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192 afleveringen, van nieuw naar oud
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Balancing Introversion with Leadership with Min Bhogaita
26 oktober 2022 · 38 min
Min Bhogaita is Managing Director of the IdeaLab at Nobody Studios. Since leaving Deloitte, where he worked for 25 years, Min has helped over 14 startups and scaleups grow, pivot, and connect. He also serves as an advisory board member and director for multiple organizations. In this episode of Unlearn, Min shares his experience in the corporate world, and he and Barry O’Reilly emphasize the importance of staying true to yourself. They also discuss how technology is changing the way we work and how startups can benefit from this change. Lees meer
Balancing Introversion with Leadership
Min admits to struggling with speaking up. During his school days, his teachers would talk about how quiet he was in class and his aversion to speaking unless spoken to. This was something he had to unlearn when breaking into the corporate world. “I was fortunate in the leaders I worked for - they knew my style, so they would coach me,” he shares. They would intentionally create opportunities for Min to share his ideas and opinions, which gradually taught him to come out of his shell and learn that behavior. “If you can recognize that there are behaviors you need to change, [you should change them].” In a serendipitous turn of fate, it was when he was learning to speak up that Min got to start his own team.Building Confidence
Barry asks Min about his leadership experience in various fields. One of the traits Min developed was confidence in himself every time he changed a role. Min admits that he was actually a novice when he transitioned from ethical hacking to forensics. A recruiter’s recommendation that he’d be good in the field inspired him to go into it. “Just because he believed in me, I [went for it],” he tells Barry. “Thirteen years later, I was still in that role and doing the world’s biggest fraud investigations.”Protecting Your Team
If you don’t have the right environment, people are going to burn out. This was made evident during the pandemic, but it was true even before then. M… -
The Importance of Mentorship with Bobby Soper
12 oktober 2022 · 29 min
Bobby Soper is former president & CEO of Mohegan Sun, and current president & CEO of Sun Gaming & Hospitality. Initially beginning his career in law, Bobby moved into the role of CEO where he had the opportunity to lead an incredible operation. Through mentorship guidance, he learned how to lead great teams. Today, Bobby is the Investor and Chairman of the Hospitality Board at Nobody Studios, helping to build companies that will innovate and disrupt the future. In this episode of Unlearn, Bobby and Barry O’Reilly explore mentorship guidance, servant leadership, and the gaming industry. Lees meer
The Role of a Mentee
Bobby attributes much of his growth and success to having a great mentor. Bill Gallardo was an exemplary role model who taught him, through demonstration, the importance of respect, humility, relationships, and hard work. Bobby shares how he cultivated that relationship and talks about the role of a mentee. “Sometimes people feel like they can reach out to anyone and hopefully ask them to be a mentor, but what you're talking about is putting yourself out there, doing hard work and demonstrating excellence,” Barry comments. Through that effort, more opportunities will come.How Mentorship Actually Works
Mentorship is more organic than approaching someone you admire and asking them to mentor you, Bobby shares. A better approach would be to ask if you can shadow them for a day. You’ll learn more from working with them and observing how they do things than sitting with them for coffee hoping to download all their esteemed knowledge. “The measurement of my success is based on how well [the people I work with or who report to me] succeed,” he adds. “I’m very fortunate because a lot of the folks I hired… have grown and become very successful as their own CEOs. To me, that is the best measurement of my success, not how much money I make or my job title.”Being a Good Leader
As general counsel for Mohegan Sun, Bobby’s responsibilities involved managing people. What tha… -
Intelligent No Code with Jason and Gareth Edge
28 september 2022 · 37 min
Jason and Gareth Edge are co-founders of ThoughtForma, the intelligent no-code platform with a mission to help people unlock and realize their purposeful ideas. As CTO and CEO respectively, they aim to break the barriers to entry that technology itself often represents, and obliterate the obstacles to creativity and enterprise in the digital space. Both brothers are VPs of Technology at Nobody Studios. In this episode of Unlearn, Jason and Gareth share their story with Barry O’Reilly, discussing how they built their company and obstacles they faced in the technology space. Lees meer
How It Started
Gareth shares the inspiration behind ThoughtForma. Building software is a hard thing to do and people - both individuals and organizations - often struggle during the process. Even with a team of skilled technologists with great track records, it’s still difficult to deliver robust solutions. Coupled with a shortage of technical skills, this leads to many projects never seeing the light of day. “That’s [what] puts a fire in my belly,” Gareth says, “this notion of ideas staying locked in people’s heads is completely unacceptable to me.”A Pleasant Coincidence
Gareth pitched the idea to his brother Jason, who happened to be working on something related. “I was able to dovetail into his vision and we came up with the ideal, no-code platform, which is our answer to the Al Gore problem,” Jason explains. He approached building the platform via an unconventional route, as he had been working for a consultancy specializing in the implementation of Master Data Management Systems. He was hitting some walls in implementing these systems. Jason started thinking about how he could capture the data he wanted without having to rebuild and redesign, and how he could put such a tool in the hands of consultants so they wouldn’t have to rely on people to build things for them. “It turns out that the ideas I came up with were so flexible that you can actually apply them to describe and manage anythi… -
Standing Ovationz with Ray Leonard Jr
14 september 2022 · 27 min
Ray Leonard Jr is co-founder of Nobody Studios and CEO of Ovationz, the premier talent marketplace allowing SMEs, artists, speakers and athletes to monetize their time and skills effortlessly. The son of legendary boxer ‘Sugar’ Ray Leonard, and a two-sport divisional collegiate athlete, Ray founded and sold his own sports agency, going on to become one of the great coaches, mentors and trainers for others looking to try and build businesses. His high energy and penchant for leadership drew him to the world of motivational speaking, where he is now one of the most in-demand speakers throughout the globe. In this episode of Unlearn, Ray and Barry O’Reilly explore the lessons he learned throughout his personal and professional journey. Lees meer
Growing Up and Out
Appreciating the diversity of the world was something Ray was privileged to experience growing up. Traveling around and meeting people from different cultures, backgrounds, and socioeconomic levels transformed his life in many ways, teaching him how to be a good-hearted person, friend, and business person. One of the little moments that helped shape him as a person happened early on in his life. He remembers his grandfather’s advice to this day: always remain humble, because success can be temporary; when better, you do better; and don’t live life with your foot on the accelerator - sometimes you have to slow down and pay attention to the small things that matter.Making His Way
Naivete paved the way to clearing his own path about what he wanted to achieve, Ray confesses. “I never believed I should be in anyone's shadow.” Even with all his successes, during high school and after in his professional life, it never felt like it was enough. He knew he had so much more to give after selling and exiting his sports agency, so he went back to the drawing board. His curiosity about money led him to the financial sector. Throughout this journey he experienced soaring highs and humbling lows, and though the lessons took a lit… -
Red Team Thinking and Finding Opportunities in Chaos with Bryce Hoffman
31 augustus 2022 · 41 min
Bryce Hoffman is a bestselling author, speaker, and unconsultant who believes that individuals have the power to transform companies and cultures through great leadership and applied critical thinking. He is one of the world’s foremost experts in decision-support red teaming, a revolutionary methodology inspired by the US military and intelligence agencies to help leaders make better decisions in today's complex and rapidly changing world. In this episode of Unlearn, Bryce and Barry O’Reilly explore red team thinking, contrarian techniques and what you can learn from failure. Lees meer
Getting Started
Bryce describes his experience writing his first book, American Icon. One day, after sending the meatier chapters to his editor, they called him and encouraged him to think about what consultant practice he would launch along with the book release. “I said, ‘What? I’m trying to get this book finished, what are you talking about? I’m not a consultant,’” Bryce shares. His editor believed people would be flocking to Bryce for help in implementing the ideas from his book, but he was of the opposite opinion. He just wanted to tell a story. True to his editor’s predictions, however, calls came in from left to right when the book launched.Red Team Thinking
Bryce defines red team thinking. “[It’s] a cognitive capability that helps individuals and organizations engage in critical thinking, enable distributed decision making, and most importantly, encourage diversity of thought.” These things all come together to help people make decisions faster in the complex world we live in today. He continues, “I discovered this concept called red team decision-support that had been developed by the military and intelligence community after 9/11… that became the top of my second book.” He took the tools and techniques for the high-stakes world of military and intelligence, and imported those ideas to help business leaders apply the same approach.Contrarian Techniques
Red Team Thinking has a gro… -
Managing Portfolios with ProductOps with Becky Flint
17 augustus 2022 · 45 min
Becky Flint is founder and CEO of Dragonboat, the responsive portfolio platform for product teams to build products customers love and deliver business results. In her career Becky has built and scaled portfolio management at Shutterfly, Feedzai and BigCommerce. She is an expert in managing ProductOps portfolios with an outcome-focused approach. In this episode of Unlearn, she and Barry O’Reilly discuss how Dragonboat is changing the game in portfolio management, and why you should make the shift to become outcome-focused. Lees meer
Finding Her Way
Becky’s entrepreneurial journey wasn’t linear. She moved to the US with a medical background to study business, then went on to do tech, until she finally found her calling in product. She founded Dragonboat by piecing together the best bits of her experiences in these industries. One of the things that emboldened her to step out her comfort zone and go into completely different domains was her confidence in her ability to learn new things. Becky believed she could build on top of the skills she already had and learn what she didn’t know. It was better than starting from zero, with no skills, knowledge or experience to speak of, she shares.Building Dragonboat
