The Innovation Show

Today’s book presents a different approach to enterprise strategy and leadership. A complementary approach the author calls: pioneering leadership. Rather than simply work within existing parameters of operational excellence pioneering leadership sees you embarking upon quests. Such quests allow us to systematically explore complex and uncertain futures. We don't set goals in the hopes that a particular future will manifest — rather, we explore multiple possible futures, and prepare proactive stratagems to capitalize on each. The result of this continuous and dynamic approach is that enterprise strategy and leadership is enriched with viable, alternative options to pursue. Such options allow enterprise leaders to mitigate risk, obtain strategic advantage and ensure meaningful progress as the world changes. Pioneering leadership is challenging to initiate and maintain — especially when compared to the established approach that favours fast results with a bias toward prudence and predictability. But! If we

Incremental improvement is no longer sufficient in helping organizations navigate the complexity, uncertainty, and volatility of today’s world.  Our guest today explores how to create non-linear, dramatic change in organizations. He explores the emerging science of change that teaches us about how to build organizations – from businesses to governments – that change and adapt rapidly.   It is great pleasure to welcome the author of "Change: How Organizations Achieve Hard-to-Imagine Results in Uncertain and Volatile Times", John Kotter. More about John: https://www.kotterinc.com

Today’s guest is widely recognized as the world’s leading expert on personal and organizational productivity. Time Magazine called today’s book, “the definitive business self-help book of the decade.” We welcome the international best-selling author of "Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity", David Allen

Digital Goddess is a book for entrepreneurial women at any stage of life who want to know what it actually takes to build a business, in a world that’s not always fair, predictable, or politically correct. It is one woman’s story—by no means universal, but common enough to be instructive. It’s about how our guest has dealt with the way things are, not the way I hoped things would be or the way I think they should be. It’s about sucking it up, making the hard choices, and dealing with the consequences. We welcome author Digital Goddess: The Unfiltered Lessons of a Female Entrepreneur, Victoria Montgomery Brown

We are living through a crisis of distraction. Plans get sidetracked, friends are ignored, work never seems to get done. Why does it feel like we're distracting our lives away? In "Indistractable", behavioural designer Nir Eyal reveals the hidden psychology driving you to distraction. Empowering and optimistic, this is the book that will help you design your time, realise your ambitions, and live the life you really want. He is a friend of the show, where we previously featured his book  “Hooked” and he is with us to share insights from his brilliant best-seller “Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life”, Nir Eyal. More about Nir: https://www.nirandfar.com

What makes your favourite nonfiction books so compelling, understandable, or enjoyable to read? Those works connect with you, as a reader. When you recognize what's happening, you can apply those same methods to your own writing. Whether you're an expert trying to communicate with a mainstream audience or a nonfiction writer hoping to reach more people, our guest offers us the insight we need to reach more people with your words. It’s a pleasure to welcome the author of "Writing to Be Understood: What Works and Why", Anne Janzer More about Anne: https://annejanzer.com

You’ve got one shot to sell your ideas...but you’re busy. So you leverage what's available: slides, data, charts, facts… and you end up with scrambled messages and no clear call to action—this is what our guest calls the Frankendeck.

 Today’s book teaches us to organize our ideas, data, and insights to help our audience quickly understand what they need to know and do with the information. It arms us with a framework for crafting influential narratives that up-level the conversation and drive business results. We welcome the author of Everyday Business Storytelling: Create, Simplify, and Adapt A Visual Narrative for Any Audience, Janine Kurnoff More about Janine: https://www.presentation-company.com/team_member/janine-kurnoff

In the past few decades, strategy has become increasingly sophisticated. If you work for a sizeable organisation, chances are your company has: a marketing strategy a corporate strategy a global strategy an innovation strategy an intellectual property strategy a digital strategy a social strategy and a talent strategy And in each of these domains, talented people work on long lists of urgent initiatives. Our guest today shows how the best companies achieve more by doing less. At a time when rapid technological change and global competition conspire to upend traditional ways of doing business, these companies pursue radically simplified strategies. At a time when many managers struggle not to drown in vast seas of projects and initiatives, these businesses follow simple rules that help them select the few ideas that truly make a difference. We welcome the author of "Better, Simpler Strategy: A Value-Based Guide to Exceptional Performance", Felix Oberholzer-Gee

