Barry O’Reilly is pleased to welcome Secil Tabli Watson, Executive Vice President for Digital Solutions for Business at Wells Fargo. In this week’s show, Barry chats with Secil about the techniques she uses to drive innovation in both retail and business banking environments. She shares the lessons she unlearned in the process and how to bring product management principles into a large organization in a way that drives innovation. First Lesson: Speak The Customer’s Language Secil’s first assignment as a digital channel manager 18 years ago was to make Wellsfargo.com into a buying site. She focused on language that was customer-focused, rather than the bank-centric. “We brought in the capabilities and the competency of doing user research and understanding customer tasks and understanding their behaviors and motivators and really putting that into the language,” she says. In addition, they transformed the architecture of the website so that it was more customer driven. [Listen from 1:55] Staff People to Outcomes Not Products If you’re struggling to move from project-based teams to outcome-based ones, Secil advises that you reframe how you think. This was a critical unlearning for her, she remarks. She shares an example of how she recast her thinking about a project from product to outcome, as a result of which her team was able to see themselves as responsible for a broader outcome, and partner with other departments to make it happen. She advises listeners to break the project into phases with quick wins, and gives insight into how to create cross-functional teams with as little awkwardness as possible. “If you ask a little bit at a time from people, they're more willing to help,” she points out. [Listen from 6:50] B2B Customer Relationships Are Deeper Businesses with B2B customers can develop deeper relationships with them. Because their B2B customers are fewer in number, Secil says, they are able to communicate on a more intimate level over a longer period of time. She asks her B2B customers, “How do you feel?” because it elicits deeper answers. “And I'm also then able to ask the question, Why?” Secil remarks. “I can ask the question as many times as I want to try to get down to a deeper meaning and a deeper need or a desire or a business problem that the customer may be having.” She and Barry discuss why co-creating with your customers - as counterintuitive as the idea appears - is their favored approach. “It builds more trust and actually derisks more of your relationship,” Barry comments. [Listen from 15:20] It Only Takes 10 “...it doesn't take more than 10 people to do things but you have to get the right 10 people,” Secil argues. Her job, as she sees it, is to figure out what to do differently so she can identify those 10 people quickly in her large organization environment. Barry comments that if more companies adopt this approach they would see greater success. [Listen from 29:35] OKRs are not for Compensation Secil and Barry agree that while measuring performance is important, performance metrics should not be tied to compensation, as pay for performance inhibits innovation. Secil believes that the team should win together and learn together; they should not compete against one another. “There is nothing more we could do to make a better team other than enable them to learn,” she says. [Listen from 36:00] Looking Ahead Secil is excited about the current trend to apply product management principles and skills in atypical areas, such as for thinking through outcomes and tactics for diversity and inclusion efforts. Barry comments, “I think everybody can take these principles and methods and apply them to build better experiences for people.” [Listen from 43:35] Resources Secil Tabli Watson on LinkedIn

This week’s guest is a leader who role models change. Christian Metzner is Chief Information Officer (CIO) at Volkswagen Financial Services UK. Barry O’Reilly describes him as someone who is “constantly staying curious and getting outside his comfort zone; and you only have to spend time with him and his team to realize how much his actions inspire others.” Christian and Barry discuss the role of leadership in inspiring organizational culture.   Initiating Change Christian has learned to step out of his comfort zone and reflect on what other leaders and cultures are doing better. Emphasizing that the one with power needs to initiate the change, he says, “If you are the one in the position with the power, then you need to open up first. You can’t expect others to change if you’re not leading the way.” Hacking Culture Innovation is often the result of challenging yourself and pushing your boundaries. “You don't come to innovation if you only go one mile faster every day,” Christian points out. “You have to push boundaries... Try to find the 5% to 10% where you can challenge your behaviors, where you can challenge people who might be stuck in their thinking.” He advocates using cultural hacks - low effort steps that can be implemented quickly, but which have high emotional impact - and shares examples of cultural hacks that he successfully implemented. Barry comments that these small changes often create ripple effects throughout an organization. Being a Leader “My simple understanding of leadership is... to remove your blockers and to make you better on a day-to-day basis.” Christian sees learning from competitors and his team as key to creating a culture of innovation: an environment where everyone is on the same playing field. “IT is - next to the capital market - the single biggest threat to an organization like ours,” he points out. “And we need to get our job... absolutely right to enable our commercial colleagues to come up with great products and services for our real end customers.” Trade-offs in Decision-Making Barry commends Christian’s ability to take “a little bit of information and make a decision and then getting more information…” He asks Christian to describe his process and the trade-offs of this approach. Christian responds that transparency, engagement, and iterating in short cycles are the key elements in this approach. The current crisis demands different behaviors, he argues. “We’re not playing the game big fish against small fish anymore,” he says. “We're playing big fish against fast fish, and that requires a different behavior.”  