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 disting...
Aug 12, 2024•50 min
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. Here are some free gifts for you: Overall Approach Used in Well-Managed Strategy Studies free download: www.firmsconsulti...
Aug 07, 2024•9 min
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? Here are some free gifts for you: Overall Approach Used in Well-Managed Strategy Studies free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/OverallApproa...
Aug 05, 2024•21 min
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...
Jul 31, 2024•16 min
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 fr...
Jul 29, 2024•13 min
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 resea...
Jul 24, 2024•1 hr 4 min
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 Her...
Jul 22, 2024•24 min
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...
Jul 17, 2024•50 min
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 Bu...
Jul 15, 2024•44 min
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, podcast...
Jul 10, 2024•52 min
Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 463, featuring an interview with golf coach, entrepreneur, and personal development enthusiast Eric Cogorno. 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 ...
Jul 08, 2024•54 min
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...
Jul 03, 2024•54 min
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 so...
Jul 01, 2024•50 min
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’...
Jun 26, 2024•49 min
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