The development of the portfolio management at PayPal was originally a connect-the-dots for certain systems, according to Becky. Data revealed business outcomes, product strategy and execution, and resourcing weren’t properly communicating, so Becky created a middle engine to put all the messy stuff together. Barry remarks, “Even a few hours ago, I was in a session with some teams… and you could see that people were struggling because sometimes their corporate strategy just feels so far removed from their day-to-day work.” Becky’s “phenomenal” portfolio management makes a typically difficult process significantly easier.Outcomes Over Outputs
One of the biggest debates in the product management industry currently is the notion of becoming more outcome-focused, Barry comme… -
Marketing's Job To Be Done with Katelyn Bourgoin
3 augustus 2022 · 43 min
Katelyn Bourgoin is a marketer by trade and founder by choice. She is CEO and Lead Trainer of Customer Camp, where she helps teams make smarter marketing decisions with buyer psychology. A marketing powerhouse, Katelyn has been nicknamed “The Customer Whisperer,” and called an “influential entrepreneur” by Forbes; she is also one of the Top 20 Wonder Women of SaaS Marketing and Growth. In this episode of Unlearn, she and Barry O’Reilly discuss her customer discovery journey and where she found breakthroughs where others have struggled. Lees meer
Effective Customer Discovery
After a brief, failed venture into making a tech company, Katelyn discovered something about customer discovery she previously misunderstood. She knew the importance of understanding and targeting your audience, but was left stumped when she did things as she was supposed to and achieved poor results. She underestimated the true value of market research, and tried selling a solution at the start, instead of starting with the customers’ needs and working backwards to the solution.Job to be Done (JTBD)
Your ideal customer profile shouldn’t be based solely on demographics, but on the job your customers need your product or service to help them perform. Katelyn learned the Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) philosophy at a webinar by Forget the Funnel and it has influenced her approach to marketing ever since. Essentially, JTBD posits that people hire products and services to help them get a job done. They will continue to use that product for as long as it fulfills their needs and circumstances, and helps them move closer to where and who they want to be. “People don’t buy products and services willy-nilly,” Katelyn explains. “...We actually have a job we’re trying to get done.” Once that solution stops working, they will find a new one.The Buyer Journey Interview
Integrating JTBD into buyer journey interviews -also called switch interviews - is the next step in elevating your market research. Katelyn’s mentor Bob … -
Exits and Acquisitions with Shawn Flynn
20 juli 2022 · 42 min
Shawn Flynn started his career in Beijing, China, by founding, scaling, and successfully exiting a company. He is now the Principal of a premier middle market investment bank specializing in mergers and acquisitions, capital markets, financial restructuring, and valuation. In this episode of Unlearn, he and Barry O’Reilly talk about acquisitions and exiting. Lees meer
Intro to investment banking
Unlike most people in the profession, Shawn did not have an undergrad economics degree, MBA, or a jam-packed resume. He was overseas for roughly 8 years after graduating from college with a mechanical engineering degree, seizing the opportunity to travel to Costa Rica, China, Europe, and back to China, where he started a few companies. One of them did well, and the others were learning experiences. After returning to the States in 2013, he got a job as an account executive for a company that unfortunately folded, but through that experience, he was able to meet and network with many angel investors and one group who eventually took him under their wing. He became the investment director for the second oldest angel group in Silicon Valley.Debunking misconceptions
The real work in investment banking is client-facing - keeping conversations and engagement going, making people feel comfortable, and asking the necessary questions so there’s no skeletons in the closet about the company. “The people skill is so huge in this line of work and I had no idea going into it,” Shawn confesses. “I thought if you were good at Excel, you’re a good investment banker, but in reality anyone can do that. The real skill is finding the deals, being able to build that rapport and keep everyone engaged through the entire process.”Open door policies
When planning an exit, you actually want employees to not have heard from you or contact you with urgent news in months. That’s a sign that things can and are operating smoothly without you - exactly what you need when exiting. Everyone knows their KPIs, the … -
Building Developer Platforms & Working with Mentors with Kaspar von Grünberg
6 juli 2022 · 41 min
Kaspar von Grünberg has extensive experience running software companies. His current role is founder and CEO of Humanitec, a product that enables companies to build internal developer platforms using their Platform Orchestrator. It enables platform engineers to build golden paths that developers love and standardizes app and infra configs by design. In this episode of Unlearn, he and Barry O’Reilly discuss becoming world class. Lees meer
Becoming World Class
“I'm telling everybody who works with me: you don't have to be world class today, but you have to know, ‘What is my relative position to elite status?’" Kaspar believes that everyone can fulfill their highest potential, and that a leader’s job is to facilitate this. His father’s early advice about choosing the right advisors directly influenced his approach to leadership. He tells Barry, "There is a lot you have to learn and you have to learn that really fast." As such, having the right mentors is crucial.Finding Problem-Mentor Fit
Mentorship is a powerful way to bolster your company’s growth, Kaspar and Barry agree. Kaspar’s experience over the years has shown that there’s a correlation between professional maturity and effective problem-solving skills. He also observed that senior and junior personnel approach problem solving differently: senior staff members usually start inquiry with basic questions before delving deeper to find answers to urgent problems. This is the model he wants all his employees to adopt, and mentorship is an effective way to make this happen. That’s why he looks for humility and coachability when hiring new talent.Why Internal Developer Platforms Are the Future
Kaspar goes on explaining why he is so passionate about platform engineering and enabling engineering organizations to build Internal Developer Platforms. Kaspar’s experience in building software teams from the ground up several times ultimately made him understand that many of the industry challenges had psychological underpinnings… -
The Future of Work: Effective Leadership Strategies for Today's Workplace with Brian Elliott
22 juni 2022 · 41 min
On this episode of the Unlearn Podcast, Barry O'Reilly chats with Brian Elliott, Senior Vice President at Slack and Executive Leader of the Future Forum, who also served as an Executive Product Leader at Google. Having observed Brian’s work, Barry says, “I was constantly inspired by the work Brian and his team were doing in the Future Forum, researching challenges about the future of work.” Brian and his co-authors, Sheela Subramanian and Helen Kupp, have encapsulated the findings of the forum - as well as the lessons they learned through their own experiences - in their new book, How the Future Works. Lees meer
From Arrogance to Transparency
Brian discusses how his perception of management evolved as his career developed. "I learned a phrase early in my profession that states ‘Seldom wrong, never in doubt’... a sort of arrogance," he recalls. He rejected his initial arrogance in the wake of Maria De Leon’s advice and observation, and realized that the greatest way to foster camaraderie and a sense of common purpose is to be open about the company's future, aspirations, and financial path. “Transparency actually creates trust,” Barry comments, “...it helps people gain clarity of what is actually happening.” Being the one with all the answers is not conducive to a healthy workplace culture, both men agree.The Future Forum
Brian joined Slack five years ago and was immediately intrigued by the company's research team, which later became the driving force behind the Future Forum. The research-based consortium focuses on creating a better future of work that is flexible, inclusive and connected through quarterly employee experience surveys and executive working groups. Since the issues are multidisciplinary, they survey 10,000 knowledge workers from all around the world. Leaders from multiple sectors are encouraged to experiment with these solutions to champion global change.Debunking the Myths
Brian debunks five major myths about the workplace, using research from his book,… -
The Power of Leading by Example with Cecelia Myers
8 juni 2022 · 35 min
Cecelia Myers is the VP of Digital at CDW, where she leads their product management, design, demand generation, customer integration, and merchandising teams. She has a deep breadth of experience from a variety of high-profile startups and tech companies and uses that to create a culture of empowerment and openness at CDW. She is a builder of new experiences and business models from co-founding a startup to the Fortune 500, a design thinker, a survivor of lymphoma, and a voracious reader. She joins Barry O’Reilly today, to talk about how you need to bring yourself to your organization to create the kind of culture you want to build.
Following Interests and Opportunities where they Lead
Cecelia left university with one of those “never land a job” majors – but she didn’t have that problem, becoming a personal archivist at a startup that managed documents for high net-worth people. This company didn’t survive the 2008 crash, but Cecelia was invited by the VC foundry that had funded the company to join them. There, she co-founded CakeStyle, leading and working in every aspect of the business.
Intimate Understanding of the Problem
Do you understand the problem you’re trying to solve? People often think they know, Cecelia notes, but unless you’re digging deep into the heart of things, it’s a hard thing to understand. Intimate knowledge of what is really happening at a company is hard to replace with any kind of experience or education. There’s something energizing about connecting at a visceral level to what you’re doing – it can be really fun!
Unlearning Old Skills
Moving into a company like Groupon, which was so new and so technology-driven was a culture shock. Politics, senior leadership, red tape – it meant having to convince finance departments and leadership that ideas were worth trying. For someone used to having control of the vision, having to work with so many other heavily involved people was a challenge, but ultimately a chance to exercise that skill of diggi… Lees meer -
Design For The Web3.0 Economy with James Sommerville
25 mei 2022 · 38 min
In this episode, Barry O'Reilly talks with James Sommerville, co-founder of ATTIK, the former Vice President of Global Design for The Coca-Cola Company and today founder of KnownUnknown, an emerging Web3.0 decentralized design community. Lees meer
Sommerville talks about his entrepreneurial journey, from his early job as a street artist to co-founding ATTIK, a design studio with Simon Needham, and then becoming the Vice President of Global Design for Coca-Cola. He explains his thoughts on design, brand storytelling and existing labor structures in corporations and agencies, as well as the possibility for future advancements and new ways of working. He also discusses how these beliefs contributed to founding KnownUnknown.
