
Aug 13, 2020•52 min•Season 2Ep. 234
What separates your mind from the mind of an animal? Maybe you think it's your ability to design tools, your sense of self, or your grasp of past and future - all traits that have helped us define ourselves as the pre-eminent species on Earth. But in recent decades, claims of human superiority have been eroded by a revolution in the study of animal cognition. Take the way octopuses use coconut shells as tools, or how elephants can classify humans by age, gender, and language. Take Ayumu, the you...
Aug 07, 2020•57 min•Season 3Ep. 233
Our guest today argues that everything is changing fast, apart from how we behave. Our ways of thinking and making decisions have changed little, with the traditional wisdom being that improvements are best done incrementally, just as big, established corporations will increase profits incrementally and governments will change laws incrementally. But the problems we now need to solve require a revolution in thinking and behavior in order to avoid disaster. He lays out the reality of the dangerou...
Jul 31, 2020•40 min•Season 2Ep. 232
Rob Fitzpatrick is author of "The Mom Test, How to talk to customers & learn if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you" His book shows us how customer conversations go wrong and how we can do better. They say you shouldn't ask your mom whether your business is a good idea, because she loves you and will lie to you. This is technically true, but it misses the point. You shouldn't ask anyone if your business is a good idea. It's a bad question and everyone will lie to you a...
Jul 23, 2020•35 min•Season 3Ep. 231
The world around us is changing rapidly. There is now more pressure on established companies to innovate. The challenge most companies face is how to develop new products for new markets, while managing their core business at the same time. The principles and practices outlined in this book provide companies with a blueprint of how to manage innovation while they execute on their core business. The Corporate Startup provides frameworks, visualisations, templates, tools and methods that can be ea...
Jul 19, 2020•39 min•Season 3Ep. 230
More agility. More energy. More genius. Why do some companies always seem to have the best ideas, the most engaged people and the most profitable growth? Based on 10 years of research, today's book goes behind the scenes of some of the world's most innovative companies and decodes the tools, hacks and approaches that help their managers systematically spark ingenuity, agility, and profitable creativity at scale. It presents a pragmatic 'how-to' guide for any team or organisation that needs to ad...
Jul 14, 2020•51 min•Season 3Ep. 229
We've reached a point in time when everyone wants innovation, but most people don't know how to actually attain it. It's not easy, which is why there are so many failed brands and companies. In our era of AI, rapid change, disruption, and possibility, there are so many great opportunities within our grasp. However, smart, successful people consistently miss out. Their capabilities are limited by seven traps, and they rely on and repeat past decisions. They miss out on the potential of what could...
Jul 09, 2020•53 min•Season 3Ep. 228
Being awarded a leadership role within an organization may feel like an amazing accomplishment, but that is only half the battle. The second, and arguably most important half, lies in building and maintaining a highly effective team. However, according to a recent survey conducted on UK workers, managers are failing miserably at this task, and are instead fostering feelings of hate and resentment among their workers. The survey states that while 22% of the UK public say they hate their boss, a s...
Jul 04, 2020•36 min•Season 3Ep. 227
As a business leader, you need to make decisions that set your company up for success, now and in the future. The challenge is In this fast-changing world, the rules of strategy are being rewritten and the go-to solutions you once relied on are no longer enough. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is here. As emerging technologies like AI and blockchain become ubiquitous, they will unleash unprecedented levels of disruption. Drawing on his broad global experience, our guest delivers the essential g...
Jun 30, 2020•1 hr 12 min•Season 3Ep. 226
Innovators need to communicate their concepts. Organisations have 5 generations working together in the workplace. We must be able to respectfully challenge ideas. This is why I asked our guest Gill Hasson to join us. Every day, you have the opportunity to interact with people in different areas of your life; in public, at work and at home, with colleagues and clients, with friends and family. Your ability to exchange ideas and opinions with other people, understand their thoughts and feelings, ...
