Podcasts about harvard business school professor

A CMO Confidential Interview with Dr. Eugene Soltes, Harvard Business School Professor and author of "Why They Do It - Inside the Mind of the White Collar Criminal". Eugene discusses how most crimes start out as small, often unnoticed decisions made by strategic people, how nearly everyone has a chance to step over the line, why many companies (Air BnB, Uber, AI) take regulatory risk, and how culture drives poor individual choices. Key topics include: when puffery gets murky; why it's dangerous to "convince yourself;" why it doesn't matter "who signed off;" and the "fraud triangle." Listen in to hear why humility and counterpoints are critical, what he learned about risk assessment from the Free Solo climber, the "difference between being an arms dealer and a transportation company," and how there are "a million ways to pay a bribe."In Part 2 of our conversation with Harvard Business School professor and author of Why They Do It, Dr. Eugene Soltes, we dive even deeper into the ethical gray zones that surround today's most ambitious companies. From social media firms that hide behind “just connecting people” to leaders who convince themselves their actions are justified, Eugene explains how culture, rationalization, and groupthink drive even the smartest executives into trouble.You'll learn why having a sign-off from Legal is never enough, why the “show me where it says I can't” culture is so corrosive, and why CMOs must understand the difference between business risk and integrity risk. We also hear Eugene's story of climbing (briefly) with Free Solo legend Alex Honnold and how that shaped his thinking around open-eyed risk—a model every marketing leader should understand.Topics include: • Why CMOs can't hide behind Legal • The “arms dealer” mindset in corporate marketing • Risk culture vs. innovation culture • How companies accidentally incentivize bad behavior • Psychological safety vs. performative candor • The million ways bribes get disguised • The importance of personal humility—even in the C-Suite

A CMO Confidential Interview with Dr. Eugene Soltes, Harvard Business School Professor and author of "Why They Do It - Inside the Mind of the White Collar Criminal". Eugene discusses how most crimes start out as small, often unnoticed decisions made by strategic people, how nearly everyone has a chance to step over the line, why many companies (Air BnB, Uber, AI) take regulatory risk, and how culture drives poor individual choices. Key topics include: when puffery gets murky; why it's dangerous to "convince yourself;" why it doesn't matter "who signed off;" and the "fraud triangle." Listen in to hear why humility and counterpoints are critical, what he learned about risk assessment from the Free Solo climber, the "difference between being an arms dealer and a transportation company," and how there are "a million ways to pay a bribe."⸻

Alison Wood Brooks is a celebrated Harvard Business School Professor who studies the hidden architecture of conversations. Her groundbreaking work shows that while all of us can struggle with difficult conversations, We're often not very good at the easy ones either (even though we have them all the time). Alison argues that part of the reason for this is because conversation is one of the most complex, demanding, and delicate of all human tasks. Every time we converse with one another, a wide range of possibilities for misinterpretation and misunderstanding arise. It's just part of it. And yet, at the same time, conversations can also be a source of great joy. Each one offering an opportunity to express who we are,to learn who others are—and to feel connected, loved, and alive.In Alison's words, there's a "magic" that happens when we get conversation right.Today we are going to have a deep and wide ranging conversation about how to have better conversations. Alison and I will dive into themes from her wonderful new book:TALK: The Science of Conversation and the Art of Being OurselvesThroughout our time together Alison will offer powerful insights, moving stories, and practical tweaks to not only make our everyday conversations better,but that also might just have a profound positive impact on our relationships at work and in life.For more on Alison, her book, and the wonderful work she is doing please visit alisonwoodbrooks.com.Did you find this episode inspiring? Here are other conversations we think you'll love:On Mastering Our Emotional Life | Ethan KrossOvercoming Self-doubt and Imposterism | Dr. Jill StoddardEnjoying the show? Please rate it wherever you listen to your podcasts. Thanks for listening!Support the show

Rebecca Henderson is a professor at Harvard Business School and is 1 of only 25 professors at Harvard given the distinction of University Professor, which is the highest honor a professor can receive at Harvard. She is the author of the book Reimagining Capitalism which explores how the private sector can help build a more sustainable economy. Rebecca is also a research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a fellow of both the British Academy and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She also sits on the boards of several companies, including AMGEN. Rebecca earned a degree in mechanical engineering from MIT and a PhD in business economics from Harvard. In this episode we discuss the following: I love the story Rebecca shared about the book contract she had lined up. She was going to write a book about how we are prone to take on too much stuff, and then she had to cancel the contract because she had taken on too much stuff. Finding the right balance between staying focused and embracing change is a never-ending struggle. Rebecca worked with Nokia, Kodak, and Motorola. All of them were at the cutting edge of technology and poised to dominate the cell phone and camera market. But none could adapt quickly enough to the changing technology. I thought it was fascinating to hear how some firms got superior results to other firms, even though they had the same inputs. The economists hated the finding because the research showed that leadership and management practices could make such a difference. The best firms took care of their people. Here are two of Rebecca's papers: Innovation in the 21st Century: Architectural Change, Purpose, and the Challenges of Our Time Moral Firms? And here is a link to her book website for Reimagining Capitalism.  Connect on Social Media: X: https://twitter.com/nate_meikle LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natemeikle/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nate_meikle/ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@nate.meikle

As many organizations throughout the business landscape implement return-to-office mandates, the debate around RTO's impact on performance and culture intensifies. Harvard Business School professor Frances Frei joins Rapid Response to bust popular myths around in-person work, and reveal the surprising intentions of many pro-RTO business leaders. Frei also shares insights about AI's impact on corporate life, valuable tips to make your meetings more efficient, and more.Visit the Rapid Response website here: https://www.rapidresponseshow.com/See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Conversations play a big role in our personal and professional lives. It'd be hard to build or maintain a relationship without them.   That's why Alison Wood Brooks, Harvard Business School Professor and conversation expert, has written the book, Talk: The Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves. She's found that if we improve our conversations, even a little, the results can be game changing. In this interview, we talk about the framework she's developed to help us do that. We also discuss how to improve our one-on-one and group conversations. Finally, we learn effective ways to manage difficult conversations, including apologies. Related Links How to Have the Perfect Conversation – and Why It's Good for You Desperate for Better Dialogue? Interview with Jeff Wetzler on Deepening Connections The Team Learn more about host, Gayle Allen, and producer, Rob Mancabelli, here. Support the Podcast If you like the show, please rate and review it on iTunes or wherever you subscribe, and tell a friend or family member about the show. Subscribe Click here and then scroll down to see a sample of sites where you can subscribe.

Imagine stepping into retirement with confidence and excitement, rather than uncertainty and anxiety. That's exactly what we aim to achieve in this episode featuring Teresa Amabile, the distinguished Edsel Bryant Ford Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. Teresa shares her insights and groundbreaking research on the psychological and emotional dimensions of retiring, going beyond the traditional focus on health and wealth. Her new book, "Retiring: Creating a Life that Works for You," serves as a foundation for our conversation on how to craft a fulfilling life after the last day at work. We explore essential strategies to align one's personal identity and values with life's changing circumstances. Through personal stories and research anecdotes, Teresa shares the four major tasks of retiring well, including the critical decision of when to retire. Our conversation emphasizes the importance of self-reflection and courage in this transition, encouraging listeners to make changes that resonate with their evolving self. The episode is rich with practical advice on preparing emotionally, offering listeners a toolkit for navigating the intricate journey of retiring. We also delve into the often overlooked challenge of managing work identity during retirement. Teresa discusses how nurturing identities beyond one's career can ease this transition, using real-life examples of individuals who have successfully shifted their focus from professional life to personal passions. Listeners will learn how to balance work identity with personal interests and maintain crucial relationships, regardless of where they are in their career journey. Whether you're contemplating retirement or simply seeking a more balanced life, this episode offers valuable insights into embracing the next chapter with enthusiasm and purpose. What You'll Learn: • The emotional and identity shifts involved in the process of retiring. • Insightful stories of individuals who are discovering new passions and redefining their identities outside the office. • Practical strategies to nurture diverse interests and relationships for a rewarding post-work life. • Thought-provoking questions and exercises to help you align your life structure with your evolving self and values. Podcast Timestamps: (00:00) – Retiring Versus Retirement (17:57) – Managing Life Transitions (30:56) - Navigating our Identities (37:03) – Who Are We in Retirement? (44:43) - Exploring Life Outside of Work More of Teresa: Teresa M. Amabile is a professor at Harvard Business School, specializing in creativity, innovation, and workplace dynamics. She earned a doctorate in psychology from Stanford University and has published over 100 scholarly articles. Her book The Progress Principle, co-authored with Steven Kramer, explores how small wins can enhance creativity and engagement at work. Amabile has received numerous accolades, including the Lifetime Achievement Award in Organizational Behavior from the Academy of Management in 2018. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/teresa-amabile-8542727 Key Topics Discussed: Retiring, Managing Transitions, Self-Identity, Identity at Work, Life After Work, Meaningful Work, Navigating Emotional Challenges, Personal Passions, Creating Life Balance, Self-awareness, Living Our Values, Retirement Planning, Financial Security, Identity Circles, Career Journey, Personal Success More of Do Good to Lead Well: Website: https://craigdowden.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/craigdowden/

Are you a leader who wants to help your team learn to risk more and fail well? In this episode, Harvard Business School professor Amy C. Edmondson sits down with our Jason Jaggard to unpack her research behind her latest book, The Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well. Their conversation includes the difference between a mistake and a failure, the 3 categories of failures, and how to encourage a team to experiment and learn quickly.

Today, instead of our usual episode, I want to share an episode from Training Camp for Leaders with Archie L. Jones Jr.Archie is an award winning Harvard Business School Professor, best selling author, and accomplished executive. He uses his podcast to inspire you by giving you access to stories and actionable advice from today's most accomplished business leaders and investors. In this episode, Archie has an inspiring conversation with Arlan Hamilton and Brittany Davis. They talk about the journey of turning the challenge of being underestimated into an opportunity to transform the faces of venture capital through their firm.If you enjoy what you hear today, be sure to follow this link to subscribe to Training Camp for Leaders and listen to more episodes: https://lnk.to/Saymore-trainingcamp Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Have you ever experienced the fear of sharing your opinion at work or had the feeling like you're walking on eggshells in a relationship? The absence of psychological safety probably plays a vital role in each of these scenarios.  Dr. Amy Edmondson, a Harvard Business School professor, identified psychological safety as a key factor in innovative companies and stable relationships. Amy has won numerous awards including the Most Influential Thinker in Human Resources by HR Magazine in 2019. I loved her book, The Right Kind of Wrong, which delves into this topic, and has won prestigious awards like the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year in 2023. Join Amy and me as she shares what psychological safety entails, how to nurture it in professional and personal settings, and why it's crucial for success in both spheres. 

Katherine Gehl, co-author of The Politics Industry and Founder of The Institute for Political Innovation, has always asked herself what she needed “to do in order to change the political situation.” “So at first I needed to sell my business,” Katherine tells us. “Then I needed to make the intellectual  case.. And then I needed to try to sell this reform to people. It just went like that.” Today, in 2024, after many years of effort and adaptation, Katherine Gehl's Final Four or Final Five voting initiatives are now poised to be on the ballot in another four states (Nevada, Idaho, Montana and Colorado) having passed in Alaska back in 2020, which then held the first such election in 2022.   Katherine recounts that in the time she's been working on these reforms, “going all the way back to 2013, but really trying to raise money actively since 2015, the reception has changed dramatically.” In this episode, which launches our extended series on 2024 election reform initiatives, we'll learn how non-partisan, competition-based election reform has gained traction among donors, reformers and voters alike. We'll also get a better understanding of how her institute and action fund “catalyze” grassroots leaders in reform-minded states, such the former Idaho Attorney General Jim Jones and Reclam Idaho founder Luke Mayhew.  “The combination of someone like Luke with Jim Jones is a bit of a dream that you could put that together,” Katherine recounts, while also detailing emerging efforts in Colorado and Montana and the second ballot initiative in Nevada this cycle as required by the state constitution.  Will this be the year Final Five Voting moves onto the national stage and transforms the incentives of elected officials in these pathbreaking states?  Tune in to learn more from Katherine Gehl, co-author of The Politics Industry (with Harvard Business School Professor, Michael Porter) and a central catalyst in the nation's growing non-partisan election reform movement.  The Purple Principle is a Fluent Knowledge production. Original music by Ryan Adair Rooney.   SHOW NOTES Our Guest: Katherine Gehl, Reform Strategist & Founder, The Institute for Political Innovation (IPI) Join Us for Premium Content: Apple: https://link.chtbl.com/PurpleApple Patreon: patreon.com/purpleprinciplepodcast Find us online! Twitter: @purpleprincipl Facebook: @thepurpleprinciplepodcast Youtube: @thepurpleprinciple  Our website: https://bit.ly/2ZCpFaQ Sign up for our newsletter: https://bit.ly/2UfFSja  Resources:  Institute for Political Innovation  https://hbr.org/2020/07/fixing-u-s-politics https://ballotpedia.org/Alaska_election_results,_2022 https://www.uniteamericainstitute.org/research/alaskas-election-model-how-the-top-four-nonpartisan-primary-system-improves-participation-competition-and-representation https://store.hbr.org/product/the-politics-industry-how-political-innovation-can-break-partisan-gridlock-and-save-our-democracy/10367 https://www.veteransforallvoters.org/ https://ballotpedia.org/Nevada_Question_3,_Top-Five_Ranked-Choice_Voting_Initiative_(2022) https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/after-restructuring-is-nevada-ranked-choice-ballot-measure-ready-for-election https://vote.nyc/page/ranked-choice-voting https://www.rcvmontana.org/petition https://rcvforcolorado.org/ https://idahocapitalsun.com/author/jim-jones/ https://idahocapitalsun.com/2024/05/01/having-exceeded-goal-idaho-open-primary-supporters-submit-final-signatures-for-verification/ https://www.reclaimidaho.org/ https://www.reclaimidaho.org/medicaid https://kentthiry.com/about/ https://www.maine.gov/sos/cec/elec/upcoming/rankedchoicefaq.html https://idahocapitalsun.com/2024/03/11/proposed-constitutional-amendment-to-block-ranked-choice-voting-fails-in-idaho-house/ https://wisconsinwatch.org/2024/01/wisconsin-republican-voting-senate-assembly-legislation-bill-watch/

Our lives are filled with repetitive tasks meant to keep us on track—what we come to know as habits. Over time, these routines (for example, brushing your teeth or putting on your right sock first) tend to be performed automatically. But when we're more mindful about these actions—when we focus on the precise way they are performed—they can instead become rituals. Shifting from a “habitual” mindset to a “ritual” mindset can convert ordinary acts from black and white to technicolor.In this interview, Harvard Business School Professor Dr. Michael Norton discusses his new book “The Ritual Effect” and how the power of establishing rituals can enhance performance in personal lives and at work. Dr. Norton explains how a ritual is different from and a habit. He talks about how to create rituals that last and he says a bottom up approach is the best way to establish effective rituals in the workplace. To finish the interview, Dr. Norton's discusses what research has taught him about what people commonly get wrong about their money. Dr. Michael Norton is a leading behavior scientist, behavioral economics researcher, Harvard Business School Professor, and business speaker obsessed with unlocking the secrets of human behavior and well-being, from happier spending to the power of rituals. Dr. Norton's research focuses on behavioral economics and well-being, with particular attention given to topics such as happiness, spending, and, most recently, rituals and habits. His book The Ritual Effect focuses on the surprising and versatile power of rituals.

