The Strategy Skills Podcast: Strategy | Leadership | Critical Thinking | Problem-Solving

Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 267, an episode with an award-winning advisor, speaker, and author, Christie Hunter Arscott. Get Christie’s book here: https://amzn.to/3Qia05S   Most of the time, the word risk is associated with fear and uncertainty. We tend to struggle with harnessing the power of risk-taking. But the first bold step sheds light on that. As Christie mentioned in this episode, “An intentional and strategic risk, even when the output is not what you desired, still can propel you further than if you made the consistent choice to play it safe.”   In this episode, we discussed the power of intentional risk-taking in building one’s career. We spoke about how to encourage women to take chances on themselves to face intentional, intelligent, and strategic risks.    Christie Hunter Arscott is a leading expert on how we can harness the power of intentional risk-taking to create more dynamic and vibrant careers and organizations. A Rhodes Scholar, Christie has been named by Thinkers50 as one of the top management thinkers likely to shape the future of business. Christie was also selected for the biannual Thinkers50 Talent Award shortlist of the top global thought leaders in the field of talent management.   Christie’s research and writing have been featured across international publications, including Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Fortune, European Business Review, TIME, Fast Company, Business Insider, and more. Her article "Why So Many Thirtysomething Women Are Leaving Your Company" was selected for the Harvard Business Review collection of the top articles on diversity.   Christie has spoken worldwide to organizations and institutions, including the World Economic Forum, Harvard Business School, the University of Oxford, and the Global Women’s Forum for the Economy and Society. Her corporate clients include Bacardi, Deloitte, PWC, HSBC, and more.   Christie holds a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Brown University, a certificate of Distinction in General Management from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business and two Master’s degrees with a focus on gender research from the University of Oxford. She currently serves on the Women’s Leadership Board of the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard Kennedy School.   Get Christie’s book here: Begin Boldly: How Women Can Reimagine Risk, Embrace Uncertainty, and Launch a Brilliant Career. Christie Hunter Arscott. https://amzn.to/3Qia05S   Enjoying this episode? Get access to sample advanced training episodes here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

10 Elo 202253min

For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we discuss the importance of corporate strategy. Enjoying our podcast? Get access to sample advanced training episodes here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

8 Elo 20229min

Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 265, an episode with a veteran Silicon Valley dealmaker, Touraj Parang. Get Touraj’s book here: https://amzn.to/3bmsDGj In this episode, Touraj takes us through his unique, decades-long experiences as an entrepreneur and investor. He shares the lessons he learned when he sold his first startup – with no exit plan – for pennies on the dollar. It was then followed by great success with his next startup as he applied his learnings and prioritized executing an exit strategy. Touraj discussed the key things to consider and the red flags to avoid when selecting investors and co-founders.  Touraj Parang is a seasoned entrepreneur, investor, advisor, and M&A expert who has sat in every seat around the table, structuring and negotiating strategic transactions since the late 1990s, including as a corporate attorney at legal powerhouses WSGR and O’Melveny & Myers. Touraj has been a founder, executive, and trusted advisor to several fast-growing technology startups with exits to LinkedIn, Instacart, Vistaprint, Postmates, and Amplify, among others. He has also spent nearly a decade on the acquirer side of M&A deals as a corporate development executive at Webs and GoDaddy. Exit Path draws on Touraj’s unique, decades-long experience involving hundreds of M&A transactions, strategic partnerships, and venture capital investments totaling billions of dollars in aggregate value. He is currently the President and Chief Operating Officer at Serve Robotics, a startup shaping the future of sustainable, self-driving delivery that he helped spin out of Uber, and an Operating Advisor at Pear VC, an early-stage venture capital firm, where he enjoys collaborating with and providing strategic guidance to mission-driven entrepreneurs. He earned his JD from Yale Law School and his BA in Philosophy and Economics from Stanford University. Get Touraj’s book here:  Exit Path: How to Win the Startup End Game. Touraj Parang. https://amzn.to/3bmsDGj Enjoying our podcast? Get access to sample advanced training episodes here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

