Boss Level Podcast

Sponsor:

• Vincit

Sponsored by Vincit.

Thanks to Nordic Business Forum for making the interview happen. 

And thanks to the sponsor of the season, Vincit.

My guest  is Rutger Bregman from Holland. He’s a historian and an author. His books Humankind and Utopia for Realists were both New York Times Bestsellers. You might also know him from a viral video of a speech he did in Davos or from an unaired, but leaked interview with Fox News that completely pissed off the host Tucker Carlson.

We discuss how how we should move to a more benevolent view of human nature and how that would change the way we run our companies. 

Sponsor link:

• MinnaLearn

Josh Seiden is a designer, strategy consultant, coach, author and speaker. He helps clients launch new products and services, and to create more agile, entrepreneurial organizations. He's the author of Outcomes Over Outputs and co-author of Sense & Respond and Lean UX. We discuss why it's important to focus on the outcomes of the work we do and not on the output. 

You can learn more about Josh on his website.

Sponsor for the episode:

- MinnaLearn - Go here to join the exclusive Boss Level study group and get 25% off the price

My guest today is Kati Levoranta. Kati is currently a Partner and Executive Vice President at P2X Solutions. Previously she was the CEO of Rovio and she has a background in law. She’s also on the board of Finavia, an airport operator company, Juuri Partners, a private equity company and OP, a large banking group.

We talk about what Power-to-X means and how building plants differs from digital services. We talk about contracting, learning and how to keep yourself in good working order.

Sponsor link:

• MinnaLearn

Episode links:

• Article on Boss Level Podcast in HS Visio
• Olli Salo

Sponsor:

• Swanlake Strategy

Some of topics covered in the discussion are:

• What's it like negotiating an exit?
• How does the operating model of a company change as it grows?
• What are the fundamental balancing acts in product development?
• Benefits of asynchronous communication
• Limits of self-organization

Links:

• Swarmia
• Smartly
• Flowdock

Sponsor:

• Swanlake Strategy

An interview with retired US Army general Stanley McChrystal. We talk about how to prepare for risks.

This episode is sponsored by Swanlake Strategy. 

Further listening:

• My previous interview with Stan McChrystal
• Eeva Vilkkumaa on decision making

Don't not tell anyone.

An interview with John Seddon, the inventor of 'The Vanguard Method' and managing director of Vanguard consultancy company. The Vanguard Method is a way of helping organizations move from command and control towards systems design.

In this episode we talk about Johns new book: 'Beyond Command and Control'. We also continue on topics we discussed previous time John was guest on Boss Level.

Links for the episode:

• Vanguard Method
• What is the Vanguard Method? John Seddon explains (video)
• John on Wikipedia

Links for the podcast:

• Mailing list: http://eepurl.com/P0dpf
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bosslevelpodcast
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/bosslevelpod
• iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/fi/podcast/boss-level/id1041885043
• Website: http://www.bosslevelpodcast.com
• Sami Honkonen on Twitter: http://twitter.com/SamiHonkonen
• Sami's website: http://www.samihonkonen.com
• Sami's blog: http://blog.samihonkonen.com

An interview with Timo Lappi, CEO of Heltti and Co-Founder of Fondia.

Links for the episode:

• Heltti
• Fondia
• Timo on Twitter

Links for the podcast:

• Mailing list: http://eepurl.com/P0dpf
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bosslevelpodcast
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/bosslevelpod
• iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/fi/podcast/boss-level/id1041885043
• Website: http://www.bosslevelpodcast.com
• Sami Honkonen on Twitter: http://twitter.com/SamiHonkonen
• Sami's website: http://www.samihonkonen.com
• Sami's blog: http://blog.samihonkonen.com

An interview with Aaron Dignan, the author of Brave New Work.

