Episodes

If you walk into a room with ten people and two of them are entrepreneurs, how would you recognize the two on sight? You probably would not until you started a conversation with them. Once in a conversation, you may recognize certain traits or a certain mindset often associated with entrepreneurs, but this does not mean that those two entrepreneurs are alike. Not all entrepreneurs follow the same path to get to where they are. In part I of this series we discussed how innovation is a component o...

In December 2019 at the onset of COVID-19, we saw a wide array of responses form businesses and entrepreneurs. Many businesses moved their activities online while entrepreneurs sought out new opportunities in the crisis. But the one thing we did see was innovation. German Breweries started making hand sanitizers and tech companies developed tracking and tracing apps. Essentially innovation blossomed in light of the crisis. This episode is Part I of a 2-Part series that explores innovation and en...

There are many models and theories concerning organization culture and if you have attended university you may have been taught many of them. The issue is that most of the models are based on either economical or psychological foundations. In this episode we question what would happen if we looked at organizational culture form another angle? What about if you used cognitive science to look at organizational culture? Most leaders think of organization culture as employee attitude and the way emp...

Everyone is talking about the new normal, and this new normal has changed our business practices, it also includes a flood of changes and new trends in tech. Software development has become more integral in every part of business and in every part of the world, meaning that new software development is having a great impact on our lives. While we cannot always predict what lies ahead for tech, but we are seeing new technology and new trends that will continue into the new decade. Deep learning: a...

Business has certainly changed, today we are facing new challenge and new opportunities but even in the midst of this crisis business and negotiations must go on. We are operating in highly unusual and disrupted commercial environment today, therefore even the location of negotiations has changed, they may not be happening in the board room today but on virtual platforms. But no matter where discussions and negotiations are taking place and under what conditions and what altered business practic...

Everyone knows the famous expression in English: When the going gets tough, the tough get going. But many people do not like challenges, they like predictability, and when we cannot inject predictability into our lives, we sometimes get frustrated and do not know how to cope. Today live in a time where there is very little predictability. In the last 3 months many people lost jobs, we have seen borders opened and closed, we live with new rules and we do not know what is around the corner. We can...

More now than ever we require a future perspective, which can take our discussions beyond current issues such as lockdown policies, social distancing, increasing and decreasing COVID-19 numbers, getting children back to school and everything else that occupies our minds daily. Individuals, leaders, and organizations must have a vision of what kind of world we will be facing - a month from now and or even in the next decade. In this episode, we explore the visions of some great minds. We ask if t...

Paul Van Der Merwe, author and engineer is known for the quote “Money makes the world go around; however, happiness greases the axle. Without this lubricant, life will seize.” But most us only know the expression money makes the world go round which can be interpreted that that money is the most important or one of the essential things in life. We all have different attitudes toward money, and we all have different practices when it comes to earning, saving and spending money and some practices ...

Most people do not question rules because they are designed to protect the status quo and create a level playing field, but sometimes we need to bend them a little if in order to get a desired result. In the right context, this can be ok because rules are not static, they evolve and are based on the information we have at a certain time. Not to be confused with laws, which are in place to protect us, rules are very often open to interpretation, rules can be changed. Sometimes we need flexibility...

A business that is visible is also considered creditable. Visibility today means being present across all digital channels and using the right tools to make sure you stand out among the competition. With the decrease in foot traffic and increase in online traffic, if customers cannot find you, they will not know who you are, and they will give their business to someone else. As study by Riverbed found that 99% of business decision makers agree that optimizing digital performance is essential to ...

During the Corona crisis, tech has been a blessing in many ways. But the use of tracking and tracing apps in various countries have raised the question whether we are putting our privacy at stake. In this episode of Leadership Beyond Borders we speak with Juergen Weichert, CRO of Munich based ad tech company Usercentrics. We talk about the use of tracking and tracing apps in the wake of the corona crisis and why the crucial question is how the data is being stored. We discuss the concept of Cons...