The Long and Winding Road
James recounts his adolescent years in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, UK, in the midst of the collapse of the city's industrial peak. He believes that this experience led him to question society. "What led us here?” he asked. “What were the mistakes made? Maybe we need to learn what are the things we're going to do differently." His inquiring mind, and witnessing with his father's entrepreneurial spirit - he saw how much freedom his father had over his own life outside of the constraints of a regular job - strongly inspired his thoughts on business. As a result, his road to KnownUnknown was filled with entrepreneurial endeavors, but his motivation has always been "that sense of being able to do something and make people smile."Put Yourself Out There
Putting yourself out there is the first step to success, James tells listeners. He describes his eventual employment with Coca-Cola as an unexpected reward that many people erroneously believed was an overnight success. However, ATTIK had been in existence for 20 years before Coca-Cola contacted them. He believes that their strategy of "putting [themselves] out there, putting [their] signal into the world," as Barry puts it, was the catalyst that led to such an exciting opportunity. T… -
Unlearn to Unblock Your Understanding of Blockchain
11 mei 2022 · 43 min
Alison McCauley, author of Unblocked, is the Chief Advocacy Officer of Unfinished an organization focused on strengthening civic life in the digital age. She is a sought-after keynote speaker at conferences over the world and her LinkedIn Learning course about how the blockchain will change business has been taken by over 70,000 students. Alison joins Barry O’Reilly in this week's show to talk about the potential of blockchain technology for our digital lives. Lees meer
The Moment of Revelation
Most of us have moments when a new idea lands like a bolt of lightning and seems to change everything. Alison had been working in emerging technology for decades when she came across the idea of blockchains, and what they could mean for people and organizations. She immediately set out to generate the key questions that would help her learn exactly what experts and experimenters in the space were trying to discover.Keeping up with Exponential Growth
There is more happening, every day, in the evolution and development of blockchain technology than anyone can keep up with. Even young, energetic technologists without many outside commitments are working 17 hours a day and unable to stay on top of what is happening in their small sliver of the space. Alison shares about how learning circles in different areas create a structure for learning and sharing information that makes it possible to progress. She predicts that success is going to go to the people who can most quickly and effectively absorb and synthesize information.The Messy Middle
Not everyone involved in emerging technologies has excellent intentions - there are nefarious actors, and even the best-intentioned projects can go off the rails. Alison makes the point that you can learn from every project, even those that go wrong, and one of the challenges is to be cautious while still being open to the learning. “If you're able to hold a healthy skepticism and an open mind in the same space… you have the most intense opportunit… -
Teamwork Makes AI Work with Bill Higgins
27 april 2022 · 41 min
Bill Higgins is Director of Watson Research and Development at IBM. He leads the integrated research and development team responsible for evolving the foundational IBM AI technologies powering their main products and systems. He’s especially interested in the intersection of culture in tech as it relates to increasing diverse representation and technical leadership. Bill joins Barry O’Reilly in this week’s show to discuss what is needed to innovate at scale. Lees meer
Bill’s Start
Bill shares how he started in DevOps and made his way to becoming a leader in software engineering. He had always worked on software products, but after a certain point, he became disenchanted with the process of building the products, especially as it related to the methods and tools involved. He thought it could be much better than it was. In the early 2010s, he became enamored with the DevOps movement and sought to drive a DevOps culture at IBM; he was quite successful at this. His team was one of the first to be sent to the IBM design camp for product teams. He describes the experience and how it impacted his career.Deterministic vs. Probabilistic
Barry recalls how Bill shaped his perception of AI. “I still remember… being blown away by the clarity of how [Bill’s colleagues] could talk about it. I got smarter just listening to them, and so many of the notions I had of what AI could do were blown away very quickly,” Barry says. Bill responds that he realized that the field of AI is a very different paradigm from traditional programming; the latter is largely about methodically defining a set of rules to create a deterministic program. AI is the opposite, by contrast; using the example of machine learning, Bill describes how AI is probabilistic by nature.AI Through the Years
Bill and Barry explore the history and development of AI, and IBM’s role in both. “There was this really famous conference at Dartmouth University in 1956 with some of the legends of the industry… that established AI as … -
Stepping into the Metaverse with Aaron Frank
13 april 2022 · 40 min
Aaron Frank is Adjunct Faculty at Singularity University, where he routinely advises large companies, startups, and governments on trends related to augmented and virtual reality and the use of virtual environments. Organizations like Twitter and FC Barcelona have benefited from his services. He is a researcher and writer whose articles have appeared in Vice, Wired, Forbes and VentureBeat. Aaron joins Barry O'Reilly in this week’s show to define the metaverse, and how to leverage it in your own business. Lees meer
The First Foray
Aaron talks about his thoughts when he first encountered immersive virtual reality headsets. He was tasked with doing an impromptu presentation for foreign investors and unfortunately didn’t execute it well. When he put on the VR headset, he thought about recreating the environment of the presentation as a sort of “public speaking simulator.” He went on to build a very basic version of it and was surprised by how true-to-life it felt. That was when he realized that VR wasn’t just for gaming. “This [was] a new way for people to experience anything,” he shares. “[It] can replicate almost any experience.” [Listen from 2:19]Behind the Scenes of AR and VR
The internet of the future will be immersive. Barry asks Aaron to describe his experience diving into the metaverse. “It’s important to make a distinction between augmented and virtual reality technologies,” Aaron says, “because those terms typically refer to the kinds of interfaces [necessary for each.]” An interface is a way of engaging with the digital environment, similar to how we use a mouse and a keyboard to operate our computers the way we want to. Aaron predicts that in the near future, however, we won’t need a mouse and keyboard; we’ll be using VR headsets and our arms. [Listen from 8:06]Manipulating the Metaverse
The metaverse allows you to manipulate physical space in a virtual environment and mimic social behavior to recreate real-life experiences. People are using the metaverse to tra… -
Designing DAOs with Ja-Naé Duane
31 maart 2022 · 41 min
Ja-Naé Duane is CEO of the Revolution Factory and the bestselling author of The Startup Equation. Her mission is to make life better for one billion people. An award-winning innovator and expert on global systems, Ja-Naé helps corporations identify trends, using emerging technology such as AI and blockchain, that will help them pave the way for the future through futures forecasting and complex system building. She also loves singing opera. Currently, she is a PhD candidate focusing her research on the future of information systems as well as a research fellow at the Center of Information Systems Research at MIT. Ja-Naé joins Barry O’Reilly in this week’s show to talk about designing Distributed Autonomous Organizations (DAO). Lees meer
Everything is Interconnected
John Newton’s philosophy that everything is interconnected, is one that Ja-Naé lives by. We build on everything we learn, she tells Barry. The same is true in a company: its founding principles are connected to how those tenets are manifested in interactions with customers. “All of these things - much like nature - is very much an ecosystem,” she points out. Survival depends on the dependencies and interdependencies within the ecosystem. Likewise, the systems of the future will be enabled by interconnected technology, and we have to be ready. [Listen from 2:15]DAO Principles
Distributed Autonomous Organization (DAO) is one of the cornerstones of Web 3.0, and as Barry puts it, “the future of how the international world could become programmable.” In a DAO, business is conducted via programmable principles and smart contracts. Ja-Naé remarks that every member of a DAO has voting rights based on their level of contribution, unlike the traditional system where only a select few dictate how the organization is run; this can really move the organization forward. “With the democratization of information that comes along with that, we are seeing these pockets of erosion around centralized models,” she continues. [Liste… -
Gaming in the Metaverse for the Future with David Chen
16 maart 2022 · 35 min
Barry O’Reilly welcomes David Chen to the Unlearn Podcast this week. Barry tells listeners that David’s story is nothing short of exceptional. His rapid rise at Deloitte saw him becoming one of the company’s youngest partners at the age of 34. He started the group GTIF Capital, and partners with several major businesses in the eSports, technology and healthcare sectors. David has worked with several partners and celebrities on the recent Super Bowl commercial. He sits on several boards including Mediabundance as the head of eSports, Faze Clan and the North American Collegiate League. He has brokered a deal to bring Wolves eSports gaming, a professional gaming wing of the Wolverhampton Wanderers, into the NACL via their strategic partnership with the Fosun Group. Lees meer
A Happy Balance
David was at the pinnacle of his career at Deloitte but his life was out of balance. He tells Barry that he had all the trappings of success, and yet he was miserable. Barry comments that successful people often feel guilty when they feel emptiness or dissatisfaction with their lives because they believe they don’t have a right to those feelings when they’ve had so much opportunity. “Nobody teaches you how to be happy,” David responds. He describes his internal struggle as the darkest journey he ever went through. “But it was the best journey that I have to go through multiple times.” The secret is to change your thought process and do things that actually matter, he posits.A Booming Industry
Gaming is the fastest-growing industry. Before the pandemic, gaming was projected to be a $3 billion industry by 2023; it’s now estimated to be worth $200 billion by 2023. This “influential shift” is because of the large population of gamers around the world. Brands trying to reach this demographic - 35 years and younger, 60% male and 40% female - have to demonstrate that they care about societal issues in a tangible way. David admonishes parents to have an open mind about gaming because it is changi… -
Venture Building in Africa with James Scott
2 maart 2022 · 22 min
Barry O’Reilly welcomes James Scott as this week’s guest on the Unlearn Podcast. James is the former Chief Digital Officer at Absa Group’s Corporate Investment Bank in South Africa. In his previous role, his focus was product design, data, and platforms, as well as new propositions. James is very passionate about building the future of digital innovation and ventures in Africa. In this week’s show, James explores his working experiences in the region, the similarities and differences in how things are done in the West, and what’s unique about Africa’s scaling venture landscape. Lees meer
A New Way Forward
James discovered his passion for venture building while looking for disruptive product opportunities on the continent. The last few years of working in the business end of technology, he was reluctantly involved in a massive large-scale digital transformation. “There [were] so many concurrent pieces of work,” he shares. “Organizing teams, trying to scale agile, building and transforming products and channels as well as embedding new ways of work while trying to hit regulatory deadlines… The good news from that part of the journey is that I made it out alive.” In his own journey, James found that while he loved leading and building teams within a corporate environment, he missed building products and businesses. He talks about getting back into it.From Corporate to Entrepreneurship
After being in financial services and large corporates for 21 years, James had some things to unlearn. People typically think the first thing would be the safety and security of a paycheck, but for James, it was capacity. When you’re in a large organization you don’t have to worry about machinery and funding; you focus instead on organizing internal teams. What you're really doing is mobilizing capacity, James says. “When you’re running big teams, you’re so far away from the backlog…” he adds, “part of the unlearning is [realizing] it’s quite hard to scale yourself.” He and Barry discuss creati… -
Making Data Awesome with Sara Michelazzo
16 februari 2022 · 37 min
Barry O’Reilly and Sara Michelazzo know each other from their days working together at Thoughtworks. Sara is Head of Customer Experience - Tech Operations at Thoughtworks, as well as Design Advisor at Nobody Studios. Sara is an advocate for women in tech, cryptos, and NFTs. In this week’s show, she and Barry discuss human-centered technology design and making data awesome to empower users to solve real-world problems. Lees meer
Empowering People with Technology
“I've never been a superfan of technology for technology's sake, but more about all the opportunity that technology brings to empower people and allow them to do things that they couldn't do before and connect them in new, meaningful ways,” Sara remarks. She tells Barry that it was seeing how technology allowed her father to continue working on his passion during his illness, that drove her to pivot from her art career into tech.Human-Centered Design
Making technology simple for users is at the heart of human-centered design. Sara tells Barry that she fully grasped the power of intuitive design through her father’s experience. Technology should be easy for users to grasp and adopt, she posits. We should design for 50% of people’s attention instead of 100% because we all have so many other things going on in our lives at any moment. Barry asks her about the future of tech and what she had to unlearn regarding technology design. Humans are the same while technology is growing exponentially, she responds. As such, we need to meet people where they are and bridge the gap.Making Data Awesome
Barry and Sara discuss Thoughtworks’ journey to become data-driven. The best software or spreadsheet means little if people don’t know how to use the data, they both agree. Sara realized that her strength was in seeing the user’s perspective; she got comfortable asking questions such as, ‘Will the user understand this?’ and ‘How are they going to use it?’Shifting the mindset from data and dashboards to people was a tall order, S…
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Personal Board of Directors with Melissa Perri and Gibson Biddle
2 februari 2022 · 56 min
Barry O’Reilly welcomes Gibson Biddle and Melissa Perri as this week’s guests on the Unlearn Podcast. Gibson is the former CPO of Netflix; he is also a speaker, teacher, writer, and author of the “Ask Gib” product newsletter. Melissa is Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School, a member of the Board of Directors at Forsta, and host of the Product Thinking Podcast. In today’s show, Gibson, Melissa and Barry review their working experience over the past six months, discuss progress challenges in the US, and define what personal and business growth means to them in the year ahead. Lees meer
The CAMP Model
The CAMP model, designed by Gibson, is an evaluation of how you feel about the overall quality of your job and career.C is about community: do you enjoy working with your boss and your peers at your company? Do you feel a connection to the customers that you serve?
