The Soul of Enterprise: Business in the Transformation Economy by THRESHOLD

Ed and Ron are honored to interview Alessandra Lezama, CEO of AbacusNext, a sponsor of The Soul of Enterprise. Alessandra possesses strategic hands-on leadership skills, drawing on extensive cross-industry experience, sustainable strategies, thorough growth and market analysis, and a focus on process improvement. She has extensive and significant expertise in start-up and under performing businesses, revitalizing organizations and scaling business operations cost effectively. She has built high-performance teams, developed executive-level client relations, and drove top and bottom-line growth. She has a consistent record in building, and turning around, private equity backed business, ranging in size up to $33 million. She enjoys being part of, as well as leading, a successful and productive team, and thrives in highly pressurized and challenging working environments.

Ron and Ed have talked project management before, but the focus was always around project planning and scope creation. In this episode, they conversation shifts to project execution and the tools needed as well as some actual predictive indicators for project completion that are NOT time based. If you have ever asked, What replaces the timesheet? this episode is for you.

The last Friday of every month Ed and Ron will do "Free-Rider Friday." Most of our shows are "topic" driven, where we dive deep into one subject. Free-Rider Fridays are designed to be "event" driven, whatever issues are in the news that we (or you) find worthy of commentary. In economics, free riding means reaping the benefits from the actions of others and consequently refusing to bear the full costs of those actions. This means Ed and Ron will free ride off of the news, and each other, with no advanced knowledge of the events either will bring up. If you'd like to call-in during the live show, the listener line is: 866-472-5790. You can also participate on Twitter at #ASKTSOE, @asktsoe, or email us at asktsoe@verasage.com.

Ron and Ed are pleased to welcome Dr. Mary Ruwart to the show to discuss her new book, Death by Regulation. During this episode we will explore how the FDA is directly affecting your life and the lives of millions, if not billions of people because of the 1962 Amendments to the Food & Drug Act which have shaved at least five years off of your lifespan without making drugs safer and more effective. In her new book, Death by Regulation: How We Were Robbed of a Golden Age of Health and How We Can Claim It, Dr. Mary Ruwart details how the FDA shifted our medical paradigm from inexpensive prevention to costly treatment, censored life-saving nutritional approaches to disease, added a decade to the time it takes to get a new drug from the lab bench to market place, destroyed over half of our medical/pharmaceutical/nutritional innovations, and caused the prices of drugs to soar without improving safety or effectiveness.

Ed and Ron are honored to interview Phil Rosenzweig, the author of one our all-time favorite business books, The Halo Effect and the Eight Other Business Delusions that Deceive Managers, originally published in 2007. We discussed the book on Episode #42, Best Business Books, May 2015. The book has a profound effect on our thinking, as it challenges many of the business books out there that propagate these delusions that give business leaders the illusion of control and what it takes to succeed.

Ed and Ron are honored to interview economist Michael C. Munger, whose recent books include Choosing in Groups (coauthored with his son, Kevin Munger) and The Thing Itself, both in 2015. His research interests include the study of the morality of exchange and the working of the new Middleman Economy. Much of his recent work has been in philosophy, examining the concept of truly voluntary exchange, a concept for which he coined the term euvoluntary. His newest book addresses the sharing economy, and is entitled Tomorrow 3.0., which will be the focus during the show.

The last Friday of every month Ed and Ron will do "Free-Rider Friday." Most of our shows are "topic" driven, where we dive deep into one subject. Free-Rider Fridays are designed to be "event" driven, whatever issues are in the news that we (or you) find worthy of commentary. In economics, free riding means reaping the benefits from the actions of others and consequently refusing to bear the full costs of those actions. This means Ed and Ron will free ride off of the news, and each other, with no advanced knowledge of the events either will bring up. If you'd like to call-in during the live show, the listener line is: 866-472-5790. You can also participate on Twitter at #ASKTSOE, @asktsoe, or email us at asktsoe@verasage.com.

We are honored to interview Blair Enns, another crusader for Value Pricing and burying the billable hour. He wrote the fantastic book, The Win Without Picthing Manifesto, and his latest is Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour. Take your pricing competency to the next level and don't miss this show.

Ron and Ed are thrilled to interview Donald Boudreaux. Prof. Boudreaux is an economist, author, professor, and co-director of the Program on the American Economy and Globalization at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Boudreaux was an Assistant Professor of Economics at George Mason University from 1985 to 1989. He was an Associate Professor of Legal Studies and Economics at Clemson University from 1992 to 1997, and President of the Foundation for Economic Education from 1997 to 2001. He is now Professor of Economics at George Mason University, where he served as chairman of the Economics Department from 2001 to 2009. His blog, Cafe Hayek, is considered must reading but both Ron and Ed.

This episode is dedicated to the possibility that quality is not objective goodness but rather conformance to a requirement. For a professional this means the customer's requirement, not just professional standards. Viewing quality in the light is challenging to our minds and not something easily grasped. If you want to think along with Ron and Ed more deeply about the issue of quality and its relationship to both the professional and the customer, you are invited to listen to this episode of the podcast.