Build Systems Around People “It's less the individual [than] the systems and the structures that are in place to help them succeed,” Barry comments. “If more companies started to recognize that they’re designing systems around people to make them successful… that’s a massive transformation that... would have a huge impact on their company.” “Let's bring people into a role where they can flourish, where they are allowed to bring in their strengths,” Christian adds. Looking Ahead Christian says that he wrote a framework in the early days of the COVID crisis that has guided the company’s decision-making. The framework focuses on three dimensions: decisiveness, simple communication, and taking care of one another. He speaks of dealing with the pandemic in phases: they are entering the phase of renewing the company, so they are using what they learned in the previous phases to inform their approach. In particular, he is excited about how the company will maintain pace and flexibility so that they can provide the best possible customer experience. Resources Christian Metzner on LinkedIn

Katie Anderson is a leadership coach consultant and author, best known for inspiring individuals and organizations. She started off in public health research then moved to Japan in 2015. Barry O’Reilly welcomes her to the show as she shares the lessons she learned in Japan on how to deepen your leadership skill. Learning Lean at the Source Her life in Japan inspired Katie to learn lean at the source as she had already been applying Toyota production principles in the healthcare system. Moving away from academia and research was her big pivot as she transitioned from public health into her own consulting practice. [Listen from 2:30] Leading With Intention Katie advocates leading with intention and orienting your actions in the direction of the behaviour that will achieve your desired purpose. Now that she was in a position where she had to help other people solve problems, she realized that her mindset and approach needed to shift. She needed to show up in a different capacity: she had to be a model and guide instead of simply going in and doing it all on her own. [Listen from 6:25] Effective Leadership Role People need alignment: they need to know what the target of the organization is in order to meet that target. If leaders don’t have clarity on what the target is, it is unlikely that the employees will. Barry comments that if employees don’t know what direction has been set by leaders, that’s a failure of the leadership team. You can have activity without vision, but not in a meaningful direction. [Listen from 13:00] Hoshin As a Tool Hoshin is about identifying the top strategies in the organization, and how the next level down contributes to achieving those strategies. It is anchored in the scientific method, and a deep process of reflection. It provides the organization with the real data, whether positive or negative and allows for the leadership team to make better and accurate decisions based on that data. [Listen from 21:45] Looking Ahead Katie is looking forward to hearing listeners’ reflections on her stories and experiences. She is excited to continue to amplify her message. She is also committed to continue helping individuals connect with their intention and their purpose, in order to achieve their desired goals. [Listen from 34:25] Resources KBJAnderson.com

Daniel Elizalde is the VP and head of IoT for North America at Ericsson. He’s spent more than 20 years working in industries, from manufacturing to aerospace and energy. Today, Daniel also teaches courses on the decision framework that he’s created. Barry O’Reilly welcomes Daniel to this week’s show to discuss how much the concepts of IoT have changed, and the impact of technology on the current world. The Evolution of IoT Once Daniel learnt of the IoT concept and recognized it in the way he did his work, he started cataloguing and creating frameworks and approaches. With the advancement of technology, you can now plot a system of sensor data points on a graph, which would have taken a year to put together previously. The advancement of technology also led to the scaling back of employees and time. Daniel encourages adapting the product psyche and learning what you can do today so that you can take advantage of the technological curve in the future. [Listen from 1:50] Looking the Other Way Around “Building relationships is the most important part to get things done,” Daniel says. Barry parallels the IoT system with the people working in a well-functioning unit: the technological idea and the people idea is what drives the performance. Daniel talks about introducing new ways of application to Ericsson, and helping the company to unlearn some of its long held strategies to adapt to the current times. Daniel