My guest for this episode is Gary Hamel, one of the biggest names in the field of strategy.

Gary started working with strategy in the beginning of the 1980’s and has since released a bunch of groundbreaking articles and books on the topic. For example, the terms strategic intent and core competency were popularized by him and his colleagues.

We talk about what makes strategies successful, how hierarchies affect organizations and what Gary thinks about bureaucracy.

There is also a new segment introduced in the second half of the podcast, hope you like it!

Sponsor links

• Panostaja - an investment company that owns and develops Finnish SMEs
• Exove - a digital growth company that helps companies look into the future and achieve growth by designing and creating visually attractive, user-friendly and seamlessly working digital solutions.

Links for the episode:

• Gary's website
• Gary on Twitter
• Gary on Wikipedia
• Gary’s new video series, Gary Tells You Why

Links for the podcast:

• Mailing list: http://eepurl.com/P0dpf
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bosslevelpodcast
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/bosslevelpod
• iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/fi/podcast/boss-level/id1041885043
• Website: http://www.bosslevelpodcast.com
• Sami Honkonen on Twitter: http://twitter.com/SamiHonkonen
• Sami’s website: http://www.samihonkonen.com
• Sami’s blog: http://blog.samihonkonen.com

Today’s topic is machine learning and I’m talking to one of the brightest minds in the field, Hilary Mason. She’s the founder of Fast Forward Labs, a machine intelligence research company. She also advises startups through Accel, a prominent venture capital firm.

If you’re interested in artificial intelligence and machine learning, I’m pretty sure you’ll love this episode.

Sponsor link:

• Valuemotive: http://www.valuemotive.com

Links for the episode:

• Hilary Mason on Twitter
• Cloudera
• Fast Forward Labs
• Accel
• Speakersforum: New Speaker of the Year
• Steal My Job -podcast
• Sami Honkonen on Akonniemen Avara Luonto

Links for the podcast:

• Mailing list: http://eepurl.com/P0dpf
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bosslevelpodcast
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/bosslevelpod
• iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/fi/podcast/boss-level/id1041885043
• Website: http://www.bosslevelpodcast.com
• Sami Honkonen on Twitter: http://twitter.com/SamiHonkonen
• Sami's website: http://www.samihonkonen.com
• Sami's blog: http://blog.samihonkonen.com

Today’s guest is Bengt Holmström. Bengt is Finnish, but he’s spent the last 40 years living in the US. Currently he’s a professor of economics at MIT.

Bengt was recently awarded the Nobel prize in economic sciences together with his Harvard colleague Oliver Hart for their contribution to contract theory.

Essentially, Bengt has spent decades studying incentives and trying to figure out how to design better incentive structures. This has been a recurring theme on the podcast so I’m sure you can appreciate how excited I am to have Bengt on as a guest.

We talk about what it feels like to win the Nobel prize, incentives (obviously), and how transparency isn’t necessarily always a good thing.

Sponsor links:

• Finitec: http://www.finitec.fi
• Wunderdog: http://wunder.dog

Links for the episode:

• Bengt on Wikipedia
• Bengt's Nobel prize lecture on pay for performance

Links for the podcast:

• Mailing list: http://eepurl.com/P0dpf
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bosslevelpodcast
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/bosslevelpod
• iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/fi/podcast/boss-level/id1041885043
• Website: http://www.bosslevelpodcast.com
• Sami Honkonen on Twitter: http://twitter.com/SamiHonkonen
• Sami's website: http://www.samihonkonen.com
• Sami's blog: http://blog.samihonkonen.com

Today Boss Level Podcast is covering one of the biggest problems in the world, poverty. My guest is Leila Janah who runs two companies aimed at helping the extremely poor by giving them work.

One of her companies, Samasource, provides digital work in developing countries, and the other, LXMI, is an organic and fair trade skin care brand employing women.

In addition to talking about businesses, we discuss how companies can measure impact.