Sign up to our newsletter and win a copy. www.theinnovationshow.io Corporations have changed the world radically in so many areas: medicine, consumer goods, transport, finance, agriculture, entertainment, communications. And they’ve done so by combining organizational abilities with the unique human capacity to imagine: the ability to see and create things that had never existed. Imagination is needed now more than ever. Since competitive advantage is increasingly short-lived, driven by rapid evolution of the technological and business environment, companies constantly risk stagnation. Since the 1960s, the average number of companies exiting the Fortune 500 has increased by 36% annually, and the proportion of industries in which the top player has led for more than five years has nearly halved. Outperformance more quickly fades to the mean. We welcome the author of The Imagination Machine: How to Spark New Ideas and Create Your Company's Future, Martin Reeves More about Martin and the book: https:/

Artificial intelligence, big data, modern science, and the internet are all revealing a fundamental truth: The world is vastly more complex and unpredictable than we've allowed ourselves to see. Now that technology is enabling us to take advantage of all the chaos it's revealing, our understanding of how things happen is changing--and with it our deepest strategies for predicting, preparing for, and managing our world. This affects everything, from how we approach our everyday lives to how we make moral decisions and how we run our businesses. The result: is a world no longer focused on limitations but optimised for possibilities. We welcome the author of the brilliant book: “Everyday Chaos: Technology, Complexity, and How We’re Thriving in a New World of Possibility” David Weinberger

In the previous book in this series, our guest observed the experiences of leaders on a rollercoaster ride through their professional and personal lives. Now, he follows them down the rabbit hole into the unknown, where, like Lewis Carroll’s Alice, they find a dystopian Wonderland in which everyone seems to have gone mad and life functions according to its own crazy logic, throwing up all kinds of obstacles in the search for truth. The first part of this book looks at the psychodynamics of leadership in both a business and a political context. The second focuses on the psychopathology of everyday life in organizations and the seemingly endless ways people can make a mess of things – including mega pay packages, acting out, digital addiction and other dysfunctional behaviour patterns. Each chapter ends with a brief anecdote to illustrate the dilemma it presents. In short, sharp nuggets, our guest helps make sense of how the madness of the present has affected leadership in organizations and the workplace. It

Today’s book brings to bear on some of the most powerful and helpful macrotrends rippling through society today. The book teaches readers how to harness their outrage and capitalize on global trends to instigate and encourage change across the world. The author identifies five global undercurrents with outsized importance that are shaping our world. The book’s lessons are supported throughout by stories, experiences, data and observations from across the globe. It is perfect for activists and leaders of all kinds who aim to increase their impact on their organisations and the world at large, as well as the intellectually curious who hope to increase their understanding of the changing world around them. More about Steve: https://www.undercurrentsbook.com

59% of U.S. workers say that communication is their team's biggest obstacle to success, followed by accountability at 29% Today’s book explains a simple, powerful tool that helps team leaders and members align and get clarity on exactly who is responsible for each part of the team's most important activities and projects. With the guidance of today’s book, you can be better prepared as a team leader or team member to plan effectively, reduce risks, and collaborate with others. Your team will be accountable and ready to deliver results! We welcome the author of "High-Impact Tools for Teams" Stefano Mastrogiacomo More about Stefano: https://www.teamalignment.co

Today’s guest offers us a fascinating glimpse into a near-future where careers last 100 years, and education lasts a lifetime.  Our guest makes the case that learners of the future are going to repeatedly seek out educational opportunities throughout the course of their working lives — which will no longer have a beginning, middle, and end.  Her book focuses on the disruptive and burgeoning innovations that are laying the foundation for a new learning model that includes clear navigation, wraparound and funding supports, targeted education, and clear connections to more transparent hiring processes.  The book examines:    * How will a dramatically extended lifespan affect our careers?   * How will more time in the workforce shape our educational demands?   * Will a four-year degree earned at the start of a 100-year career adequately prepare us for the challenges ahead?   We welcome the author of Long Life Learning: Preparing for Jobs that Don't Even Exist Yet, Michelle Weise, welcome to the show.