A is about autonomy: do you feel you have the opportunity to set your own direction?
M is about mastery: are you learning?
P is about purpose: do you feel a connection to the work that you're trying to do? Do you feel like it will help “dent the universe” in some way?
These questions are asked to be answered on a scale of 1 to 10. “I generally want everyone I work with to have an 8, 9, or a 10,” Gibson shares. “I can usually figure out ways to get a 6 or 7 to an 8, eventually.”
CAMP-S
“I added another letter to the CAMP model,” Melissa admits. “The S is for scale. In the last board of directors meeting, I talked about how I burned out pretty hard during [the pandemic] while I was scaling [my] consultancy, so I’m trying to focus on things that scale, where it’s not me working 24/7.” Barry asks Melissa and Gibson to evaluate their experience over the past 6 months using the CAMP model.The HBS Case Method
Melissa talks about her first year doing the case method with her students. Harvard’s case method is an interactive, discussion-focused teaching approach that uses cases about true scenarios that have happ… -
Scaling 101 for Small Businesses with Le-an Lai Lacaba
19 januari 2022 · 29 min
Barry O’Reilly welcomes Le-an Lai Lacaba to this episode of the Unlearn Podcast. Le-an is the CEO and co-founder of 2xYou, an outsourcing company that specializes in hiring, managing, and growing remote executive assistants for solopreneurs and small business owners. She has been working from home since she was 15; she published her first book at 18, and became CEO at 20. At 23 she partnered with her boss to start 2xYou Executive Services, and aims to help 10,000 entrepreneurs grow remotely, and 1 Million Filipinos to work from home. Le-an also has her own Youtube channel, where she trains Virtual Assistants on how to work from home. She and Barry talk about entrepreneurship, and she gives advice to solopreneurs and small business owners on how to scale their business. Lees meer
Building Systems
Le-an describes her early career as being an “outsourced CEO”, as she was running her clients’ businesses on their behalf. This was a major lesson she learned from that time, so her mission with 2xYou is “to empower executive assistants to empower the entrepreneur”. Le-an explains that she was able to develop and refine her processes over 3 years of hiring, interviewing, and training others. “There was a lot of testing and a lot of rediscovering things that I already knew, and then looking at different ways that it could be better,” she tells Barry.Scaling Remotely
What are some key things to unlearn when you want to scale your business to working with remote teams, Barry asks Le-an. She shares three tips:Don’t expect your team to know everything right away. Delegate the right task when you’re onboarding, so that they are not overwhelmed.
Make sure your workers document and report what they are working on. This ensures continuity in case someone else needs to take over their task.
It’s your responsibility to build a solid relationship and clear communication with your employee. If your workers are not sure about what they need to do next, it’s your fault.
The Importance of Me…
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Bridging the Mental Health Gap with Dr. Sally Spencer-Thomas
5 januari 2022 · 36 min
Barry O’Reilly is happy to welcome Dr. Sally Spencer-Thomas to this episode of the Unlearn Podcast. Sally earned international acclaim as an entrepreneur and innovator in social change, helping to establish many large-scale mental health efforts, including Man Therapy and National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention. A trained clinical psychologist and a suicide loss survivor herself, she sees issues of suicide prevention and mental health promotion from a holistic perspective. Sally is a team member at Nobody Studios, leading the Employee Crisis Management function, where her mission is to save company-employee relationships by ensuring both sides have their needs met in times of difficulty. He and Sally discuss how we all can promote mental health in our companies, family, and community. Lees meer
The Turning Point
“Many of us have these moments in our life where we had a life before and then we have life afterward,” Sally says. That pivotal moment for her was her brother’s death by suicide. She describes her deep grief and the moment in a Suicide Loss Survivors support group when she realized that she could contribute to supporting others.Facing Down Fear
“The fear around suicide is just immobilizing,” Sally tells Barry. Even trained mental health professionals feel that fear and often ‘hot potato’ clients who are struggling with suicidal feelings: they fear losing their reputation - and their license - if a client dies by suicide on their watch. If, however, we face down the fear, we can really help people, she points out.Sally describes how fear made them reluctant to take a different approach to suicide prevention, despite data telling them that they should. In the end, they decided to face down the fear and go against the status quo. She and Barry talk about the importance of psychological safety. If people don’t feel safe to reach out for help, they won’t, and then they can’t get the help they need.
Learning From Disaster
“A lot of times when we face large-s… -
Unlearn Season Three Finale: Ask Me Anything with Barry O’Reilly
8 december 2021 · 31 min
Barry O’Reilly goes solo in this season's finale episode of the Unlearn Podcast. He answers listeners’ questions about perfectionism, permanent hybrid work, and letting go of the past, among other things. Lees meer
Q: How do you deal with perfectionism in the startup you're working on at the moment?
Q: How do you get the most out of the content you create under reach?
Q: How would you summarize the insights and learnings from your podcast guests about being change agents?
Q: Given that your move towards permanent hybrid work seems to be gaining serious momentum, how will this affect founders’ efforts to scale their businesses?
Q: In the unlearning process, what encouragement do you have to counter the fear of letting go of the past?
Q: What are you most excited about at the moment?
Q: What kind of guests are you looking for for future episodes?
Q: What's the biggest lesson you've had so far in 2021?
Resources
Barry O’Reilly on LinkedIn -
Selling Confidence with Ryan Serhant
24 november 2021 · 31 min
Barry O’Reilly is excited to welcome this week’s guest, Ryan Serhant, to the Unlearn Podcast. Ryan is founder & CEO of SERHANT., the bestselling author of Sell It Like Serhant and Big Money Energy, and is one of the most successful and well-known real estate brokers in the world. He is a producer, public speaker, and the star of multiple TV shows. In this inspiring episode, Ryan talks about how he revolutionized the traditional brokerage model and his strategies for building businesses of tomorrow. Lees meer
Selling Confidence
“I have never sold a house in my entire career,” Ryan tells Barry. “What I've sold is about $5 billion dollars worth of enthusiasm and confidence.” When he started out in real estate, he didn’t have the ‘right’ education, connections, or experience. What he did have in spades though, was self-confidence. Every day he would convince himself that he was the greatest real estate broker because he knew that clients were not just buying a house, they were buying into his belief that he was the very best in the business. Barry asks Ryan how he helps clients see something exciting in an otherwise ordinary property. “Facts tell, stories sell,” Ryan responds. He no longer just gives information, he deciphers it so that clients see the potential.Diversifying Happiness
“I diversify opportunities for happiness so every single day is exciting,” Ryan comments. He learned the hard way to never depend on just one “line of happiness”. As such, he used his skills to create other businesses and diversify his income sources. This led him to create his online education platform and his real estate media production company. “It’s really proven beneficial for my long-term career,” he adds. Barry comments that diversification is one of the tenets of Nobody Studios: “It's all about diversifying because you're building lots of different businesses; you're diversifying your skills, your portfolio, your investment strategy; and I think it's really important for people to see t… -
Startup Hustle with Shiyan Koh
10 november 2021 · 45 min
Barry O’Reilly welcomes Shiyan Koh as this week’s guest on the Unlearn Podcast. Shiyan is Managing Partner at Hustle Fund, a VC fund that invests in pre-seed software startups in the US, Canada, and Southeast Asia. What makes Hustle Funding different is that, beyond the usual criteria that VCs look for, they tend to prioritize founders that have speed of execution. In today’s show, Shiyan and Barry discuss her professional experience, from her beginnings in finance to her current role at Hustle Fund. Lees meer
A Whole New World
“I’ve never been one for ten-year plans, so I cannot tell you that [I knew] I was going to end up here,” Shiyan tells Barry. One major interest was policy creation and regulation, which she defines as “systems being enacted on people,” so she surprised herself when she delved into investment banking after receiving an internship in college. “I didn't really know what I was showing up for, but opened up a whole new world,” she says. The company that offered her the internship, JPMorgan, invited her to work for them as a full-time employee, which she accepted. Eventually, however, she decided that the job and the industry weren't in her long-term game plan.Finance, to Growth Stage Venture Capital
Shiyan talks about how she transitioned from investment banking, and how that experience helped her determine what to do next. “I thought [to myself], ‘I don’t want to be an investment banker anymore, but let me reflect on the things I enjoyed about the job.’ [So I] made lists… When I thought about all the different projects I've gotten to work on over the course of my time there, I realized that my favorite ones were the young companies, the ones who were just going public. And so I went ‘You know what, I want to do more of that.’”Growing Beyond Growth
It’s much easier to model growth in an Excel sheet than it is to make it happen. Shiyan recalls what she learned from her stint in growth stage venture capital. “I often felt like a fraud in those board mee… -
How Maximizing Your Brain Will Maximize Your Business with Dr. Erik Reis
27 oktober 2021 · 40 min
Barry O’Reilly is pleased to welcome Dr. Erik Reis to this episode of the Unlearn Podcast. Erik is a Co-Founder of Health and Wellness at Nobody Studios and has spent the last 10 years of his career helping individuals maximize their bodies, brains, and business through neuroscience and behavioral psychology. “He believes the brain is limitless,” Barry remarks, “which is why his efforts at Nobody Studios are focused on maximizing human potential and improving access to global healthcare.” In today’s show, Erik and Barry talk about the power of the brain, and how to maximize your human potential. Lees meer
Maximize Your Brain
“Every single one of us has the capacity to change and to improve and to adapt, and become more efficient at whatever task it is,” Erik tells listeners. He stresses that your daily actions, habits, and choices manifest in long-term outcomes. This is exciting because it means that we can achieve big goals by taking small steps every day. “I think that the brain is the final frontier. I'm thoroughly convinced that it is one of the only frontiers that we can truly try and pursue and master at some point,” Erik says.Update Your Brain’s Software
You can change your brain simply by changing your habits, Erik points out. Given the same stimulus, people make different choices based on their perceptions. As such, Erik sees it as his mission to help people change their brain, or “update their software”. This is a requirement to reach your fullest potential in life and in business, he says. One simple step anyone can take to ‘update their software’ is movement and exercise: “Movement will always be the language of the brain,” Erik says.Small Steps, Big Impact
There’s no one magic pill; rather, maximizing your potential is a matter of small actions taken consistently. Instead, keep an open mind - be open to differing opinions, perspectives, and experiences. The brain is not binary, so our mindset shouldn’t be either. He and Barry discuss the importance of diet … -
The Innovation Stack with Jim McKelvey
13 oktober 2021 · 33 min