Sponsor link:

• Gofore: http://www.gofore.com
• Agile42: http://www.agile42.com

Links for the episode:

• Leila's website
• Leila on Twitter
• Leila on LinkedIn
• Samasource
• LXMI
• Leila's book Give Work

Links for the podcast:

• Mailing list: http://eepurl.com/P0dpf
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bosslevelpodcast
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/bosslevelpod
• iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/fi/podcast/boss-level/id1041885043
• Website: http://www.bosslevelpodcast.com
• Sami Honkonen on Twitter: http://twitter.com/SamiHonkonen
• Sami's website: http://www.samihonkonen.com
• Sami's blog: http://blog.samihonkonen.com

While I was in Australia in June to keynote the Agile Australia conference I had the privilege to interview Troy Magennis. When I first heard Troy speak at a conference years ago I remember how impressed I was with his deep understanding of the mathematics involved in forecasting. After listening to this episode I think you’ll be equally impressed.

Troy is the founder of Focused Objective, a consultancy that helps companies with forecasting, portfolio planning, risk management and metric selection.

We talk about why 3 to 7 recent samples is often better than thousands of samples from last year, how we need several opposing metrics to prevent local optimization and how we’ve lost the art of post mortems.

Troy has a ton of resources that are freely available for you to download and try out. For example, you might like the team dashboard Troy has built. After listening to the episode you can use his tools to take your forecasting to the boss level.

Sponsor link:

• Finitec: http://www.finitec.fi

Links for the episode:

• Troy on Twitter
• Focused Objective
• Free tools and resources

Links for the podcast:

• Mailing list: http://eepurl.com/P0dpf
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bosslevelpodcast
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/bosslevelpod
• iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/fi/podcast/boss-level/id1041885043
• Website: http://www.bosslevelpodcast.com
• Sami Honkonen on Twitter: http://twitter.com/SamiHonkonen
• Sami's website: http://www.samihonkonen.com
• Sami's blog: http://blog.samihonkonen.com

This is not a regular episode. This one is special. This is an update. And this update holds the future of the podcast.

Links for the episode:

• http://www.dias.fi
• http://www.tomorrow.fi
• Helsingin Sanomat
• Yle Uutiset
• Kauppalehti

Links for the podcast:

• Mailing list: http://eepurl.com/P0dpf
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bosslevelpodcast
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/bosslevelpod
• iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/fi/podcast/boss-level/id1041885043
• Website: http://www.bosslevelpodcast.com
• Sami Honkonen on Twitter: http://twitter.com/SamiHonkonen
• Sami's website: http://www.samihonkonen.com
• Sami's blog: http://blog.samihonkonen.com

My guest for this episode is Jussi Markula, a teal mentor, a serial entrepreneur and the co-founder of the Teal Finland community. In his daily work at Prominda, Jussi facilitates the exploration of new paradigms in organizations.

Idea of a Teal organization was introduced by Fredrick Laloux in 2014 in his book, called Reinventing organisations. The book walks through the evolution of human organizational paradigms and then discusses the most advanced one to date, dubbed Teal.

Jussi helps us delve a little deeper in to the breakthroughs that enabled teal organizations to come to life.

Links for the episode:

• Jussi’s Twitter
• Prominda Revolution
• Frederic Laloux - Reinventing Organizations
• Teal Suomi Facebook Group
• An interview with CEO of Buurtzorg on Boss Level Podcast. Buurtzorg is an elderly care company that is usually presented as an example of a teal organization.

