Podcast appearances and mentions of adam pisoni

Adam Pisoni co-founded Yammer in 2008, and oversaw product, analytics, and engineering as the SaaS company scaled to 500 employees and was acquired by Microsoft in 2012 for $1.2 billion. More recently, he has turned his attention to the US education system. Abl, the company he founded in 2015, aims to help all schools move beyond the 20th century model of education. In this talk, he describes how inequities manifest themselves in K-12 education, and explores the roles that innovative social ventures can play in addressing those inequities.

Adam Pisoni co-founded Yammer in 2008, and oversaw product, analytics, and engineering as the SaaS company scaled to 500 employees and was acquired by Microsoft in 2012 for $1.2 billion. More recently, he has turned his attention to the US education system. Abl, the company he founded in 2015, aims to help all schools move beyond the 20th century model of education. In this talk, he describes how inequities manifest themselves in K-12 education, and explores the roles that innovative social ventures can play in addressing those inequities.

Adam Pisoni, founder and CEO of Abl Schools, shares how he tackles complex challenges, like modernizing the education system. Pisoni describes how he listens first, addresses today’s known issues and builds pathways to new possibilities. He breaks down how to identify scalable solutions, validate ideas and prioritize needs.

Adam Pisoni, founder and CEO of Abl Schools, shares how he tackles complex challenges, like modernizing the education system. Pisoni describes how he listens first, addresses today's known issues and builds pathways to new possibilities. He breaks down how to identify scalable solutions, validate ideas and prioritize needs.

Adam Pisoni, founder and CEO of Abl Schools, shares how he tackles complex challenges, like modernizing the education system. Pisoni describes how he listens first, addresses today’s known issues and builds pathways to new possibilities. He breaks down how to identify scalable solutions, validate ideas and prioritize needs.

I'm excited to share a chapter of my book, Responsive: What It Takes to Create a Thriving Organization. The full audiobook version of Responsive comes out in late September 2018, but in the meantime, I am excited to share it in podcast form. -- Here's an excerpt: Each person must determine how they will lead, but that leadership always stems from character and values. The leadership demonstrated by Stanley McChrystal, Pam Slim, and Adam Pisoni is rooted in what they personally value. The particulars of how that leadership materializes will vary depending on the situation, but an organization can't surpass the quality of its leadership. As Chris Fussell has said of the team of teams approach, leader behavior is the essential element that allows a plan to succeed. Investing in leadership—your own and that of your teams—can only pay dividends in the long run. -- If you've enjoyed this chapter of Responsive, you can purchase a Kindle or print version of the book on Amazon. And be sure to check out the Responsive Conference, coming up September 24-25th in Queens, NY.