says he’s always looking the other way around to determine feasibility and what the customers really want. [Listen from 15:00] Building Capability Driving results, for Daniel, involves discovery and getting more projects from other units in order to apply their concepts to Ericsson. Daniel describes what has worked for him in terms of expanding technology in the company. He discusses monetizing 5G networks as they emerge, focusing on customers’ problems and adding value. “Your capability is the knowledge you’re accumulating in your organization, and making good decisions based on what you’re learning,” Barry comments. [Listen from 23:25] Looking Ahead Daniel is excited to see how 5G is applied in the coming years and how it will level the technological playing field. He is looking forward to individuals being able to build on 5G just like the Internet. He is also looking forward to seeing the things people had talked about ten years ago becoming a reality in the not too distant future. [Listen from 41:05] Resources Daniel Elizalde on LinkedIn Daniel’s blog & podcast: danielelizalde.com  D-15 IoT Studio at Ericsson: https://www.ericsson.com/en/about-us/experience-centers/d-fifteen/d-15-iot-studio

Diana Stepner is the VP for Product Management of Innovative Learning Solutions at Pearson. She enjoys building product experiences that customers love as well as weaving innovation, experimentation, and technology into actionable product visions and roadmaps that accelerate growth. Barry O’Reilly welcomes Diana to this week’s show as they discuss finding her voice and why a product management approach to leadership is valuable in these times. Finding Her Voice Barry comments, “We often figure out what we want to do as we do things and learn our way through them.” Diana explains that she had to unlearn the notion that a leader must be the loudest person in the room and know all the answers. A point from an article she read - that great leaders spend more time listening and asking questions than talking and giving answers - helped her realize that her natural leadership style was indeed valid. Encouraging others to contribute, bringing people into the conversation who might not have felt comfortable to speak before, was the right way for her. The Power of Pausing Pausing to think, to process and analyze information before responding, helps you make better decisions. Diana says that she had to unlearn making snap decisions and jumping to conclusions. “What I've had to do,” she says, “is take a step back when I've got a lot of information that I need to synthesize; to open up more towards other ways of addressing an approach; think about a more broad perspective; and then evaluate a couple of different opportunities initially, test them out and then be able to determine what's the right way to proceed.” Pauses are ok, Barry emphasizes, and we should make more space for them in communication. A Period of Unlearning Many companies are going through a sense of unlearning, Diana says. She and Barry discuss the changes that are happening in companies currently: they are realizing the power of having diverse representation so they are listening more. Diana remarks that those companies that make the effort to have these changes stick will benefit in the long run. “If you don't define the outcome, if you don't make the data available, if you don't look at the reality of what's happening and make changes to move towards the direction you want, nothing is going to change,” Barry adds. While change may be difficult and uncomfortable, good can come from it. Advice for Leaders Barry asks Diana to share advice for leaders who want to adopt her leadership approach. She gives several tips including: Expect change. Learn from those around you. Find ways to empower those you work with. “I think it’s by the creation of a space where people feel comfortable to speak up and to share their voice, where you can truly have a tremendous amount of impact,” she says. Looking Ahead Diana says that she tries to find the good in everything that is happening right now. She is excited to see the acceleration of trends: things that we thought would happen in the future are happening today. More companies are encouraging a culture of experimentation now to get an insight into the future, she says. Barry comments that he is glad that more people are realizing that no one person has all the answers, and that our best bet moving forward is to learn our way through together. Diana hopes that we continue to normalize remote working as the pandemic has proven that we can be productive outside of the workplace. Resources Diana Stepner on LinkedIn

Barry O’Reilly is delighted to welcome Alexander Osterwalder, famed author of The Business Model Canvas, The Value Proposition Canvas and most recently The Invincible Company. Alex is also an entrepreneur and speaker, and one of the world’s leading experts on innovation and entrepreneurship. In this exciting episode, they discuss some of the aspects that help innovation and entrepreneurship flourish, including how business leaders can identify what they have to unlearn to be successful in the future.  