Links for the episode:

• Brave New Work
• Aaron on Twitter

Links for the podcast:

• Mailing list: http://eepurl.com/P0dpf
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bosslevelpodcast
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/bosslevelpod
• iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/fi/podcast/boss-level/id1041885043
• Website: http://www.bosslevelpodcast.com
• Sami Honkonen on Twitter: http://twitter.com/SamiHonkonen
• Sami's website: http://www.samihonkonen.com
• Sami's blog: http://blog.samihonkonen.com

My guest is Jeff Gothelf, the co-author of Sense and Respond, Lean UX and Lean vs Agile vs Design Thinking.

Links for the episode:

• Jeff's website
• Jeff on Twitter
• Mirette's blog post on Yle

Links for the podcast:

• Mailing list: http://eepurl.com/P0dpf
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bosslevelpodcast
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/bosslevelpod
• iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/fi/podcast/boss-level/id1041885043
• Website: http://www.bosslevelpodcast.com
• Sami Honkonen on Twitter: http://twitter.com/SamiHonkonen
• Sami's website: http://www.samihonkonen.com
• Sami's blog: http://blog.samihonkonen.com

Links for the episode:

• Cliff on Twitter

Links for the podcast:

• Mailing list: http://eepurl.com/P0dpf
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bosslevelpodcast
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/bosslevelpod
• iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/fi/podcast/boss-level/id1041885043
• Website: http://www.bosslevelpodcast.com
• Sami Honkonen on Twitter: http://twitter.com/SamiHonkonen
• Sami's website: http://www.samihonkonen.com
• Sami's blog: http://blog.samihonkonen.com

This is not a regular episode. This one is special. This is an update. And this update holds the future of the podcast.

Links for the episode:

• http://www.dias.fi
• http://www.tomorrow.fi
• Helsingin Sanomat
• Yle Uutiset
• Kauppalehti

Links for the podcast:

• Mailing list: http://eepurl.com/P0dpf
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bosslevelpodcast
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/bosslevelpod
• iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/fi/podcast/boss-level/id1041885043
• Website: http://www.bosslevelpodcast.com
• Sami Honkonen on Twitter: http://twitter.com/SamiHonkonen
• Sami's website: http://www.samihonkonen.com
• Sami's blog: http://blog.samihonkonen.com

My guest for this episode is Jussi Markula, a teal mentor, a serial entrepreneur and the co-founder of the Teal Finland community. In his daily work at Prominda, Jussi facilitates the exploration of new paradigms in organizations.

Idea of a Teal organization was introduced by Fredrick Laloux in 2014 in his book, called Reinventing organisations. The book walks through the evolution of human organizational paradigms and then discusses the most advanced one to date, dubbed Teal.

Jussi helps us delve a little deeper in to the breakthroughs that enabled teal organizations to come to life.

Links for the episode:

• Jussi’s Twitter
• Prominda Revolution
• Frederic Laloux - Reinventing Organizations
• Teal Suomi Facebook Group
• An interview with CEO of Buurtzorg on Boss Level Podcast. Buurtzorg is an elderly care company that is usually presented as an example of a teal organization.

Links for the podcast:

• Mailing list: http://eepurl.com/P0dpf
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bosslevelpodcast
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/bosslevelpod
• iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/fi/podcast/boss-level/id1041885043
• Website: http://www.bosslevelpodcast.com
• Sami Honkonen on Twitter: http://twitter.com/SamiHonkonen
• Sami’s website: http://www.samihonkonen.com
• Sami’s blog: http://blog.samihonkonen.com

Brief walkthrough of the evolutionary stages presented in Laloux book:

• The first stage is called Red. That’s the stage of top-down authority and strict division of labor. Think of a street gang or a wolfpack, where fear is the glue of the organization.
• Then we have Amber. Amber is characterized by hierarchy, formal roles and stable processes. It’s where we use the stick to keep people in control. An example of an amber organization is the army.
• Then we get to Orange. Orange is the organization that acts like a machine. Orange organizations value innovation and accountability and are based on a meritocracy. This is probably the most common organizational paradigm currently in use.
• After Orange comes Green. That’s the family-like organization. These green organizations are driven by their values and people are empowered to produce to the stakeholders. Green organizations have a strong focus on culture.
• The final stage introduced by Laloux is teal. Teal is an organization that behaves like a living organism. The organization has it’s own evolutionary purpose. It’s self-managed and leadership is distributed. People bring their whole selves to work and don’t create a strong distinction between their work and private personas.