I'm very pleased to share, exclusively for this podcast, the first chapter of my book, Responsive: What It Takes to Create a Thriving Organization. The full audiobook version of Responsive comes out in late September 2018, but in the meantime, I am excited to share it out in podcast form. Here's an excerpt. Subscribe and listen to The Robin Zander Show for the full chapter!   On the Shoulders of Giants Responsive has been built on a community of which I am just a single member. I am grateful to the six people wrote the Responsive Org manifesto, and began a movement: Adam Pisoni, Aaron Dignan, Matthew Partovi, Mike Arauz, Steve Hopkins and Alexis Gonzales-Black. They put words to a problem faced by organizations today and gave us a language to describe the challenges and tensions that have long existed in the workplace. I would not have written this book without the friendship of Steve Hopkins, who taught me how to run an un-conference, and the handful of collaborators with whom I produced my first Responsive events. I'm indebted to the fifty-plus leaders who I've interviewed on my podcast, The Robin Zander Show, who described big ideas like non-hierarchy and holacracy in simple language and gave me hope that I could write a book to do the same.   How To Use This Book My career path has never followed a traditional route. My first job out of college was as a management consultant, with a gig as a circus performer nights and weekends. Of course, I couldn't tell the consulting company that I was in the circus, but I also couldn't admit to my fellow circus artists that I wore a suit to work. I am not content to live in such a binary world. I want to live in a world that encourages the full expression of every individual, and I am dedicated to building it. Improving the ways we work seems like a great place to start. Responsive is a compilation of tactics and accompanying short stories about innovators on the front lines of the future of work. It is designed to be a choose-your-own-adventure exploration into how we work in the modern era, the approaches and perspectives employed by high performing organizations, and what makes those methods so effective. While this book can be read cover to cover, I have designed it so that you can jump to those sections most interesting or relevant to you right now. Ultimately Responsive is intended as a reference guide as much as a road map—a resource you can return to again and again as you dive deeper into Responsive and the future of work.   A Responsive Café I have a vested interest in discovering what works for myself and my small team. Throughout this book, I'll share stories about my small business, a coffee shop in San Francisco, where I work with my ten-person staff to serve coffee and avocado toast and to build community. I founded “Robin's Café” in late April 2016, with no prior experience as a restaurateur but armed with a clear purpose: to foster a nascent community that I knew could exist in our corner of San Francisco. We had exactly three weeks from inception to opening day, so, unsurprisingly, our first week of operations was a mess. Attendees of a conference I had organized on site wanted to support the café, creating a bona fide lunch rush on our very first day. In those early weeks, we were a team of four, often making up recipes on the spot to cover orders. I look back on those times now, after having a tough day, and realize that no matter how terrible things might seem, it will never be as chaotic and insane as those first few weeks. We desperately needed additional staff. One day, a man named Frank quietly dropped off his resume during our usual morning rush. I was up to my elbows managing an exploding keg of cold brew. But even in the midst of a coffee emergency, it quickly became clear that Frank was professional, playful, and knowledgeable about the food service industry. I hired him, and he soon became indispensable at the café. On May 20, 2016, Frank had been scheduled to open the café. Around 9:30 a.m., I got a call that Frank hadn't shown up. “Was he sick?” I wondered. I checked to see if he'd sent me any messages, but there were none. I called him, but it went to voicemail. A week later, I sent an email, mostly in jest, with the subject, “Are you still alive?” The staff and I just assumed that Frank became a “no call, no show,” something not uncommon in the service industry. Frank's cutting contact was a simple case of job abandonment. Still, it somehow didn't seem like Frank, and I wanted to make sure he was okay. I tracked down his brother on social media and messaged him. I heard nothing for several days. Then, out of the blue, Frank's brother called me. “I'm sorry to have to tell you this,” I remember him saying, “My brother is dead. He was hit and killed by a train.” In that moment of shock, while I digested what I'd just heard, Frank's brother went on: “I want you to know how happy he was to be working at Robin's Café.” Frank's death is a constant reminder to me of how truly transient and changeable business—and life—can be. As a small business owner in those first few weeks, I had to be resilient, not just in my response to Frank's death, but to be able to mentor and support those at our café and in the community who knew him. I was determined to build into the ethos of our organization this realization that circumstances can change in an instant. I wanted my team to be resilient when times got tough and grateful for the days when work felt more like play. I like to think that in some way this commitment to resilience and good humor is a small homage to Frank. That same ethos is what has compelled me to write this book and to share just some of the ways that ground-breaking organizations and individuals are exploring human-centered work. This book is an invitation to see the value of Responsive approaches and bring them into your organization as fits your vision and culture. -- If you've enjoyed Chapter 1 of Responsive, you can purchase a Kindle or print version of the book on Amazon. And be sure to check out the Responsive Conference, coming up September 24-25th in Queens, NY.