Failure is a Door to Opportunity Oftentimes we overstate failure, and we don’t look for the opportunities that come out of it. Alex relates how failure often turned out to be a door to new opportunities for him. “I think you just have to be ready to embrace the surprises that life gives you and learn from every failure,” he says. He advises listeners to own their failures and don’t blame others. “If you focus on the positive, all of a sudden you know how to instrumentalize failure.” Entrepreneurs distinguish between reversible and non-reversible decisions, so they can make calculated bets. While failure is never the goal, it is an inevitable consequence and a good thing. You can become more dispassionate about failure if you view it as experimentation, Alex posits. You Get Better Over Time You get better at innovation and entrepreneurship over time. Most successful entrepreneurs are 40 years and over, and have been through several startups. They learn what not to do through practical experience. However, Alex says, you also need to learn the technical aspects of entrepreneurship and innovation. Stay Humble “No company is invincible,” says Alex, “but companies that constantly reinvent themselves because they don’t believe they’re invincible, those are the ones who are going to stay ahead.” Staying humble and keeping the mindset that there is always something new to learn, some new way to reinvent your company, is the difference between growth and stagnation. Barry adds, and Alex agrees, that successful leaders are always creating scenarios that take them out of their comfort zone. Alex shares an exercise he does with leadership teams to help them visualize their current state, and recognize what they need to do differently. Create the Environment for Innovation “As a leader you don’t pick the winning ideas; you create the conditions for the winning ideas and the winning teams to emerge,” Alex remarks. Research shows that only four out of every 1000 projects will succeed, so leaders need to foster an ecosystem for those winning ideas to surface. He describes a practical system companies can adopt to incrementally fund winning ideas. He emphasizes that innovation and execution must work in harmony to enable each other. Barry comments that entrepreneurs should ask, “How quickly can we get these ideas in front of people to see? Should we build it and then test? Can we execute it?” Alex and Barry discuss why innovation is a moral obligation for companies. “My belief is innovation is almost a moral obligation - not to create more money but actually to create more stable jobs,” Alex says.  Looking Ahead Alex is excited about the boost of distributed work that the pandemic has accelerated. He loves that the software tools being adopted are leveraging human creativity, and sees huge opportunities coming out of this difficult period. Resources AlexOsterwalder.com The Invincible Company: How to Constantly Reinvent Your Organization with Inspiration From the World’s Best Business Models

Barry O’Reilly welcomes authors Alexandra Jamieson and Bob Gower to this week’s Unlearn Podcast. They are the co-authors of a new book which details their practical system to have difficult conversations in a productive manner. The book is entitled Radical Alignment: How to Have Game-Changing Conversations That Will Transform Your Business and Your Life.  How the System Originated Alex and Bob describe how the Radical Alignment system started. It was a tool they used in their own relationship and that they taught to others. Often people would reach out to them afterwards about implementing the tool in other contexts. It soon became apparent that they had something valuable that they could share with the world. Four Simple Steps The heart of the Radical Alignment system is four simple steps, Alex points out. “As a couple, or even as an individual or as a team, you share your intentions, concerns, boundaries and dreams.” Bob explains that they usually constrain the system to a topic and he illustrates how the system would work in the context of the current pandemic. Barry comments that he finds the system practical and applicable. “I felt like it was very explicit about what things matter, what was I going to do, and I could act on it straight away,” he says. How To Have Difficult Conversations Conflict often develops because there’s a missing conversation, according to Fernando Flores. “More often than not,” Bob adds, “the missing conversation is just some key little piece of context that you don't have, that really explains the person's behavior.” He shares an example of how context changed his perception from annoyance with his neighbor to acceptance. Alex remarks that this system brings structure and ease to her communication. “For me the most valuable thing about this structured conversation is that it gives me a way to organize my emotions and my thoughts and my desires.”  The Goal is Binding People Together Radical alignment essentially is about binding people together. Although the first three steps are vital, they can be somewhat utilitarian, Bob comments. The fourth step - talking about your dreams - is inspirational. He describes the physiological effects of sharing dreams, which results in binding people together as a group. Alex emphasizes that there are important rules for having these conversations: no cross-talk, no arguing points, you must listen to each other. The objective is to develop tactical empathy, which is simply understanding where each person is coming from. Other Important Lessons Barry, Alex and Bob share some important learnings and unlearnings about being radically aligned: People want to have difficult conversations but don’t have the tools to do so. Alex says, “Don't talk about anything important when either of you are hungry, angry, lonely or tired. We adapted that to be AHA - angry, hungry or alcohol.” Reason and emotions are intimately intertwined. “Teams fall apart because people can’t get along, because people don’t understand each other,” Bob comments. “...The big lesson of the last few years is how much I need to actually listen and to take on somebody else’s perspective before I have an opinion about it.” People may not understand how useful a tool is unless they use it. Trust is a lubricant that helps diverse people work together. Looking Ahead Alex is excited about how their tool is helping mom entrepreneurs. Bob wants to see people bring their whole selves to work. He hopes that this tool, that has been so impactful in their lives, can impact many others. Resources Radical Alignment: How to Have Game-Changing Conversations That Will Transform Your Business and Your Life

