Today my guest is Masha Sedova, the co-founder of Elevate Security delivering the first people-centric security platform that leverages behavioral-science to transform employees into security superhumans.

Elevate’s unique Security Behavior Platform uses data to score employee risks, show actionable trends and practical feedback to motivate, reward and reinforce smart security behaviors of employees. This new approach to security awareness earned Elevate Security a spot on the list of 10 Finalists for the Innovation Sandbox Competition at the RSA Conference 2020.

Masha is a member of the Board of Directors for the National Cyber Security Alliance and a regular presenter at conferences such as Blackhat, RSA, ISSA, Enigma, and SANS.

As we begin our conversation, Masha emphasizes the importance, no the urgency, of looking for the silver lining’ of our disruptive event and how we can embrace the opportunities it presents to emerge with unique outcomes for positive change.

Since human error accounts for about 90% of all breaches, Masha explains how new thinking and understanding of security awareness and training can be one of your crisis opportunities’ to improve.

It’s all about the data. One of RedZone’s big ambitions is to essentially create a biological response on the networks, creating systems that are automated at scale. So, I ask Masha why she thinks we haven’t begun using data in the workplace the way we use it in other areas of our lives like fitness. You may have a fully integrated Fitbit, so why haven’t we considered implementing similar data integration and thinking into our organization’s security awareness platform?

There are some really great concepts and tools that we discuss here. This conversation will give you a chance to understand how to get out of the tactical fear part of your brain and really look into the strategy of security.

This is an episode that you do not want to miss.

Continue reading →

Today my guest is Oleg Konovalov. Oleg received his doctoral degree from the Durham University Business School and is a member of the 2019 Class of Thinkers50 Radar. He has been recognized as #1 Global Thought Leader on Culture by Thinkers360 and is #1 Global Leading Coach (Marshall Goldsmith Thinkers50).

Oleg is an influential and thought provoking business thinker. His long international consulting experience has given him a superior understanding of how business works across different cultures and has made him adept at dealing with challenges at all levels. His research identifies entrepreneurs’ and managers’ strategic needs in the areas of corporate culture, leadership, and he uses corporate diagnostics, in order to enable them to drive their companies to success.

He is the author of four best-selling business books, and he continues his research and writing journey identifying entrepreneurs and managers’ strategic needs and helping them drive their companies to success and become true champions of healthy business culture.

I love talking with leaders like Oleg Konovalov on my podcast. The wisdom they have to share from broad business and life experiences is invaluable. In this episode, Oleg tells some terrific stories about how he teaches leaders and organizations to seek out real problems and find effective solutions.

We discuss the leadership role and why it’s important for leaders to create a space for themselves that’s different – apart from the problem. Oleg believes that taking this step back and looking at your problem from a different (new) perspective is critical to identify the – often underlying problem, keeping you and your organization from dragging old mistakes into the future.

Oleg also points out a new way of looking at end of career’ thinking. If you were 50 or 56 years old 20 years ago, you would be considered at the end of your career. Oleg looks at it quite the opposite. At the employee level, he doesn’t think people truly understand how productive and how much these 50-something employees still have to offer.

Listen as we discuss his perspective and the question, If everything changes and everyone is learning in the present, every day, how will we all impact the future and build this new reality from scratch?

You will love every second of this interview with Oleg as he reveals his strong insight about organizational leadership and culture. After you listen to this podcast, you can continue to expand your knowledge bank’ and read more from Oleg in his most recent book, LEADEROLOGY.

Here are some of things that you will learn in this podcast episode:

Continue reading →

Today my guest is Mark Greeven, Professor of Innovation and Strategy at IMD. I’m going to begin by commenting on the amazing timing of my interview with Mark, just last week. In our conversation, his first-hand insight into the culture and strategies of Chinese business as they experienced the COVID-19 crisis, are absolutely relevant for us, as leaders, as we are now experiencing the same in the USA.

In our conversation, Mark explains why China, the people and their organizations were able to react so quickly to a sudden and immediate crisis. Why they seemed so much more prepared with a huge population of 1.4 billion even within the healthcare system, and how did they mobilize exponential technologies so quickly?

Before joining IMD, Mark also held faculty positions in China and The Netherlands, and currently serves as a a research associate at China’s National Institute for Innovation Management, Center for China and Globalization, Center for Global R&D and Innovation, and the US-China Innovation Research Center at Duke Kunshan University.

With a decade of experience in research, teaching and consulting in China, Mark has learned how to organize innovation in a turbulent world; and through collaboration with innovative Chinese companies and entrepreneurial multinationals, has explored novel ways of organizing, accelerating corporate innovation, and designing business ecosystems to thrive on uncertainty.

Mark’s latest book, Pioneers, Hidden Champions, Change Makers and Underdogs: Lessons from China’s Innovators, was published in 2019; and in 2017, he was named on the 2017 Thinkers50 Radar list of 30 next generation business thinkers, an annual ranking that the Financial Times deemed the Oscars of Management Thinking.

Listen to this novel interview as Mark and I discuss business ecosystems and how we need to do things together, as a leader, individually, and as a company. Mark will share with us his predictions for the outcome and lasting impact of turbulent events, which don’t all happen to be bad. The consequences will reveal that resilience during these uncertain times will set apart the more successful leaders from the less successful leaders.

Continue reading →

Today my guest is Chip Conley. Chip is a New York Times bestselling author and hospitality maverick. He is a recipient of hospitality’s highest honor, the Pioneer Award, and was named the Most Innovative CEO in the San Francisco Bay Area by the San Francisco Business Times.

As a rebel entrepreneur, Chip has disrupted his favorite industry… twice. At age 26, the founder of Joie de Vivre Hospitality (JdV) where he took an inner-city motel and turned it into the second largest boutique hotel brand in America. He sold JdV after running it as CEO for 24 years.

Soon the young founders of Airbnb asked him to help transform their promising start-up into the world’s leading hospitality brand. In four years as Head of Global Hospitality & Strategy, Chip taught his award-winning methods to hosts in close to 200 countries, and today he serves as the company’s Strategic Advisor for Hospitality & Leadership.

His five books have made him a leading authority at the intersection of psychology and business. While writing his latest book, Wisdom@Work: The Making of A Modern Elder, Chip was inspired to build the world’s first “midlife wisdom school,” the Modern Elder Academy (MEA), where attendees learn how to repurpose a lifetime of experience for the modern workplace.

Chip holds a BA and an MBA from Stanford University, and an honorary doctorate in psychology from Saybrook University. He is an active mentor to six young CEO founders in the hospitality/tech world and serves on the board of Encore. org and the advisory board for the Stanford Center for Longevity.

He believes curiosity is the elixir of life and started learning Spanish and surfing at age 58.

In my conversation with Chip, you will hear stories about experiences that taught him to understand the difference between knowledge and wisdom. In an age where the world is changing faster, people are living longer, and power tends to be moving younger and at the age of 59, he shares his vision and award-winning methods around building teams aligned with a different kind of diversity and creating effective business culture including a new view of mentoring.

Listen to this podcast to learn about how you can disrupt your thinking and learn how to make more meaningful contributions in your lives and careers during the later period of life.

Continue reading →