Wholegrain Leadership

Kai-Jürgen Lietz has written a book about storytelling called “Storytellity”. He explains the power of telling stories. Although it goes back to the stone age, you can easily apply it to modern-day (business) contexts. Kai-Jürgen and Matthias discuss different basic structures such as the “Hero's Journey” and the “Man in the Hole”. Kai explains simple ... Read more

My guest Kai-Jürgen Lietz has written a book about storytelling called "Storytellity". He explains the power of telling stories. Although it goes back to the stone age, you can easily apply it to modern day (business) contexts. We talk about different basic structures such as the "Hero's Journey" and the "Man in the Hole". Kai explains simple tricks to build up a repository of personal, authentic stories you can use in work or business contexts. He also reveals why it's better to watch daily soaps rather than movies to become a good storyteller. .fusion-button.button-1 {border-radius:2px;}.fusion-button.button-1 .fusion-button-text {text-transform:none;}View full shownotes

Matthias explains what leaders should read and listen to for insights and perspective. Contrary to popular belief, leadership is less about talking and more about listening. Matthias tells you what he reads and consumes and how you can get out of your bubble to get the crucial perspective that will make you an effective leader. ... Read more

In this solo episode, I explain what leaders should read and listen to to get insights and perspectives. Contrary to popular belief, leadership is less about talking and more about listening. I tell you what I read and consume and how you can get out of your bubble to get the crucial perspective that will make you an effective leader. .fusion-button.button-1 {border-radius:2px;}.fusion-button.button-1 .fusion-button-text {text-transform:none;}View full shownotes

Becoming a thought leader is essential to transitioning into senior leadership roles. It's not enough to be an expert. You also have to be able to communicate your ideas to a broad audience. Matthias's guest Rhea Wessel, a journalist by training, is the founder of the Institute for Thought Leadership. She explains what a thought ... Read more

Becoming a thought leader is an essential part of transitioning into senior leadership roles. It's not enough to be an expert. You also have to be able to communicate your ideas to a broad audience. My guest Rhea Wessel, a journalist by training, is the founder of the Institute for Thought Leadership. She explains what a thought leader is and how you can find the sweet spot between your passion (purpose), your credentials (experience), and your "big idea". The intersection of those three is your thought leadership niche. I also get an impromptu coaching session when Rhea asks me to explain the motivation and purpose of my podcast. And Rhea shares how she got drawn into the world of thought leadership. .fusion-button.button-1 {border-radius:2px;}.fusion-button.button-1 .fusion-button-text {text-transform:none;}View full shownotes

How do you generate or refine a business model? In this episode, Matthias introduces the Business Model Generation canvas developed by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur. He describes the nine building blocks and dives into different business models: the long tail, multi-sided platforms, freemium, and open business. Finally, he explains the phases of a business ... Read more