This is such a fun episode, all about the power of rituals in the kitchen (and beyond). I speak with Dr. Michael Norton, a leading behavior scientist, behavioral economics researcher, Harvard Business School Professor, and business speaker obsessed with unlocking the secrets of human behavior and well-being. He's the author of the new book, The Ritual Effect: From Habit to Ritual, Harness the Surprising Power of Everyday Actions. While I've written about rituals in the past, it was so fun to better understand the psychology of rituals, and how we can use them to enhance our lives. Dr. Norton describes what a ritual is, and how it differs from a habit or tradition. We explore how rituals have the power to connect us to ourselves, to each other, to our past, as well as to the foods we eat. Dr. Norton explains why rituals can imbue our lives with more meaning, and how they can also be a safe outlet for expressing emotions. A ritual doesn't have to be complicated or time consuming—in fact, a ritual can literally be anything (just wait until you hear about the candles in the meatloaf!). It isn't about the action itself, but about the intention behind it. From cooking favorite recipes, to having family dinners (or snacks), to tying on an apron, to raising our glasses before eating, to clinking forks (more on that in the episode) there are a million ways to bring ritual into the kitchen. I hope this episode inspires you to look at the rituals you already have in your own life and possibly to even create some new ones. Episode Links:* Mind, Body, Spirit, FOOD newsletter: https://mindbodyspiritfood.substack.com/* Find Nicki on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nickisizemore/* Michael Norton's website: https://michaelnorton.com/* The Ritual Effect: From Habit to Ritual, Harness the Surprising Power of Everyday Actions: https://amzn.to/49MQtnF* Rituals in the Kitchen: https://mindbodyspiritfood.substack.com/p/gochujang-maple-sheet-pan-dinner* Intentional cooking: https://mindbodyspiritfood.substack.com/p/grilled-wedge-steak-salad This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mindbodyspiritfood.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to an interview with the author of Deep Purpose: The Heart and Soul of High-Performance Companies, Ranjay Gulati. In his book, Ranjay reveals the fatal mistakes leaders unwittingly make when attempting to implement a reason for being. Moreover, he shows how companies can embed purpose much more deeply than they currently do, delivering impressive performance benefits that reward customers, suppliers, employees, shareholders, and communities alike. To get purpose right, leaders must fundamentally change not only how they execute it but also how they conceive of and relate to it. Ranjay Gulati is the Paul R. Lawrence MBA Class of 1942 Professor and the former Unit Head of the Organizational Behavior Unit at Harvard Business School. Until recently, he chaired the Advanced Management Program, the flagship senior leader executive program, at the school. Professor Gulati has been ranked as one of the top ten most-cited academics in the fields of economics and business by ISI-Incite and has received similar recognition from The Economist, Financial Times, and the Economist Intelligence Unit. Professor Gulati studies how “resilient” organizations—those that prosper both in good times and bad—drive growth and profitability. His work bridges strategy (establishing clear strategic pillars for growth), organizational design (reimagining purposeful and collaborative organizational systems), and leadership (fostering inspired, courageous, and caring execution). Get Ranjay's book here: https://rb.gy/31r53k Deep Purpose: The Heart and Soul of High-Performance Companies Here are some free gifts for you: Overall Approach Used in Well-Managed Strategy Studies free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/OverallApproach McKinsey & BCG winning resume free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/resumepdf Enjoying this episode? Get access to sample advanced training episodes here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo  

Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 413, an interview with the author of Deep Purpose: The Heart and Soul of High-Performance Companies, Ranjay Gulati. In his book, Ranjay reveals the fatal mistakes leaders unwittingly make when attempting to implement a reason for being. Moreover, he shows how companies can embed purpose much more deeply than they currently do, delivering impressive performance benefits that reward customers, suppliers, employees, shareholders, and communities alike. To get purpose right, leaders must fundamentally change not only how they execute it but also how they conceive of and relate to it. Ranjay Gulati is the Paul R. Lawrence MBA Class of 1942 Professor and the former Unit Head of the Organizational Behavior Unit at Harvard Business School. Until recently, he chaired the Advanced Management Program, the flagship senior leader executive program, at the school. Professor Gulati has been ranked as one of the top ten most-cited academics in the fields of economics and business by ISI-Incite and has received similar recognition from The Economist, Financial Times, and the Economist Intelligence Unit. Professor Gulati studies how “resilient” organizations—those that prosper both in good times and bad—drive growth and profitability. His work bridges strategy (establishing clear strategic pillars for growth), organizational design (reimagining purposeful and collaborative organizational systems), and leadership (fostering inspired, courageous, and caring execution). Get Ranjay's book here: https://rb.gy/31r53k Deep Purpose: The Heart and Soul of High-Performance Companies Here are some free gifts for you: Overall Approach Used in Well-Managed Strategy Studies free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/OverallApproach McKinsey & BCG winning resume free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/resumepdf Enjoying this episode? Get access to sample advanced training episodes here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo  

Do you know what steps you need to take to build the life YOU want? Harvard Business School Professor and New York Times Best-selling Author, Arthur Brooks has dedicated his research to discovering the science of happiness. In his latest book he co-authored with Oprah Winfrey, Build the Life You Want, they lay the foundation for how to best attain the life your heart desires. Arthur joins Trey to offer insight into the "unhappiness epidemic" the world is experiencing and share the key principles needed to discover the life you want to live. Follow Trey on Twitter: @TGowdySC Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Amy Edmondson is the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at the Harvard Business School, renowned for her research on psychological safety over twenty years. Her award-winning work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, Psychology Today, Fast Company, Harvard Business Review, and more. Named by Thinkers50 in 2021 as the #1 Management Thinker in the world, Edmondson's TED Talk “How to Turn a Group of Strangers into a Team” has been viewed over three million times. She received her PhD, AM, and AB from Harvard University. Her latest book is titled: The Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well.    Some interesting insights from this episode: ·         A good failure is an undesired outcome that brings you new knowledge that could have not been gained any other way. It should be just big enough to get new information without wasting unnecessary time.  ·         Most of us have shifted from curiosity and learning in our childhood to defensiveness and self-protection in our adulthood because of the belief that we had to be right or successful to be worthy. ·         Psychological safety Is a belief that one can take interpersonal risks without the fear of punishment or rejection. ·         You need psychological safety in order to cultivate a culture of intelligent failure.  ·         Reframing is one of the techniques we can use to learn from failure. It's the ability to challenge the automatic thinking and come up with a healthier, more productive way to think about the same situation.  ·         A culture of accountability and high-performance standards can coexist with a culture of psychological safety and embracing failure.  ·         “The easiest way to not fail at all is to not take risks at all.”  ·         “Excellence is doing as well as you can in your chosen field and making a positive difference.”   Notes: Books: Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth   Websites: Amy Edmondson personal page Harvard Business School bio

Join host Guy Kawasaki on Remarkable People as he engages in a thought-provoking conversation with Amy Edmondson, an esteemed Professor of Leadership and Management at the Harvard Business School. They explore the pivotal role leaders play in nurturing an environment conducive to learning and collaboration, essential factors in our rapidly changing world. Amy's TED Talk, "How to Turn a Group of Strangers into a Team," has engaged over three million viewers, solidifying her influence and stature within her domain. In her latest book, 'Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well,' she invites us to rethink conventional perceptions of failure, offering profound insights into handling it with grace and resilience.Listeners of the Remarkable People podcast will learn from some of the most successful people in the world with practical tips and inspiring stories that will help you be more remarkable. Episodes of Remarkable People organized by topic: https://bit.ly/rptopology Listen to Remarkable People here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/guy-kawasakis-remarkable-people/id1483081827 Like this show? Please leave us a review -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally! Thank you for your support; it helps the show!

#enterpriseai #generativeai #aiethics Harvard Business School professor Iavor Bojinov explains how to make enterprise AI projects successful, given their high rate of failure. Here are his key points:► Prioritize Projects: Focus on AI initiatives that align with your business goals and are feasible to implement.►Leadership and Culture: Make sure your company culture is open to AI, with leaders who grasp both the technical and commercial dimensions.►Scalable Systems: Develop an 'AI factory' to streamline and scale AI development.►Vendor Flexibility: When working with outside partners, don't lock yourself into one platform. Be ready to switch if necessary.►Trust: Ensure that AI systems are transparent, audit for bias, and establish clear lines of accountability for failures.Bojinov stresses that each stage of an AI project, from conception to ongoing management, needs expertise, adaptability, a receptive culture, and trust. With a well-thought-out strategy, companies can navigate typical challenges and harness AI's full potential.Our guest co-host for this episode is QuHarrison Terry.Read the complete transcript and see more of CXOTalk: www.cxotalk.com/episode/harvard-business-school-professor-how-to-lead-enterprise-aiSubscribe for more: www.cxotalk.com/subscribeIavor Bojinov is an Assistant Professor of Business Administration and the Richard Hodgson Fellow at Harvard Business School. He is the co-PI of the AI and Data Science Operations Lab and a faculty affiliate in the Department of Statistics at Harvard University and the Harvard Data Science Initiative. His research and writings center on data science strategy and operations, aiming to understand how companies should overcome the methodological and operational challenges presented by the novel applications of AI. His work has been published in top academic journals such as Annals of Applied Statistics, Biometrika, The Journal of the American Statistical Association, Quantitative Economics, Management Science, and Science, and has been cited in Forbes, The New York Times, The Washingon Post, and Reuters, among other outlets. Before joining Harvard Business School, Professor Bojinov worked as a data scientist leading the causal inference effort within the Applied Research Group at LinkedIn. He holds a Ph.D. and an MA in Statistics from Harvard and an MSci in Mathematics from King's College London.QuHarrison Terry is head of growth marketing at Mark Cuban Companies, a Texas venture capital firm, where he advises and assists portfolio companies with their marketing strategies and objectives.Michael Krigsman is an industry analyst and publisher of CXOTalk. For three decades, he has advised enterprise technology companies on market messaging and positioning strategy. He has written over 1,000 blogs on leadership and digital transformation and created almost 1,000 video interviews with the world's top business leaders on these topics. His work has been referenced in the media over 1,000 times and in over 50 books. He has presented and moderated panels at numerous industry events around the world.

How do we embrace failure in a fast-changing world? Harvard Business School Professor, Amy Edmondson, is ranked #1 on the latest Thinkers50 ranking of the world's most influential management thinkers. Amy is the winner of Thinkers50 Breakthrough Idea Award for being a “pioneer of psychological safety and author of The Fearless Organization, a ground-breaking blueprint on creating a fear-free culture.” Amy is also the winner of the 2019 Distinguished Scholar Award from the Organization Development and Change Division of the Academy of Management. Named the Most Influential International Thinker in Human Resources by HR Magazine in 2019, one of Amy's books - The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth (John Wiley & Sons, 2018) - has been translated into more than 15 languages and is consistently among Amazon's top-sellers in the human resources category. Amy's latest book Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well hits bookshelves and online stores on September 5, 2023. In this episode, we talk about organizational design and transformation, her research on psychological safety, the three type of failures: intelligent, basic, and complex, as well as self-awareness vs. systems awareness. Amy unpacks the connection between failure and regret. And we even brainstorm a new concept of a “discussability index” to evaluate team cohesion.

Welcome to a special bonus episode of The HPS Podcast with Professor of Psychology, Simine Vazire, discussing the ways in which HPS scholars and scientists can work together to create better science.We are releasing the episode to coincide with the campaign put together by Simine and others to support the legal defence of Data Colada – a group of professors who identify concerns with the integrity of published research. Members of Data Colada are being sued by Francesca Gino, a Harvard Business School Professor, after they published blog posts raising concerns about the data integrity of four papers on which Gino was a co-author. As the group says, “defending science requires defending legitimate scientific criticism against legal bullying”.In this podcast episode Indigo Keel, talks with Simine about more than just this one issue. They discuss Simine's connection to History and Philosophy of Science, the need for scientists to reflect on the practices of their discipline, issues that have arisen out of the replication crisis and cases of alleged scientific misconduct – including the Francesca Gino case. Simine highlights how philosophers of science can contribute to making science better.Relevant links:·       The GoFundMe Campaign to Support Data Colada's Legal Defense·       Vox Article: Is it Defamation to Point out Scientific Research Fraud?·       Data Colada Post (Part 1): “Clusterfake”·       Data Colada Post (Part 2): “My Class Year is Harvard”·       Data Colada Post (Part 3): “The Cheaters are Out of Order”·       Data Colada Post (Part 4): “Forgetting the Words”A transcript of the episode can be found here: https://www.hpsunimelb.org/post/bonus-episode-transcript Simine studies the research methods and practices used in psychology, as well as structural systems in science, such as peer review. Simine is editor in chief of Collabra: Psychology, one of the PIs on the repliCATS project (with Fiona Fidler), and co-founder (with Brian Nosek) of the Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science.Thanks for listening to The HPS Podcast with your current hosts, Samara Greenwood and Carmelina Contarino.You can find more about us on our blog, website, bluesky, twitter, instagram and facebook feeds. This podcast would not be possible without the support of School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne.www.hpsunimelb.org

Make sure you buy Christina's book, The Portfolio Life: How to Future-Proof Your Career, Avoid Burnout, and Build a Life Bigger than Your Business Card. On this Walker Webcast, we are joined by Christina Wallace, serial entrepreneur and top professor at Harvard Business School where she is the co-course head for The Entrepreneurial Manager, teaches Launching Tech Ventures, and leads HBS Startup Bootcamp for student entrepreneurs. A self-described “human Venn diagram,” Christina crafted a career at the intersection of business, technology, and the arts and believes that when it comes to pursuing your passions, you shouldn't have to choose. Watch the replay If you have any comments or questions, please reach out to your main Walker & Dunlop point of contact. We are all available to answer questions and provide assistance. Additionally, if you have topics you would like covered during one of our future webcasts, we would be happy to take your suggestions.   