This is a book about why people want what they want. It’s based on the notion that, in the end, we will either be masters or slaves of our desires and that we can choose the outcome. True freedom, our guest argues, is the freedom to want what is best for ourselves and for others—and that those need not be different things. The ability to desire in a healthy way is not something we’re born with, but a freedom we must earn. And due to one powerful and hidden feature of human desire, that freedom is hard won. More about Luke here: https://lukeburgis.com

Creating true change is never easy. Most startups don’t survive. Most community groups never get beyond small local actions. Even when a spark catches fire and protesters swarm the streets, it often seems to fizzle out almost as fast as it started. The status quo is, almost by definition, well-entrenched and never gives up without a fight. To truly change the world or even just your little corner of it, you don’t need a charismatic leader or a catchy slogan. What you need is a cascade: small groups that are loosely connected but united by a common purpose. We welcome back for the 3rd time, Bestselling Author, Keynote Speaker and Innovation Advisor and author of Cascades: How to Create a Movement that Drives Transformational Change, Greg Satell. Links mentioned in the show: https://digitaltonto.com/2020/10-principles-for-transformational-change/ https://www.joinclubhouse.com/join/the-innovation-show/3ovqI5FP/xq5YRvjd

Marshalling unique insights from archaeogenetics, an emerging new discipline that allows us to read our ancestors' DNA like journals chronicling personal stories of migration, our guest charts two millennia of adaption, movement and survival, culminating in the triumph of Homo Sapiens as we swept through Europe and beyond in successive waves of migration - developing everything from language, the patriarchy, disease, art and a love of pets as we did so. As well as being a radical new telling of our shared story, today’s book is a reminder that the global problems that keep us awake at night - climate catastrophe; the sudden emergence of deadly epidemics; refugee crises; ethnic conflict; over-population - are all things we've faced in the past and overcome. Our guest is one of the most established international experts in the field of archaeogenetics, he is director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology Germany and he is the author of "A Short History of Humanity: How Migration Made Us Wh

In our world of incessant change, we are all threatened by VUCA volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity — at the individual and organizational levels.  Today’s book offers you a new lens through which to consider change as an opportunity rather than an obstacle.  You’ll be inspired to consider the big questions of today:  What does the future hold? What does the exponential growth of technology mean for the world of work? What does a changing job market mean for future generations? What do waves of disruption mean for business leaders? Society is evolving at breakneck speed. What does this mean for all of us?  While we cannot see into the future, there are repeatable patterns that we can understand. The first step to becoming Undisruptable is to realize that evolution is a natural part of life, and nature provides many examples.  If you haven’t guessed already that is the blurb for my own book and because of so many requests from former guests and listeners, I will be interviewed today by gu

Have you ever wanted to disagree with your boss? Speak up about your company's lack of diversity or unequal pay practices? Make a tough decision you knew would be unpopular? We all have opportunities to be courageous at work. But since courage requires risk—to our reputations, our social standing, and, in some cases, our jobs—we often fail to act, which leaves us feeling powerless and regretful for not doing what we know is right. There's a better way to handle these crucial moments—and today’s book provides the moral imperative and research-based tactics to help you become more competently courageous at work. Our guest is the world's foremost expert on workplace courage, He explains that courage isn't a character trait that only a few possess; it's a virtue developed through practice. And with the right attitude and approach, you can learn to hone it like any other skill and incorporate it into your everyday life. We welcome a friend of the Innovation Show and one of our very early guests, author of Choo

If you're a shaper, you put your stamp on your work. You earn your stripes. You sync with a rhythm of life that lights you up. At times, work may be a frightening obstacle (and obsession), but shapers move through adversity with temperament and tenacity. A determination to continually improve and evolve. A willingness to experiment and learn from mistakes. To create on the fly. To work fluidly; To persevere and be patient in equal measure.  To nourish the soul. A shaper is someone who becomes energised by work. The way they work provides for the highest expression of self. They lead deeper and more fulfilling lives because what they do every day serves them and the greater good. We welcome the author of Shapers, Jonas Altman More about Jonas www.shapers.life