Links for the podcast:

• Mailing list: http://eepurl.com/P0dpf
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bosslevelpodcast
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/bosslevelpod
• iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/fi/podcast/boss-level/id1041885043
• Website: http://www.bosslevelpodcast.com
• Sami Honkonen on Twitter: http://twitter.com/SamiHonkonen
• Sami’s website: http://www.samihonkonen.com
• Sami’s blog: http://blog.samihonkonen.com

Brief walkthrough of the evolutionary stages presented in Laloux book:

• The first stage is called Red. That’s the stage of top-down authority and strict division of labor. Think of a street gang or a wolfpack, where fear is the glue of the organization.
• Then we have Amber. Amber is characterized by hierarchy, formal roles and stable processes. It’s where we use the stick to keep people in control. An example of an amber organization is the army.
• Then we get to Orange. Orange is the organization that acts like a machine. Orange organizations value innovation and accountability and are based on a meritocracy. This is probably the most common organizational paradigm currently in use.
• After Orange comes Green. That’s the family-like organization. These green organizations are driven by their values and people are empowered to produce to the stakeholders. Green organizations have a strong focus on culture.
• The final stage introduced by Laloux is teal. Teal is an organization that behaves like a living organism. The organization has it’s own evolutionary purpose. It’s self-managed and leadership is distributed. People bring their whole selves to work and don’t create a strong distinction between their work and private personas.

My first guest for the seventh season is Eeva Vilkkumaa, Assistant Professor at the Aalto University School of Business. She studies decision making and resource allocation at companies and public organizations.

We talk about how companies can develop mathematical models to support their decision making. Eeva emphasises the importance of co-creation when building decision making models. She thinks that if people are not involved on building the model or don't understand the principles behind the model, the results are not going to be great.

Hope you enjoy episode!

Sponsor link

• Panostaja - an investment company that owns and develops Finnish SMEs: http://www.panostaja.fi/en/

Links for the episode:

• Eeva's profile on Aalto University's site
• Aalto University's Systems Analysis Laboratory

Links for the podcast:

• Mailing list: http://eepurl.com/P0dpf
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bosslevelpodcast
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/bosslevelpod
• iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/fi/podcast/boss-level/id1041885043
• Website: http://www.bosslevelpodcast.com
• Sami Honkonen on Twitter: http://twitter.com/SamiHonkonen
• Sami’s website: http://www.samihonkonen.com
• Sami’s blog: http://blog.samihonkonen.com

My guest for this episode is Barry O’Reilly, who’s one of the authors of Lean Enterprise that discusses how high performance organisations innovate at scale.

What’s especially interesting to me about Barry’s experience is that he’s worked a lot with large organisations. He’s for example the founder of ExecCamp, where he takes executives to retreats lasting up to 8 weeks, and helps them disrupt their own businesses.

We talk about how organisations can transform their culture to support experimentation and better decision making. Barry also highlights couple of insights from his newest book, Unlearn.

Links for the episode:

• Barry’s website
• Unlearn: Let go of past success to achieve extraordinary results
• Barry on Twitter
• About Barry on Singularity University’s website
• Barry’s talk on lean enterprises at GOTO Chicago 2016

Links for the podcast:

• Mailing list: http://eepurl.com/P0dpf
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bosslevelpodcast
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/bosslevelpod
• iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/fi/podcast/boss-level/id1041885043
• Website: http://www.bosslevelpodcast.com
• Sami Honkonen on Twitter: http://twitter.com/SamiHonkonen
• Sami’s website: http://www.samihonkonen.com
• Sami’s blog: http://blog.samihonkonen.com

This is my interview with Harri Valpola. Harri is the CEO of Curious AI, a Helsinki-based 20 person startup that’s aiming to build a general artificial intelligence. Now that’s a pretty bold goal when Facebook’s head of AI research just recently said that in terms of general intelligence, we’re not even close to a rat.

Harri is a respected researcher in the field of artificial intelligence. He knows his stuff. The previous company he founded, ZenRobotics, builds robots so that’s pretty cool too.

We talk about what general artificial intelligence would be like, whether we should try to simulate the human brain or not and how curiosity is a great guide in life.