Harvard Business School Professor Amy Edmondson has been recognized as the #1 thought leader in the world. She literally revolutionized the way CEOs around the world think about psychological safety. In her new book - The Right Kind of Wrong - she takes this conceptual framework one big step forward - and shares a practical tool-kit to help people reframe risk and learn from mistakes. Edmondson confronts head-on the biggest dilemma facing innovative organizations. Bluntly, it requires people take risks and venture into the unknown. Yet people despise failure. How can leaders resolve this paradox? How can leaders create a culture that inspires their people to innovate, to be inclusive, to share unpopular views, to venture into the unknown, and to learn from their mistakes? How should talent feel about inevitable failure - and the embarrassment and shame they may feel? One thing is certain - until organizations embrace 'intelligent failure' - they'll be at a competitive disadvantage to more innovative competitors. Professor Edmondson's practical lessons apply broadly and equally well to innovators, CEOs, elite athletes, top chefs, research lab scientists, and even parents who just want to raise kids who embrace a more healthy perspective to risk taking and learning from the right kind of wrong. Join the Breakfast Club.

Harvard Business School Professor Amy Edmondson has been recognized as the #1 thought leader in the world. She literally revolutionized the way CEOs around the world think about psychological safety. In her new book - The Right Kind of Wrong - she takes this conceptual framework one big step forward - and shares a practical tool-kit to help people reframe risk and learn from mistakes. Edmondson confronts head-on the biggest dilemma facing innovative organizations. Bluntly, it requires people take risks and venture into the unknown. Yet people despise failure. How can leaders resolve this paradox? How can leaders create a culture that inspires their people to innovate, to be inclusive, to share unpopular views, to venture into the unknown, and to learn from their mistakes? How should talent feel about inevitable failure - and the embarrassment and shame they may feel? One thing is certain - until organizations embrace 'intelligent failure' - they'll be at a competitive disadvantage to more innovative competitors. Professor Edmondson's practical lessons apply broadly and equally well to innovators, CEOs, elite athletes, top chefs, research lab scientists, and even parents who just want to raise kids who embrace a more healthy perspective to risk taking and learning from the right kind of wrong. Join the Breakfast Club.

Christina Wallace, a professor at Harvard Business School, teaches you how to avoid burnout, how to create your own personal board of directors (or advisors), and how to create a career and life that makes you happy.  Plus did you know your ceramics hobby can get you that higher paying job? Seriously. After a decade as a serial entrepreneur, Christina Wallace joined the faculty of Harvard Business School, where she is the course head of the first-year entrepreneurship class and runs the HBS startup bootcamp. Her latest book is The Portfolio Life, How to Future Proof Your Career, Avoid Burnout, and Build a Life Bigger Than Your Business Card.  LINKS: -Connect with Christina on LinkedIn -The Portfolio Life: How to Future-Proof Your Career, Avoid Burnout, and Build a Life Bigger than Your Business Card: Click Here! -FREE DOWNLOAD: Improve Your Video Quality to Increase Your Revenue - 10 Tips to Take Your Videos from Mediocre to Magnetic click here -Follow host Kim Rittberg on Instagram! -How To Be A Happier, Less Stressed & More Successful Parent: Click here!

Why would a K-12 educational leader listen to a Harvard Business School Professor who specializes in sales and marketing? Well, as Jeff often points out, smart leaders learn from others who are in different lanes and industries. When you listen to Frank Cespedes, you will see the leadership correlation between business and sales with education. Frank's latest book identifies several trends and solutions that translate to leading in fast changing environments. You will love it!

Enter our Giveaway here: https://www.enterpriseexcellenceacademy.com/giveawaySummary Keywordspeople, leadership, organisation, world, john, create, vision, opportunities, management, leading, helping, change, important, terms, study, business, system, problem, achieve, running.IntroductionWelcome to episode 133 of the Enterprise Excellence Podcast. It is a pleasure to have Dr John Kotter on the show today. John needs little introduction. We have all gained so much from his work in change management, business Agility and Leadership over his Career. John is a Harvard Business School Professor, he has written many best-selling books such as Leading Change, a sense of urgency and My iceberg is melting. Today we will be honing in on his work in the books XLR8 and, most recently, Change. These two books are so relevant to all we are facing. They provide insights into developing business Agility, Change for the better and making it stick. We are proudly sponsored by S A Partners, a world-leading business transformation consultancy. For the month of April, we are celebrating all things Agile. Over this Agile month, we are going to bring you some of the most impressive podcast guests on the topic of Agile. This is timely given our launch of the Enterprise Excellence Academy's ongoing series of Agile Events focused on helping organisations deploy Agile to the whole enterprise in any industry and in any role.Brad is delivering at least one highly practical capability-building event every quarter. Our first focus is the Agile High-Performance Teams registration, which offers a combined Scrum Master Product Owner accreditation, certified by Jeff's company, the Agile Education Program. We are excited to be able to offer our listeners a free place each and every April & May to join us, either in the event of your choice or to join our community for one year. We really want to help create a better future for people, profit and the planet. To register for either or both of these offers, go to our website, https://www.enterpriseexcellenceacademy.com/giveawayOr click on the "giveaway" button in our header. You can read a little about our community and the training that we offer there. Enter quickly to ensure you are in the next draw, and we'll look forward to e-meeting you :) SA Partners Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.To learn more about what we do, visit www.enterpriseexcellenceacademy.com.Thanks for your time, and thanks for helping to create a better future.

Dr. Rakesh Suri is one of the top heart transplant surgeons in the world - with stints at both Mayo Clinic and the Cleveland Clinic - the top two hospitals in the world. Suri is also one of the most visionary leaders in the world. Recognizing his considerable gifts, Tony Robbins recently recruited Suri to help lead a revolutionary new healthcare venture called Fountain Life. Rakesh's leadership journey is so compelling, that one of the world's top scholars - Linda Hill - a Professor at the Harvard Business School - wrote three case studies on Dr. Suri - focusing on leadership, globalization, and innovation. Today, we are in for a special treat. I've invited both Suri and Hill to the podcast. www.imperfectleaders.com

Today's guest is Bill George currently a Harvard Business School Professor, former CEO of Medtronic, which under his leadership grew from $1.1 billion to $60 billion, averaging 35% growth per year.  Bill also is the author of Discover Your True North and the new Emerging Leader Edition of True North, which we discuss today. During this episode Bill explains why it's important to have unscheduled time slots on your calendar and how during that time you can focus on introspection. He shares that the average leader is spending over 70% of their time in meetings and what they should be doing with that time instead. We discuss the importance of understanding the values of the individuals you work with and how to determine if your values align. And we talked about having an integrated life where you're the same person at work, home, church, and in your community. Finally, we discuss quiet quitting, remote work, our focus on bachelors degrees, and how we need to encourage more individuals to follow their passions into trades and other fields. We discussed all of this and so much more during our conversation, so please sit back and enjoy the show. And send me a message with your thoughts @ JamesQuandahl on https://quandahl.com/Instagram (Instagram) and https://quandahl.com/twitter (Twitter)… And if you're enjoying the show please subscribe or follow and share this episode with a friend. Episode Resourceshttps://www.billgeorge.org (Bill's website) https://amzn.to/3UfRnkp (Bill's new book, True North: Emerging Leader Edition)

Summary Keywordspeople, leadership, organisation, world, john, create, vision, opportunities, management, leading, helping, change, important, terms, study, business, system, problem, achieve, running.IntroductionWelcome to episode 112 of the Enterprise Excellence Podcast. It is a pleasure to have Dr John Kotter on the show today. John needs little introduction. We have all gained so much from his work in change management, business Agility and Leadership over his Career. John is a Harvard Business School Professor, he has written many best-selling books such as Leading Change, a sense of urgency and My iceberg is melting. Today we will be honing in on his work in the books XLR8 and, most recently, Change. These two books are so relevant to all we are facing. They provide insights into developing business Agility, Change for the better and making it stick. Let's get into the episode, John thanks for joining us today.We are proudly sponsored by S A Partners, a world-leading business transformation consultancy.Two Minute Tip  104:27min John, in your area of expertise in all you've done, what would be a rapid small two-minute tip that you'd give to leaders to say, look, start here, consider this with trying to really build more agility and start to actually make a transformation stick in that space? Well, I think we've hit the point now. This is going to sound outrageously self-serving. So I'm just going to warn you in advance. We've got to the point now, where we have studied this enough that we can say things with some real confidence. And if you're serious about wanting to improve your capacity to lead, improve your capacity to produce not just good, but outstanding organisations, go out and look at the latest applied research. Read some of this stuff and try it. Don't just read it, try it. Use common sense. And I have found in our consulting, that we give out books, we give out articles and if they're given with the right oh tone, you know, you have to trust me on this, my friend. There's something in here you will find that will help you. It's amazing how people will find things, will try things that are new and will get better results. Don't assume this is all a bunch of "everybody's got a different opinion. And they're all equally valid". Nope. Don't assume this is such "soft stuff" that you can't say anything within confidence. No. We're understanding it better, you should understand it better. And you can really do something with it. Yeah.Thanks again for your time and knowledge John, thanks for helping us create a better future. Bye for now. LinksBrad is proud to support many Australian businesses. You can find him on LinkedIn here. If you'd like to speak to him about how he can help your business, call him on 0402 448 445 or email bjeavons@iqi.com.au. Our website is www.bradjeavons.com.What's next?Join our membership page to access great resources that we and our guests have made available.Join our community beginning in April 2022.  www.enterpriseexcellenceacademy.com.Have a look at all of John's books:  https://www.kotterinc.com/bookshelf/Reach out to Kotter Inc:To learn more about what we do, visit www.enterpriseexcellenceacademy.com.Thanks for your time, and thanks for helping to create a better future.

Should a couple of speeding tickets - or perhaps a big, brand new house - disqualify a top CEO candidate? Should hiring companies investigate - or even care about - the personal lives of top executive prospects? Today's guest - Professor Aiyesha Dey, Harvard Business School - is a governance expert who recently conducted fascinating research on exactly this topic - and Corporate America should pay attention to her practical and well-researched advice. Like all human beings, CEOs are complex and may have a dark side. Rather than ignore these warning signs, smart boards of directors gather as much intelligence as possible on candidates during the CEO succession process, even if that means investigating the personal lives for important clues on rule bending, self-control and humility. Armed with multiple data points, Boards are able to see the full picture, manage risks, and up-skill their governance capabilities. Any comments, questions or thoughts to share with today's podcast guest - Professor Aiyesha Dey - join our community at www.imperfectleaders.com.

Should a couple of speeding tickets - or perhaps a big, brand new house - disqualify a top CEO candidate? Should hiring companies investigate - or even care about - the personal lives of top executive prospects? Today's guest - Professor Aiyesha Dey, Harvard Business School - is a governance expert who recently conducted fascinating research on exactly this topic - and Corporate America should pay attention to her practical and well-researched advice. Like all human beings, CEOs are complex and may have a dark side. Rather than ignore these warning signs, smart boards of directors gather as much intelligence as possible on candidates during the CEO succession process, even if that means investigating the personal lives for important clues on rule bending, self-control and humility. Armed with multiple data points, Boards are able to see the full picture, manage risks, and up-skill their governance capabilities. Any comments, questions or thoughts to share with today's podcast guest - Professor Aiyesha Dey - join our community at www.imperfectleaders.com.

Deep Purpose is a series of captivating conversations with Harvard Business School Professor Ranjay Gulati and top global CEOs about how courageous leaders unlock potential, proving that vast performance gains–and vital social benefits–are the payoffs when firms get purpose right.

