As Ron Friedman, my guest on this week's episode, explains, we have been taught for generations that there are two ways to succeed either from talent or practice, the latter popularised by Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers.

In his new book, Decoding Greatness, Ron describes a third path. One that has quietly launched icons in a wide range of fields from artists, writers and chefs to athletes, inventors and entrepreneurs and one that would be applied widely to learning in the workplace, the path of reverse engineering. Click below to listen to this week’s episode or to read the full transcript.

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The transformation that Steven Baert is leading as Chief People and Organisation Officer at Novartis, in shaping culture and leadership to a re-imagined medicine is hugely impressive. As Steven explains in this week's episode of the podcast, Novartis is successfully fuelling a scientific and entrepreneurial spirit of the company through its inspired, curious and un-bossed culture. This equips the people closest to the customer or product with the freedom to own the important decisions about their work for themselves. Novartis is also empowering their people by re-imagining its approach to performance management. Click below to listen to this week’s episode or to read the full transcript.

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AT&T is the world's largest telecommunications company and it is in the midst of a major business and organisational transformation. As part of this AT&T is evolving its performance culture towards a more agile approach based on the notion of Kind Candor. My guest on this week's episode, Melissa Corwin, is The Vice President for Employee Experience and she is overseeing the development of the new performance culture. As you will hear, this is an impressive, well coordinated strategy that is supported across the organisation and tied closely to improving outcomes for the business, employees and AT&T’s customers. Click below to listen to this week’s episode or to read the full transcript.

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My guest on this week's episode is Greg Harris, CEO of Quantum Workplace, which was founded in 2003 and has since emerged as one of the pioneers in the revolution of the employee feedback market.

Greg believes that the economic value of employee feedback is probably equal to, or greater than, input from customers and that employee feedback is the first step in creating an inclusive environment. Greg also explains why employee engagement and performance management are two sides of the same coin. Click below to listen to this week’s episode or to read the full transcript.

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BNY Mellon is America's oldest bank, having been created in 1784, and is currently on a journey of reinvention as it transforms into a digital organisation. The pandemic has accelerated this journey and that is where Jolen Anderson, my guest on this week's episode, comes in. Jolen is a Global Head of Human Resources and with her team, is responsible for translating their business strategy into their workforce strategy and igniting the passion of BNY Mellon's employees. As the business transformation was accelerated by the pandemic Jolen and her team are focused on three key driving principles. First, operational resiliency. Second, service to customers and third, employee wellbeing and safety. These three principles, not only underpin the digital transformation but the bank's culture too. Click below to listen to this week’s episode or to read the full transcript.

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My guest this week is Dr. David Rock, who coined the term NeuroLeadership and is the Co-Founder and CEO of the NeuroLeadership Institute, which has worked with over 50% of the Fortune 100 companies, to make organisations better for humans through science. David has authored four successful books, including Your Brain At Work, a business best seller and has written for and been quoted in hundreds of articles about leadership, organisational effectiveness and the brain. The centrepiece of my discussion with David is his SCARF Model, which is based on neuroscience and is designed to help us work more effectively with others. Click below to listen to this week’s episode or to read the full transcript.

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My guest on this week's episode is Jimmy Zhang, the Head of People Strategy and Analytics at Vertex Pharmaceuticals. He joined the company, which has just over 3000 Employees, in 2018 and has built the People Analytics team from the ground up. I am often asked if People Analytics is the preserve of larger companies and I always say no, every company has business questions that can be answered with People Analytics. That said there are different challenges in setting up a People Analytics Team in an organisation with, say less than 5,000 Employees. For one, you don't have the luxury of building a large team, this means you need to take a different approach, one of partnership and leveraging skills from across the organisation. This is exactly what my guest on this week's episode has done and in doing so has built one of the most agile, most innovative and most successful People Analytics Teams I have come across. Click below to listen to this week’s episode or to read the full transcript.

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My guest on this week's episode is Jignasha Grooms, Chief Human Resources Officer at Epicor Software, a 4,000 person, global technology company. Jignasha has 20 years of experience in the IT Industry, both in Business and Sales Operations and in Human Resources. Perhaps Jignasha’s biggest achievement in her role at Epicor has been the development of The One Epicor Culture, which puts employees at the centre and is built on pillars, including trust, agility, authenticity and empathy. It is a particularly impressive story, as you will hear, and one that has led to some significant outcomes for the Business and the workforce. Click below to listen to this week’s episode or to read the full transcript.

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My guest on this week's episode is Ian White, Founder and Chief Executive Officer at ChartHop, one of the fastest growing and most exciting new technologies in our space. ChartHop has grown by more than 10X since the start of the pandemic and has a prestigious list of investors, including Andreessen Horowitz. Josh Bersin recently highlighted ChartHop as “a cool tool that displays every piece of data you need in a visual way” which is high praise indeed and deservedly so. Ian believes that when people have the full context, know what they are trying to achieve together, know their roles and fundamentally trust that Managers and Leaders are transparent and fair, you can achieve great things. Click below to listen to this week’s episode or to read the full transcript.

