333: Gaia Bernstein, Managing screen time and addictive technology

For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic from a 10 episode program to help our clients and customers measurably, radically transform their careers through The Author Program. How would your career, reputation, and earnings change as a published author? Imagine your client interactions when potential and current clients saw your thinking in a published book before they met you? Imagine the time you would save not having to explain your ideas and the value you could add to them? Imagine the fee premium you could earn? Imagine avoiding awkward meetings trying to establish your credibility? Imagine how many potential clients would find you and reach out to you? Learn more and see the application guidelines: https://www.firmsconsulting.com/experts-published-author-program/ Apply: email team@firmsconsulting.com Enjoying our podcast? Get access to sample advanced training episodes here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

12 Huhti 202326min

For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic from the Corporate Strategy & Transformation study. In this phase of the podcast series, we are focusing on week 4 when we are bringing the entire leadership team together to help them make one decision. The only decision they have to make is: "Should Empire International focus on the non-regulated non-core activities as they are now doing or refocus their efforts to support Empire Energy on their core regulated business: generating energy, transmitting energy and distributing energy?" In today's podcast, while we are heavily focused on week 4 and the build up to that major visioning workshop, we step back to understand a little bit of the broader contextual issues facing this client. If you have been following this podcast series you will realize that there are 2 criteria that must be met for any strategy study to be a corporate level strategy study. The first one is the objective function for the client, the key question for the client, must be unclear. If the objective function is known for the client than you are not doing a corporate strategy study. You are doing some other kind of strategy study, like BU strategy. The other condition is that you have to help the client pick the market where they want to compete. And that usually involves doing a lot of industry analysis /value chain analysis. The skill explained in this podcast is essential for any partner, but it is equally useful for any consultant at any level. Getting clarity when many paths are possible is a crucial skill to have. Most bad consulting engagements hit their main hurdles at this early stage, in determining the key problem facing the client. In this podcast, we want to help you understand how we went about figuring out the objective function for this client. And this is something we did way back at the beginning of the study, before we even started. And if you go onto the website and you look at the detailed maps, videos, power points as we explain each step in the study, this is explained in enormously more detail than what we are going to do here. Yet, seeing this helicopter view is important. What we want to do here is simply explain the questions we wanted to answer to determine the objective function and how we wrote out the logic. If you do this, you will always be on the right track. Click here to see the full study and here to see the merger study and market entry study. Enjoying our podcast? Get access to sample advanced training episodes here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

10 Huhti 202318min

Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 335, an interview with Sandeep Chennakeshu, the author of Your Company Is Your Castle: Proven Methods for Building a Resilient Business, where he describes how to assess and systematically build a company's business model, financial health, strategy, culture, products, sales channels, execution, and stakeholder confidence to make the company formidable. Your Company Is Your Castle equips you with critical insights and principles to build strong businesses and in turn build yourself into a strong leader. Sandeep Chennakeshu is a lifelong student and aspiring teacher whose heart is in technology and mind is in business. He earned a postgraduate diploma in industrial management from the Indian Institute of Science and a PhD in electrical engineering from Southern Methodist University. He then entered the electronics industry and led the development and launches of technology that billions use every day via cell phones, laptops, wearables, satellites, medical equipment, and cars. He is a Fellow of IEEE and a named inventor on 180 patents. After two decades in corporate roles as CTO of Ericsson Mobile Phones and Sony Ericsson, president of Ericsson Mobile Platforms, SVP at Freescale, president of BlackBerry Technology Solutions, and EVP of AMD, Sandeep returned to consulting and the start-up world. He is currently COO at Uhnder Inc., a pioneer in digital-imaging radar, and sits on the advisory boards of exciting tech start-ups. Managing operations in fourteen different countries over the span of his career gave Sandeep a deep appreciation for global businesses. Along this rich cultural journey, he led the transformation of three underperforming businesses using the principles outlined in his new book. Sandeep lives and works in Austin, Texas and plans to spend the next chapter of his life sharing his learnings through writing and mentoring. Get Sandeep's book here: Your Company Is Your Castle: Proven Methods for Building a Resilient Business. Sandeep Chennakeshu. https://www.amazon.com/Your-Company-Castle-Building-Resilient/dp/1957616040 Enjoying this episode? Get access to sample advanced training episodes here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

5 Huhti 202356min

Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 334, an interview with Rishi Dave, a partner in Bain's Commercial Excellence practice with deep expertise in B2B marketing and digital marketing. In this episode, Rishi explains the concept of a "Day 1 List" in B2B sales and marketing and the three things that will get a supplier or seller on the list. Rishi also discussed what a "sales play" is, how to build it, institutionalize the knowledge within the company, and get the sales team to adopt the sales play to fulfill their potential and increase their productivity and sales. Rishi Dave partners with CMOs and management teams to drive marketing transformations and build modern marketing capabilities. He serves as an expert on the implementation of Bain's B2B Marketing Diagnostic and Sales Play System. Rishi has held global CMO roles at public technology and cloud companies, including Dun & Bradstreet, Vonage, and MongoDB. Prior to these roles, he served as the global head of digital marketing for Dell's B2B businesses. Rishi started his career at Bain & Company. As a marketing executive, Rishi has built world-class marketing organizations and capabilities that have driven top-line growth leveraging the right marketing technology, data, analytics and content strategy. Rishi has driven major brand and messaging transformations, reimagined digital customer experiences, and built and scaled go-to market models. Rishi earned an MBA in Marketing from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania as well as a BS in Chemical Engineering and an AB in Economics with Honors from Stanford University. Enjoying this episode? Get access to sample advanced training episodes here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