Sponsor link:

• Valuemotive: http://valuemotive.com
• Wunderdog: http://wunder.dog

Links for the episode:

• Curious AI
• Harri on Wired magazine

Links for the podcast:

• Mailing list: http://eepurl.com/P0dpf
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bosslevelpodcast
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/bosslevelpod
• iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/fi/podcast/boss-level/id1041885043
• Website: http://www.bosslevelpodcast.com
• Sami Honkonen on Twitter: http://twitter.com/SamiHonkonen
• Sami's website: http://www.samihonkonen.com
• Sami's blog: http://blog.samihonkonen.com

John Seddon is the inventor of The Vanguard Method. The Vanguard Method is a way of helping organizations move from command and control towards systems design. Seddon is the author of books such as Freedom from Command and Control and The Whitehall Effect. He’s currently working on a book titled Beyond Command and Control. Seddon’s work has provoked a lot of thought and has significantly deepened my understanding of how organizations function.

We talk about organizations as systems, value and failure demand, incentives, system conditions, budgeting and how the system drives behavior.

Sponsor link:

• Nitor: http://nitor.fi
• Talented: http://talented.fi

Links for the episode:

• John Seddon
• The Vanguard Method
• Freedom From Command and Control
• The Whitehall Effect

Links for the podcast:

• Mailing list: http://eepurl.com/P0dpf
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bosslevelpodcast
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/bosslevelpod
• iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/fi/podcast/boss-level/id1041885043
• Website: http://www.bosslevelpodcast.com
• Sami Honkonen on Twitter: http://twitter.com/SamiHonkonen
• Sami's website: http://www.samihonkonen.com
• Sami's blog: http://blog.samihonkonen.com

My guest today is Katri Saarikivi. Katri is a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Helsinki. She studies empathy in digital environments. Essentially she’s trying to figure out how we could better express ourselves in digital conversations.

Sponsor link:

• Finitec: http://www.finitec.fi

Links for the episode:

• Katri Saarikivi on Twitter
• Tomorrow Labs is hiring

Links for the podcast:

• Mailing list: http://eepurl.com/P0dpf
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bosslevelpodcast
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/bosslevelpod
• iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/fi/podcast/boss-level/id1041885043
• Website: http://www.bosslevelpodcast.com
• Sami Honkonen on Twitter: http://twitter.com/SamiHonkonen
• Sami's website: http://www.samihonkonen.com
• Sami's blog: http://blog.samihonkonen.com

I’m interviewing Bjarte Bogsnes. Bjarte is one of the key people behind the adaptive management model called Beyond Budgeting. If there’s one person you want to learn about Beyond Budgeting from, it’s Bjarte.

Bjarte is one of the key people who have been leading Statoil’s journey from traditional corporate budgeting to a completely new management style. Along the way, he’s authored books on the things he has learned.

What’s good to know before we get started is that despite the name, Beyond Budgeting is not only about getting rid of budgeting. It is a new approach to management that emphasizes empowerment and adaptivity.

Beyond Budgeting’s 12 principles cover topics such as purpose, values, transparency, autonomy, targets and resource allocation. It is much larger than just budgets.

Sponsor links:

• Gofore: http://www.gofore.com
• Agile42: http://www.agile42.com

Links for the episode:
- Article about Tomorrow Labs in Helsingin Sanomat
- Tomorrow Labs, Careers
- Bjarte Bogsnes on Twitter
- Statoil
- Beyond Budgeting

Links for the podcast:

• Mailing list: http://eepurl.com/P0dpf
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bosslevelpodcast
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/bosslevelpod
• iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/fi/podcast/boss-level/id1041885043
• Website: http://www.bosslevelpodcast.com
• Sami Honkonen on Twitter: http://twitter.com/SamiHonkonen
• Sami's website: http://www.samihonkonen.com
• Sami's blog: http://blog.samihonkonen.com

Today, I’m chatting with Sara Öhrvall. Sara is the Co-founder and Senior Advisor at Mindmill Network. Mindmill helps companies understand how digital technologies impact their business. Before Mindmill Sara was the Senior Vice President of R&D at the Bonnier Group.

Sara sits on several boards. For example, she’s on the board of SEB, a Nordic corporate bank and Investor, the leading owner of Nordic-based international companies.

