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OutsideVoices with Mark Bidwell

In OutsideVoices Mark Bidwell talks to remarkable and compelling leaders from the worlds of business, exploration, arts, sports, and academia. In these conversations he explores topics of fundamental importance to many of us today, both in work and in life, topics ranging from leadership and performance to creativity and growth. OutsideVoices has a clear purpose: to bring fresh and diverse perspectives that help listeners navigate the world we live in.
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Now displaying: 2017
Oct 24, 2017

In this episode, we are joined by Founder and Director of the IMD Global Board CenterProf. Didier Cossin. Didier is a global expert in governance, and in addition to his role at IMD has served as a consultant to the United Nations, the European Central Bank and multiple major corporations, including HSBC, Vodafone, Schlumberger and Coca-Cola. We speak about four pillars of good board governance: people, information, structure and  processes, and group dynamics.  

What Was Covered

  • Didier’s definition of board governance as “the art of decision making at the top of organizations”
  • The particular challenge that corporations with a long history face to transform and how this requires board leadership that “breaks the internal mould, breaks bureaucracy and opens up to the world”
  • What Didier has identified as the four pillars that constitute good governance – people, information, structure and processes and group dynamics - with good and bad examples of each

Key Takeaways and Learnings

  • A good assessment of board effectiveness is the extent to which it focuses on the past compared to the future – and that most boards spent too much time looking back
  • A board must ensure it receives the proper balance of internal and external information, of formal and informal information. That the very best board packs are “synthetic” – they use a variety of tools to synthesize the information that tracks the evolution of the key metrics
  • The criticality of the difficult task of organizing a board so its committees are well structured and focused on the issues of most importance to the organization
  • How a Chairman needs have the “art” of stimulating the right discussions, ensuring all views are considered and bringing these together – and the importance of this to enabling a functioning organization

Links and Resources Mentioned in this Podcast

Sep 26, 2017

In this episode, author and speaker, Akshay Nanavati, joins us to discuss his new book, Fearvana: The Revolutionary Science of How to Turn Fear into Health, Wealth and Happiness, which uses neuroscientific and psychological research to aid personal development. Akshay talks openly about his personal journey, struggle with drugs and alcohol and post traumatic stress disorder diagnosis that led to the research in his concept of Fearvana. Akshay is a Marine Corps Veteran, adventurer, entrepreneur and success coach.

What Was Covered

  • Akshay’s definition of Fearvana as the state of bliss that results from engaging our fears to pursue our own worthy struggle
  • Why Akshay believes that we should change our relationship with, and the benefits that can flow from handling differently our most primitive and basic emotion
  • The view that we should Feel whatever we feel, whatever shows up, it's what we do with it that matters
  • Ashkay’s research into neuroplasticity and the ability to rewire neuro-connections in the brain through introspection and habit changing

Key Takeaways and Learnings

  • The importance of acknowledging and accepting our own fears without judgement as the key to mental, physical and spiritual growth
  • Proven techniques to allow us to change the relationship to our emotions
  • How approaches such as visualising obstacles can help us avoid procrastination, or other proxies for fear, and improve our performance in the space between stimulus and response
Sep 12, 2017

In this episode, we are joined by Greg Satell, an entrepreneur, author, speaker, and innovation advisor. Greg has been published in The Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Fast Company Inc., The Times of London, and Business Insider, and has just published his first book, Mapping Innovation. Previously, Greg spent 15 years in media businesses in Eastern Europe - from Poland to Moscow to Kiev and from small business journals to large news organizations and lifestyle brands. His work as an innovation advisor spans from Fortune 500 companies, to mid-size firms, and startups.

What was Covered

  • Greg’s approach to mapping innovation, what he calls a “playbook for navigating a disruptive age”
  • How organisations can no longer just look to their internal capabilities and assets to solve their most important problems but need to leverage external platforms in order to extend those internal capabilities
  • How companies like Eli Lilly and Experian used new approaches to problem solving that involved the ecosystems of talent and technology which are key to sustaining innovation in today’s world of work

Key Takeaways and Learnings

  • Looking at innovation as an important problem which requires a novel solution – in the end a line manager is less interested in whether an innovation is sustaining or disruptive but if it answers the perennial question of, “What the hell do I do next?”
  • How power is moving from the top of the heap to the center of a network which means the indispensable partners are the dominant players
  • Why managing connections to external ecosystems of talent is today’s essential management skill as competitive advantage switches from being the sum of all efficiencies to the sum of all connections

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Podcast

Aug 29, 2017

In this episode, we are joined by Hanne de Mora, Co-Founder and Chairperson of management consultancy organisation a-connect, to talk about innovation of the future of the world of work. Hanne is also a member of the Board of Directors for AB Volvo and the Supervisory Board for IMD Business School.