Susan O’Malley is an expert at building high performance teams and culture. This is the passion that influenced her work at Google, as well as her current position of Senior Director at IDEO. She joins Barry O’Reilly on this week’s show to share her inspiring story. Being Open to Following Your Heart Few people approach new opportunities with the openness that Susan displays, Barry comments. She credits her mindset to a love of learning and the ‘harmonizer’ role she embodied as a middle child. It deepened when she joined Google in its early years. “I literally saw the product changing the world and changing people’s business models,” she says. “…And it gave me this tremendous sense of optimism around what technology can do, not just for the big guys, but actually for the little guys and the guys in the middle. That was a really, really inspiring thing.”  What Makes Great Leaders Susan looked to the great leaders around her for traits she could cultivate in her own life. From her observations, great leaders were charismatic, fair, intentional and they succeeded at whatever they put their hand to. Barry adds about great leaders, “...they all seem to be working in a different field than they originally trained, and yet they really cultivated this capability to continuously adapt to changing circumstances. And they build systems that allow them to explore uncertainty very intentionally; they build a lot of fast feedback mechanisms into things. They're very curious to get outside their comfort zone.” The Value of Authenticity Authenticity is about being yourself. Susan says, “It helps other people be attracted to what you’re trying to do. It helps us communicate. It helps us produce amazing results in other people… Our job is to cultivate companies and teams where we have a great mix of people, and where people can really be themselves so that we can all find this energy and find this collaboration that's gonna take us to the next level.” Barry comments that being inauthentic demands energy, while just being your true self gives you energy. Living Your Values Performing at your highest level as an organization demands living out your values. Susan relates that she had to unlearn several ideas when she joined IDEO, including how to embrace ambiguity and how to work with designers. She now teaches these lessons to her coaching clients. “It’s not about your performance, and it’s not about what you know,” she tells her clients. “It’s about the things that everybody can make together.” Creating this kind of high performance environment means knowing your culture, she points out. She describes how leaders and teams can create the culture they aspire to. Focus on the Process Not the Outcome High performance is more about perfecting the process rather than the outcome, according to Susan. Barry adds, “The result is secondary to figuring out what's the real problem here and having a good process to explore it. And if we do that well, we're gonna be taken to the direction that we should go, that's probably not where we thought we would be at the start.” Susan shares practical tips including the Hierarchy of W’s and having Torque Partners. Looking Ahead Susan is coming to understand more and more how important culture change is in building an organization that will succeed. She is delving into talent design: helping organizations identify, retain and develop the talent they need to win. Resources Susan O’Malley on LinkedIn IDEO.com  Books referenced: Nine Lies About Work - Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall Dying for a Paycheck - Jeffrey Pfeffer Building Microservices - Sam Newman Unleashed - Frances Frei and Anne Morriss

This week’s guest, Tendayi Viki, is an Associate Partner at Strategyzer. A prolific author, he has written three books and is a regular contributor to Forbes magazine. His most recent book, Pirates in the Navy: How Innovators Lead Transformation, is a manifesto on how to drive corporate innovation in large organisations. He and Barry O’Reilly chat about how he helped organizations drive and scale innovation, including key unlearning moments along the way.   