Building Yammer Adam Pisoni (@adampisoni) co-founded Yammer, which sold to Microsoft for 1.2 billion dollars, recounts how he learned about about Conway's law. “At Yammer, we believed in rapid product iteration. Once we realized the organizational structure was part of the product, we then had to believe in rapid organization iteration." The engineering mantra at Yammer became: “We're not smarter than other people. We just iterate faster.” This insight led Adam to recognize that he and the engineering and product teams at Yammer were not just building a product but building a company (at least, if they were going to be effective). He began to investigate what it would mean not just to rapidly iterate on Yammer's product but to iterate the organization's structure itself. In other words, he began to explore whether Yammer could become more Responsive. What Adam was clear on was their product didn't exist in isolation. Yammer, as a communication platform for enterprise businesses, was particularly well placed to recognize the challenges of the current working world. Eventually, Adam put these thoughts into a manifesto and shared them with CEOs and C-level executives. The response was an enthusiastic affirmation of their ideas. The result of this thinking led Adam to co-found the Responsive Org movement.   Experiments in Education Adam realized the education system in North America is largely still reliant on an assembly-model way of teaching and thinking. Consider the structure of most schools: there are grades, segregated by age; there are alarm bells which tell students when to move from one classroom to the next. The most common form of learning is to passively sit and absorb lectured lessons. More subtly, subjects are taught according to a linear progression. Math education in the United States, for example, moves from algebra, to geometry, to advanced algebra, to precalculus, to calculus. This progression to trains students to think about math in a way that only entrenches a hierarchical, linear view of how to how the world works. School in the 21st Century is still designed to produce people to work in factories. So Adam was bold enough to tackle revitalizing the education system, by optimizing administrators' time and budgets. He founded Abl Schools, a collaborative platform for administrators and teachers. Abl has re-envisioned how principals relate with their teachers and facilities and how schools use their time. The idea is to help schools better manage the day-to-day to be able to achieve its educational goals, starting with the company's first product, a cloud-based master scheduler. Exciting possibilities emerge when we reconsider even behemoth institutions like the U.S. education system and to experiment with new approaches that leverage technology and new models of collaborating. What is necessary is the willingness to experiment.   A Diverse Founding Team Adam Pisoni has been open about the challenges of creating diversity in founding his company Abl Schools. He writes: "If your founding team is homogenous, it will likely develop a narrow culture which is well suited for that narrow group of people. That culture won't be as self-aware of the lack of inclusion in the culture, but it will feel inclusive for everyone within the tight knit founding team. As new employees with different backgrounds join, they will be more likely to reject or be rejected from the culture than to add to it. While you may be celebrating how strong a culture and tight a team you have, you may also be unaware of the ways you're actually reminding that new employee that they don't belong." While there is a lot of conversation about fostering an inclusive company culture, very few Silicon Valley companies have an equal gender split between male and female employees, and even fewer have women or underrepresented groups at the highest levels of leadership. As Adam explains, this is doesn't actually mean teams of straight white men can't produce great companies. He argues: “I believe diverse founding teams can produce better outcomes. A team of white men can come up with good ideas. But I believe a diverse team can come up with better ones.” The curiosity and perseverance Adam has demonstrated at Abl Schools is an example of what can be done in any number of genres by founders just starting out. -- If you enjoyed this episode of the Robin Zander Show, you might enjoy hearing me and Adam is conversation, recorded at the Responsive book launch party last November. This video was recorded live at the 1st Annual Responsive Conference in 2016. Come see Adam speak live again this year at the 3rd Annual Responsive Conference on September 24 and 25, 2018 in Queens, New York. Learn more: http://responsiveconference.com  

Adam started Abl to help all schools move beyond the 20th century model of education. Two and a half decades after dropping out of high school, he returned to the field of education to rethink the structure of school as we know it. His career has been focused on helping organizations become more agile and responsive, and now he brings this expertise to schools. Prior to Abl, Adam co-founded Yammer in 2008, ultimately creating one of the fastest growing SaaS companies of all time. He oversaw product, analytics, and engineering, scaling the company to 500 employees until Yammer sold to Microsoft in 2012 for $1.2 Billion. To clear his head, Adam also enjoys long bike rides, backpacking, and rock climbing.   "If we started today, designing school what would it look like?” -Adam Pisoni   Adam Pisoni Show Highlights How a listening tour started his company Abl What prevents traditional school from meeting the needs of all their kids Abl allows data to guide through terrible trade-offs and challenging constraints The problems with current master scheduling systems How school leaders can apply agility and responsiveness to education Try testing small things first Everything is an experiment  Reframing success and failure Should we run schools top-down? Model agnostic philosophy How Adam uses cadences in his company Consent vs Consensus (integrated decision making) Real change starts by engaging the community   Adam Pisoni Resources   Adam’s Company Abl   Never Split the Difference   The Teacher Wars   The End of Average   Follow Adam on Twitter   Email Adam   Join my hybrid group coaching & leadership development community Text BETTERMASTERMIND to 33444 Create winning cultures Focus on the essential Lead with courage & integrity    BECOME A PATRON OF THE SHOW FOR AS LITTLE AS $1/MONTH DID YOU LIKE THE SHOW?  iTunes SUBSCRIBE HERE! SHOW SOME LOVE: PLEASE LEAVE A 5-STAR RATING AND REVIEW Grab your FREE 15 Phrases of Effective School Leaders  Text PHRASES to 33444 or click the link above.   Website :: Facebook :: Insta :: Twitter :: LinkedIn   SHOW SPONSORS: SCHOOL SPIRIT VENDING Hassle-free, year-round fundraising for your school. With School Spirit Vending, we do all the work, you just cash the check Increase school spirit with custom stickers for your school and raise funds at the same time -no upfront costs, no volunteers, no selling Sick of the same old ways of raising money for your school? Let School Spirit Vending's hassle-free, year-round fundraising program supplement the other fundraisers you're already doing. SSV is also giving away the Top 10 School Fundraising Ideas for 2017. Download the guide here.     Copyright © 2017 Better Leaders Better Schools    