What was Covered

  • How Hanne and her fellow Co-Founders created new demand within the traditional industry of workforce and management consultancy services – and how Hollywood provided inspiration
  • How technology changes the consulting, executive education and transportation industries and how these forces also apply elsewhere
  • Why Hanne thinks it is important for business leaders to foster entrepreneurship within organisations through pushing responsibility for human resource and P&L management processes as far down the organization as possible
  • The top skill sets which Hanne thinks are essential to being successful in the future of the world of work

Key Takeaways and Learnings

  • How understanding the numbers – how does a business make money and what does its cash flow look like – will remain relevant for any future leader.
  • In a world of ever increasing pace of change the ability to course correct is essential.
  • Inspiration is not hierarchical – it can come from anywhere in an organization. And while mothers and fathers will happily talk about being inspired by their children there remains a resistance within organisations to gain similar inspiration from their cross-generational workforces.   

 

Aug 1, 2017

In this episode, Kyle Nicholas McCray, Director of Innovation at American Pacific Mortgage Corporation, joins us to discuss his experience as an intrapreneur and innovator within an established financial business. We cover with Kyle his early career at Apple, his time as an entrepreneur and how that led him to set up Scrappy Labs, an innovation lab within APMC dedicated to exploring new and innovative products and services to revolutionize the relationship between the company and a new generation of homebuyers. 

What Was Covered 

  • Why Kyle decided to set up Scrappy Labs and the purpose of an innovation lab within a traditionally ‘small i’ innovation organisation 
  • APMC’s approach to ‘institutionalizing innovation’ and its focus on how it communicates with its customers – the foundation of a services business 
  • How Kyle acknowledges generational gaps between the company and its customers and how he responds to and leverages new trends and changes 

Key Takeaways and Learnings 

  • The importance of pivoting, responding quickly to changes in communication and technology, and bridging the gap between older and younger generations of staff and consumers 
  • How nurturing a culture of ‘scrappiness’ has been essential to reducing the risk that new innovations are rejected when they come out of the ‘lab’ and are integrated into the wider organization 
  • The importance of understanding the different communication ‘styles’ of team members how this common language helps to limit conflict and maximize the results of the innovation process 
Jun 27, 2017

In this episode, we are joined by Michael Mueller, partner and co-founder of Acrea, an innovative management consultancy which focuses on helping companies thrive in the digital age. Michael started his career at McKinsey after which he went on to hold a number of senior IT management roles within the banking industry.  More recently he has developed his entrepreneurial career by founding a startup B2B travel company.

What Was Covered

  • The three most typical ways businesses are being impacted by digitization – through the creation of entirely new business models, by establishing new customer experiences, and via transforming the delivery of whole parts the operations of a business via technology
  • The challenge established businesses face in dealing with their technology ‘debt’ in contrast to startups who can build their infrastructures from scratch at a fraction of the cost
  • How a “failure to communicate” still exists between the IT and management groups of businesses – even as the importance of technology to operations continues to grow
  • The reality of customer acquisition costs for startups compared to the established client bases of existing businesses

Key Takeaways and Learnings

  • The need for organizations to think long term when it comes to managing their technology costs
  • The importance for startups to understand their intended customer base and to face the reality of customer acquisition costs
  • The need for IT and management to adopt a common language to gain better understanding of how technology impacts their business, what it can do, how much it costs
May 16, 2017

In this episode Pam Marrone, a serial entrepreneur, having founded, built and sold two biopesticide companies, joins us. She is currently the CEO and founder of Marrone Bio Innovations Inc, a Nasdaq listed company at the forefront of the drive towards sustainable agriculture This purpose drove my work at Syngenta, and is central to that of Terramera, the Vancouver-based agtech company that I am on the Board of.

In our discussion we cover: 

  • The arc of Pam's fascinating career.  She shares her unique perspective, developed over four decades in the industry and some of the ups and downs that characterise every entrepreneurial journey
  • How agriculture is being shaped and transformed by digital technologies such as drones, sensors, robotics and big data
  • What it takes to be a paradigm breaker and intrapreneur in an industry like agribusiness, characterised by long product lifecycles, an increasingly challenging regulatory environment, and industry consolidation

Key takeaways and learnings include:

  • Valuable insights for intrapreneurs, irrespective of industry, on to how to drive change from within a large company
  • How important it is for an entrepreneur and business builder to create a strong and sustainable culture, with a focus on hiring slowly and firing fast
  • The disruptions underway in agriculture and the impact these can have on us all
Mar 28, 2017

In this episode, Mark briefly shares his key takeaways from season 3 followed by a special sneak peak at his interview for Nick Skillicorn's Innovation and Creativity Summit coming up next week. Listen in as Nick interviews Mark about his intrapreneurial and entrepreneurial experiences and his key advice for corporate innovators at all levels.