Jun 25, 2020•54 min•Season 3Ep. 225
Our guest's Business Model Canvas changed the way the world creates and plans new business models. It has been used by corporations and startups and consultants around the world and is taught in hundreds of universities. After years of researching how the world's best companies develop, test, and scale new business models, he has produced his definitive work. Todays book explains what every organization can learn from the business models of the world's most exciting companies. The book explains ...
Jun 22, 2020•1 hr 6 min•Season 3Ep. 224
Review us on iTunes , it helps grow the show. Today's guest teaches business leaders about the importance of relationship building in the digital age. He argues that in spite of (and because of) the advances in tech, we've become a less connected society. We have dramatically evolved away from face-to-face communication, and the skill of building rapport is evaporating. This means that customer personalisation and relationships are more important now than ever--and they will be the key to succes...
Jun 17, 2020•43 min•Season 3Ep. 223
Give Us A Review On iTunes Companies spend millions on legal compliance training and initiatives to eliminate workplace drama and the resulting low morale and lawsuits, but don't always get the results they want. Most organisations understand that simply checking legal compliance boxes around sexual harassment, bias, etc. isn't enough, but are at a loss on how to implement solutions, especially in today's post-#MeToo world. Our guest today is an attorney, HR expert, trainer, and former state reg...
Jun 12, 2020•43 min•Season 3Ep. 222
Complex problem solving is the core skill for 21st Century Teams Complex problem solving is at the very top of the list of essential skills for career progression in the modern world. But how problem solving is taught in our schools, universities, businesses and organisations comes up short. Our guest today shares the seven-step systematic approach to creative problem solving developed in top consulting firms that will work in any field or industry, turning you into a highly sought-after bulletp...
Jun 10, 2020•52 min•Season 3Ep. 221
This episode is about the creation of a new global currency. Unlike traditional currencies, such as the dollar, yen, or euro, this currency strives to be a risk-free store of value. And unlike bitcoin, which tethers to a finite number of units, this store of value tethers to zero risk. As a result, it is constrained not by an arbitrary number of units, but by market forces of supply and demand. The foundational ideas are not new and not unique. A privately controlled, market-based currency striv...
Jun 05, 2020•46 min•Season 3Ep. 220
Your job is at risk-if not now, then soon. We are on the leading edge of a Smart Machine Age led by artificial intelligence that will be as transformative for us as the Industrial Revolution was for our ancestors. Smart machines will take over millions of jobs in manufacturing, office work, the service sector, the professions, you name it. Not only can they know more data and analyse it faster than any mere human, but smart machines are free of the emotional, psychological, and cultural baggage ...
Jun 02, 2020•55 min•Season 3Ep. 219
Most of us do not see ourselves as biased towards people of different races or genders. And yet in virtually every area of modern life disparities remain. Even in organisations, which have, for the most part, embraced the idea of diversity as a mainstream idea, but patterns of disparity remain rampant. Why is this? Breakthroughs in the cognitive and neurosciences give some idea why our results seem inconsistent with our intentions. Bias is natural to the human mind, a survival mechanism that is ...
May 30, 2020•51 min•Season 3Ep. 218
In his 14-plus years as a strategic communications trainer, the biggest obstacle our guests comes across - one that connects directly to nervousness, stammering, rambling, and epic fail - is that most speakers and writers don't have a point. They typically have just a title, a theme, a topic, an idea, an assertion, a catchphrase, or even something much less. A point is something more. It's a contention you can propose, argue, defend, illustrate, and prove. When we have a point, our influence sna...
May 27, 2020•40 min•Season 3Ep. 217
This episode aims to empower young women and give some tips to parents and mentors along the way. Recast yourself - Own your wins - Define your legacy - Leverage your success Written by Randy Patterson, the CEO of a multimillion-dollar startup, The Matriarch Rules provides you with guidelines that empower you to find personal success and growth in being the compassionate, powerful, and forward-thinking woman you are. Achieve success by becoming the change maker you were always meant to be. What ...
May 23, 2020•43 min•Season 3Ep. 216