Schedule a call with Jethro As a review for a year that has included a lot of changes for me professionally, I wanted to list some of the greatest events from the podcasts that I released this year. You can check out my current Top 10 podcasts here, but this list is going to talk about the top 10 things I implemented this year as a result of interviewing some amazing guests. Improving the school scheduling nightmare with Adam Pisoni Transformative Principal 185 The most downloaded podcast released this year is my interview with Adam Pisoni, where we talked about improving the school scheduling nightmare. Here’s my big takeaway. Adam said (5:58–8:35) that he started asking instead of asking what was possible in schools, he asked what prevents traditional schools from iterating. This train of thought led me to make a decision to intentionally combat those things that prevent us from iterating, and make sure we can still iterate even with the struggles we will face. Enjoy the Journey with Jethro Jones Transformative Principal 1035 - This one is a bit of a cheat, since the episode where I shared my 4 year plan for my school was really a culmination of so many things that I have learned from this podcast. But, here goes. (19:50–24:42) What’s cool is that instead of my plan starting next year, it is already starting this year. Advisory and flexible learning block with service learning. Teachers are coming to me asking for these things. Don’t Try to Change People, Change Behavior with Tom Hierck Transformative Principal 188 - 18:55–19:29 In this episode, it was really about the powerful thing that Tom shared about how to be a transformative principal. He said, “Ensure that relationships are healthy and positive. Being positive doesn’t guarantee a good outcome, but being negative does guarantee a negative outcome.” Rules turn students into classroom lawyers with Tom Hierck Transformative Principal 187 - In this episode, 5:00–7:26 I found that the most powerful statement from this was when Tom said, “I have yet to meet a kid who is connected who disappoints”. Since this interview, I have worked hard to make sure that kids are connected. I’ve found what he said is true, when kids are connected, they rarely disappoint. Last week, a student threw some trash across the cafeteria and he made a mess. He needed to clean it up. Because we had worked on a relationship, I put my arms out as if to say, “what are you doing?“ and then had to wait about 30 seconds before he decided to stand up and take care of his mess. He didn’t disappoint. What I Wish I Knew as A First Year Principal with Jethro and Friends Transformative Principal Special - The thing that I have taken away from this one is from my friend Jessica Cabeen.3:40–4:08 She says, Take care of yourself. While I haven’t been exercising as much this year as I have in the past, my sleep has been much better and I am doing a much better job of not working from home and actually being home when I am home. That is really important to me. End College and Career Readiness with Jethro Jones Transformative Principal 1040 - This podcast seems to have hit a nerve, as it was just released a couple months ago, and is already one of the most downloaded. In this, I basically argue that we need to focus on inspiring passion in our students rather than preparing them for something. One man I recently met is amazing. He said that he is a jack of all trades, master of one: learning. That really hit me. He didn’t learn how to do that from school, he says. He learned how to do that from his experience. He learned that learning is the most important thing he can have. In a recent Hack Learning episode, Mark Barnes said that learning can’t be measured. In our traditional system, you’re right, it can’t. But it can in our own lives, and we are the ones best suited to measure. I can’t measure all that I have learned from doing this podcast over the last four years in an easy-to-digest way. This post is an example of one way that I am trying to summarize my learning. One of my good friends Darren Draper posted on the Facebook post for this comment the question, “If everyone follows their passions, will society have the skilled workers it needs?” We had a little back and forth, that I encourage you to add your two cents to. My real point here is that if we teach kids how to learn on their own they will have more success in their life, regardless of what their passions or careers are. (1:48 –2:18) Instructional Leadership Team with David Smith Transformative Principal 182 - David Smith’s advice on how to be a transformative was to decide that you’re going to spend time in every classroom. 17:21–20:15 I have made this my priority this year, even to the tune of spending each morning before lunch in classrooms. I’m not perfect at it, but it is helping me do a much better job. Routines to Make Yourself More Successful with Karine Veldhoen Transformative Principal 160 - I have really gotten into routines this year and established some good ones. I’ve read the book she recommends and even went deep into The 1 Thing, about which I interviewed Geoff Woods. Look for that interview coming up soon. She talked about setting daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly practices. This is not easy. It really isn’t. It is actually kind of boring. In fact, Geoff Woods said that most people are unwilling to endure the monotony of success. Success is doing the right things at the right time. 8:26–9:46 - Self-care plans for her staff and for herself. One aspect of that that I have adopted is a habit to go to bed with my wife each night and not stay up late doing things for the podcast or other work, or playing games, or wasting time on Facebook. That is a small thing, but something that I think will really help me get to bed earlier, get rested, and spend quality time with my wife each night. With being so busy, it is easy to be distracted from the important things. Kids Can’t Learn When They Don’t Trust with Zaretta Hammond Transformative Principal 157 - 4:00–6:08 Trust Generators to quickly build trust. This has been really powerful as I have started my new school in Fairbanks. I have tried to be vulnerable with teachers to help build that trust so they know who I am. It’s not perfect, but we have been moving quicker than I expected in some areas, as I mentioned before. Where Jethro is interviewed for the Principal Matters Podcast with Will Parker - Bonus Episode 1033 21:45–22:53-The thing that sticks out from this interview is that 1, it was on Will Parker’s podcast, where he interviewed me. It was fun to release it at the same time. Number 2, Will asked me a big question, what do I want to achieve. My big goal is to impact 100 Million students over the next 10 years through my work on this podcast, my masterminds, speaking engagements, consulting, and everything else that I do. I had been thinking about setting a big goal before he asked me, but I wasn’t sure I could do it. So I took his challenge and set a goal. I’m tracking it here so please help me reach that goal by adding the impact this podcast has had on you to that survey. At the time of this writing, I am .021% of the way there. 21,412 kids have been impacted so far. WOW! That’s actually pretty amazing. Are you feeling like you are always behind at school? Do you feel like you need about 2 more hours each day to accomplish everything? Here’s how I help principals work manageable hours: Create your ideal week, so that you can leave work at work and enjoy your life! Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher.  Please follow me on Twitter: @jethrojones for the host and @TrnFrmPrincipal for the show. Buy Communication Cards Show notes on TransformativePrincipal.com Download Paperless Principal.   Take Control of your email Web Site Transformative Principal on Stitcher Refer A Principal Best Tools for Busy Administrators Survey  

