What if the greatest threat to smart decision-making isn’t bad data, but how we interpret it? In a world overflowing with information, even the most seasoned leaders and investors fall for myths dressed up as facts. Not because they’re uninformed, but because they’re human. In this episode, I sat down with Alex Edmans, Professor of Finance at London Business School and author of May Contain Lies, a powerful new book about how stories, statistics, and studies exploit our biases — and what we can ...
Jun 24, 2024•52 min
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 Fir...
Jun 19, 2024•42 min
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'...
Jun 17, 2024•53 min
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 ...
Jun 12, 2024•55 min
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 strategis...
Jun 10, 2024•47 min
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 ass...
Jun 05, 2024•51 min
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 “t...
Jun 03, 2024•53 min
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),...
May 29, 2024•53 min
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 in...
May 27, 2024•48 min
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 wh...
May 22, 2024•56 min
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,...
May 20, 2024•59 min
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 tra...
May 15, 2024•56 min
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 strang...
May 13, 2024•51 min
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...
May 08, 2024•51 min
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 Steinbe...
May 06, 2024•53 min
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 ...
May 01, 2024•50 min
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...
Apr 24, 2024•52 min
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 ...
Apr 22, 2024•49 min
For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we discuss how to know what is corporate strategy. Subscribe to FIRMSconsulting's YouTube channel: http://bit.ly/Firmsconsultingsubscribe Here are some free gifts for you: Overall Approach Used in Well-Managed Strategy Studies free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/OverallApproach McKinsey & BCG winning resume free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/resumepdf Enjoying this episode? Get access to sample advanced training episodes here...
Apr 17, 2024•5 min
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 b...
Apr 15, 2024•12 min
For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we discuss about financial strategy. Here are some free gifts for you: Overall Approach Used in Well-Managed Strategy Studies free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/OverallApproach McKinsey & BCG winning resume free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/resumepdf Enjoying this episode? Get access to sample advanced training episodes here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo...
Apr 10, 2024•10 min
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. Here are some free gifts for you: Overall Approach Used in Well-Managed Strategy Studies free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/OverallApproach McKinsey & BCG winning resume free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/resumepdf Enjoyi...
Apr 08, 2024•9 min
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...
Apr 03, 2024•55 min
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 t...
Apr 01, 2024•51 min
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 h...
Mar 27, 2024•53 min
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...
Mar 25, 2024•16 min
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 datase...
Mar 20, 2024•57 min
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 strategi...
Mar 18, 2024•56 min
For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we discuss value chain analysis. Here are some free gifts for you: Overall Approach Used in Well-Managed Strategy Studies free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/OverallApproach McKinsey & BCG winning resume free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/resumepdf Enjoying this episode? Get access to sample advanced training episodes here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo Subscribe to FIRMSconsulting's YouTube channel: http://bit.ly/Firmsconsul...
Mar 13, 2024•11 min
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 th...
Mar 11, 2024•47 min