What one attribute sets apart high-performing teams? In its quest to build the perfect team, Google's People Analytics division established Project Aristotle to identify key attributes of successful and effective teams. By matching observations and group dynamics of over 180 teams across the company against findings of decades of academic studies, Google targeted precisely which qualities make the best teams. The research team identified psychological safety as one of the key characteristics. Harvard Business School Professor, Amy Edmondson, first referred to psychological safety in 1999 as 'confidence that the team will not embarrass, reject or punish someone for speaking up'. Google further defined it as a team that demonstrates characteristics of conversational equity and social sensitivity. How can managers ensure team members feel safe to take risks and be vulnerable in front of each other? ·      Start by replacing blame with curiosity. ·      Create a conscious workplace culture where key attributes of psychological safety are the norm. ·      Avoid the ripple effect of belittling, sarcasm, blaming or incivility which hijacks focus. ·      Make it easy for people to speak up with ideas, questions, concerns or mistakes. ·      Understand five key dysfunctional team behaviours and transform them into five positive behaviours. ·      How Managers can build an emotionally intelligent team where operational excellence is the result. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you're going to foster thought diversity and bringing different minds together at your organization (which you NEED to do), you need to be prepared for some debates and disagreements. Of course, these are things that make some companies and leaders uncomfortable, but they're necessary and you need to embrace them. In this episode Harvard Business School Professor, Francesca Gino, discusses the ways companies can get comfortable with the “conflict” that's essential in fostering thought diversity. Guest Bio Francesca Gino is an award-winning researcher who focuses on why people make the decisions they do at work, and how leaders and employees can have more productive, creative and fulfilling lives.  She is the Tandon Family Professor of Business Administration in the Negotiation, Organizations & Markets Unit at Harvard Business School and the author of a book called “Rebel Talent: Why it Pays to Break the Rules in Work and Life.”  She also co-wrote the Harvard Business Review article, “Managing a Polarized Workforce–How to foster debate and promote trust.”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

So you've got two people talking AT each other, not listening, wanting the other person to listen, because if they just LISTENED to you, they would see it your way, and realise that you're right.  We have all been there.Today's podcast takes a lesson from the book "Edge: turning adversity into advantage" by Laura Huang and award-winning Harvard Business School Professor.In the book, they observed then interviewed more than 60 leaders who are trying to convince business associates and other people to change their minds on a course of action they initially disagreed with. The leaders who were the most successful in overcoming other people's skepticisms had one thing in common.And this is the key to how to change someone's mind…. LinksJoin 1:1 Leadership Coaching/Mentoring for the final quarter (last chance until Q2 2023, April intake)Going from Solo to CEO? Read about the upcoming guided program Free mini-course: Time to Hire? 5 questions to ask yourself before hiring your first (or next) team member.Connect with Me: Join Weekly Email: https://campus.zenithjourney.com/mailinglist   Website: https://www.zenithjourney.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katepeardon/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zenithjourney/ References:Book: Edge: turning adversity into advantage: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/600457/edge-by-laura-huang/Join the Mailing List - hear first when new episodes are liveZenith Journey website - leaders aren't born, they're trainedBuy the Delegation Playbook - delegate seamlessly, for better results, without the stressZenith Journey InstagramKate Peardon Linkedin

When it comes to leadership, the world is always in need of leaders who can make a difference. With so much change happening around us, it's critical for emerging leaders to be grounded in their values and ready to navigate whatever comes next. While there are many ways to develop leadership skills, it is essential to first understand what it means to be an authentic leader. And that is what our guest, Bill George, talks about. Bill is a Harvard Business School professor who has successfully blended his academic and business life and touched and impacted the lives of 10,000 students who have come through the Harvard Business School and the Harvard Kennedy School. He is a bestselling author of leadership classics, including Authentic Leadership and True North. Hot off the press, Bill has recently co-authored and just launched what is probably his most important book to date, The Emerging Leaders' Edition of True North. Join Bill George as he shares how emerging leaders can find their true north and lead authentically in the workplace.Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review & share! https://anne-pratt.com

In this episode of the FCPA Compliance Report, I am joined by Harvard Business School Professor, author of the book Purpose + Profits, How Business Can Lift Up the World. Some of the highlights include: 1.     Why this book and why now? 2.     His personal journey to ‘purpose'. 3.     Is this book an extension of his earlier work around white-collar crime and anti-corruption compliance.  4.     What trends bring together both business goals and broader societal goals? 5.     How did technology and social media help this change? 6.     What is the role of Gen Xers and Millennials? 7.     How can or should a company data analytics into this change? 8.     What are the 6 archetypes of value creation? 9.     What is the Southwire “12 for Life” story?  10.  Why did your student's attempt to replicate it fail and what lessons did you draw from that failure.  Resources George Serafeim at the Harvard School of Business George Serafeim on Linkedin Purpose + Profits on Amazon.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Do you see yourself as a “rebel”? If so, you may have what it takes to become very successful! Our guest, award-winning Harvard Business School Professor and behavioral scientist Francesca Gino, has been studying rebels at organizations around the world for two decades. She contends the most successful among us are those who break the rules and she shows how to do that in her book called, “Rebel Talent: Why it pays to break the rules at work and in life.” Francesca's website is: http://francescagino.com. Note: This episode was previously aired. Thanks to our sponsor of this episode!: Everlywell is digital healthcare designed for you — all at an affordable and transparent price. With over thirty at-home lab tests, you'll be able to choose the test that makes the most sense for you to get the answers you need, like the Metabolism Test or Food Sensitivity Test. Everlywell ships products straight to you with everything needed in one package. To take your at-home lab test, simply collect your sample and use the included prepaid shipping label to mail your test back to a certified lab. Your physician-reviewed results get sent to your phone or device in just days! If you've been experiencing symptoms and don't know where to start, Everlywell is committed to listening and supporting your journey towards better health and wellness. For listeners of Nobody Told Me!, Everlywell is offering a special discount of twenty percent off an at-home lab test at everlywell.com/nobody. That's everlywell.com/nobody for twenty percent off your next at-home lab test. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the conclusion of Kathleen's conversation with Harvard Business School Professor, Ranjay Gulati, the author of Deep Purpose, Ranjay shares what leaders need to ask themselves when it comes to attracting the RIGHT talent.

Why did Mary appear, of all places, in Fatima, Portugal, in 1917? The answer may surprise you! Plus, how Our Lady of Fatima figured in the powerful conversion of a Harvard Business School Professor! And, don't miss The Week That Was!

In this episode of Partnering Leadership, Mahan Tavakoli speaks with Professor James Heskett. Professor Heskett is UPS Foundation Professor Emeritus at the Harvard Business School. James Heskett has authored/co-authored nine books, including one with fellow Harvard Business School Professor John Kotter on Corporate Culture and Performance. In this conversation, Mahan and James Heskett talk about Professor Heskett's latest book, Win from Within: Build Organizational Culture for Competitive Advantage, and actions leaders can take to overcome barriers and nurture the right culture within their teams and organizations. Some highlights:- Professor Heskett on why so many leaders doubt their ability to influence their organization's culture- How leaders can establish the right culture for working in a hybrid environment - The role of belonging, diversity, and inclusion in great organizational cultures - Professor James Heskett on how leaders can create more trusting relationships - Specific steps leaders can take to impact the culture of their team and organizationConnect with Professor James Heskett:Professor James Heskett @ Harvard Business SchoolProfessor James Heskett Books @ AmazonConnect with Mahan Tavakoli:MahanTavakoli.comhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/mahan/More information and resources available at the Partnering Leadership Podcast website: PartneringLeadership.com

Do your employees feel safe asking questions or admitting their mistakes in the workplace? Amy Edmondson, Harvard Business School Professor and author of The Fearless Organization, shares why psychological safety in the workplace is critical to foster employee performance and innovation. She details how a psychologically safe environment creates a culture where talent can feel safe to express their left-field ideas, correct their mistakes, and turn half-finished thoughts into the next big thing. This interview originally aired in 2019.