She also writes a column for Dagens Industri, which is the financial daily of Sweden.

In 2017 Sara was selected for Wired’s list of 50 most inspiring female influencers from across Europe. She’s one of the best and brightest women in technology.

We talk about the impact technology will have on people and businesses and how our companies should adapt to that change.

Sponsor links:

• Nitor: http://www.nitor.fi/myths
• Talented: http://www.talented.fi

Links for the episode:

• Sara Öhrvall on Twitter
• Mindmill Network

Links for the podcast:

• Mailing list: http://eepurl.com/P0dpf
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bosslevelpodcast
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/bosslevelpod
• iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/fi/podcast/boss-level/id1041885043
• Website: http://www.bosslevelpodcast.com
• Sami Honkonen on Twitter: http://twitter.com/SamiHonkonen
• Sami's website: http://www.samihonkonen.com
• Sami's blog: http://blog.samihonkonen.com

My guest for this episode is Kaisa Hietala, Executive Vice President of Renewable Products at Neste. Neste currently makes half of its profits from renewable products and the shift towards this state has happened in the the last 10 years.

We talk about changing the oil industry from the inside out. What have been the most important lessons Kaisa has learned during her years at Neste? What has the journey of developing a renewable product line been like? Has the transformation to using renewable products been hard?

Kaisa also reveals that 20 years ago she could have become a researcher in climate change. What made her to join an oil company instead?

This is the last episode of Boss Level Podcast before summer break. Season 7 starts on September.

If you want to enjoy the podcast during summer break, just tune again in to your favorite episodes. You’re most likely to find some new thoughts and ideas, that you’ve missed the first time. Or just start the whole show from beginning 😉

We wish a great summer to all the listeners of Boss Level Podcast!

Sponsor link

• Zervant - Free invoicing software for small businesses: https://zervant.com/

Links for the episode:

• Kaisa on Twitter
• Kaisa's profile on Bloomberg.com
• Neste's renewable products
• Neste's sustainability guidelines and reports

Links for the podcast:

• Mailing list: http://eepurl.com/P0dpf
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bosslevelpodcast
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/bosslevelpod
• iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/fi/podcast/boss-level/id1041885043
• Website: http://www.bosslevelpodcast.com
• Sami Honkonen on Twitter: http://twitter.com/SamiHonkonen
• Sami’s website: http://www.samihonkonen.com
• Sami’s blog: http://blog.samihonkonen.com

My guest for this episode is Leyla Acaroglu, who calls herself sustainability provocateur and cultural protagonist. She has developed the Disruptive Design Method, an approach to design-led social change.

In Boss Level Podcast, we've often talked about systems thinking, but mostly in the context of organizations. With Leyla, we're going to take a look at systems on a much bigger scale: we talk about the systems that sustain life on earth and how we can use design to make our life on earth more sustainable.

Sponsor link

• Zervant - Free invoicing software for small businesses: https://zervant.com/

Links for the episode:

• Leyla's website
• Leyla on Twitter
• Unschool project
• Leyla's TED talk: "Paper beats plastic? How to rethink environmental folklore"

Links for the podcast:

• Mailing list: http://eepurl.com/P0dpf
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bosslevelpodcast
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/bosslevelpod
• iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/fi/podcast/boss-level/id1041885043
• Website: http://www.bosslevelpodcast.com
• Sami Honkonen on Twitter: http://twitter.com/SamiHonkonen
• Sami’s website: http://www.samihonkonen.com
• Sami’s blog: http://blog.samihonkonen.com

My guest for this episode is Troy Hunt, well known security expert and creator of haveibeenpwned.com. It's a service which allows you to check, whether your email has been leaked as a part of a data breach.

We talk about online security, including securing your accounts and using a password manager. We also discuss about privacy and compare our thoughts on social media platforms, messaging applications and encryption. What kind of trade-offs people should make to be more private? What is a pragmatic standpoint on privacy? What is the balance between convenience and privacy?