Gain empathy Live day-to-day changes to scheduling. Basic level of master scheduling. Deeper level of how everything works in a school. Real instructional minutes. Where people are and when. How to learn about struggles that people have. Hired a principal to help guide the decision. worked with 1 school. Then worked with many schools. How to affect change in others’ lives. Get to the next level of detail. All changes to school require a holistic understanding of the impact. How to be a Transformative Principal? Gain empathy.   Are you feeling like you are always behind at school? Do you feel like you need about 2 more hours each day to accomplish everything? Here’s how I help principals work manageable hours: Create your ideal week, so that you can leave work at work and enjoy your life! Join my group coaching program Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher.  Please follow me on Twitter: @jethrojones for the host and @TrnFrmPrincipal for the show. Buy Communication Cards Show notes on TransformativePrincipal.com Download Paperless Principal.   Web Site Transformative Principal on Stitcher Refer A Principal Best Tools for Busy Administrators Survey

Schools are being forced to lie to their systems to get their information correct. Adam Pisoni is a serial technology entrepreneur who is most notably known for being the co-founder and CTO of Yammer, the enterprise communications software that was bought by Microsoft for $1.2 billion in 2012. He is considered a pioneer of the Enterprise Social Network (ESN) concept and a visionary in organizational design and management. After a short stint at Microsoft, Pisoni spent a year researching education in America and realized that master scheduling is a game changer for the future of K12 education. See Pisoni’s byline Why I started Abl in Student Voices. ABL Schools Startups since 1995 and founded Yammer with David. K-12 education wasn’t that positive. Where you go to school matters. How did he know that scheduling was a problem. Progressive schools. Instead of asking what’s possible in schools, what prevents traditional schools from iterating. Teachers don’t have the power to make some changes. Where is the greatest lever for change? We find countless examples of district schools that are doing innovation. Schools are being forced to lie to their systems to get their information correct. Master scheduling. Launching in July at Principal’s conference Multiple steps that are disconnected. Abl brings them all together. Conflicts and coteaching scenarios are all in the same dynamic system. Are you feeling like you are always behind at school? Do you feel like you need about 2 more hours each day to accomplish everything? Here’s how I help principals work manageable hours: Create your ideal week, so that you can leave work at work and enjoy your life! Join my group coaching program Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher.  Please follow me on Twitter: @jethrojones for the host and @TrnFrmPrincipal for the show. Buy Communication Cards Show notes on TransformativePrincipal.com Download Paperless Principal.   Web Site Transformative Principal on Stitcher Refer A Principal Best Tools for Busy Administrators Survey

Innovators & Innovations: Interview with Adam Pisoni, CEO & Founder, Abl by EdTech Times

Adam Pisoni, CEO of Abl Schools and co-founder of Yammer, discusses his early experience of dealing with “otherness” and how that eventually led him to a greater awareness of the need for more diversity and inclusion within technology companies. Adam shares lessons that he learned from his experiences at Yammer, and the actions he has taken in his new company to increase diversity and inclusion.    To learn more, visit www.jenniferbrownspeaks.com 

On this episode of the ProGuide, we hang out with Yammer Cofounder, Adam Pisoni. We chat about how Yammer got started, what the staff culture is like, and what they see next.