In Episode 4 of Series 7 of The Rights Track, Todd is in conversation with Sam Gilbert, an entrepreneur and affiliated researcher at the Bennett Institute for Public Policy at the University of Cambridge. Sam works on the intersection of politics and technology. His recent book – Good Data: An Optimist's Guide to Our Future – explores the different ways data helps us, suggesting that “the data revolution could be the best thing that ever happened to us”.  Transcript Todd Landman  0:01  Welcome to The Rights Track podcast which gets the hard facts about the human rights challenges facing us today. In Series 7, we're discussing human rights in a digital world. I'm Todd Landman, in the fourth episode of this series, I'm delighted to be joined by Sam Gilbert. Sam is an entrepreneur and affiliated researcher at the Bennett Institute for Public Policy at the University of Cambridge, working on the intersection of politics and technology. His recent book, Good Data: An Optimist's Guide to Our Future explores the different ways data helps us suggesting the data revolution could be the best thing that ever happened to us. And today, we're asking him, what makes data good? So Sam, welcome to this episode of The Rights Track. Sam Gilbert  0:41  Todd thanks so much for having me on.  Todd Landman  0:44  So I want to start really with the book around Good Data. And I'm going to start I suppose, with the negative perception first, and then you can make the argument for a more optimistic assessment. And this is this opening set of passages you have in the book around surveillance capitalism. Could you explain to us what surveillance capitalism is and what it means?  Sam Gilbert  1:01  Sure. So surveillance capitalism is a concept that's been popularised by the Harvard Business School Professor, Shoshana Zuboff. And essentially, it's a critique of the power that big tech companies like Google and Facebook have. And what it says is that, that power is based on data about us that they accumulate, as we live our lives online. And by doing that produce data, which they collect, and analyse, and then sell to advertisers. And for proponents of surveillance capitalism theory, there's something sort of fundamentally illegitimate about that. In terms of the way that it, as they would see it, appropriates data from individuals for private gain on the path of tech companies. I think they would also say that it infringes individual's rights in a more fundamental way by subjecting them to surveillance. So that I would say is surveillance capitalism in a nutshell.  Todd Landman  2:07  Okay. So to give you a concrete example, if I'm searching for a flannel shirt from Cotton Trader, on Google, the next day, I open up my Facebook and I start to see ads for Cotton Trader, on my Facebook feed, or if I go on to CNN, suddenly I see an ad for another product that I might have been searching for on Google. Is that the sort of thing that he's talking about in this concept? Sam Gilbert  2:29  Yes, that's certainly one dimension to it. So that example that you just gave is an example of something that's called behaviour or retargeting. So this is when data about things you've searched for, or places you've visited on the internet, are used to remind you about products or services that you've browsed. So I guess this is probably the most straightforward type of what surveillance capitalists would call surveillance advertising.  Todd Landman  2:57  Yeah, I understand that, Sam, but you know when I'm internally in Amazon searching for things. And they say you bought this other people who bought this might like this, have you thought about, you know, getting this as well. But this is actually between platforms. This is, you know, might do a Google search one day. And then on Facebook or another platform, I see that same product being suggested to me. So how did, how did the data cross platforms? Are they selling data to each other? Is that how that works?  Sam Gilbert  3:22  So there's a variety of different technical mechanisms. So without wanting to get too much into the jargon of the ad tech world, there are all kinds of platforms, which put together data from different sources. And then in a programmatic or automated way, allow advertisers the opportunity to bid in an auction for the right to target people who the data suggests are interested in particular products. So it's quite a kind of complex ecosystem. I think maybe one of the things that gets lost a little bit in the discussion is some of the differences between the ways in which big tech companies like Facebook and Google and Amazon use data inside their own platforms, and the ways in which data flows out from those platforms and into the wider digital ecosystem. I guess maybe just to add one more thing about that. I think, probably many people would have a hard time thinking of something as straightforward as being retargeted with a product that they've already browsed for, they wouldn't necessarily see that as surveillance, or see that as being particularly problematic. I think what gets a bit more controversial, is where this enormous volume of data can have machine learning algorithms applied to it, in order to make predictions about products or services that people might be interested in as consumers that they themselves haven't even really considered. I think that's where critics of what they would call surveillance capitalism have a bigger problem with what's going on. Todd Landman  4:58  No I understand that's, that's a great great explanation. Thank you. And I guess just to round out this set of questions, really then it sounds to me like there's a tendency for accumulated value and expenditure here, that is really creating monopolies and cartels. To what degree is the language of monopoly and cartel being used? Because these are, you know, we rattle off the main platforms we use, but we use those because they have become so very big. And, you know, being a new platform, how does a new platform cut into that ecosystem? Because it feels like it's dominated by some really big players. Sam Gilbert  5:32  Yes. So I think this is a very important and quite complicated area. So it is certainly the case that a lot of Silicon Valley tech companies have deliberately pursued a strategy of trying to gain a monopoly. In fact, it might even be said that that's sort of inherent to the venture capital driven start-up business model to try and dominate particular market space. But I suppose the sense in which some of these companies, let's take Facebook as an example, are monopolies is really not so related to the way in which they monetize data or to their business model. So Facebook might reasonably be said to be a monopolist of encrypted messaging, because literally billions of people use Facebook's platform to communicate with each other. But it isn't really a monopolist of advertising space, because there are so many other alternatives available to advertisers who want to promote their products. I guess another dimension to this is the fact that although there are unquestionably concentrations of power with the big tech companies, they also provide somewhat of a useful service to the wider market, in that they allow smaller businesses to acquire customers much more effectively. So that actually militates against monopoly. Because now in the current digital advertising powered world, not every business has to be so big and so rich in terms of capital, that it can afford to do things like TV advertising. The platform's that Facebook and Google provides are also really helpful to small businesses that want to grow and compete with bigger players.  Todd Landman  7:15  Yeah, now I hear you shifting into the positive turn here. So I'm going to push you on this. So what is good data? And why are you an optimist about the good data elements to the work you've been doing? Sam Gilbert  7:27  Well, for me, when I talk about good data, what I'm really talking about is the positive public and social potential of data. And that really comes from my own professional experience. Because although at the moment, I spend most of my time researching and writing about these issues of data and digital technology, actually, my background is in the commercial sector. So I spent 18 years working in product and strategy and marketing roles, and particularly financial services. Also at the data company, Experian, also in a venture backed FinTech business called Bought By Many. And I learnt a lot about the ways in which data can be used to make businesses successful. And I learned a lot of techniques that, in general, at the moment, are only really put to use to achieve quite banal goals. So for example, to sell people more trainers, or to encourage them to buy more insurance products. And so one of the things that I'm really interested in is how some of those techniques and technologies can move across from the commercial sector, into the public sector, the third sector, and be put to work in ways that are more socially beneficial. So maybe just to give one example of that type of data that I think contains huge potential for public goods is search data. So this is the data set that is produced by all of us using Google and Bing and other search engines on a daily basis. Now, ordinarily, when this data is used, it is to do banal things like, target shoes more effectively. But there is also this emerging discipline called Infodemiology, where academic researchers use search data in response to public health challenges. So one great example of that, at the moment has been work by Bill Lampos at University College London and his team, where they've built a predictive model around COVID symptoms using search data. And that model actually predicts new outbreaks 17 days faster than conventional modes of epidemiological surveillance. So that's just one example of the sort of good I believe data can bring. Todd Landman  9:50  So it's like a really interesting example of an early early warning system and it could work not only for public health emergencies, but other emerging emergencies whether they be conflict, or natural disasters or any topic that people are searching for, is that correct? Sam Gilbert  10:05  Yes, that's right. I mean, it's not just in the public health field that researchers have used this, you just put me in mind actually Todd of a really interesting paper written by some scholars in Japan who are looking at citizens decision making in response to natural disaster warnings. So floods and earthquakes that that migration patterns I guess, would be the way of summarising it. Those are things that can also be detected using search data.  Todd Landman  10:31  Well, that's absolutely fascinating. So if we go back to public health then. I was just reading a new book, out called Pandemocracy in Europe: Power, Parliaments and People in Times of COVID. And it's edited by Matthias Kettemann and Konrad Lachmayer. And there's a really fascinating chapter in this book that transcends the nation state, if you will. And it talks about platforms and pandemics. And one section of the chapter starts to analyse Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and telegram on the degree to which they were able to control and or filter information versus disinformation or misinformation. And just the scale of some of this stuff is quite fascinating. So you know, Facebook has 2.7 billion daily users, it's probably a bigger number now. And you know, 22.3% of their investigated Facebook posts contain misinformation about COVID-19. And they found that the scale of misinformation was so large that they had to move to AI solutions, some human supervision of those AI solutions. But what's your take on the role of these big companies like we've been talking about Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Telegram, and their ability to control the narrative and at least provide safe sources of information, let's say in times of COVID, but there may be other issues of public interest where they have a role to play?  Sam Gilbert  11:57  Yes, I think this is such an important question. It's very interesting that you use the phrase, control the narrative, because of course, that is something that big tech companies have traditionally been extremely reluctant to do. And one of the things I explore a bit in my book is the extent to which this can really be traced back to some unexamined normative assumptions on the part of tech company executives, where they think that American norms of free speech and the free speech protections of the First Amendment that's sort of universal laws that are applicable everywhere, rather than things which are culturally and historically contingent. And for that reason, they have been extremely reluctant to do any controlling of the narrative and have tended to champion free speech over the alternative course of action that they might take, which is to be much more proactive in combating harms, including but not limited to misinformation. I think this probably also speaks to another problem that I'm very interested in, in the book, which is what we are concerned about when we say we're concerned about big tech companies' power, because I think ordinarily, the discussion about big tech companies power tends to focus on their concentrations of market power. Or in the case of surveillance capitalism theory, it concentrates on the theoretical power that algorithms have over individuals and their decision making. And what gets lost a bit in that is the extent to which tech companies by providing these platforms and these technologies actually empower other people to do things that weren't possible before. So in some work I've been doing with Amanda Greene, who's a philosopher at University College London, we've been thinking about that concept of empowering power, as we call it. And as far as we're concerned, that's actually a much more morally concerning aspect of the power of big tech, big tech companies than their market position.  Todd Landman  14:11  Yeah. So I like it that you cite the First Amendment of the American Constitution, but interestingly, the international framework for the protection and promotion of human rights also, you know, has very strong articles around protection of free speech, free assembly, free association, which of course, the tech companies will be interested in looking at and and reviewing. But what it raises to I believe really is is a question around the kind of public regulation of private actors, because these are private actors. They're not subjected to international human rights law in the way that states are. And yet they're having an impact on mass publics. They're having an impact on politics. They're having an impact on debate. So perhaps I misspoke by saying control the narrative. What I'm really interested in is we seem to have lost mediation. We have unmediated access to information. And it seems to me that these it's incumbent upon these organisations to provide some kind of mediation of content, because not all things are true just because they're said. So it gets back to that question, what where's the boundary for them? When will they step in and say this is actually causing harm if there's some sort of a big tech Hippocratic oath about do no harm that needs to be developed? So that, so there is at least some kind of attempt to draw a boundary around what is shared and what is not shared? Sam Gilbert  15:34  Yes, so the idea of a Hippocratic oath for tech workers is definitely out there, the writer who has explored it more than I have is James Williams in his book Stand Out Of Our Light. I think that that is certainly something that would help. I also think that it is beneficial that at the moment, we're having more discussion about data ethics and the ethics of artificial intelligence, and that that is permeating some of the tech companies. So I think more ethical reflection on the part of tech executives and tech workers is to be welcomed. I don't think that's sufficient. And I do think that it's important that we have stronger regulation of the tech sector. And I suppose from my perspective, the thing that needs to be regulated, much more than anything to do with how data is collected or how data is used in advertising. Is this what sometimes referred to as online safety, or other times it's referred to as online harms. So that is anything that gives rise to individuals being at risk of being harmed as they live their lives online. There's actually legislation that is coming through in the UK at the moment called online safety bill, which is far from perfect legislation, but in my opinion, it's directionally right. Because it is more concerned with preventing harm and giving tech companies a responsibility for playing their part in it, then it is concerned with trying to regulate data or advertising. Todd Landman  17:13  Yeah, so it's really the result of activity that is trying to address rather than that the data that drives the the activity, if I could put it that way. So if we think about this, do no harm element, the mediating function that's required at least to get trusted information available to users. I, I wonder if we could pivot a little bit to the current crisis in Ukraine, because I've noticed on social media platforms, a number of sites have popped up saying we're a trusted source for reporting on on the current conflict, and they get a sort of kite mark or a tick for that. I've also seen users saying, don't believe everything you see being tweeted out from Ukraine. So where does this take us and not only COVID, but to something as real time active and horrific as conflict in a country, we can talk about Ukraine or other conflicts about the sharing of information on social media platforms? Sam Gilbert  18:08  Yes, well, this is a very difficult question. And unfortunately, I don't have the answer for you today. I guess what I would point to is something you touched on there Todd, which is the idea of mediation. And we have been through this period with social media, where the organizations, the institutions that we traditionally relied on to tell us what was true and what was false and sort fact from fiction, those organisations have been disintermediated. Or in some cases, they have found themselves trying to compete in this very different information environment that is much more dynamic in a way that actually ends up undermining the journalistic quality that we would otherwise expect from them. So this is not a very satisfactory answer, because I don't know what can be done about it, except that it is a very serious problem. I suppose just to make one final point that I've been reminded I've been reading stories on this topic in relation to the Ukraine crisis, is that the duality of this power that tech companies and that technology has given to ordinary users in the era of social media over the last 15 years or so. So if we were to rewind the clock to 2010, or 2011, the role of Twitter and Facebook and other technology platforms in enabling protest and resistance against repressive regimes that was being celebrated. If we then roll forwards a few years and look at a terrible case like the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya people in Myanmar, we are at the complete opposite end of the spectrum where the empowerment of users with technology has disastrous consequences, and I guess if we then roll forward again to the Ukraine crisis, it's still not really clear whether the technology is having a beneficial or detrimental effect. So this is really just to say, once again, when we think about the power of tech companies, these are the questions I think we need to be grappling with, rather than questions to do with data. Todd Landman  20:31  Sure, there was there was a great book years ago called the Logic of Connective Action. And it was really looking at the way in which these emerging platforms because the book was published some years ago about lowering collective action costs, whether it was, you know, for protest movements, or, you know, anti-authoritarian movements, etc, we did a piece of work years ago with someone from the German Development Institute on the role of Facebook, in, in opposition to the Ben Ali regime in Tunisia, and Facebook allowed people to make a judgement as to whether they should go to a protest or not based on number of people who said they were going and and so it lowered the cost of participation, or at least the calculated costs of participating in those things. But as you say, we're now seeing this technology being used on a daily basis, I watch drone footage every day of tanks being blown up, of buildings being destroyed. And you know, part of my mind thinks it's this real, what I'm watching. And then also part of my mind thinks about, what's the impact of this? Does this have an impact on morale of the people involved in the conflict? Does it change the narrative, if you will, about the progress and or, you know, lack of progress in in the conflict, and then, of course, the multiple reporting of whether they're going to be peace talks, humanitarian corridors and all this other stuff. So it does raise very serious questions about the authenticity, veracity and ways in which technology could verify what we're seeing. And of course, you have time date stamps, metadata and other things that tell you that that was definitely a geolocated thing. So are these companies doing that kind of work? Are they going in and digging into the metadata, I noticed that Maxar Technologies, for example, is being used for its satellite data extensively, and looking at the build-up of forces and the movement of troops and that sort of thing. But again, that's a private company making things available in the public sphere for people to then reach judgments, media companies to use, it's an incredible ecosystem of information, and that it seems like a bit like a wild west to me, in terms of what we believe what we don't believe and the uses that can be made of this imagery and commentary. Sam Gilbert  22:32  Yes, so there is this as an all things, this super proliferation of data. And what is still missing is the intermediation layer to both make sense of that. And also tell stories around it that have some kind of journalistic integrity. I mean what you put me in mind of there Todd was the open source intelligence community, and some of the work that including human rights organisations do to leverage these different data data sources to validate and investigate human rights abuses taking place in different parts of the world. So to me, this seems like very important work, but also work that is rather underfunded. I might make the same comment about fact checking organisations, which seem to do very important work in the context of disinformation, but don't seem to be resourced in the way that perhaps they should be. Maybe just one final comment on this topic would relate to the media, the social media literacy of individuals. And I wonder whether that is something that is maybe going to help us in trying to get out of this impasse, because I think over time, people are becoming more aware that information that they see on the internet may not be reliable. And while I think there's still a tendency for people to get caught up in the moment, and retweets or otherwise amplify these types of messages, I think that some of the small changes the technology companies have made to encourage people to be more mindful when they're engaging with and amplifying content might just help build on top of that increase in media literacy, and take us to a slightly better place in the future. Todd Landman  24:26  Yeah, I mean, the whole thing around media literacy is really important. And I I also want to make a small plea for data literacy, just understanding and appreciating what data and statistics can tell us without having to be you know, an absolute epidemiologist, statistician or quantitative analyst. But I wanted to hark back to your idea around human rights investigations, we will have a future episode with a with a group that does just that and it's about maintaining the chain of evidence, corroborating evidence and using you know, digital evidence as you, you know in ways that help human rights investigations and, you know, if and when this conflict in Ukraine finishes, there will be some sort of human rights investigatory process. We're not sure which bodies going to do that yet, because we've been called for, you know, like a Nuremberg style trial, there have been calls for the ICC to be involved as been many other stakeholders involved, but that digital evidence is going to be very much part of the record. But I wonder just to, yeah go ahead Sam.  Sam Gilbert  25:26  Sorry I am just going to add one thing on that, which I touched on this a little bit, and my book, but I think there's a real risk, actually, that open-source intelligence investigations become collateral damage in the tech companies pivot towards privacy. So what some investigators are finding is that material that they rely on to be able to do their investigations is being unilaterally removed by tech companies, either because it's YouTube, and they don't want to be accused of promoting terrorist content, or because it's Google or Facebook, and they don't want to being accused of infringing individual's privacy. So while this is not straightforward, I just think it's worth bearing in mind that sometimes pushing very hard for values like data privacy can have these unintended consequences in terms of open source intelligence. Todd Landman  26:24  Yes, it's an age old chestnut about the unintended consequences of purposive social action. I think that was a Robert Merton who said that at one point, but I guess in closing that I have a final question for you because you are an optimist. You're a data optimist, and you've written a book called good data. So what is there to be optimistic about for the future?  Sam Gilbert  26:42  Well, I suppose I should say something about what type of optimist I am first, so to do that, I'll probably reach for Paul Romer's distinction between blind optimism and conditional optimism. So blind optimism is the optimism of a child hoping that her parents are going to build her a tree house. Conditional optimism is the optimism of a child who thinks, well, if I can get the tools and if I can get a few friends together, and if we can find the right tree, I think we can build a really incredible tree house together. So I'm very much in the second camp, the camp of conditional optimism. And I guess the basis for that probably goes to some of the things we've touched on already, where I just see enormous amounts of untapped potential in using data in ways that are socially useful. So perhaps just to bring in one more example of that. Opportunity Insights, the group at Harvard run by Raj Chetty has had some incredibly useful insights into social mobility and economic inequality in America, by using de-identified tax record data to understand over a long period of time, the differences in people's incomes. And I really think that that type of work is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this enormous proliferation of data that is out there. So I think if the data can be made available to researchers, also to private organisations in a way that, as far as possible, mitigates the risks that do exist to people's privacy. There's no knowing quite how many scientific breakthroughs or advances in terms of human and social understanding that we might be able to get to. Todd Landman  28:52  Amazing and I guess, to your conditional optimism, I would add my own category, which is a cautious optimist, and that's what I am. But talking to you today does really provide deep insight to us to understand the many, many different and complex issues here and that last point you made about, you know, the de-identified data used for for good purposes - shining a light on things that that are characterising our society, it with a view to be able to do something about it, you see things that you wouldn't see before and that's one of the virtues of good data analysis is that you end up revealing macro patterns and inconsistencies and inequalities and other things that then can feed into the policymaking process to try to make the world a better place and human rights are no exception to that agenda. So for now, Sam, I just want to thank you so much for coming on to this episode and sharing all these incredible insights and, and and the work that you've done. So thank you. Chris Garrington 29:49 Thanks for listening to this episode of The Rights Track, which was presented by Todd Landman and produced by Chris Garrington of Research Podcasts with funding from 3DI. You can find a detailed transcript on the website at www.RightsTrack.org. And don't forget to subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts to access future and earlier episodes. Further reading and resources: Sam Gilbert (2021) Good Data: An Optimist's Guide to Our Digital Future. Bill Lampos' covid infodemiology: Lampos, V., Majumder, M.S., Yom-Tov, E. et al. (2021) “Tracking COVID-19 using online search”. Infodemiology Japan/natural disasters paper: [1906.07770] Predicting Evacuation Decisions using Representations of Individuals' Pre-Disaster Web Search Behavior (arxiv.org) On “empowering power”:  Greene, Amanda and Gilbert, Samuel J., (2021) “More Data, More Power? Towards a Theory of Digital Legitimacy”. On the Hippocratic oath for tech workers: James Williams (2018) Stand out of our Light: Freedom and Resistance in the Attention Economy. Matthias C. Kettemann and Konrad Lachmayer (eds.) (2022) Pandemocracy in Europe: Power, Parliaments and People in Times of COVID-19. W. Lance Bennett and Alexandra  Segerberg (2013) The Logic of Connective Action; Digital Media and the Personalization of Contentious Politics.