Barry O’Reilly’s guest is Jim McKelvey, who has been everything from a glassblowing artist, to a founder of a multibillion-dollar organization. Just recently, he was appointed Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Jim is the co-founder of Square, a leading financial services and digital payments company, and the author of The Innovation Stack: Building an Unbeatable Business One Crazy Idea at a Time, where he shares the story of building Square and his philosophy for building disruptive companies. His most recent startup, Invisibly, gives consumers control of how their personal data is monetized by advertisers. Jim treats listeners to some fun facts and tips he learned from his own journey in this week’s episode. Lees meer
Be Grumpy, Optimistic and Tenacious
Innovation requires a “wonderful blend of grumpiness and optimism”, as well as a healthy dose of tenacity, Jim argues. Grumpiness makes you upset about a problem, and optimism inspires you to come up with a solution. Tenacity keeps you going through the tough times. “A lot of the companies that are now household names ... began with a founder who just found themselves in a really unpleasant situation and didn't quit,” Jim says. The mix of work ethic and stubbornness is often the secret sauce to your ultimate breakthrough. The most successful founders are just regular people; you just need the right tools, which Jim describes in his book.Entertain Them
Barry loves The Innovation Stack for its amusing anecdotes and contrary approaches, one of his favorites being Jim’s approach to pitching investors. “People get pitching wrong,” Jim explains. “People spend a lot of time pitching as if they are trying to sell somebody something. I pitch as if I'm trying to entertain and invite them to partner with me, and it's a subtle difference.” It’s your duty to entertain your listeners, he argues, especially if you want them to listen to you for more than 30 seconds.Make it an Experience
Your product or service should … -
Democratizing Entrepreneurship with Jaime Schmidt
29 september 2021 · 26 min
Jaime Schmidt started Schmidt’s Naturals in her kitchen and scaled it to acquisition by Unilever. In the process, she pioneered a movement of modern brands bringing naturals to the mainstream. Since then, Jaime has been empowering the next generation of consumer brands through her inclusive investment firm, Color. In 2019, she launched Supermaker, a media company that celebrates inclusive and disruptive independent brands. Her book, Supermaker: Crafting Business on Your Own Terms, on this very topic was released in 2020 and is all about turning your passion project into a thriving business. Jaime is gearing up for her starring role on Season One of Going Public airing on October 19, the first show that will enable viewers to invest in companies on screen, to help entrepreneurs take their brands to a global audience. “There's so much here that resonates with our mission at Nobody Studios about giving access to all for entrepreneurs,” host Barry O’Reilly says. Lees meer
Get Your Hands Dirty
Oftentimes, you have to get your hands dirty to figure out what you want to do, Jaime discovered. She outlines her journey from college to working in HR to ultimately starting her own business. She advises listeners, try to learn something from every experience you’ve had that you can take forward: “Figure out something about that [present] job that you can take with you that will somehow make you a stronger performer in your dream job.”Leadership Lessons
Barry and Jaime talk about important lessons that Jaime learned and unlearned along the way. Some of these lessons are:Not all leadership looks the same.
Decide how you want to show up as a boss. Emulate the good behaviors you learned from other leaders, and discard the bad behaviors.
There’s no one way to be a good leader. The best way is to just be yourself. Your leadership style is good enough.
“Don't be afraid to admit what you don't know; ask for help when you need it, and just keep that ego under control.”
Hire a good team: …
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What it Takes to Build a Product Led Organization with Yi-Wei Ang
15 september 2021 · 36 min
What is a product-led organization? What does it take to build one? How can technology help solve real-world problems? These are just a few of the questions that Yi-Wei Ang has dedicated his career to answering. Yi-Wei is the Chief Product Officer at Talabat, the largest food delivery and quick commerce company in the Middle East, and is responsible for Talabat’s rapid growth in the region. He joins Barry O’Reilly to talk about what better leadership means, and what it takes to build a product-led organization. Lees meer
Using Technology to Solve Human Problems
“If we think about what great design is and great experiences are,” Yi-Wei tells Barry, “it's not just [that] it's beautiful - it’s how the thought process that goes behind every decision you make... is anchored on the end-user.” From an early age, Yi-Wei was fascinated with how you could create something that works using technology. He became immersed in human factors engineering in university, especially with building resilient systems that were responsive to unplanned exceptions. Ultimately, he remarks, it’s about understanding humans and building products that help them solve their problems.Better Management
Marty Cagan taught Yi-Wei that people aren’t looking for less management, they’re looking for better management. This was counterintuitive to what he believed at the time, and it was a major unlearning for him. He knew that he didn’t want a top-down micromanaged organization, so he mistakenly felt that this meant giving his teams complete autonomy to choose the problems they wanted to solve. The result from this approach was that his teams’ efforts were misaligned, and they did not deliver on several commitments because of it. Cagan’s advice opened his eyes that he needed to set constraints and provide context and direction for his teams.One Thing That Matters
Trust the team close to the problem to solve the problem, Yi-Wei advises. Solving that problem should be their sole focus. At any given moment, the… -
Winks From the Universe with Peggy Liu
1 september 2021 · 44 min
Peggy Liu is on a mission to spark quantum change towards a better future faster. Hailed as the Green Goddess by the Chinese media, Peggy has been bringing people together from around the world to change the world for the better. She is the Chairperson of JUCCCE, the Joint US-China Collaboration on Clean Energy, as well as the bestselling author of Mesmerize the Media: Maximize Your Impact with More Press. She joins Barry O’Reilly on this week’s show to talk about building momentum for your change movement and how to recognize when the universe is winking at you. Lees meer
From Head to Heart
“The power of the intellect,” Peggy tells Barry, “is not matched at all by the magnetism of the heart.” This was an important lesson she had to learn in her own life, so everything she does now is based on tapping into emotional energy. Quantum change - societal change that’s the end goal of tornado leadership - starts with mastering emotional energy of movements, and of yourself, she argues. When you build the energetic architecture of a tornado behind the change you want to see, you bring people along with you to a better future faster.Perception Creates Reality
The books that inspired her from a young age and the influence of her grandfather, are just two of the “winks from the universe” that told Peggy what path she was meant to take. “...It begins with the perception of yourself and reality,” she remarks. “Perception is what creates reality.” You create the future by visioning that you’re already there. The emotion of euphoria of already achieving that future is what magnetizes people subconsciously. Barry comments on the value of meditation as part of your morning routine. People who are good at leading change usually practice spending time with their thoughts, he says. Peggy shares an example of how practicing meditation helped her craft a speech for the Harvard Model UN. You have to open yourself up to transformational ideas. Allowing yourself freedom to do so is one secret to… -
Engage in the Lives of Your Users with Donald Farmer
18 augustus 2021 · 41 min
Some people just do things differently. Data analytics expert and advisor Donald Farmer is one of them. Donald works with Barry O’Reilly at Nobody Studios where he serves as the Chief Innovation Officer. With his company TreeHive, Donald advises enterprises and non-profits in emerging economies on innovation, strategy, and the uses of data. His career has taken him around the world and into a huge range of industries, from fish farming, to managing a village nursery, to being the face of business intelligence for Microsoft. He and Barry talk about creating a better world for the people who live in it through technology and innovation. Lees meer
Different, not Better
“I’ve never been interested in computers for their own sake. I’m really interested in what I can DO with it.” Donald tells Barry, “I see the machine as an intellectual lever that allows me to do more – that’s what’s interesting to me.” This leveraged power is important because there is a lot in the world that needs changing. A guiding principle of Donald’s work is that each individual is unique – humans can’t be aggregated into categories for whom one solution will work all the time. By moving away from the industry standards of incremental change and towards exploring alternative solutions that make things materially better for people, Donald is able to ask how a new company or idea will help change the way things are done.A Pivotal Moment
Barry wonders about the choices Donald made that really clarified this perspective of focusing on humans above all else, and Donald shares a story about a fish farming tech startup he developed while doing some consulting work in the Scottish Highlands. He formed a company that productized the data around fish weights and measurements and aided in the complex calculations needed for transporting and exporting and so on. Eventually, they sent the product to Japan, where it was extremely well received, except for one major issue: the computer beeped when a data entry error wa… -
Milestones not Millstones with Aidan McCullen
4 augustus 2021 · 47 min
Bill Gates is a fan of The Innovation Show, hosted by this week’s guest, Aidan McCullen. It’s also one of Barry O’Reilly’s favorites, because of the meaningful conversations Aidan has with guests, and because of Aidan himself, whose lifelong journey of reinvention is inspiring. Aidan played professional rugby for 10 years for the 2 most successful teams in Europe in Ireland and France before transitioning into the business world. He is an acclaimed consultant and advisor, with expertise in team transformation, innovation and team culture and leadership. He has also developed and delivered modules in Emerging Technology Trends at Trinity College. He and Barry talk about his recent book, Undisruptable: A Mindset of Permanent Reinvention for Individuals, Organisations and Life, as well as the mental models he learned and unlearned that helped him become who he is today. Lees meer
Moments of Change
“Difficult moments are always growth points,” Aidan remarks. “They’re inflection points where you can reframe them… as milestones rather than millstones.” Success is more about pushing through challenges and working hard to accomplish your goals, and less about how much talent you are born with, he tells Barry. The secret is to just keep going, and give it your all: “When I get out of this I don't want to ever turn back and go, I should have done, I could have done… I never wanted to walk away with something and have a regret.”Discipline Is the Magic Word
Aidan succeeds in rugby and in life because he just keeps showing up. “Discipline is like this force that you can use and point it at anything to use it for positive,” he tells Barry. When you do the work, Barry agrees, you set yourself up to get the best out of yourself and the situation. It’s what separates people who excel from those who are just ‘winging it’.Lessons to Unlearn
Barry asks Aidan to share some lessons he had to learn and unlearn. Some of the lessons Aidan shares include:“There's always a high and a low at the…
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Cultivating an Ecosystem for Growth with Soumeya Benghanem
21 juli 2021 · 37 min
Soumeya Benghanem is a product management leader at VMWare and the creator and curator of a thriving product manager and builders community on Clubhouse. Soumeya is an inspiring member of the product industry – she shows up with passion, resilience, and adaptability to everything she puts her hand to. She and Barry discuss the different kinds of cultures you run into in the tech industry, how to handle mistakes – your own and those of your team, and the value of community.