Listen to the episode, tell us what you think! Also remember to check if you have an account that has been compromised in a data breach.

Sponsor link

• Academy of philosophy: https://filosofianakatemia.fi/en

Links for the episode:

• Have i Been Pwned
• Troy's intro on haveibeenpwned.com
• Troy's website
• Troy on Twitter

Links for the podcast:

• Mailing list: http://eepurl.com/P0dpf
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bosslevelpodcast
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/bosslevelpod
• iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/fi/podcast/boss-level/id1041885043
• Website: http://www.bosslevelpodcast.com
• Sami Honkonen on Twitter: http://twitter.com/SamiHonkonen
• Sami’s website: http://www.samihonkonen.com
• Sami’s blog: http://blog.samihonkonen.com

Today's topic is personal productivity and my guest is David Allen, author of Getting Things Done.

Getting Things Done - often referred to as GTD - is a time management method, described in a book of the same title. It helps you capture all the stuff floating around in your brain, process it into your next actions and projects and then just get them done. The method has significantly improved productivity of probably millions of people.

I read the book roughly 10 years ago and have since applied it pretty much every day. It has helped me to get stuff done and to feel less stressed about stuff.

In this episode, we walk through some of David's history and talk about how he came up with the ideas and models behind Getting Things Done method. We also cover the basics of the method itself and give some tips on how to get better at it.

If you're interested in learning more about the Getting Things Done method, I strongly urge you to find the book and read it.

Sponsor link

• Academy of philosophy: https://filosofianakatemia.fi/en

Links for the episode:

• Getting Things Done -method's website
• David's intro on gettingthingsdone.com
• David on Twitter
• Getting Things Done -book on Amazon
• GTD in 15 minutes -guide

Links for the podcast:

• Mailing list: http://eepurl.com/P0dpf
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bosslevelpodcast
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/bosslevelpod
• iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/fi/podcast/boss-level/id1041885043
• Website: http://www.bosslevelpodcast.com
• Sami Honkonen on Twitter: http://twitter.com/SamiHonkonen
• Sami’s website: http://www.samihonkonen.com
• Sami’s blog: http://blog.samihonkonen.com

My guest for this episode is Björn Wahlroos, one of the most influential businessman in Finland. He's currently the chairman of the board at Sampo Group, Nordea and UPM-Kymmene.

We talk about Björn's background in academia, his defining moments, his current roles, sleepless nights, self confidence and leadership.

Björn is known to have pretty strong opinions, and he doesn't exactly hold back in expressing them. Listen to the episode and tell us what you think!

Links for the podcast:

• Mailing list: http://eepurl.com/P0dpf
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bosslevelpodcast
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/bosslevelpod
• iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/fi/podcast/boss-level/id1041885043
• Website: http://www.bosslevelpodcast.com
• Sami Honkonen on Twitter: http://twitter.com/SamiHonkonen
• Sami’s website: http://www.samihonkonen.com
• Sami’s blog: http://blog.samihonkonen.com

My first guest for the season is Teemu Arina. Teemu is a biohacker, a technologist, an entrepreneur and he was recently selected as Public Speaker of the Year in Finland.

We talk about biohacking and the science behind it. And we talk about how biohacking strives for balance instead of maximising performance in all areas of life.

Sponsor links:

• Neuroleadership: https://neuroleadership.fi/
• Kevytjuridiikka.fi: https://kevytjuridiikka.fi/

Links for the episode:

• Teemu on Twitter
• Biohacker’s handbook
• Biohakkerin käsikirja

Links for the podcast:

• Mailing list: http://eepurl.com/P0dpf
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bosslevelpodcast
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/bosslevelpod
• iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/fi/podcast/boss-level/id1041885043
• Website: http://www.bosslevelpodcast.com
• Sami Honkonen on Twitter: http://twitter.com/SamiHonkonen
• Sami’s website: http://www.samihonkonen.com
• Sami’s blog: http://blog.samihonkonen.com