Good Enough Is Better Than Perfect In an interesting twist of fate, Tendayi ended up in Stanford’s Graduate School of Business under the tutelage and mentorship of innovators like Steve Blank. He says that this was the turning point for him to converge his psychology training with entrepreneurship and innovation. He recounts two major unlearning moments, the major one of which was his tendency to over-edit. Barry describes this as a classic trap: we want our product to be perfect before we publish, but the better approach is to make it good enough, put it out there and start the conversation. In the academic world, Tendayi points out, your ideas evolve in private; but the innovation world is the opposite as your ideas evolve in public. This makes you vulnerable and takes courage, but the feedback you receive makes your product better. Earn the Right to Criticize You have to earn the right to criticize, according to Tendayi. People will only follow you when they see you as a partner on their journey, when they feel that you understand their struggle and have their best interests at heart. Helping Successful Ideas Evolve There’s no way to tell which of your ideas will succeed, so invest in many ideas and see which ones pan out. Tendayi remarks, “The fundamental theory of innovation is the theory of an entrepreneurship ecosystem… and in that ecosystem the evolution of successful ideas is actually pretty random. We don't know what's going to succeed and what’s not going to succeed. What we do is just throw things at the wall: we invest in a whole bunch of stuff and then we see what succeeds and what fails.” He emphasizes that you cannot choose winning ideas yourself on day one. He tells leaders that they have to provide the context for the best ideas to bubble up. Double down once you see what works. Coaching the Team Training is not enough: build organizational habits that allow the training to become a repeatable process within your organization. Tendayi explains why he uses this approach when working with large organizations. Coaching the team - both the leaders and employees - involves helping them incorporate this new mindset into their daily routine. Leaders in particular need to be deliberate about what they say and the questions they ask. Their questions should help to bring out the best in the team. What Lean Startup Is Not Lean startup is not a way to make any idea you have work. In fact, the majority of times it will tell you what doesn’t work. “What lean startup does is it allows you to find things that don't work, quicker and cheaper, so you can stop working on that stuff and double down on the things that work,” Tendayi says. He shares practical tips for incorporating the lean startup culture into a large organization, including creating artificial scarcity, which instills the discipline of focusing on what you need to do to be successful. Looking Ahead Tendayi is working on completing ongoing projects, including the Insight Strategyzer tool and a new book entitled Right Question Right Time. His next step, he says, is to return to his academic roots to research the psychology of uncomplacency. Resources TendayiViki.com Pirates In The Navy: How Innovators Lead Transformation

Barry O’Reilly talks with social scientist and author of Tiny Habits, Dr. BJ Fogg on this week’s Unlearn Podcast. BJ is a Research Associate at Stanford University and creator of the Fogg Behavior Model in which he teaches people how to adapt their behavior based on the challenges they want to solve. His students include the co-founder of Instagram, as well as several other product, app, and service developers who create solutions using the models and methods he teaches. A Natural Experimenter “There’s a real skill about recognizing different patterns and seeing a trend and bringing it all together to create a new field,” Barry comments. He describes BJ as a natural experimenter, as he was able to converge his love of rhetoric with scientific study to create the new field of persuasive technology. BJ points out that it’s not a straight path: “You kind of stumble into learning and unlearning moments—you find what works and what doesn't; and certainly do by being curious to explore new paths, design experiments and get insights through research.” How To Make Change Sustainable Lasting change has these two characteristics, according to Fogg: Will it help you do what you already want to do? Will it help you feel successful? These two maxims are foundational to Fogg's systematic approach, Behavior Design, that helps people make the sustainable changes they are aiming towards. BJ describes how he discovered this new domain by setting himself up to be free to pursue his goals in the way he felt was best. Once you have a little support to independently sustain yourself for a while, he says, you realize that you can take more risks than you thought before. Barry adds, “Our ability to continuously adapt our behavior and thinking to changing circumstances is probably the most important skill we may need.” Just Get It Out There “Design the experiment. Crank it out. The first you're gonna mess up on. So just do it, learn, change and then do the next one,” BJ advises. Instead of trying to get it perfect, just get it done and put it out. The market will tell you what you need to improve and how to iterate. This is a key tenet of Behavior Design, BJ says. He illustrates this idea with an interesting story about how he forced his students to create a Facebook app in a seemingly impossible deadline. An important lesson he took away from that experience, he says, is that simplicity is key. It was the simple apps that really took off: “10 weeks later it engaged over 24 million people on the Facebook platform and some of them were making lots of money.” Looking Ahead As BJ looks to the future, he comments that now is the critical time for behavior change. He feels a responsibility to help people get through the current pandemic and social justice issues using his behavior change system. It’s a system that you can apply to any problem, so he wants to teach people to use the system to tackle these challenges. He also talks about the focus mapping tool that he is launching to help users match themselves with new habits or behavior changes that are right for them. Resources BJFogg.com TinyHabits.com