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The guest on this week’s episode of the podcast is Isabel Naidoo, Global Head of Inclusion and Talent at FIS, where she runs the Strategic Talent Agenda for the FinTech company’s 60,000 employees. One of the features of the work that Isabel oversees at FIS, is how the company has seamlessly incorporated HR technology to bring personalised, consumer like experiences, to its employees and how it has harnessed people analytics. This episode is a must listen for anyone interested or involved in how people data, technology and analytics can personalise HR programs, enhance the employee experience and drive better business outcomes. Click below to listen to this week’s episode or to read the full transcript.

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The guest on this week’s episode of the podcast is Claude Silver, Chief Heart Officer at VaynerMedia. In our conversation we discuss how the role of Chief Heart Officer emerged and how it has evolved. We look at Claude’s close working relationship with Gary Vaynerchuk, the CEO and how together, they seamlessly merge a people perspective with VaynerMedia’s business strategy and dive into the work that Claude is leading on diversity, equity and inclusion. Click below to listen to this week’s episode or to read the full transcript.

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The guests on this week’s special bonus episode are Arianna Huffington, CEO and Founder of Thrive Global and Donna Morris, Chief People Officer at Walmart. In our conversation, we discuss how the pandemic has thrust the human resources function centre stage, and how HR has thrived during this difficult time in organisations where the function is well led, has strong senior stakeholder equity, has prioritised employee wellbeing and has robust capability in people analytics. If anything, this has raised expectations of Chief People Officers even further, can they and the functions they lead evolve at the pace necessary to deliver on the expectations of Leaders and the workforce? Click below to listen to this week’s episode or to read the full transcript.

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My guest on this episode of the podcast is Alexis Saussinan, who is the Group Head of People Data and Technology at Merck Group. The function he has built has become a bedrock of Merck's people strategy and consistently delivers value to the business and the global workforce at Merck. Alexis and I reflect on the journey of people analytics over the last five years at Merck and look forward to the future as Alexis' role has expanded to bring people data, analytics and technology together. Click below to listen to this week’s episode or to read the full transcript.

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My guest on this week's episode of the podcast is Karen Powell, Chief Talent and Learning Officer at IQVIA. Karen emphasises that talent marketplace goes far beyond being a technology solution, instead it is a far broader cultural shift that permeates across the organisation and enables a whole new way of thinking about talent. In our conversation, Karen and I discuss how HR and the business are working together to drive transformational change at IQVIA, with a skills-based talent strategy. Click below to listen to this week’s episode or to read the full transcript.

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My guest on this week's episode of the podcast is Ruslan Tovbulatov, who first saw how HR and people analytics could be a strategic enabler of innovation, during his time at Google. This inspired Ruslan to pivot towards the HR tech field, first by joining Arianna Huffington at Thrive Global, where he worked in senior product and marketing roles for four years before moving on to his current role as VP of Global Marketing at Gloat. The company that first coined the phrase talent marketplace. In this episode, Ruslan shares powerful examples of the business benefits of creating a talent marketplace. Click below to listen to this week’s episode or to read the full transcript.

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My guest on this week’s episode is Jeroen Wels, the Executive Vice President of HR at Unilever and the architect of Flex Experiences. Flex Experiences is Unilever's thriving, internal talent marketplace, which is currently used by 65,000 global employees who are able to share their skills and experience with people in other teams and in other countries. During their quarterly earnings call for the first quarter of 2020, Unilever CEO, Alan Jope, highlighted how by using Flex Experiences the company had been able to redeploy over 3000 people from parts of the business with low demand, to the areas that were seeing high demand due to the pandemic. Click below to listen to this week’s episode or to read the full transcript.

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My guest on this week’s episode is Ina Gantcheva, a Principle in Deloitte’s Human Capital Practice and a leading authority on talent marketplace. In Ina’s words, talent marketplace has the potential to change the way organisations think about three fundamentals. One, work, by fractionalising work for increased efficiency. Second, the workforce, by unlocking greater potential and value. And finally third, the workplace, by breaking down silos. Click below to listen to this week’s episode or to read the full transcript.

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The guest on this week’s episode of the podcast is Head of People Strategy and Analytics at Capital One, Guru Sethupathy, who presides over one of the leading people analytics functions in the world. During this, just shy of four year tenure, Guru has quadrupled the size of the team to around a hundred people and together with his team has delivered significant value to the business as well as Capital One's Associates. Guru is a deep thinker and has retained that passion for people analytics that I saw four years ago. I know that listeners will enjoy learning from Guru’s experience and vision for people analytics. Click below to listen to this week’s episode or to read the full transcript.

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The nature of work and workplaces was already changing, but the pandemic has fast-forwarded many aspects of the future of work. The guest on this week’s podcast is Ethan Bernstein, who is an Associate Professor in the Organisational Behaviour Unit at The Harvard Business School. Ethan studies the impact of workplace transparency, the observability of employee activities, routines, behaviours, output and performance on productivity. Together with others, Ethan has conducted research during the pandemic to understand the implications of working without an office, which sought to answer a number of questions. Paramount amongst them was what impact has working from home had on productivity and creativity? Click below to listen to this week’s episode or to read the full transcript.

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My guest on this week’s episode is Wagner Denuzzo, who has a wonderful job title of Head of Capabilities for Future of Work, where he is leading the effort to design the organisation of the future at Prudential Financial. Wagner’s team is responsible for organisational design and capabilities and he is overseeing the development of an extraordinary end to end employee experience, as well as the transformation of learning, careers and skills development for the future and the creation of a talent marketplace. Click below to listen to this week’s episode or to read the full transcript.

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