Rasha Hasaneen is the Vice President of Innovation and Product Excellence for Trane Technologies. A former executive with global businesses, Rasha also leads the Center for Healthy & Efficient Spaces as Executive Director. In this show learn about: Why, when the world is diving into ESG and Climate measures we are not normally drawn to consider inside spaces, – why is that? Why is how we live indoors so crucial to a sustainable future? What is the impact on productivity loss due to unhealthy indoor spaces? Covid 19 is not the first pandemic and not likely to be the last, learn about the “extra layer.” Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services   Find out more about Rasha below: Rasha on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rashahasaneen/ Rasha on Twitter: https://twitter.com/rhasaneen Company Website: https://www.tranetechnologies.com   Full Transcript Below ----more---- Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband, or friend. Others might call me boss, coach, or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker.   Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as The Leadership Hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors, and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush, and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you   Today's special guest is Rasha Hasaneen. She's a Vice President and Executive Director, at Trane Technologies where she runs Center for Healthy & Efficient Spaces. Rasha is also a board of advisor member, a board member for a number of technology and climate tech companies and councils. But before we get a chance to speak with Rasha, it's The Leadership Hacker News. The Leadership Hacker News Steve Rush: In the news today, we explore whether or not organizations and leaders are taking ESG seriously. And if they do, how it can directly correlate to great results. The letters ESG of course stand for Environmental, Social and Governance, and are typically how organizations structure activities and commitments to each be it greenhouse gases and emissions and waste, that's E. Staff, labor, relations, employee safety, that's the S or board diversity in supply chain management, that's the G and while most organizations will have a view and a lens. Having tactical and focused activities can be really relevant to the business world and more and more shareholders and stakeholders, as well as customers, staff and consumers are starting to take more notice around ESG and ESG ratings. The momentum towards ESG has not slowed with the pandemic. The crisis has intensified and reinforced the important issues of ESG. George Serafeim, a Harvard Business School Professor and ESG expert said COVID 19 has caused us to dive deeper and integrate our ESG inside organizations around them management and their strategy. And it's no longer just about feel-good issues. We're talking about even more important value drivers. So, let's have a look at how ESG can really drive shareholder return and maximize value for the organization. In one HBR Study, they found that $1 investment yielded $28 return over 20 years for companies that focused on ESG. And those that didn't focus on ESG measures only returned $14. In a recent study by McKinsey's, they explained executing ESG effectively can help combat rising operating expenses. Affecting operating profits as much as 60%. For leaders who want to reap such reports, they should immediately begin measuring ESG metrics alongside other KPIs. Of course, companies can then demonstrate what they measure and the impact that has to returns, and ESG helps with talent too. According to Wharton, Professor Peter Cappelli. Most hiring is a result of drastically poor retention. This issue has only been compounded in recent years with Mercer Global Talent Trends, 2020, calling the great recession. Revealing that nearly half, that's 46% of C-suites believe that their organization is ill equipped to attain, attract, the right talent. Though ESG and talent may seem unrelated, they are deeply correlated. A study from Marsha McLean & McLennan found employers with an attractive ESG strategy, attract, and retained the best talent in the marketplace. In addition, saw performance roughly 25% higher than average employers. There's enormous amount of evidence pointing that ESG is a value driver and will be even more of when moving forward. So, if leaders want to win, they should be putting those three letters, ESG at the heart of their strategies. That's been The Leadership Hacker News, as always please get in touch, in news, stories or insights that you might have. Start of Podcast Steve Rush: Rasha Hasaneen is our special guest on today's show. She's the Vice President of Innovation and product excellence for Trane Technologies, a former executive with Global Businesses. Rasha now leads the Center for Healthy & Efficient Spaces as Executive Director for Trane Technologies, Rasha welcome to The Leadership Hacker Podcast. Rasha Hasaneen: Thank you, Steve. It's a pleasure to be here. Steve Rush: So, you and I have taken an absolute age to try and get together, right? With the moving schedules, global pandemic but we are finally here at last. Rasha Hasaneen: Yes, agreed. It's been a little crazy. I mean, every time we think there's, you know, there's light at the end of the tunnel, there's more to come. And so, I think we're all trying to navigate it as best we can Steve Rush: Indeed. And the first time you and I met, we were talking around climate change and the role that Trane Technologies plays in that. And if anything, timing's perfect because the world has just really grab hold of the whole climate change initiative, hasn't it? Rasha Hasaneen: You bet, absolutely. Steve Rush: Yeah. I'm looking forward to getting into that in a moment before we do, though, we love our guests to give our audience the opportunity to share their backstory and understand a little bit about how they've arrived to do what they do. Tell us a little bit about Rasha? Rasha Hasaneen: You bet. So, I'm originally Egyptian. I moved to the United States very young. My mom came here to study. And then, you know, I spent my formative years between sort of the U.S. and the Middle East. Came back to do University, actually in Canada. So, I am also Canadian. Then worked for a few years, came back to the U.S., did a Masters, then sort of dug in on the digital side of things. So, I worked in Silicon Valley for a number of years. Decided I was really interested in sustainability with a big S, versus sort of sustainability with a little less S. Sort of doing stuff at home and composting and doing all the cool stuff. I wanted to really understand how I could impact climate change at the time. I will not date myself by telling you when the time was, but it was before climate change was cool. But I realized that sort of the combination of digital technologies with actually the industrial world was going to have a much bigger impact than the combination of digital technologies with the consumer world, which was kind of all the rage at the time. This was the early days of Amazon, again, dating myself. The early days of Amazon. You know, I had an iPod before the iPhone came out, which a lot of listeners may not remember. Steve Rush: Yep. Rasha Hasaneen: But it became clear to me that actually the integration of digital and industrial was really where it was going to be. And so, I went back and did the Doctorate, focusing on sustainability, but really focusing on industrial businesses. Made my change from Silicon Valley to sort of oil and gas and power. Finished my Doctorate. And then I was really on the supply side, I would say of climate change. So, power generation, you know, fossils versus renewables, et cetera. And then at the time Ingersol Rand, which then became Trane Technologies, came to me and said, hey, how would you like to be on the demand side? And they presented a very compelling argument about what it means to be on the demand side of climate change and really understanding how to reduce consumption through efficiency and so on. And so, they convinced me, and I joined the company to do product excellence and innovation and have never looked back since. Steve Rush: Awesome. So where did the bug come from? Because the whole career so far for you has been around sustainability. Rasha Hasaneen: Yes. Steve Rush: And where did that kind of a little S turn into a big S? Rasha Hasaneen: For me, you know, I'll share a very personal story. When I was working in Silicon Valley, I got really sick. I was in the hospital for about nine days in the intensive care unit. I was very young. And until that point I was kind of invincible and so was the world. And then you kind of examine your own vulnerabilities at that point. And then, for me, it was more about what, you know, you get to a point where it was like, what do you want to do with your life? And you want to do something that matters, right? And you also want to do something you're good at, and that you enjoy. So, I knew I enjoyed building things. I enjoyed, you know, building teams from scratch, doing things that were completely new and what I loved to do. And so, when it came to where I could apply my skillset in a way that would really help, sustainability became sort of part of the narrative for me personally, right. It was like, you know, how do we make businesses more sustainable? How do we make it better for people all over the world? Not just people in certain economic situations or in certain countries. And how does that the ubiquity of climate, how do you impact that? It was a big problem to solve, and it seems really overwhelming. And that was kind of, you know, it became a big puzzle for me, like, it's overwhelming, how do you break it down into kind of bite size pieces? And so, I started to understand it more and I wanted to really work on something that would really like change the world. And, you know, at the time, you know, apps were growing in popularity. And so, people would make apps for everything, right. I think at one point there was an iFart app. I was like, that's not what I want to work on. And so, I started to really sort of get the bug back for, you know, industrial businesses, I'm Mechanical Engineer by trade. My Masters is in Industrial Engineering, so I kind of missed that sort of the tangibility of being part of a business that builds things. But I also knew that it was that combination of my digital experience, bringing it to sort of the heavy metal type industry that was really going to make a difference. And every time I looked at something that was made better by digital, it was like the gains were humongous. And, so for me, it was really about doing something of import with sort of your superpowers. And that's kind of how I landed here. Some of it was serendipity of course. But a lot of it was really just having an internal sort of self-reflection over a period where your kind of most vulnerable, I think. Steve Rush: It's a great reflection. So, when it comes to climate change, our listeners are probably thinking, you know, traditional ESG measures. It's unlikely that when they do think of climate measures that they think of indoors. Rasha Hasaneen: Yeah. Steve Rush: And being drawn to consider indoor spaces, what's the reason it doesn't get the same profile, maybe as some of the other more explicit things that folk are undertaking right now? Rasha Hasaneen: Absolutely. Great question. And it's a question I think about a lot. So historically it has taken a very long time, even for climate measures to become acknowledged as quote unquote real or something that we need to pay attention to. It took focused effort by science and researchers. It took, you know seasons and seasons of intense weather for sort of this very deliberate approach to take hold among the population. Indoor climates are very similar. They're intangible, right. Like your indoor climate is fine until it's not. Steve Rush: Right. Rasha Hasaneen: And it has to be really bad for you to want to do something. Like, just think about your own home, right? Like you're in your home, if you're a little cold, you put on a blanket, right. You know, if it's a little stuffy, you open a window or you kind of deal with it. And it's not until like somebody burns something that you're like, okay, I got to turn on the hood vent. I've got to clear out the smoke and it's got to really be irritating. And humans tend to go to the bad, like I want to make the bad better. I rarely want to make the good, better if it's good, it's fine. And indoor spaces are no different. The impact of negative indoor environments is chronic. It's not acute. So, it happens over time, and it could be so many factors. And like, is it genetic? Is it this? Is it that? Why do I have asthma? And so, in the south here, in the United States, we call it the boiling frog syndrome, right. If you put a frog in really hot water, it jumps right out. But if you put a frog in cold water and you heat up the water slowly, it can boil to death. I know it's very gruesome, but without realizing that that's what's happening to it. And that's kind of how indoor environments are. You can't see it. Most of the times, you can't smell it. You can't feel it. And so, these indoor environments are not given as much attention by individuals. Steve Rush: Mm, and also. People perceive climate change to be an outside thing. They don't actually make the association that it's everything around us. Rasha Hasaneen: Inside, exactly. And so, were so focused on planetary health and sort of, you know, our very existence that we won't always then come back and think about human health. And if you just think about ESG metrics, the E gets a lot of attention. The S gets a little bit of attention, but not nearly as much. And human health is really a part of that social piece, right? Steve Rush: Right. Rasha Hasaneen: So, if you think about, you know, environmental, social, and governance, that social piece, that human health, the health of employees. The health of communities, it's something that's very big. It's very nebulous, very much a like climate change, but hasn't gotten the same attention. And people don't realize that, you know, you experience 90% of the outdoors in indoors, right. Because that's where you spent most of your time. And if you're bringing outdoor air in, if you're bringing in, you know, outdoor lights, you're bringing that in, but you don't think about it that way, because those walls are up and it feels very safe inside and you could be creating some negative health effects or maybe not negative health effects, but they're not super positive, right? Steve Rush: Right. Rasha Hasaneen: They're okay. Steve Rush: Yeah. What are the things that contribute to inside sustainability? The things that are around us at work and at home we can be thought full about. Rasha Hasaneen: That's another really great question. So, I think that what people most associate with is thermal comfort, right. Am I too hot? Am I too cold? If I'm too warm, you know, I can't sleep. I can't work. I can't get creative. I have to sort of get to the right temperature and that's absolutely part of it, but you also have a number of other factors. Air quality is one of the main one's. Different levels of what we've historically measured as a proxy, CO2 can improve or decrease productivity and the amount of CO2 in a space can make you sleepy, but it can also make it very hard for you to think and process information and complete tasks. In addition, you know, with respect to air, you know, there's compounds that are generated all the time, either by the materials in your room or by activities of people, we call them volatile organic compounds. Those can be pretty harmful. They can be irritants. You hear about allergen, so air quality is a huge part of it. Lighting is another part of it. We've seen a lot of focus on lighting recently with the capability that LED gives you. So, when you had incandescent bulbs, you know, it was just one temperature, it was on or off, and so, you took it for granted. The productivity that came with the introduction of electricity and indoor lighting will far outweighed any potential issues with lighting. But as we started to have more access to light emitting diodes, now you could vary dimness, so light intensity, you could vary the temperature of the light. Is it white? Is it yellow? Is it sort of darker or lighter? You see daylight bulbs come out; does it simulate daylight? So, lighting has a huge component on our circadian rhythm, but it also plays a huge part in how well we also process information and so on. So, the third one here is lighting. And that's part of a bigger sort of piece around visual comfort. And that includes things like outside views. It includes things like, is there enough greenery? You know, our bodies are programmed to feel better when we are exposed to things that are good around us. And we're programmed to love plants and love outside views and so on. So, lighting and visual comfort is really important. And so, the last part of this is really acoustics. So, acoustics is really about sound and noise and really poor acoustics that you get from either equipment in a building or even externally coming in. So outside noise pollution can have a huge impact on how productive you are, how well you sleep. So, you might be able to sleep. You might be able to work, but the quality of that sleep and that work matters. And that has a lot to do with ambient noise, whether it's noise intensity, or noise frequency. Steve Rush: That's really insightful actually. And as you were spinning through those different themes, I'm putting myself in that scenario in my office and thinking about, oh, I'm not got enough light here or you know, I know how frustrated I get when I hear some outside noise and I get distracted easily. Rasha Hasaneen: Right. Steve Rush: They're all things that contribute to that. So not only is that sustainable, but absolutely has a direct correlation to people's wellbeing, doesn't it? Rasha Hasaneen: Exactly. That's exactly right, right. So, we think about LED lights, for example, we use the lighting example as being a phenomenal way to reduce energy intensity in the home or in the office, right? So, you see all these sort of LED projects where I'm like I'm going out and replacing all of the lighting in a skyscraper, all of the lighting in a mall. But what you don't understand is, what we are starting to understand is that that also improves wellbeing. So, that technology has enabled us to vary lighting temperature in a way to make, you know, and commercial organizations have known this for a very long time, right. The type of lighting you have changes, you're buying behavior. So, if I want to buy something, it's got to have the right lighting around it in order for me to be attracted, to buying that. Or if I'm at a restaurant, I have to have the right ambiance in order for me to feel relaxed or romantic or whatever it is you're aspiring to do in terms of the restaurant. Steve Rush: Right. Rasha Hasaneen: LED lights have turbocharged that, right. So, in an effort to reduce energy intensity and improve outdoor kind of sustainability or the carbon footprint of the built environment, we've also introduced a tool that can improve human health indoors, but you have to use that tool. So even though for example, LED lighting is very dimmable, most switches are still on, off. The dimmability of light is very important, right. You need to reduce light intensity throughout the day so that you can sleep at night, so you can be healthy the next day, so you can be productive. And, we're still learning in the built environment, how to do that. Air quality is no different, acoustics are no different, right. And so, as we're starting to learn about the impact of these different elements on human health, we can start to change how we build things, how we implement these systems in a way to take full advantage of not only their impact on sustainability, on climate, the big climate, but also their impact of the indoor climate on human health and start to tune these environments in a way that allow you to have different environments for different situations. Steve Rush: It's far more scientific than most people give this credit, right? Rasha Hasaneen: Absolutely. Steve Rush: You are talking about it in almost a forensic way, which I love by the way. I think it's really insightful, but I wonder how many people have to struggle with getting as thoughtful about that? Rasha Hasaneen: You're absolutely right. And we did a survey recently of just homeowners, right. So commercial spaces are a little bit different because a lot of times, you know, facility managers and building owners are really focused on employees, but the home tends to be where kind of your average consumer is. And when we talk about indoor air quality, for example, it's like, so what are the types of things you would do to improve your air quality? It's like, we light a candle. And you're like, oh my, right. Because it's like that fantastic. Except you know, there's so much more to air chemistry, you know, than lighting a candle and you could be making it worse. Steve Rush: Yeah. Rasha Hasaneen: Funny story, we're doing a project with a company in India and it's an indoor air quality sensor. And they had put it in these locations and every day and around the same time, they would see these particulates go up, right. And particulates are not great for a lot of reasons. They kind of get into your lungs and they cause asthma. But they also kind of carry viruses, bacteria, et cetera. And some particulates would go up and they would spike around the sensor. And so, they went to this place, and it turns out they were like lighting incense to worship. And it's like, okay, well, you might not want to get too close to God right now, right. Or in this way, there's other ways. But they were lighting incense right around this sensor. And the incense was creating, you know, this really crazy indoor environment. Now, again, in the grand scheme of things, right. Huge space, little stick of incense, not a big deal, but that's how people think about this kind of air quality. It's very unspecific, unscientific, but really the impacts on human health, super scientific, lots of studies out there that show the impacts of different elements of air and light and acoustics on productivity and health. And so, there's a lot out. And the challenge we're going to have through the pandemic have been sensitized to this is really bringing that science to the average consumer in a way that they can understand it and that they can digest it, right. And then really developing solutions where I don't have to have the consumer know every scientific detail to implement those solutions where they can just say, hey, I want a room for an asthmatic child. Can you please dial that in for me? Steve Rush: Yeah. Rasha Hasaneen: Right, and somebody else who understands the science, who understands the situation can help them really get the best indoor environment. Steve Rush: And it's like anything with, if you take the whole climate or journey to net zero, whatever your focus is right now. Rasha Hasaneen: Yeah. Steve Rush: It's everybody taking personal responsibility to do their bit, that will make the big difference overall, right? Rasha Hasaneen: Absolutely. And there are definitely strategies just like with anything else that could give you a really fantastic indoor environment that could have a really devastating impact on the climate, which then creates a poorer outdoor environment, which makes you have to work harder to create this really good indoor environment. So, I'll give you an example of that. If you in an urban environment, a lot of times the immediate microclimate around where you live or where you work is not fantastic, right. So, then you get the indoor environment, and you know, guidance that says, hey, you need to ventilate. The easiest way to ventilate is to open a