How do you generate or refine a business model? In this episode, I introduce the Business Model Generation canvas developed by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur. I describe the nine building blocks and also dive into different types of business models: the long tail, multi-sided platforms, freemium models, and open business models. Finally, I explain the phases of a business model generation process. .fusion-tabs.fusion-tabs-1 .nav-tabs li a.tab-link{border-top-color:#f1f2f2;background-color:#f1f2f2;}.fusion-tabs.fusion-tabs-1 .nav-tabs{background-color:#ffffff;}.fusion-tabs.fusion-tabs-1 .nav-tabs li.active a.tab-link,.fusion-tabs.fusion-tabs-1 .nav-tabs li.active a.tab-link:hover,.fusion-tabs.fusion-tabs-1 .nav-tabs li.active a.tab-link:focus{border-right-color:#ffffff;}.fusion-tabs.fusion-tabs-1 .nav-tabs li.active a.tab-link,.fusion-tabs.fusion-tabs-1 .nav-tabs li.active a.tab-link:hover,.fusion-tabs.fusion-tabs-1 .nav-tabs li.active a.tab-link:focus{background-color:#ffffff;}.fusion-tabs.fusion-tabs-1 .nav-tabs li a:hover{background-color:#ffffff;border-top-color:#ffffff;}.fusion-tabs.fusion-tabs-1 .tab-pane{background-color:#ffffff;}.fusion-tabs.fusion-tabs-1 .nav,.fusion-tabs.fusion-tabs-1 .nav-tabs,.fusion-tabs.fusion-tabs-1 .tab-content .tab-pane{border-color:#ebeaea;}ResourcesTranscriptSubscribeOther episodesResources Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur (2010): Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers Free download of the Business Model Canvas Transcript Today, we will be talking about business models and more specifically, how you can generate business models or you can analyze them and how you can refine them. It's a very important part of being a leader. Welcome to another episode of the Wholegrain Leadership Podcast. My name is Matthias Catón. Welcome to the show. Today we will talk about business model generation. The business model is essentially the master plan of what your organization has to offer. So this is a vital central part of what you [00:01:00] do, and it is a very important part of a leader's job to make sure that business models are up to date. They are working, that you can come up with innovation. And we'll talk a little bit about how you can do that. There is a great book that I will present to you today, or the ideas, the main ideas of that book. It's called "Business Model Generation", and the subtitle is: "A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers." So if you think you could be one of those three envisionary a game changer. Or a challenger, then this will be useful and interesting for you. The book is written by two people, Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur. They have a very particular approach that I like a lot. They've also written other books, so we'll probably get back to them in other episodes of this [00:02:00] podcast again, but today we want to talk about the business model generation. The podcast will have different parts, and I'll go through the main ideas of that book and obviously as usual, you will find the exact link to that book in the show notes. So if you want to go ahead and purchase it, which I think you absolutely should, then you can find the link there. The two office of the book was to Stivarga and Pega. They work with a design thinking approach. For me, that works very well. I have used this approach myself. I like it. There are obviously other ways you can generate or work on business models. I like it because they approach they're using is at the same time. Very creative allows for innovative out of the box ideas by this. Also structured enough to make sure that what comes out of it at the end of the process is [00:03:00] something coherent that you can actually put into practice. The central element of the business model generation process is the business model canvas. You cannot see this in the podcast of course, but if you go to the show notes,

Defining and executing strategy is one of the most important tasks of a leader. In this episode, Matthias Catón explains what strategy is, what it isn't, and how it differs from other concepts such as operational excellence. He discusses two principles you can apply when developing your strategy: the Blue Ocean Strategy and mission-driven strategies. ... Read more

Defining and executing strategy is one of the most important tasks of a leader. In this episode, I explain what strategy is, what it isn't, and how it differs from other concepts such as operational excellence. I talk about two principles you can apply when developing your strategy: the Blue Ocean strategy and mission-driven strategies. Furthermore, I explain how you can analyze your company's situation or develop a new strategy by using a simple SWOT analysis or the more sophisticated business model canvas. .fusion-tabs.fusion-tabs-3 .nav-tabs li a.tab-link{border-top-color:#f1f2f2;background-color:#f1f2f2;}.fusion-tabs.fusion-tabs-3 .nav-tabs{background-color:#ffffff;}.fusion-tabs.fusion-tabs-3 .nav-tabs li.active a.tab-link,.fusion-tabs.fusion-tabs-3 .nav-tabs li.active a.tab-link:hover,.fusion-tabs.fusion-tabs-3 .nav-tabs li.active a.tab-link:focus{border-right-color:#ffffff;}.fusion-tabs.fusion-tabs-3 .nav-tabs li.active a.tab-link,.fusion-tabs.fusion-tabs-3 .nav-tabs li.active a.tab-link:hover,.fusion-tabs.fusion-tabs-3 .nav-tabs li.active a.tab-link:focus{background-color:#ffffff;}.fusion-tabs.fusion-tabs-3 .nav-tabs li a:hover{background-color:#ffffff;border-top-color:#ffffff;}.fusion-tabs.fusion-tabs-3 .tab-pane{background-color:#ffffff;}.fusion-tabs.fusion-tabs-3 .nav,.fusion-tabs.fusion-tabs-3 .nav-tabs,.fusion-tabs.fusion-tabs-3 .tab-content .tab-pane{border-color:#ebeaea;}ResourcesTranscriptSubscribeOther episodesResources Blue Ocean Strategy Thomas W. Malnight, Ivy Buche and Charles Dhanaraj 2019: Put Purpose at the Core of Your Strategy (Harvard Business Review) Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur (2010): Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers SWOT analysis Transcript [00:00:48] This will be another solo episode where we will talk about strategy. Now, leadership has many facets, but obviously one of the most important ones is to work with strategy, define it, implemented, evaluated. That's what leadership is about. This is not a topic that we can cover entirely in just one podcast episode. [00:01:15] So we will get back to this. It should probably a number of times over the course of this podcast in the future. Recently, I had to run a one-day workshop here at Frankfurt School on strategy, so it was a good opportunity for me to refresh some of the things and I thought it might be a good idea. To put that into a little podcast episode. [00:01:37] So let's, let's get started with what strategy is and what it isn't. And a lot of these things, they go back to what could be called the guru office strategy. Michael Porter, he's a professor at Harvard Business School, and he has developed many of the ideas that underlie, we understand, ask corporate strategy today, and all the things I will mention. [00:01:59] Don't [00:02:00] worry, I will put them in the show notes. So you don't have to worry about missing some of the information. If you want to read more about different things, everything will be in the show notes. So let's start with a little bit of a definition of what strategy is. Now. If you imagine a company, maybe you're a company or any other than you can imagine it as being a set of different. [00:02:24] Activities, lots of different activities at make obvious enterprise. So you're producing something. You will have production elements, cars or other parts. You will have marketing and sales. You will have general administration. You will have research and development. And so on and so forth. Different things. [00:02:46] And depending on the size and the complexity of your organization, those activities may be many, many, many. And you could map them in a activity map and you can show the connections between those elements. Here we get to the fundamental difference between strategy and other things such as operational effectiveness. [00:03:07] And when we're talking about effectiveness, and we're talking about.