What’s Different about Start-Up World
Soumeya got her start at large companies and in the start-up world – this is important because what works in large companies and in smaller ones are not always the same. There are systems and values that are constant, but how they are applied in different cultures is different. The amount of risk you can take in a startup compared to a large established business is quite different, for example. Barry concurs, and notes that one of the classic traps you can fall into is that as a consultant, you can coach and guide teams towards solutions, and people will be able to take that and run with it. In a startup, you often need to get right in there and do it.
Making Other People’s Mistakes
It is very hard to make mistakes that you know other people have already figured out the answers to. Soumaya thinks that it is important to make them anyway, to keep the wheels moving, and to make sure you’re really learning. Barry points out that there are so many ways to do things the right way, and you just need to commit to one. It is also possible to make the same mistake over and over again without ever knowing what you’re doing. Barry notes that this is quite a common problem and shares his own repeated mistake – and the solutions he has developed to make sure there is better visibility and collaboration on small teams.
Team Retrospectives
Soumeya’s team has a meeting called the Weekly Retro where they talk about what has gone on, what has been great, and what’s been diffic… Lees meer -
How Consistency, Belief and Action Can Transform Your Life with JeVon McCormick
7 juli 2021 · 49 min
“If there's one thing we love on this show,” Barry O’Reilly tells this week’s guest, “is people just speaking from their heart and what really matters and what they believe in; and I can't think of anyone who better exemplifies that than you.” JeVon McCormick's story is certainly a testament to the value of believing in yourself and taking consistent action despite the odds. JeVon persevered through every setback, vowing to never stop until he achieved his goals. He and Barry talk about his inspirational journey and how to keep going even when the decks are stacked against you. Lees meer
Possibility Opens Your Eyes
You can only aspire to what you see and know is possible, JeVon tells Barry. He shares that a drive through an affluent community as a child was the beginning of his mindset shift. “It showed me possibility, and that was very key,” he comments. A big problem in lower economic communities is that many people there don’t know all the options that exist. “When I was shown possibility, that was game-changing for me; even though I didn't know how I was going to get there, it showed me possibility, and it was up to me to go figure out [how to] make that happen,” he says. [Listen from 2:00]Be Consistent
In a society of instant gratification, the importance of consistency is often downplayed. However, JeVon tells Barry, what helped him improve his circumstances and his life overall was his commitment to never stop trying. “The biggest thing was I was always consistent,” he remarks. He kept learning from his mistakes and improving on his strengths. He posits, “I truly believe you only fail if you stop trying.” Barry adds that society rarely talks about the hard part of consistency: getting back up after getting knocked down, or holding on when it seems more sensible to let go. [Listen from 8:35]How Conscious Capitalism Can Change Lives
Barry sees JeVon’s work in conscious capitalism as a great juncture of his ethics, mindset, and entrepreneurialism. He asks him what i… -
Chaos Engineering And Disciplined Experimenting with Casey Rosenthal
23 juni 2021 · 1 uur 1 min
Casey Rosenthal is the co-founder and CEO of Verica and the former Engineering Manager of the Chaos Engineering team at Netflix. He is an author and thought leader in chaos engineering, “a discipline of experimenting with software systems in production in order to build confidence in the system's capability to withstand unexpected and turbulent conditions.” Casey was an early engineer and champion of chaos engineering, bringing together people from companies like Netflix, Google, Facebook, and Amazon to explore the field. In this week’s Unlearned Podcast, Casey and Barry O’Reilly talk about the chaos engineering domain and how to apply its principles to build high-performance teams and businesses. Lees meer
Origins of Chaos Engineering
Netflix’s migration to the cloud, in particular the sudden outages and service disruptions that would occur, spurred the creation of a program they called Chaos Monkey. “So Chaos Monkey would for each service inside Netflix, every day it would randomly choose an instance and turn it off,” Casey tells Barry. The underlying principle was that once engineers knew a problem existed, they would fix it. “It changed their behavior by aligning the organization around the business problem that needed to be solved,” he remarks. He shares the early Chaos Community Days, bringing colleagues together from leading tech companies to build the discipline they would call chaos engineering.Navigating Complexity
Chaos engineering assumes that you already have complexity in your system. “This is engineering to navigate it, or to surface it so that you’re aware of it,” Casey explains. Once you’re aware a problem exists, you can take steps to fix it. It’s a proactive approach to improving availability and security, which improves your system overall. He shares an example of how United Health Group was able to discover a system vulnerability they didn’t know they had, and allocate appropriate resources to strengthen their position. Barry comments, “The thing that… -
Shifting Bias and Beliefs with Sejal Thakkar
9 juni 2021 · 45 min
Sejal Thakkar is on a mission to educate and empower others to create a world where everyone is treated with dignity and respect. She is a former employment law attorney, a TEDx speaker, and the founder and Chief Civility Officer at TrainXtra, where she helps her clients create positive, safe, and respectful workplaces through customized training and coaching. She also recently joined Nobody Studios as Chief Culture Officer. Barry O’Reilly welcomes her on this week’s Unlearned Podcast to share her story of unlearning how to shift her own biases and beliefs. Lees meer
Check Your Biases
It’s difficult to acknowledge your biases because they often portray a vision of you that is the opposite of what you believe of yourself. Sejal had to check her own biases in order to do her job as an attorney, representing persons accused of discrimination and harassment. “I had to do a lot of my own inner work to recognize my own bias so that I can do my job because there's no way that I can represent people unless I checked my own biases,” she remarks. Our biases often stem from our experiences, and they don’t make us bad people. The key is to slow down and recognize when we’re letting our unconscious biases affect our decisions and use strategies to combat them. She has changed her language: she no longer refers to them as biases, but beliefs. She shares an online tool listeners can use to discover their unconscious beliefs. She also advises leaders to have an accountability partner who will tell them honestly if they’re letting unconscious beliefs influence their decisions.Unlearning Preconceived Notions
Practice active listening, Sejal advises, and you’ll start picking up on your own preconceptions and judgments. Barry reminds listeners that we’re all programmed to have automatic responses in some situations. However, we can reprogram our brains once we become aware of our negative hidden beliefs. He and Sejal discuss their own blind spots and the importance of being humble and willin… -
Joyful Work with Rich Sheridan
26 mei 2021 · 36 min
Rich Sheridan, world-renowned entrepreneur and bestselling author of Joy, Inc. and Chief Joy Officer, is on a mission to inspire organizations to create joyful cultures. He is the CEO and Chief Storyteller at Menlo Innovations, recognized by Inc Magazine as the Most Joyful Company in America. People from all over the world have visited Menlo to see firsthand the unique culture and systems at the company. Barry O’Reilly welcomes Rich to this week’s Unlearn Podcast to talk about how leaders can inspire joy at work. Lees meer
Listen to Your Intuition
Rich’s experience at “one of the highest-flying entrepreneurial tech firms” motivated him to listen to his instincts. He tells Barry that they were so far removed from what their customers wanted, that he knew instinctively they would not survive. His intuition proved correct. “They weren’t learning anything,” he remarks; “...they were only applying what they learned from years past.” He vowed to do things differently in his own company so that they didn’t make the same mistake. “All of us have that little place in our guts when something goes wrong… I just learned to pay attention to that signal,” he tells Barry.Look For the Opportunity
When things aren’t going well, that’s where the opportunity is. Many systems exist because they helped you get to where you are, but “there are bits that calcify”, Barry says; leaders need to be true to themselves and see where changes need to be made. Rich points out that when things are going wrong, the leader must become a student again. He recommends going to books first: read the first 30-40 pages, and if it resonates with you, keep reading. You may discover a new idea or an opportunity that will help your company grow.Experiments Over Meetings
“Let’s try it before we defeat it.” This simple change of approach has inspired dramatic change in many organizations, Rich says. Ideas need a chance to be proven before being discarded, because only then would you really know if they work. “I thin… -
Branding and Blind Spots with Margaret Molloy
12 mei 2021 · 43 min
Margaret Molloy and Barry O’Reilly connected by following each other’s podcasts and work. Margaret grew up in Ireland, and attended Harvard in the US. She currently serves as Chief Marketing Officer at Siegel+Gale, a leading brand strategy and design experience agency. She is a recognized leader in diversity and inclusion, and has built a global community around her How CMOs Commit podcast, as well the popular panels she regularly convenes. Lees meer
Simple is Smart
“I study topics deeply to understand them profoundly, to be able to communicate them simply,” Margaret tells Barry. Being able to distill a brand to its essence and then communicate that in clear, simple language is very compelling, she argues. COVID-19 has only amplified the value of simplicity as it removes “cognitive tax” during this stressful time. “I believe the buying public will reward brands who truly appreciate the opportunity to remove that cognitive tax... Simplicity is just another way to say removing friction,” she remarks. Barry adds, “When you can create these simple, clearly understood messages, that's what connects with people.”Illuminating Blind Spots
It’s an act of courage and grace for someone to show you your blind spot. Understandably, it’s common for your first reaction to be defensiveness. This was certainly Margaret’s initial reaction to being told by an attendee that her gender-equal panel did not reflect ‘The Future of Branding’ as the name promised since it was not racially diverse. The experience challenged her view of herself and showed her that race was her blind spot. “Shortly after that I caught myself, and I realized I had just received probably the most constructive feedback I had ever received in my career,” she says. She had to unlearn her mental model of being color blind: she needed to be color brave. “Ever since that day I have worked to build my network and extend myself to make sure that I have diverse representation on our panels,” she points out. Interestingly, it wa… -
The Future of Venture Company Creation with Mark McNally
28 april 2021 · 36 min
Mark McNally has seen the upside and downside of new company ventures. He has been involved in 14 startups, as a senior executive or CEO each one building on the lessons he learned from the one before. Barry O’Reilly describes him as a “radical thinker, venture innovator, founder and Chief Nobody at Nobody Studios.” Mark’s bold vision to create 100 compelling companies over the next 5 years was so intriguing to Barry that he jumped at the opportunity to join Mark on the boldest bet of their careers. In this week’s show, they discuss the vision for Nobody Studios, as well as their lessons learned and unlearned over the years as entrepreneurs. And why now is the moment for the missing piece of the venture ecosystem . Lees meer
The Bold Vision For Venture
“...What we're about to do next is launch a venture studio together with an amazing collection of diverse innovators, entrepreneurs, and creators who want to change the way new companies are created, sourced, explored, and scaled to sustainable businesses,” Barry tells listeners. “But not only that, we're going to be the first company to make venture investing accessible to the masses by crowdfunding the company to enable anyone to own equity in the studio and every single company we create in the future forever.”Missing out on making simultaneously exploring companies of the future frustrated Mark. “I decided I really wanted to create a vehicle that allowed people to be more involved and more aggressive in making bets on things that aligned with their vision of the future,” the result is Nobody Studios.