3 Elo 20221h 10min

Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 264, an episode with startup entrepreneurs Ash Ali and Hasan Kubba. Get Ash and Hasan’s book here: https://amzn.to/3Q8ctPD In this episode, we speak about the concept of unfair advantage and the process of identifying and managing it so it’s your edge over any competition. Many people have the limiting belief that they don’t have something authentic to offer, but what they don’t realize is that we all have unique skill sets and talents. It only takes self-awareness to realize that the ingredients to success are already within you.  Ash Ali is an award-winning serial tech entrepreneur and angel investor. Ash sold his first internet business at just 19 years old (and most recently, his Dubai-based on-demand mobile app startup in 2018). As the first marketing director of Just Eat UK, which IPO’d for £1.5 billion, he was included in the Top 250 Growth Hackers, as well as the Top 100 Asian Tech Stars in the UK. With over 20 years of hands-on experience creating and growing startups, he has consulted, advised, and invested in hundreds of startups at various funding stages. Ash is a highly sought-after international speaker and expert on digital disruption and tech transformation, and has spoken at numerous global organizations and conferences, including Salesforce, Ernst & Young, and TEDx. He is currently co-founder of Uhubs, a new skills training platform that helps entrepreneurs and professionals upskill.   Hasan Kubba is an author, entrepreneur, and startup strategist. Hasan is a specialist in technology startups, marketing, and fundraising. With his own London-based digital marketing business and startup investment experience, Hasan is particularly strong at breaking down complex business concepts into simple and effective strategies and tactics. His recent TEDx talk titled Startups, Entrepreneurship, and Unfair Advantages was voted the highest ever on the official TED subreddit. He is passionate about the future of entrepreneurship and digital disruption globally and is an in-demand startup mentor to early-stage entrepreneurs, workshop trainer, and international speaker.  Get Ash & Hasan’s book here:  The Unfair Advantage: How You Already Have What It Takes to Succeed. Ash Ali and Hasan Kubba: https://amzn.to/3Q8ctPD Enjoying our podcast? Get access to sample advanced training episodes here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

1 Elo 202250min

Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 263, an episode with an artist, researcher, author, and educator at Northwestern University, Julio Mario Ottino. Get Julio’s book here: https://amzn.to/3b4390g   Individuals and organizations face complex problems and challenges today that demand a new way of thinking to grasp underlying solutions and opportunities. In this episode, Julio shares the beauty of the coexistence of art, science, and technology – rather than being separate disciplines – to navigate the complex world.   Julio was born in Argentina and grew up with twin interests in physical sciences and visual arts, finding beauty in math and art, and seeing creativity as being one thing, rather than something that lives in compartments. Art provided a cathartic means of expression while he grew up in turbulent times. He managed to create a solo art exhibit while drafted as an officer in the Argentinian Navy. When he moved to the United States to pursue a doctorate, his research achievements followed.     Most of the early attention Ottino received stemmed from pioneering work in chaos theory and a combination of scientific insight and visualization. His research work has been featured on the covers of Nature, Science, Scientific American, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, and other publications. He has supervised more than 65 Ph.D. theses, written over 250 papers and two books, and has given invited presentations at over 200 universities in the United States and around the world, as well as at organizations such as Accenture, Boeing, Google, 3M, and Unilever.    An academic entrepreneur, Ottino was the founding co-director of the Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems and educational and research initiatives in design, entrepreneurship, and energy and sustainability. As dean of the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, he founded educational and research partnerships with Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, Pritzker School of Law, Medill School of Journalism, Feinberg School of Medicine, School of Communication, and School of Education and Social Policy, as well as with external partners ranging from the Art Institute of Chicago to Argonne National Lab. In 2008, he was selected by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers as one of the “One Hundred Engineers of the Modern Era.” In 2017, Ottino was awarded the Bernard M. Gordon Prize for Innovation in Engineering and Technology Education from the National Academy of Engineering for the concept of whole-brain engineering. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow and is a member of both the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Sciences as well as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.   Get Julio’s book here:  The Nexus: Augmented Thinking for a Complex World–The New Convergence of Art, Technology, and Science. Julio Mario Ottino. https://amzn.to/3b4390g   Enjoying our podcast? Get access to sample advanced training episodes here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

27 Heinä 20221h 4min

Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 262, an episode with a professor at Queensland University of Technology, Amanda Lotz.   In this episode, Amanda shares her insights as a media expert about Netflix’s recent announcement that they are introducing an ad-supported version of their streaming service. She spoke about the challenges that Netflix may face as it goes down the advertising route. Amanda discussed the pros and cons of a subscription-based model versus an advertisement-based model and what it will be for Netflix as it launches its new strategy.   Amanda Lotz is a media scholar, professor, and industry consultant. Her expertise includes media industries, digital distribution, the future of television, the business of media, and net neutrality.    Amanda leads the Transforming Media Industries research project in the Digital Media Research Centre at Queensland University of Technology. She is the author, coauthor, or editor of eleven books that explore television and media industries, including Netflix and Streaming Video: The Business of Subscriber-Funded Video on Demand, Media Disrupted: Surviving Cannibals, Pirates and Streaming Wars, We Now Disrupt This Broadcast: How Cable Transformed Television and the Internet Revolutionized It All, The Television Will Be Revolutionized, and Portals: A Treatise on Internet-Distributed Television.    Her most recent books explore the connections between internet-distributed services such as Netflix and the legacy television industry, as well as the business strategies and revenue models that differ. Her award-winning book, The Television Will Be Revolutionized, now in its second edition, has been translated into Mandarin, Korean, Italian, and Polish. She is frequently interviewed by NPR’s Marketplace, has appeared on BBC, CNN's The Nineties, HuffPost Live, and ZDF (German television network), and has been interviewed for articles in the Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, The Atlantic, Christian Science Monitor, the Associated Press, Wired, and Men’s Health among many others. She publishes articles about the business of television at Quartz, Salon, The New Republic, hosts the Media Business Matters podcast, and tweets about television and media @DrTVLotz.   Enjoying our podcast? Get access to sample advanced training episodes here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