Well-being is on everybody's mind. Who doesn't want to be well, healthy and happy, after all? In this episode, Matthias talks to a real expert in this field, Dr. Anat Itay-Sarig. They discuss what well-being means, why it's more than just the occasional yoga class or a latte macchiato in the morning, and why you, ... Read more

Wellbeing is on everybody's mind. Who doesn't want to be well, healthy and happy, after all? In this episode, I'm talking to a real expert in this field, Dr. Anat Itay-Sarig. We discuss what wellbeing means, why it's more than just the occasional yoga class or a latte macchiato in the morning, and why you as a leader should pay attention to the issue. We cover the spheres of public policy, where wellbeing has been discussed for quite some time now and is part of the official government policy of countries such as New Zealand, but we also talk a lot about what this means for businesses. Finally, we connect the dots between wellbeing, which can be a fluffy concept at times, and the hard world of numbers and statistics. My guest Anat is a data scientist, after all. ResourcesAbout my guestTranscriptSubscribeOther episodesMent.ioDr. Anat Itay-Sarig is an expert on planning and measuring wellbeing, progress, and happiness - particularly incorporating them into strategy and policy for the public, private and third sector. She was the chief scientist and co-founder of BBetter, a data analytics start-up acquired in 2019. She holds a PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and conducted a substantial part of her research in UCL, the University of London. She is teaching at the Government & Sustainability program at the IDC Herzliya, and at the MBA program at the Academic College of Tel-Aviv-Yaffo. She is a consultant to international organisations, NGO's, governments and businesses on how to apply wellbeing prism into their strategies. Anat passionately advocates for using wellbeing indicators to better plan success. Matthias Catón: [00:00:00] Wellbeing is on everybody's minds who doesn't want to be well, healthy and happy. After all, today I'm talking to a real expert in this field, Dr. Anat Itay-Sarig. We will discuss what wellbeing means, why it's more than just the occasional yoga class or a latte macchiato in the morning, and why you as a leader should pay attention to the issue. My name is Matthias Catón and today we will be talking about wellbeing, and I have a great interview guest here today. Her name is Dr. Anat Itay-Sarig. She is an expert on planning and measuring wellbeing, progress, and happiness. Particularly how to incorporate those things into strategy and policy for the public, the private and the third sector. She was the chief scientist and cofounder of be better a data analytics startup that I think recently got sold. She holds a PhD from the Hebrew university of Jerusalem and she has done research. At UCL in London, and she's also teaching right now in the government and sustainability program at IDC in Herzliya in Israel, and also at the MBA program at the academic college of Tel Aviv Jaffo. She's a consultant to international organizations. NGOs governance businesses on how to apply wellbeing into strategy, and she's a passionate advocate for using wellbeing indicators to better plan success. That was a long introduction, but you're doing a lot of things. Welcome to the show, Anat! Anat Itay-Sarig: [00:02:01] Thank you so much. It's such a pleasure to be here. Great. So let's start off with a definition. When we're talking about wellbeing. What exactly do you mean with that? Ah, that's a very good question and a very tricky question as well. I think the main point is that wellbeing differs from being happy, important as it is or from being healthy. Important as that is, or being safe, uh, having proper infrastructure and other aspects of life that we all need to have. I think it's beyond the, what we would like to have. It is an additional layer to that, but I'd say that wellbeing is having what you need in different life domains that every person needs, and also attaining the possibility to prosper. So it's having those basic things that you'd need in life, but also having possibilities to prosper. So it's more than just being healthy. Isn't that how you could say that?