People First
Nobody Studios’ founding principle is people first. If you have ideas and talent, no matter where you are in the world, the company invites you to join them on their journey. “I'm a big believer that if we focus on building up people around us, then our journey will be just fine,” Mark remarks.Making people part of something bigger is in the company’s DNA, he tells listeners. Transparency is another of their…
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People-Centered Design Sprints with Kai Haley
14 april 2021 · 35 min
Kai Haley is the Head of UX Methods and Practice at Google and the founder and leader of the Google Sprint Leadership Academy. She is an expert at leading change, creating movements and creating high performance teams. Barry O’Reilly says of her, “She was one of the first people to embrace design sprints at Google and helped formulate that practice, codify it, and has coached hundreds - if not thousands - of people how to use these tools to identify product visions, drive successful user-centered products, and build cultures of innovation all across Google and outside.” She joins Barry in this week’s show to talk about how design sprints started, lessons she unlearned along the way, and the importance of designing for people first. Lees meer
Looking Outside
Look for patterns and inspiration outside of your field, Kai advises. “I do gravitate towards looking outside of wherever I'm focused right now to how are people solving things over here, or what inspiration could we gain from something else?” she says. Her undergraduate study in anthropology helps her to keep the human and cultural connection top of mind in any design project. “When I'm looking outside of the discipline of design I'm keeping my eyes on the people and who this is for and who are we trying to solve these problems for,” she tells Barry.Origin of Design Sprints
Creating a high performance cross-functional team requires a shared language and a shared idea of success. Getting design sprints off the ground meant that Kai and her team needed to bring together elements of design thinking, user research, business methods and psychology. The term ‘sprint’ was used to get the engineering team to buy in, as they were already used to ‘agile sprints’. Kai tells Barry that the first sprints were just four hours long, while other people were running longer sessions. Starting small gained her buy-in as everyone praised how impactful the exercise was, and asked for more. Her manager soon asked her to have one every two … -
People AND Automation with Nancy Householder Hauge
31 maart 2021 · 41 min
Nancy Householder Hauge is the Chief HR Officer at Automation Everywhere, one of the fastest-growing companies in the world. She sees herself as Chief People Officer because she believes in putting people first even in the midst of disruption. Nancy has won the Stevie Award for women in hi-tech and is considered one of the most influential women in Silicon Valley. Lees meer
Barry O’Reilly admires her talent for spotting winners and her sense of humor. Nancy has coached future female leaders and truly understands the challenges that organizations face when they are transforming. She joins Barry to talk about how she spots future disruptors, the importance of thinking time, and why automating human jobs should be celebrated rather than feared.
Spotting Future Disruptors
Nancy credits her time at Sun Microsystems with giving her an appetite for companies that disrupt. She believes that getting ready for the future means unlearning the past and being open to something new and different. Three things get her intuition buzzing that a company may be a future disruptor, she says:The people are smart;
They are good, as people, and at their mission;
They are passionate about what they can achieve.
She tells Barry that she joined Automation Everywhere because the CEO asked her a provocative question that made her want to help solve it. Barry comments, “People that are smart and passionate and deeply ingrained in something new seem to be able to ask those provocative questions; and great teams are good at asking those provocative questions of one another... to actually tease out some of the real meaning, the real value, the real things that matter to folks.” [Listen from 2:50]
Automation is Good
Automating repetitive manual tasks frees humans up to do the work our brain was made to do. It uncovers talents in us that we couldn’t explore because we were bogged down with “arcane processes and mundane work”. “The really wonderful discovery I've had around bots,” Nancy tells Barry: “… -
Decentralizing Data: From Data Monolith to Data Mesh with Zhamak Dehghani
17 maart 2021 · 55 min
Barry O’Reilly and this week’s guest, Zhamak Dehghani met 10 years ago when they worked together at ThoughtWorks. Zhamak is currently the Director of Emerging Technologies at ThoughtWorks and the creator of Data Mesh, which Barry describes as “one of the most exciting paradigm shifts in how we manage data at scale.” He and Zhamak discuss why traditional data architecture models are failing and how applying product thinking principles to data management is a way to harvest the data’s full potential. “This show,” Barry remarks, “is for those who are curious to understand how to bring the convergence of product thinking, data management, and distributed systems development together to create platforms and products of the future.” Lees meer
Early Values
Zhamak has always believed in distribution of responsibility and decentralization of ownership. She finds that these design principles are more compatible with real life. Colleagues taught her the Unix philosophy early in her career which now forms the basis of her data management approach. “They taught me those wonderful ideas to build systems and programs that do one thing and one thing really well. But most importantly they work together really well,” Zhamak says. “‘Simple is beautiful and beauty is the truth’... Reduce systems to their simple principles; then together can emerge complex behaviors.” She saw an opportunity to bring the UNIX principles to data.Challenging Assumptions
It often takes someone new to a system to point out obvious flaws to long-time practitioners. Zhamak says that when she came into the world of big data, she was agnostic to the accepted assumptions, so she felt free to challenge them and conceive a different paradigm. For some reason when it comes to data, people eschew UNIX principles and see it as something to be centralized. Unsurprisingly, a data lake becomes monolithic and departments become siloed. Reimagining the world of data requires a new language, she points out: “The moment you need t… -
Leading an Engineering Culture Transformation with Chris Goddard
3 maart 2021 · 40 min
On reading Lean Enterprise, this week’s guest, Chris Goddard, reached out to Barry O’Reilly several years ago to help implement its principles and practices at his company, G-Research. Chris has been with G-Research, a leading quantitative research and technology company in the algorithmic investment space, for almost 20 years. He is currently the Chief Technology Officer there. Barry says of G-Research, “Working with the team has really helped me evolve my thesis on the power of gathering and synthesizing data to inform your products and business model investments, much of which is actually captured in my latest article, Precision Product Creation…” Lees meer
Becoming a Leader
Being thrown into a job that he didn’t sign up for turned out to be a blessing in disguise for Chris. “What it really taught me was how the ecosystem of everything hung together;” he says, “how you needed to think about the building blocks as being bigger than just lines of code…” That experience set him up to progress to more strategic roles over his 20-year career at G-Research. He says that it’s important for leaders to ask good questions and to look for inspiration outside their field. Also, you have to accept that you will be wrong sometimes and face up to your mistakes.Signals of Change and a Culture Shift
At a certain point, the strategies that brought you success in the past no longer suffice. At that point, a leader needs to move in another - often counterintuitive - direction. G-Research’s founder asked Chris, “Why does it feel like it's not working? Like we were adding more resources and that the business was doing well, but it felt like it was getting harder.” Chris tells Barry about the changes happening in the company, as well as how he realized that the company needed to shift their focus from functionality to developing their craft. With Barry’s help, Chris says, the company underwent a culture change. He jokes about the ‘Barry Post-Its’ that now decorated the previously bare walls.… -
Keep Learning Forward with Amy Farrow
17 februari 2021 · 38 min
“Amy Farrow [is] a seasoned executive who lives at the center of customer-focused product and technology innovation,” Barry O'Reilly says. Amy is a collaborator, team builder, and problem solver at heart, traits that she brought to her former roles at Salesforce and Twitter, and which she continues to champion as the current Chief Information Officer of Lyft. Amy and Barry talk about the value of reflection and how to leverage learning to build a better organization, including what not to do in times of challenge or crisis. As Barry points out, this episode “is a fantastic podcast to understand the convergence of customer insights, technology, and product to create great experiences.” Lees meer
Learning From Customers
“There’s what you see and then there’s what you don’t see. And often what you don’t see is more impactful than what you do see,” Amy remarks. She and Barry discuss the importance of learning about and directly from customers. In her early career, Amy didn’t really understand why this was so important. Her time at Salesforce in particular gave her a new perspective. Barry comments that customer discovery is part of building great products and delivering great service. If a customer has a problem, help them to solve it as best as you can and bring back what you learned to the team so you can improve the product. Building this type of culture ultimately becomes a competitive advantage, as it did for Salesforce.Keep Moving Forward
Leveraging your team’s expertise in a crisis is critical; to do that you first have to bring people together and build trust in one another. Barry comments that high-performance teams feel free to make mistakes and to discuss them openly without laying blame. In this healthy culture, teams respond quicker and learn faster than the competition, he says. In a challenge or crisis, keep going forward, Amy adds. Take small steps toward solving the problem. She says that she tries to understand why the problem arose without laying blame. Ins… -
Bold Product Decisions with Quincy Carroll
3 februari 2021 · 38 min
Quincy Caroll has a passion for delighting users, fans, and communities through world-class mobile, web, and computer applications and services. Quincy is this week’s guest on the Unlearn Podcast. He and host Barry O’Reilly discuss the bold product decisions he experienced while working on initiatives such as GarageBand at Apple, pivoting eBay’s search algorithm to scaling Crunchyroll, the world-leading Manga streaming platform from 300,000 to 3 million users. Lees meer