window. Well, if you're out in the country, or if you're in a suburban environment, chances are your outdoor air is fantastic. And if you open up a window, you're going to create a really great indoor environment. However, if you have an HVAC System, if you've got your air conditioner on, summer, you have your air conditioner on. It's going to have to work harder because your kind of air conditioning, the world, right. All of that cool air sort of goes out your window, and the hot air comes in. So, it's going to work harder. It's going to use more energy. A lot of that energy is still very much fossils, and you're going to start to get a degrading outdoor environment. So even when you now open the window, you're not going to get the environment you want. If you're in an urban environment, you're already there. Steve Rush: Yeah. Rasha Hasaneen: When you open a window in an urban environment, a lot the CO2 and all of those things that are accumulated inside, they dilute, that's great. But what you're bringing in could have different things going on, right. You could have different pollutants coming in, allergen, smoke, VOCs, et cetera, depending on where you are in an urban environment. So, it's not easy, right. It's not easy. And your actions as an individual have a direct impact on climate. So, if you do one of these things and you have to use more energy to do it, multiply that by 7 billion people. Steve Rush: Right. Rasha Hasaneen: Right, so if everybody, and not 7 billion, not all 7 billion people have air conditioning systems, but a billion, let's talk about a billion, right. If everybody opens their windows and keeps their air conditioner on, or if everybody opens their windows, turns it off, then everything gets hot or everything gets cold depending on whether or not summer or winter or where you are in the world. Then you have to bring down the temperature again or bring up the temperature again, if it's cold, that air conditioning unit is working so much harder, multiplied by a billion. Steve Rush: Yeah, exactly Rasha Hasaneen: Right. And so that's the issue, and that's just homes, right. Now, let's talk about industrial environments or commercial environments and so on. And so, there are things that if you do them, could give you a negative environment on climate and give you a positive outcome when it comes to indoor environments. And the key is to get those indoor environments in a way that also reduces your greenhouse gas footprint, because you don't want to do one at the expense of the other. And that's why, you know, we call it The Center for Healthy & Efficient Spaces. It's because we want to make sure that the actions we're recommending to our clients, we want to make sure that the actions that I recommend in these podcasts are actions that will have a positive impact on both indoor and outdoor climates. Steve Rush: Yeah, it's all about pulling levers and getting balances. Isn't it? Rasha Hasaneen: Exactly. That's exactly right. Steve Rush: Yeah. Now you mentioned this a little earlier on, as you were talking through the different things that we could be thinking about, and you mentioned productivity, and there's a real business case that sits behind this, alongside that sustainability case, isn't there? Rasha Hasaneen: There absolutely is. So, if you look at a given building, right, let's say you're renting a space in a building or you've got a building and you've got a small business, you're an entrepreneur. The amount of money you spend on energy is a 10th of maybe the amount of money you're going to spend on people. It could be as much as the hundredth, right? So, it's a much smaller amount of money that you're going to spend on things like utilities and that's sort of our proxy for energy consumption, right. But your people are probably going to be one of your biggest assets and the health of those people becomes a huge economic lever for you as a business owner. We know, for example, that indoor air quality can have a productivity. So, let's just take indoor air quality as an example, and we can do this. We have studies on lighting. We study on acoustics, but I like air for a couple of reasons, you know. It's not just about sort of direct productivity every day, cognitive function, et cetera, but think about airborne pathogen transmission, which is still, I think, top of mind for a lot of people with the pandemic kind of still raging. Hundreds of billions of dollars a year is lost in productivity due to absenteeism. Steve Rush: Right. Rasha Hasaneen: Same with schools, then you combine both, absenteeism as a result of kids being sick from school. And then there's hundreds of billions more of loss productivity as a result of employees working while sick. Now think about that. I don't even have to make everybody perfectly safe from pathogen transmission. Like, I don't need to reduce a hundred percent of pathogen transmission in a building to improve this. If I can just improve the air quality in a building such that I reduce transmission of cold or flu, or COVID in this particular case by 10%, tens of billions, right. 20%, like, just think about that. Those are not big numbers, but if I create these environments in such a way that I can just reduce absenteeism, that's hundreds of billions of dollars. Steve Rush: Yeah. Rasha Hasaneen: And that's, just one part of the productivity. We know that air quality impacts asthma, chronic illnesses, which reduce productivity without creating absenteeism, right. If you're a chronic sufferer asthma or upper respiratory disease that has an impact on your productivity, but also impact cognitive function, right, as much as 30%. You can have poor indoor air quality and just your ability to process things and do tasks at work goes down dramatically. Steve Rush: That's a significant amount of time too, isn't it? Rasha Hasaneen: Absolutely, and learning, right. So, we think about school systems and the measures they have with student learning. Let's take out absenteeism for a second, right. Like just kids being sick. We found that, not we, researchers have found that the indoor environment can have as significant and impact on test scores as grades. So just think about public test. You want to predict how well a student is going to do on a test, okay. On a public test. There's a number of factors that can give you an indication of how well that student is going to do. The most common one we think about is, are they a good student? Do they get good grades? That has a really strong correlation with how well they're going to do on these tests. As strong a correlation, how good is their indoor environment? Steve Rush: Wow. Rasha Hasaneen: As strong a correlation on how well they're going to do on this test is whether or not while taking that test, do they have a good indoor environment? And that includes acoustics, it includes lighting and includes air, and it includes temperature. And so, you're thinking about this and you're like that child's ability to score on a test is that dramatically impacted by indoor environments. Like it boggles the mind, right. And these are, I mean, these are scientific studies. They're peer reviewed, they're out there. You can kind of see them, but I mean, these are, you know, they've done control groups and testing doing these things on days where it's good indoor environments, days on bad indoor environments, it's amazing to me and that's the type of productivity we're talking about. And so again, there's so many people on the earth, right. Multiply that by hundreds or millions or billions. And you're talking about a huge sort of impact, not just on human health, but also on sort of economic productivity. Steve Rush: Yeah. It's amazing when you start to just think of the tiny little changes we could make and then multiplication across the globe, we can make a massive difference, not just for sustainability, but also productivity and wellbeing. Rasha Hasaneen: Absolutely. Steve Rush: Really fascinating. Rasha Hasaneen: And then when you think about, just to close this up, when you think about the places that have poor indoor environmental quality, it's typically those places that don't have a lot of investment. Steve Rush: Right. Rasha Hasaneen: And therefore, they're in disadvantaged communities and disadvantaged areas. So, it exacerbates any equity issues we have, right. So, you just think about social equity and having sort of high-quality indoor environments as a human right almost, right. To say, look guys, like kids in school and disadvantaged communities, have the card stacked up against them already. And this is yet another card that's kind of stacked up against those who are less fortunate. And so, you start to look at the equity impacts of this and how much this exacerbates that. And you start to realize that a lot of where we think about human health and social equity, it comes right down to, you know, can I create these indoor environments for people in different economic situations, in such a way that I'm leveling the scales a little bit as it relates to social equity. Steve Rush: So, ponding, how many of our listeners right now are thinking about their environment as they listen to this? Very interesting to get some feedback from our listeners about that, wouldn't it? Rasha Hasaneen: Oh, you bet. Steve Rush: Yeah. Rasha Hasaneen: Absolutely would love to hear from listeners on that. Steve Rush: So, we're going to flip it a little now, and this is where I get to hack into your leadership brain. Rasha Hasaneen: Awesome. Steve Rush: But before I do that, I just wanted to get a sense from you that if I was a listener listening to this and I was a leader or an entrepreneur, where's the first place I should really start to think? What's the immediate kind of win I can make? Rasha Hasaneen: When it comes to indoor environmental quality, it depends on your situation, right. If you're working, you know, from home, if you have control over the environment, definitely you can start by doing things as simple as improving your lighting, right. You can get LED lights pretty much from any hardware store, you can get dimmers. You can improve of your lighting. You can connect with your HVAC provider, make sure you have the right number of air changes that you're getting enough ventilation, that you've got filters, right. The simplest thing is make sure your filters are changed on a regular basis. You know, there's a lot you can do when it comes to acoustics, to insulate things like window coverings and in fact, now there's actual window coverings that say on them, how much energy they save. You know, there's a lot you can do when it comes to your own space or the space for your employees. And then you can also consider in room type solutions. If you don't have access to those broader systems, right? So, we carry an in-room air purification solution, you just plug it in and run it and away it goes, and you do a little bit of maintenance. You can do an in room HEPA. You can think about opening windows on a regular basis to make sure there's enough ventilation. So, there is a lot that can be done by the individual, by a small business, an entrepreneur just by being conscious of this, if you want to do things that are more sophisticated, definitely, you know, you would need to connect with a professional. And I would say, if you do have a larger business or a larger building, it's not a do it yourself. Steve Rush: No. Rasha Hasaneen: Right. Steve Rush: Yeah. Rasha Hasaneen: It's definitely not, because you want to make sure you're balancing energy or make sure you're balancing the different elements of indoor environmental quality. So definitely if you're a listener, and you're a building owner or you've got multiple buildings, you're a real estate investor, or you've got sort of a number of opportunities to improve people's and their environments. Don't try to tackle it yourself, definitely reach out to a professional and have them come in, do an indoor air quality assessment or indoor environmental quality assessment, understand where some of the gaps are. There are fantastic certifications, right. Out there for building performance. So, whether it's wealth certification, fit well certification, there's a number of certifications out there that can be done to ensure, and to communicate to your tenants, that these buildings are optimized for indoor environmental quality, Steve Rush: Great advice, good hacks too. So, leadership hacks time. Rasha Hasaneen: Awesome. Steve Rush: I want to dive into your experience. You've led businesses all over the world, different types of businesses and different types of teams. And I want to try and get into your top three leadership hacks. What would they be? Rasha Hasaneen: That's a really good question. So, my leadership hacks, or I think there are things that I do deliberately that if I were to say them, you would be like, of course, but most people probably wouldn't do subconsciously. I know I wouldn't do subconsciously. So, the first thing I do is, you know, so most of the teams that I lead are innovative high performing teams. And I think there's a leadership approach that says you have to have a vision and the strategy, and you have to have the answer as a leader. And the answer is you don't. And it's very jarring for employee or for team members that are used to kind of having a more autocratic approach. So, I take collaborative to the sort of, to the extreme and I work with my teams and have for years to build strategies, to build visions. I don't expect to, you know, I don't expect to come up with the vision and kind of have everyone follow. So, for me, it's really around early and often with the team. Talking about the team's vision and the mission and how we want to be seen. And so, that sort of extreme collaboration, I'm not going to call it delegation, but really working with your team and giving them ownership of not just the tactical execution, but also of the strategy. Really for me, has worked exceptionally well. The outcome is a lot better. It's scratchier, and so that's my second sort of leadership hack, which is, don't be afraid if people are uncomfortable, don't be afraid to be uncomfortable because that's when kind the best outcomes are. And I always feel like afterwards people really appreciate discomfort. Steve Rush: Yeah. Rasha Hasaneen: I've had a couple of team members that are just, oh my gosh, I never want to do that again. But most of the time people start to get it and they're like, oh, I get it now, right. And it's like, there's no epiphany there. It's a really uncomfortable place when there's a lot of disagreement about where to go and feels very chaotic, I think at first. So that's the second one, is to really get comfortable with other people's discomfort and your own discomfort, right. Of not having the answers and maybe being seen as vulnerable. And that leads me into my third one, which is really sort of leaning into the vulnerability piece with teams. And again, a lot of times there is this view that the leader has to be a strong leader and you have to kind of carry the burden. And I don't actually think you do, you know, being comfortable with not having the answer, being vulnerable with your team, being very authentic. Like I tend to hear on the side of being transparent. Steve Rush: Right. Rasha Hasaneen: And again, for some people that's very uncomfortable, but for a lot of people, I think having that context and transparency, even if it takes a little bit more time matters. And what that then leads me to do is I actually have unstructured time even during the pandemic. I have a lot of unstructured time with people I interact with. And I feel like people really appreciate that. So, by unstructured time, I mean, like we're in a meeting, it's 30 minutes. It may only take 10 minutes to get the work done. But you know, taking that extra 20 minutes to get to know people, having them get to know me. Being really transparent about what's going on just in your life, just creates this sense of empathy with others and with yourself that gives sort of, and I may use a very Southern term here, that allows people to give and get grace, right. Like there's so much of business interaction that is very businessy. Steve Rush: Right. Rasha Hasaneen: Get the work done. Don't waste my time. And it's like, no, no, there's grace too. Like no one is perfect. And so, if you know people's circumstances, you can give them grace, if you know people's circumstances, you can be empathetic. And so, when they do make mistakes or if deadlines are missed, there's a very sort of collaborative approach to it versus being very adversarial. And I think that comes with really getting to know people and showing them that kind of grace in interaction. I know they're very wishy washy, but those are my top three. Steve Rush: Awesome advice. No, not wishy washy at all. The next part of the show, we call it Hack to Attack. This is typically where something in your life or your work hasn't worked out, but there's a real learning that come from that, and it serves you well, what would be your Hack to Attack? Rasha Hasaneen: I thought, didn't I already share the time I almost died. Like that was my thing in life that didn't work out well. But you know, that to me is probably the standout one. I've had many sorts of things that haven't worked out well. In Innovation you tend to have something called a pipeline conversion, which is, how many things have to fail, fail is a bad word, but how many things don't turn out the way you expect it before you kind of have something succeed, right. And for me, I look at it like, if things don't break when you're doing them, you're probably not taking enough risk. Steve Rush: Yeah, exactly right. Rasha Hasaneen: And so, things go wrong around me all the time, right. And the question just is, what are you learning from that? And how are you turning that kind of into a positive experience? And I feel like I do that all the time. I've had a couple of big ones, or probably the biggest is when, you know, you expect your body to do something, and it doesn't want to comply. I like if you expect your body to breathe and it doesn't want to breathe, that's not a good thing, but I did learn a lot around sort of work life balance or work life management, whatever you want to call it, making choices about who to work for, where to work and being sort of an understanding that you're blessed enough to be able to make those choices, because that again, leads to a lot of grace when it comes to working with others. So, for me, it's hard to point to one thing outside of almost dying. Steve Rush: Yeah, maybe dying kind of does it though, doesn't it? Rasha Hasaneen: Yeah. That kind of trumps everything you possibly could do. Steve Rush: So now, the last thing we get to do. You get to do some time travel, bump into Rasha at 21, give her some advice. What would it be? Rasha Hasaneen: Don't color your hair. That's the advice. Steve Rush: If you have hair, of course. Rasha Hasaneen: If you have hair, of course. But me at 21, I did, and I had a lot of it, and it was starting to turn gray. I remember at 21, I was started to get gray, and I was obsessed with coloring the gray and it led to about 20 years of hair damage, which I have now thankfully reversed. Steve Rush: On a serious note, though. That's really serious advice. If it starts to happen to you, it can change your future outcomes for sure. Rasha Hasaneen: Yeah. Well, that's it, I mean, for me, it does come down to sort of being really authentic as a leader. Don't color your hair is just a euphemism for that, you know, at 21, man, I had just graduated college. It was my first kind of job. I was still a competitive martial artist and appearances really mattered and they kind of don't anymore. Steve Rush: Talking of which, little bird tells me, you were actually national karate champion, is that right? Rasha Hasaneen: I was, I was. And so, I will tell you at 21, I was pretty oblivious to a lot of stuff going on around me and I grew up in a very sheltered sort of, high school. It was a small girl finishing school in the Middle East. And you know, my graduating class was like 10 people. I was very sheltered, when I went to college, I didn't have the same college experience as everyone else, but I will say, you know, at 21 that would be the one thing is, sort of, you know, while I would say at 21, I was definitely judged differently because I didn't have a lot of the credibility I have now. I do feel like I spent an inordinate amount of time sort of maintaining appearances and I was very naive. And I feel like, one. I trusted people too much, but at the same time I felt like I only trusted them so far, which was kind of the worst of both worlds, right? Steve Rush: Yeah. Rasha Hasaneen: So, you're either all in, like you're all in, on being kind of your authentic self and your kind of over the top or you're sort of super reserved and it's kind of in the middle that confuses people a lot. And I was definitely in the middle for a long time before I embraced being all in on authenticity. So, I'm glad I did that, but that would be the one thing. Negotiate your salary. That would be another thing like, yes, you can negotiate and no, that's not enough. And the third thing I would say, would be, definitely look at work relationships differently than I did. I would say, I probably didn't understand the role of sponsors and mentors and sort of those work, call it friendships. I didn't understand how important they were at 21. And I made some sort of real mistakes in terms of getting that kind of sponsorship early on. And so, it took me some time to get there, but that's it. That's what I would say. Steve Rush: It's some great advice for people listening to this, for sure. Rasha Hasaneen: Yes. Steve Rush: So how do we get people who are listening to this to connect with you and Trane Technologies? Where's the best place to send them? Rasha Hasaneen: So, couple of things. Definitely they can reach out. We know tranetechnologies.com I think, is what it is now. The Center for Health Efficient Spaces has a spot under sustainability there. And you can definitely connect via the inbox. In fact, that likely get a faster response since the team definitely monitors that and there's a lot of great resources on The Center for Healthy Efficient Spaces. All of those numbers, I quoted about productivity. We have a primer on indoor environmental quality if people want to learn more. I would definitely recommend they go to the Trane Technologies website and look us up at Center for Healthy & Efficient Spaces. Steve Rush: We'll drop those links into our show notes as well. Rasha Hasaneen: Absolutely. Thank you. Steve Rush: Rasha, thanks ever so much for taking time out and I know you have a really, really busy schedule, so I am super grateful that we've been able to connect and get you on the show. Thanks for being part of the community. Rasha Hasaneen: I appreciate it as well. You've got a lot of fantastic guests, and this is a great podcast. So, thank you for having me and help helping us tell our story. Steve Rush: Thank you, Rasha. Closing Steve Rush: I want to sign off by saying thank you to you for joining us on the show too. We recognize without you, there is no show. So please continue to share, subscribe, and like, and continue to get in touch with us with the great new stories that we share every week. And so that we can continue to bring you great stories, please make sure you give us a five-star review where you can and share this podcast with your friends, your teams, and communities. You want to find us on social media. You can find us on Facebook and Twitter @leadershiphacker, @LeadershipHacker on YouTube and on Instagram, the_leadership_hacker and if that wasn't enough, you can also find us on our website https://leadership-hacker.com. Tune into next episode to find out what great hacks and stories are coming your way. That's me signing off. I'm Steve Rush, and I've been your Leadership Hacker.  