My guest for this episode is Barry O’Reilly, who’s one of the authors of Lean Enterprise that discusses how high performance organisations innovate at scale.

What’s especially interesting to me about Barry’s experience is that he’s worked a lot with large organisations. He’s for example the founder of ExecCamp, where he takes executives to retreats lasting up to 8 weeks, and helps them disrupt their own businesses.

We talk about how organisations can transform their culture to support experimentation and better decision making. Barry also highlights couple of insights from his newest book, Unlearn.

Links for the episode:

• Barry’s website
• [Unlearn: Let go of past success to achieve extraordinary results][2]
• [Barry on Twitter][3]
• [About Barry on Singularity University’s website][4]
• [Barry’s talk on lean enterprises at GOTO Chicago 2016][5]

Links for the podcast:

• Mailing list: http://eepurl.com/P0dpf

• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bosslevelpodcast

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/bosslevelpod

• iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/fi/podcast/boss-level/id1041885043

• Website: http://www.bosslevelpodcast.com

• Sami Honkonen on Twitter: http://twitter.com/SamiHonkonen

• Sami’s website: http://www.samihonkonen.com

• Sami’s blog: http://blog.samihonkonen.com

  [2]: https://www.unlearn.online/
  [3]: https://twitter.com/barryoreilly
  [4]: https://su.org/about/faculty/barry-oreilly/
  [5]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQJxlGUz5xY

My guest for this episode is Gary Hamel, one of the biggest names in the field of strategy.

Gary started working with strategy in the beginning of the 1980’s and has since released a bunch of groundbreaking articles and books on the topic. For example, the terms strategic intent and core competency were popularized by him and his colleagues.

We talk about what makes strategies successful, how hierarchies affect organizations and what Gary thinks about bureaucracy.

There is also a new segment introduced in the second half of the podcast, hope you like it!

Sponsor links

• Panostaja - an investment company that owns and develops Finnish SMEs
• Exove - a digital growth company that helps companies look into the future and achieve growth by designing and creating visually attractive, user-friendly and seamlessly working digital solutions.

Links for the episode:

• Gary's website
• Gary on Twitter
• Gary on Wikipedia
• Gary’s new video series, Gary Tells You Why

Links for the podcast:

• Mailing list: http://eepurl.com/P0dpf
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bosslevelpodcast
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/bosslevelpod
• iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/fi/podcast/boss-level/id1041885043
• Website: http://www.bosslevelpodcast.com
• Sami Honkonen on Twitter: http://twitter.com/SamiHonkonen
• Sami’s website: http://www.samihonkonen.com
• Sami’s blog: http://blog.samihonkonen.com

My first guest for the seventh season is Eeva Vilkkumaa, Assistant Professor at the Aalto University School of Business. She studies decision making and resource allocation at companies and public organizations.

We talk about how companies can develop mathematical models to support their decision making. Eeva emphasises the importance of co-creation when building decision making models. She thinks that if people are not involved on building the model or don't understand the principles behind the model, the results are not going to be great.

Hope you enjoy episode!

Sponsor link

• Panostaja - an investment company that owns and develops Finnish SMEs: http://www.panostaja.fi/en/

Links for the episode:

• Eeva's profile on Aalto University's site
• Aalto University's Systems Analysis Laboratory

Links for the podcast:

• Mailing list: http://eepurl.com/P0dpf
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bosslevelpodcast
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/bosslevelpod
• iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/fi/podcast/boss-level/id1041885043
• Website: http://www.bosslevelpodcast.com
• Sami Honkonen on Twitter: http://twitter.com/SamiHonkonen
• Sami’s website: http://www.samihonkonen.com
• Sami’s blog: http://blog.samihonkonen.com