As a leader, you will have a message you want to communicate to your customers, staff, and the general public. Your message is important to you, so people should remember it. For that, it needs to be “sticky”. To persuade people, you should follow the six basic principles Matthias explains in this episode. The principles ... Read more

As a leader, you will have a message — something that you want to communicate to your customers, your staff, the general public. Your message is important to you, so people should remember it. For that, it needs to be "sticky". If you want to persuade people, you should follow six basic principles that I will explain in this episode. The principles come from a great book called Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive, and Others Die by Chip and Dan Heath. The authors analyzed lots of ideas and tried to find the magic sauce that made some of them viral, whereas others were quickly forgotten. Interestingly enough, it does not depend on the merits of the idea. Instead, six factors make it likely that people will remember it. A message should be simple unexpected concrete credible emotional told in stories ResourcesAbout my guestTranscriptSubscribeOther episodesThe book Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die is available as paperback, ebook and audio book. This is a solo episode without guests. If you are a leader, you will have a message, something that you want to sell, something that you want to convince people off, something that is important to you or your organization. And ideally you want to make sure that people remember what you have to say. You want to make it sticky, and this is what we're going to talk about today. How to craft a message that people remember and that is sticky. Stay tuned. If you have something to say, and I hope you do. Then you want to communicate that to two people in writing or through presentations or whatever other channel you have. Part. More importantly, you also want people to remember what you had to say and this is what we're going to talk about today. I will introduce you to a wonderful book that I find very, very helpful. I recommend that a lot, and that entails exactly with this, again, the exact title. It will be found. In the show notes. The book is called Made to Stick, and the subtitle is Why some ideas take hold and others come unstuck. It was written by two people, Chip and Dan Heath. It's now, I think in its third edition or something like that, and it's really, really helpful. What Chip and Dan Heath wanted to find out is, as the subtitle suggests, why some ideas are memorable, they're repeated, they stay on forever, whereas others get forgotten very quickly. And what is important to note here is that whether something gets remembered or not, it does not really have to do with the value, the objective of, well, you off the idea. It has to do with other things. So there is a lot of very useful things that somehow don't get attraction, whereas either very stupid or simply untrue stories that gets told and retold and retold again and they wanted to know or find out how that is or why that is. And they analyze lots of ideas, stories, products, and so on, and try to distill the essence of stickiness and they have come up with a set of very easy factors that I just want to go through with you here in this episode are that you can follow to make whatever you have to say, stickier. It is an acronym that comes out. It's called success. And the items or the, the factors that mega messaged sticky are simpleness unexpectedness, whether it's concrete, it's credible, it's emotional, and if it contains or whether it contains stories so that together makes the acronym success. So let's dive a little bit deeper into some of these items. And the first one is. In order to be sticky and idea has to be simple, by the way. Simple, not simplistic. That's a big difference. And often when I work with people, for example, who want to become better at public speaking, some of the things that I often witness is that people make things overly complex. They have so many great ideas and they want to all put them into this one speech. Or if we're talking about written something written, they want to all put it into this one book or this one publication.