3 Huhti 202356min

Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 332, an interview with the author of How to Listen, Oscar Trimboli. Effective communication is not all about eloquent speaking. The key sits on the ability to listen and how you react and respond to what you hear. As Oscar said in the episode, "The difference between hearing and listening is action". In this episode, we discuss what good listening and communication is. We also highlighted the impact of good listening in your career, organization, and personal life. Oscar Trimboli is on a quest to create 100 million Deep Listeners in the world. He is an author, host of the Apple Award winning podcast—Deep Listening and a sought-after keynote speaker. He is passionate about using the gift of listening to bring positive change in homes, workplaces and the world. Through his work with chairs, boards of directors and executive teams in local, regional and global organizations, Oscar has experienced first-hand the transformational impact leaders and organizations can have when they listen beyond the words. He consults with organisations including Cisco, Google, HSBC, News Corp, PayPal, Qantas, TripAdvisor helping executives and their teams listen to what's unsaid by the customers and employees. Oscar lives in Sydney with his wife Jennie, where he helps first-time runners and ocean swimmers conquer their fears and contributes to the cure for cancer as part of Can Too, a cancer research charity. Get Oscar's book here: How to Listen: Discover the Hidden Key to Better Communication. Oscar Trimboli. https://www.amazon.com/How-Listen-Discover-Hidden-Communication-ebook/dp/B09XWY5PRH?ref_=ast_author_dp Enjoying this episode? Get access to sample advanced training episodes here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

27 Maalis 20231h 12min

Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 331, an interview with the co-author of The Burnout Challenge, Michael P. Leiter, Ph.D. Burnout is one of the major contributors driving people to leave their job. It results from unsuccessfully managed workplace stress and is a combination of exhaustion, psychological distancing, and a low sense of accomplishment. So how do we address burnout and who is responsible for managing this issue? In this episode, we discuss the factors contributing to employee burnout and what leaders and managers can do to understand, protect, and manage their employees to alleviate the distress from the elements that result in burnout. "Some people are looking for something from that job that it's not providing, that there is a mismatch." —Michael P. Leiter, Ph.D. Michael P. Leiter, Ph.D., is an organizational psychologist interested in the relationships of people with their work. He has been a professor of Industrial and Organisational Psychology at Deakin University in the Faculty of Health and Canada Research Chair in Occupational Health at Acadia University. Michael lives in Nova Scotia where he writes and consults with workplaces on preventing burnout while improving respect among people. Get Michael's new book here: The Burnout Challenge: Managing People's Relationships with Their Jobs. Christina Maslach and Michael P. Leiter. https://www.amazon.com/Burnout-Challenge-Managing-Peoples-Relationships-ebook/dp/B0B3JSJ8T3?ref_=ast_author_dp Enjoying this episode? Get access to sample advanced training episodes here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

22 Maalis 202349min

Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 330, an episode with Christina Maslach, PhD, a professor of psychology (Emerita) and a researcher at the Healthy Workplaces Center at the University of California, Berkeley. In this episode, we discuss the causes of burnout and the factors contributing to it, and how leaders and organizations can address this issue to provide a sustainable and healthy working environment for their employees. Christina Maslach, PhD, received her BA from Harvard and her PhD from Stanford. She is best known as the pioneering researcher on job burnout, producing the standard assessment tool (the Maslach Burnout Inventory, MBI), books, and journal articles. She has received numerous awards for her work, including both academic (the 2020 award for scientific writing from the National Academy of Sciences) and public (named in 2021 as one of the top 100 people transforming business, by Business Insider). In addition, she is an award-winning teacher and was Professor of the Year in 1997. As an administrator, she was Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education and Instructional Technology, and the Chair of the faculty Academic Senate (twice) at UC-Berkeley. She was the president of the Western Psychological Association when it celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2020. She is now interviewing women faculty who arrived at Berkeley in the 1970s, after the historic low point for women in the 1960s. Get Christina's new book here: The Burnout Challenge: Managing People's Relationships with Their Jobs. Christina Maslach and Michael P. Leiter. https://www.amazon.com/Burnout-Challenge-Managing-Peoples-Relationships-ebook/dp/B0B3JSJ8T3?ref_=ast_author_dp Enjoying this episode? Get access to sample advanced training episodes here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

20 Maalis 20231h 5min