25 Heinä 202251min

Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 261, an episode with the Blue and Gold Distinguished Professor of Energy and the Environment at the University of Delaware, Saleem Ali. Get Ali’s book here: https://amzn.to/3aOWwie   In this conversation, we discussed numerous examples of major problems around the world, from the resources industry, environmental conflicts, culture, and the system of order and control of many organizations, and how these issues come down to the need for literacy and proper education.    Environmental awareness is present today, however, we are lacking science or environmental literacy. Education is not an elite enterprise and someone even without formal education can be a citizen scientist who is seeing and observing the world and continuously gaining much more depth of knowledge and understanding to contribute to solving the problems of the world.    Prof. Ali previously served as chair in Sustainable Resource Development and professor of sustainability science and policy at University of Queensland in Australia. He also was a professor of environmental studies at the University of Vermont's Rubenstein School of Natural Resources and founding director of the Institute for Environmental Diplomacy and Security. He was also formerly on the adjunct faculty of Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies and the visiting faculty for the United Nations mandated University for Peace (Costa Rica).   Prof. Ali's primary research interests have been in the causes and consequences of environmental conflicts in the mineral sector, and the process of using ecological factors to promote peace. Some of Prof. Ali’s former research appointments include a visiting fellowship at the Brookings Institution's research center in Doha, Qatar; a Public Policy Fellowship at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia; a Baker Foundation Research Fellowship at Harvard Business School; and a parliamentary internship at the U.K. House of Commons. He has teaching experience in courses on environmental planning, conflict resolution, industrial ecology, research methods, and technical writing.   Before embarking on an academic career, Prof. Ali worked as an environmental health and safety professional at General Electric, an Associate at the Boston-based consulting firm Industrial Economics Inc., as well as a consultant for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Health Canada.   Prof. Ali is a citizen of the United States of America by birth; Pakistan by parental lineage; and Australian by naturalization. He received his doctorate in Environmental Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), an M.E.S. in environmental law and policy from Yale University, and his Bachelors in Chemistry from Tufts University.   Get Ali’s Book here: Earthly Order: How Natural Laws Define Human Life. Saleem Ali. https://amzn.to/3aOWwie   Enjoying our podcast? Get access to sample advanced training episodes here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

20 Heinä 202252min

Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 260, an episode with bestselling author, keynote speaker, workplace expert, and resilience researcher, Adam Markel. Get Adam's Book here: https://amzn.to/3PwE6l6   In this episode, Adam speaks about how he reinvented his career path through valuable lessons and eye-opening life events. He shares his experience as a Jones Beach lifeguard in New York. As a first responder in a life-and-death environment, he learned the importance of cultivating a high-performance capacity and impeccable teamwork. He learned to never let anyone go under the water, not to quit, and to keep going no matter what the conditions were. Years later, after experiencing a panic attack due to stress and exhaustion, he was reminded of another important lesson that he learned at the beach: the importance of taking intermittent breaks. Rest, recover, and recuperate, or you cannot perform well.   Lots of people think of resilience as getting up after taking a blow, moving forward after getting knocked down, and bouncing back from setbacks. Resilience is more than that. As Adam mentioned in this episode, “Resilience is not about how we bounce back. It's actually about how we bounce forward. It's not about how we endure life's challenges, adversities, and uncertainties. But actually how it is that we leverage that uncertainty for our growth.”   Adam is the author of the #1 Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, and Publisher’s Weekly bestseller, Pivot: The Art & Science of Reinventing Your Career and Life. A leading international keynote speaker, he has reached tens of thousands worldwide with his message of resilience as the competitive edge in today’s complex markets. An attorney, entrepreneur, and transformational trainer, Adam is a sought-after business culture catalyst who inspires, empowers, and guides organizations and individuals to create sustainable, high-performance strategies.   Adam is also the CEO of More Love Media and host of The Change Proof podcast, where he shares his insights on pivoting and resilience in today's fast-paced market and interviews experts, innovators, and influencers in the areas of business and life.   Adam credits much of his success to the principles he learned during his eight years as a Jones Beach lifeguard in New York. He’s found that the principles of this type of culture and leadership equally apply to any business that wants to build a competitive advantage to win.   After building a multi-million-dollar law firm, Adam pivoted his own career path to become CEO of one of the largest business and personal growth training companies in the world. Here he learned that motivation and inspiration alone are not enough to effectively utilize change. It's about providing leaders, teams, and audiences with effective takeaways to sustain them over time.   Get Adam’s Book here: Change Proof: Leveraging the Power of Uncertainty to Build Long-Term Resilience. Adam Markel. https://amzn.to/3PwE6l6   Enjoying our podcast? Get access to sample advanced training episodes here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

18 Heinä 20221h 9min