We negotiate things big and small constantly, often without even noticing it. Despite this, many feel uneasy when facing an important negotiation. Often, we're also not good at it. In this episode of the Wholegrain Leadership Podcast, I speak with Anja Henningsmeyer. She is an expert on communications and negotiation and works as a trainer and coach. She has recently published a book specifically looking at how women negotiate. Among other things, we discuss: why negotiating is so importantif there are different negotiation styles of men and womenwhy so many people have difficulties with negotiation situationsif there are differences between cultures when it comes to negotiationthe importance of one's reputationthe role of emotions in negotiationshow to prepare for a negotiation ResourcesAbout my guestTranscriptSubscribeOther episodesAnja's book is called Denn sie wissen, was sie tun: Wie Frauen erfolgreich verhandeln and was published by Campus-Verlag in 2019. It is available as paperback, ebook and audio book. Anja Henningsmeyer has excelled in many jobs. She was a journalist, manager of a film festival, and owner of a photo agency in Hong Kong. Since 2008 she heads the Hessian Film and Media Academy (Hessische Film- und Medienakademie), a network of thirteen public universities in the German state of Hesse. In addition, she is a university lecturer and trainer for successful communication (presentation, networking and negotiation).As a certified negotiator she shares her knowledge in seminars across Germany, particularly for women. Her book Denn sie wissen, was sie tun: Wie Frauen erfolgreich verhandeln (Because they know what they are doing: How women negotiate successfully) was published by Campus Verlag in 2019. In the book, Anja describes negotiation behavior and methods with a focus on gender differences.Anja is a lay judge at the local court in Frankfurt and active in different women networks such as Digital Media Women and European Women Management Development.>> Anja's website

We negotiate things big and small constantly, often without even noticing it. Despite this, many feel uneasy when facing an important negotiation. Often, we're also not good at it. In this episode of the Wholegrain Leadership Podcast, Matthias Catón speaks with Anja Henningsmeyer. She is an expert on communications and negotiation and works as a ... Read more

Giving and receiving feedback is one of the essential capabilities of a leader. In this episode, Matthias Catón explains straightforward rules when giving and receiving feedback. If you are giving the feedback, always speak from your own perspective; be concrete; focus on things that can be changed; and balance the pros and the cons. If ... Read more

Giving and receiving feedback is one of the most essential capabilities of a leader. In this episode, I will explain a very simple set of rules that you can apply when giving and receiving feedback. If you are the person giving the feedback, always speak from your own perspective; be concrete; focus on things that can be changed; and balance the pros and the cons. If you receive feedback, listen and shut up; be thankful; and think about the feedback carefully afterward. TranscriptSubscribeOther episodesWelcome to the very first episode of the Wholegrain Leadership Podcast. My name is Matthias Catón. In this podcast, we will address all sorts of issues that have to do with leadership that will help you become a leader or grow as a leader. And today it will start with one of the most essential parts or skills of growing as a leader and helping others to grow. And that is to give and to receive feedback. That is absolutely essential. That's the best way we can grow and we can help others grow as well.The process for that is very, very easy, very straightforward. There's a couple of simple rules that you need to follow. So it's not difficult, but still, a lot of people fail. And when I mean to fail, I mean both ends, the receiving end, and the giving. And I hope that I'll be able to help you by getting better at this process. If you think of professional sports, for example, it would be unthinkable to have it without a continuous feedback process where the coach observes the person that he's in charge of gives feedback, and then through iteration, that person will grow in their ability to perform the sports. It's very much the same as any other area. So no matter where you are working, that is something that you absolutely need to master. If you are able to give feedback, that will obviously be good for those around you.Those people that you lead. But it's also good for yourself because if you become a skilled observer of others, that will also help your own personal growth process. I will focus in this podcast on the two roles, the evaluator, meaning the person who gives feedback and the value e the person who receives the feedback. So let's start with the evaluator. The feedback giver. If you are to give somebody feedback, the first thing you have to do in that sounds trivial, but it's absolutely essential. Make sure that that person actually wants feedback. And that may sound funny, but people may have very legitimate reasons why they would not want feedback, why they would want to have it at this particular point in time. Or maybe also they wouldn't want to have it from you. And that is something that obviously you must respect.The second thing is that you should also check, if possible in advance what kind of feedback the person would want you. One example at Toastmasters International, the international public speaking organization. Every speech project has a set of objectives and it is obviously important that the feedback giver pay attention to that set of objectives and then evaluate the person against those objectives. And similarly, in other situations as well, there may be particular things that people want you to pay attention to. Be sure that you keep the number of things that you want to observe limited.It is impossible for you to take everything into consideration, and equally, it is impossible for somebody receiving feedback to be inundated with a barrage of well-meant advice and observations. So you should purposefully limit yourself to maybe two or three points. Whenever you give feedback, you should do so right after you have observed a particular situation such as, for example, a speech or an office situation. It's never a good idea to accumulate too many of the things and then address them at a later stage. It will be difficult if you do so for the person to actually remember the situation and to make sense of what you're saying, and especially if you have something that you would...