Today, Harvard Business School Professor Michael Norton joins the show. His research covers a range of topics, but in this one we really tackle rituals - what they are, when to implement them, and why they help - and then cover his older research on money - does more money make us happier? How should we spend our money to change how we spend our time? What about buying experiences? - and a lot more. While he's no doubt an expert, that says nothing about how thoughtful and kind Mike is - an entirely different lesson I take from this conversation and from having known him. Full show notes here at chrismcgrory.net

Eugene is a friend, mentor, and modern era intellectual. We unpack his work with white collar criminals, his time management strategies, and of course, his spirit animal.

In his youth, John Kotter didn't intend to become a writer of bestsellers and a professor at Harvard Business School. But early on in his career he fell in love with digging into a topic very deeply and finding value for readers. His first book, Mayors In Action, kicked off a life-long love affair with research and writing. John, a Harvard Business School professor, has become a highly respected change management leader. In fact, Leading Change, released in 1996, has been named by Time magazine as one of the 25 most influential business management books ever written. John is also author of the global bestseller Our Iceberg Is Melting. John's latest book, released in June, is Change: How Organizations Achieve Hard-to-Imagine Results in Uncertain and Volatile Times. In this interview, John talks to Published Author Podcast host Josh Steimle about his books, ideas, and writing career. He also shares some advice for new authors. John Kotter's Advice For New Authors! John will spend a lot of time working on a book outline until he is satisfied with it. He takes the same approach to his chapter ones, reworking them until he is ready to proceed. This, he says, makes writing the next few chapters much easier. “Writing is much more than writing,” he explains. “It forces you to confront inconsistencies that don't quite hang together. “I'm not throwing away my writing,” he continues. “I'm throwing away a piece of analysis that has been informative. With that clear in my head I can set it aside and go back to writing.” A second tip is never to stop writing if the work and flow feel forced. It may lead you in a direction that you don't want to go in, and it's better to stop and let your brain figure it out. For new authors who are working with publishers (as opposed to self-publishing), John says they should go in with low expectations. “Publishers are operating under difficult circumstances,” says John, referring to the massive amount of change they've faced since the rise of the Internet. “The model doesn't necessarily fit an author's needs. Consider self-publishing instead.” The Reward of Being a Catalyst And Influencing Others John finds a lot of satisfaction in influencing other people's work, or discovering that people are referring to him as a significant influencer. “You also get terrific feedback from people. And if someone goes out of their way to send a note or email, that really says something,” says John. “Hearing stories about how people used your information to create something new is very rewarding,” he continues. “People say John Kotter made it happen, but they made it happen. My role was more of a catalytic one.” Both Research And Experiences Shape Books John says his books come from research, but also a lot of his life experiences. He believes his brain is active 24 hours a day with information at the back of his mind, and a focal point emerges as some point, sparking a flurry of writing. For example, John's latest book Change began as an official research project with his consulting company, Kotter. He explains: “We had a group of five of us talking about some new ideas from brain science and how they were informing us about human nature that fit in an interesting way with some of the research we had that had nothing to do with neurology. “Our research was observational and had to do with why organizations were much more change-efficient and effective than others,” he continues. “That group met on and off for a few years, and one person said ‘OK, we've got enough. Let's write!'.” But John said the timing didn't feel right. He agreed that the group had learned a lot, but believed that it had further to go. However, a year later, John got up one day, went to his iPad, and began writing. “For me, it happens because my brain gets to the point where it says we've figured out the basics and we're ready to put them down on paper,” John explains. “So we can be more systematic about working out the inconsistencies or the missing data, or are there questions that aren't quite answered yet? Show Your Book Draft To Others John has consistently shown drafts of his books to colleagues and readers. He did this methodically with one of his most famous books, Our Iceberg Is Melting. John and the book's co-author Holger Rathgeber self-published that book first, and then self-published seven more times. With each version, they sought feedback. Today, the book is published by Penguin. “When you get negative feedback, most of us cringe and kind of hide and hate that. But nevertheless, as a way to improve your thinking, your writing, your capacity to produce something that will be used and be useful to people, it's invaluable,” says John. And for first-time writers, John encourages them to put on a suit of armor and simply get their book out there! Learn more: If you appreciated this episode, listen to: Overcome Imposter Syndrome To Finish Your Book And: A Hook Point For Your Book Will Win You More Clients - Brendan Kane LinkedIn FaceBook Twitter YouTube Kotterinc.com ABOUT THE HOSTThe Published Author Podcast is hosted by Josh Steimle, founder of Published Author. Josh is a book author himself and his article writing has been featured in over two dozen publications including Time, Forbes, Fortune, Mashable, and TechCrunch. He's a TEDx speaker, the founder of the global marketing agency MWI, a skater, father, and husband, and lives on a horse farm in Boston. Learn more at JoshSteimle.com.

Greg has dedicated his life to improving the entrepreneurial failure rate and he's been asking the same question for years: Why do more than 75% of startups fail? This week's guest might have the answer. Tom Eisenmann is a Harvard Business School Professor and the author of the new book, Why Startups Fail: A New Roadmap for Entrepreneurial Success. In part one, Tom discusses why he decided to focus on entrepreneurship at Harvard, the importance of getting a management team aligned, and the patterns that account for the vast majority of startup failures.

Scott Snook, Harvard Business School professor, joins me to talk about is it better to be loved or feared, the most important character traits for success, why should people follow you, and one thing he wishes everyone knew.