A Product Person
Quincy changed careers several times throughout his professional life. What he learned along the way helped him to become a “product person”. Barry asks him to explain some of the things he learned about himself during this period. Quincy responds that being a product person allowed him to work with all kinds of people. The diverse perspectives and experiences are invaluable in developing products, he comments. He is happy that the focus is now on group mentality and fostering team success. “Now it’s about the actual function of the role as it is, like either mentoring other people or setting up the team in such a way that the chemistry is right.”Getting The Timing Right
Companies, products, and projects are all about the right timing. How they come to be and how they ultimately develop depends on the time spent on them and what concepts and disciplines are used to create them. Barry comments that craft discipline is a concept that is still forming even now. He remarks on Quincy’s time at eBay. Quincy adds that during his time there, he worked on, and was able to complete, significant platform-level projects within eBay’s system. However, he also faced the challenge of convincing the company not to end certain projects. Many organizations face this same challenge, Quincy comments: they either end projects too quickly, or let them run for too long.Quality over Quantity
Quincy and Barry discuss the challenges of business owners who are rigid regarding product development. Barry comments th… -
Making Quality Decisions with Diana Kander
20 januari 2021 · 35 min
Diana Kander is a New York Times Bestselling Author, an entrepreneur, and keynote speaker. Barry O’Reilly likes to reference her Ted Talk and $1 experiment in many of his videos. Diana has spent her career challenging assumptions and asking thought-provoking questions. Barry welcomes her to this week’s show as they discuss tips and tricks that lead to innovation. Lees meer
The Road to Innovation
Her parents’ ability to essentially create something from nothing fed Diana’s urge to get into entrepreneurship and innovation. Her immigrant parents had to work hard to provide for the family. Through their hard work, they were able to build their own business.New Mindset, New Growth
One of Diana’s biggest unlearning experiences happened while starting up her own business. She gives an anecdote of her interaction with a high growth program leader. She talks about having to change her mindset and approach to business due to that interaction and how it grew her company 1000% in one year! Barry adds that breaking free of existing behaviors within that frame and thinking big but starting small can help a business grow.Saying No and Letting Go
“Good strategy means you say no, even to customers you know,” Barry says. Customers you go after are the customers you will get, Diana emphasizes. Sales from larger companies will take longer to get, but the return is worth it. She says that you should say no to companies that can prevent you from going after the kind of business you really want. She cites her experience of letting go 90% of her own customers so she could have more growth and profitability. Barry iterates that being serious about your business growth means sometimes letting go of existing customers.Quality Decision-Making
Making decisions on a 1 to 10 scale allows you to make higher quality decisions. Diana says that many people are misguided on how to say yes to things because they think about decisions as a yes or no binary, rather than on a scale of one to ten. In the bus… -
Enabling Agility by Being Agile with Annette Gabriel
6 januari 2021 · 37 min
This week’s guest, Annette Gabriel, is enthusiastic about helping leaders and teams adopt higher performance practices. Annette is a former Senior Director of Human Resources at Pepsico. Barry O’Reilly describes her as “one of the people who just shines when you hear her stories.” Annette and Barry discuss the framework of agility, and how to let teams lead. Lees meer
Agility Mindset
Leaders who adopt an agility mindset are eager to explore the world around them. Annette says that she views each job as a learning opportunity and a new experience whether she ends up liking it or not. Barry comments that trying and even failing is part of the process: you just have to recalibrate when things don’t go as you planned. If more people adopted an agility mindset, they would be open to trying new ways of working.Unlearning Moments
Barry asks Annette to relate some of the mistakes she made along the way, and what she had to unlearn. “Trying to do too much at once whilst still trying to influence the leadership layer of the company,” she begins. She gives an anecdote of going at the leadership layer with working programs that failed because they were too complicated. She was still learning the programs while trying to share and develop them, so she should have taken more time to fully understand them before presenting to company leaders. Barry comments that leaders often find it hard to just get out of the way and let front line staff have more authority. However, when they start to see the values and principles come to life and the positive outcomes of them, it becomes easier for them to trust the process.Being Agile
“There is no one way to be agile,” Annette remarks. “Being agile is actually pivoting and adjusting for what you need at that moment, at that time based upon what you've learned, what information you've gathered and what you've learned from testing,” she continues. It’s a common misconception that processes have to be standardized to be successful, Barry comments. A… -
Unlearn Season Two Finale: Ask Me Anything with Barry O’Reilly
23 december 2020 · 34 min
Welcome to the Unlearn Podcast’s second Ask Me Anything, something that is fast becoming an annual tradition. This episode is a kind of retrospective, a chance to not only answer questions from listeners all over the world but a chance to reflect on the year that has happened - the challenges as well as the opportunities.
Here’s to 2021 – and now, 10 answers to 10 questions.
· What has been the most important characteristic that has helped you lead through COVID?
· As a leader, what advice would you give your younger self for managing such an accelerated period of change?
· What was the biggest shift for you personally in your approach to leadership this year?
· What are the key traits and habits that leaders need to adopt to lead in this new world of work?
· You often talk about collaboration fit — can you elaborate on it?
· What’s been your most interesting video conference experience in 2020?
· What are your principles of work?
· What one change have you made to help you for 2021 and beyond?
· What’s the most interesting research you’ve discovered this year?
· What’s your favorite book you read this year? Lees meerFurther Listening:
Role Modeling Culture Transformation with Christian Metzner
Product Management For Large Scale Innovation with Secil Tabli Watson
Help Others Win with Steven Leist
Resources:
How to be an Anti-Racist
Strong Towns -
Helping Others Win with Steven Leist
9 december 2020 · 44 min
Steven Leist is the Vice President for Customer Technology at American Airlines, the world’s largest airline. He is a technology leader who is intentional about creating a culture that cares for his team members. Barry and Steven discuss building employee relationships, becoming better leaders, and developing culture within organizations in this week’s Unlearn Podcast. Lees meer
Helping Others Win at Work
Over time, Steven has adopted the concept of helping others win at work. He tells Barry that it comes down to people within an organization, and stresses the importance of culture as the driving force behind his leadership. Helping others win changes people's mindset. "I think some of the challenges we hear at times are that folks feel constrained by policies, and so we worked really hard to try to listen to our frontline employees and really try to put them in a situation where they can actually help the customer," Steven comments. He tells Barry that he had to unlearn how to let go as a leader, and that he did not have to be the smartest person in the room.Thinking Big and Starting Small
One of the challenges many companies have is that they think big but don’t start small. Steven shares an example where he and his team became frustrated with a project at work because they thought big and started big to complete it faster. He expresses that this is a common management issue "because they have to see the big picture and they've got to get the revenue results". The pandemic allowed American Airlines to pivot and start attacking the new problems presented by it, within the parameters of thinking big and starting small. "I think this capability and mindset - and behavior really - you've built of thinking big but starting small, means teams are constituting small things, and there's opportunities for leaders to see small progress, small steps, small mistakes and then course correct and grow into these bigger solutions that have profound impact across your company," Barry re… -
Building for Tomorrow with Sara Wood
25 november 2020 · 50 min
Sara Wood is the CEO of Kaluza. She is a product leader, non-executive board member and a “builder at heart” who has even helped the UK with its Covid systems. Barry O’Reilly welcomes Sara to this week’s show as they discuss changing technology and the effects of the pandemic on the energy sector. Lees meer
Transitioning Across Domains
Sara’s wide-ranging experience has enabled her to go from place to place through the lens of “what is interesting here, what’s interesting about the technology there”. She is essentially “a builder at heart”, she says. Barry asks her what advice she would give to someone who wants to transition from one domain to another. She responds, “I think the combination of really being curious about the world around you, about where technology is going, and adaptable to what you find on the other side of that.”The Platform Play and Supply Chain
Sara learned supply chain in the fashion industry at Gap. She moved to Farfetch because she was impressed with that company’s platform play, particularly the impact it would have on supply chain. At Kaluza, she sees technology and data as the platform that would enable the transition in the energy industry. What we do now with regard to the climate crisis will inform the future, she points out. She laments that the existing data and technology is not being put to use as they should be. To her, she tells Barry, a platform approach is about “how do we empower people in their homes who are just living a normal life to both understand how they participate in the energy ecosystem and adapt behavior?” She finds that using the technology and data to empower customers and give them more choices is fueling demand for sustainable energy.Platform Thinking
Trends and data that exists within the teams she works with, are all information Sara pools together into her platform. Barry applauds this “platform thinking.” Sara says that she jumps into a new industry with a fair amount of curiosity. She believes that product lea…