Mar 14, 2017

In this episode we are joined by Tamara Kleinberg, serial innovator, keynote speaker, creator the Innovation Quotient Edge (IQE) Assessment and founder of LaunchStreet, a leading platform for individuals and organisations seeking to innovate.

In this episode we cover:

  • The lessons Tamara has learnt throughout her 20 year career advising companies such as Disney, General Mills, RICOH, P&G, J&J on how to create innovative cultures.
  • Why she so firmly believes that everyone has the possibility to be an innovator and the implications of this for leadership in large, established organisations.
  • We walk through Tamara’s IQE Assessment the only tool designed to decipher a person's natural innovative strengths and create the right environment for them to thrive.
Feb 28, 2017

Pondering the cure for cancer, developing vaccines for genital herpes, seeking that next big scientific breakthrough and mopping a basement floor is a day in the life of this episode’s guest Dr. Jessica Baker Flechtner, Chief Scientific Officer and Biosciences Pioneer at Genocea Biosciences.

Jessica joined innovative biotech startup Genocea in 2007, soon after the company was founded, and played an essential role in progressing the small company through startup phase to going public. At the same time as building a company, Jessica used her 18+ years of experience in immunology, infectious diseases, cancer and vaccine treatment to lead the Genocea efforts to develop T cell-directed vaccines and immunotherapies.

Jessica is also a member of the prestigious 40 women over 40 for her passion project to encourage more young women to embark on careers in STEM – learn more about it here. She joins a number of our previous guests, 40 over 40 founder Whitney Johnson, Pamay Bassey and Celine Schillinger in this extraordinary forum.

In today’s episode, learn from Jessica’s journey and rationale for joining an innovative biosciences startup despite her illustrious research career; her key role in bringing a company from the acquisition of venture capital funding through to going public in year and how she and the Genocea team create a culture of discussing failure and celebrating success that helps them maintain their competitive edge in an ever-changing and demanding pharmaceutical industry. This episode is an intriguing soire into the life of a Biosciences startup pioneer and the challenges that come along with it, we hope you enjoy!

Feb 21, 2017

Do you stop and smell the roses every once in awhile ? Do you remember what a raisin really tastes like? Do you take the time to listen to what your inner monologue are really saying?
Today’s guest Josh Spodek has made it his job to remind leaders to do just that. Labelled by Forbes and ABC News as a “Rocket Scientist”, Josh is nothing short of a serial overachiever. He has found success across many fields and disciplines such as science, invention, entrepreneurship, art, leadership, coaching, and education. He is an Adjunct Professor at NYU, leadership coach and workshop leader for Columbia Business School, columnist for Inc and founder of Spodek Academy. Josh holds five Ivy League degrees, including a PhD in Astrophysics and an MBA, and studied under a Nobel Prize winner.

Josh’s fascination with leadership as something that could be learned drove him to study it himself and eventually led him down the path of leadership and as an executive coach. He now leads seminars in leadership, entrepreneurship, creativity, motivation and sales at Harvard, Princeton, MIT, INSEAD (Singapore), the New York Academy of Science, and private corporations, including: UBS, EY, Deloitte, McKinsey, BCG, Bain, Time Magazine, Google and many more. He also leads seminars in Leadership, Creativity, Sales, Strategy, and Motivation at Columbia, Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, MIT, and INSEAD Singapore, among others. Following visits to North Korea, he lectured on North Korean strategy at Columbia University, and in South Korea and China wrote a book on the topic reviewed as “a very thought-provoking read that may totally change how you interpret the country.”

If his professional achievements alone aren’t enough. Josh also swam the Hudson River, did over 80,000 burpees, wrote over 2,400 blog posts, took over 250 cold showers, coined the term sidcha, and has jumped out of two airplanes. He now lives in New York City’s Greenwich Village and blogs daily at www.joshuaspodek.com.

In this episode, Josh and Mark discuss Josh’s journey from PhD student of astrophysics to launching and failing in the business world and finally becoming a sought-after leadership coach and professor at NYU. They also experiment with some practical tools and exercises Josh uses to build the leadership muscles (for those of you hungry for tools); Finally, they explore the importance of experiential learning or project-based learning for building leadership and personal skills.

Jan 23, 2017

In today’s episode, futurist and simplification guru Lisa Bodell and our host Mark Bidwell reconvene to share more essential tools for leaders and teams to simplify their work environment from her second book Why Simple Wins (check out our book review on Amazon here); they explore insights into how companies like SAP, Southwest Airlines and Syngenta are putting simplification principles into action; and get a sneak peak at her favourite tool “killing complexity” that you can try out for yourself and your team.

Want to keep up with our guests visit our website and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Instagram.

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