As we start to come out of this crisis and things very slowly get back to normal, those companies that have shown strong leadership are the first ones to bet on. Some industries were impacted more than others, regardless of how strong the leadership is. Still, it is the companies that have shown innovation, flexible business models, excellent customer communication and strong leadership that will recover. In this episode, we explore what great leadership looks like by talking with an influential...

Luka Lucic, a Pratt Institute psychologist who studies the effects of war said “People, during times of prolonged, radical change, end up changing,” The question we will pose in this episode, how have local businesses changed and what does the new normal look like. Until the Covid-19 is subdued either by a vaccine or by a global campaign of strategically coordinated lockdowns our lives will not look like they did before. Businesses will not look they did before, and we will continue to have chal...

As the world reaches COVID-19 exhaustion and we all realize that this crisis has already changed our daily lives, very often we do not recognize what else the crisis has changed including its impact on global opinions surrounding politics, the environment and technology. Our attitudes toward potential opportunities—and risks— of using Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to combat COVID-19 are varied. There are examples of data and AI-based technologies that combat viruses and the spread of the...

For the first time in history, we are working with six generations in one workforce but whether this multi-generational workforce is collaborative and productive, or challenging and stressful, is up to how we manage. Over the past months we have experienced a crisis making it more complicated to do business-as-usual. Remote teams and lockdown policies have changed how we communicate. Different people react to these changes in different ways, but are different generations reacting to these new ch...

Local Search is about ‘near me’ searches that were incredibly popular and based on intent, proximity, location optimization and relevance, the searcher was getting what they wanted in a very local sense. Given the recent restriction of offline movement, one could ask how this has affected Local Search? It would be natural to assume that it has dramatically fallen or even evaporated. Yet that’s not the case. As footfall has declined for most local retailers and other merchants, online visits and ...

Marketing practices are adapting to the corona crisis in both the B2B and B2C sectors. E-commerce is surging among SMBs, while business models are changing. Demands are shifting in online product orders. High-demand for new products and services in a world where everyone is shopping online creates new competition and makes channels such as affiliate marketing a logical choice. In this episode we take a look at the affiliate marketing channel, how it works and why it can be a reliable marketing c...

Sales Operations have shifted. You can no longer look you customer in the eye, so what do you do? In this episode we discuss how businesses are transforming their sales operations due to the COVID-19 pandemic, what we can learn from how remote sales have been done to date. We discover the best practices that are going on and what type of training is needed for salespeople who may be transitioning from field sales to telesales or inside sales. We explore the challenges of how this can be done eff...

Start ups are generally known for their agility and quick response, while large organizations are rarely so flexible. Large organizations often resist disseminating plans until they are completely sure, and then they are reluctant to change for fear of creating confusion both within the organization and with customers. But now large organizations are being forced to learn from smaller and medium size organizations as we all fight to keep our heads above water in this unexpected crisis. Time-stra...

Keeping calm and thinking both strategically and operationally can be challenging when a crisis occurs, and that’s what we are in. Facing a massive number of customer requests and questions, some of them desperate and some of them just inquisitive, can be challenging even in the best of times. We as leaders and companies must consistently provide transparent and accurate communication that maintains a trusting relationship with our customers, employees and other stakeholders. What kind of messag...

The Importance of Storytelling cannot be underestimated. The world we live in today could not exist without the influence from past generations, the experiences from people across the globe and the experiences from those that surround us. As creatures of habit and tradition we instinctively hand down lessons and share knowledge. We crave communal knowledge, which very often comes from the stories we share. It is one of the most traditional and human processes. Great stories often reflect the wor...

It is difficult enough to balance career, family, children and still have time for yourself, and then we suddenly find ourselves in a world health crisis and everything changes. We find ourselves “locked down” with family under foot, trying to build a rountine so that life can somehow go on. In this episode we speak with two female executives on how they are mannaging and organizing their family in these difficult times. We speak about everything from organizational best practices to how to expl...

Many of us saw the outbreak of SARS or EBOLA, but both of these pandemics were before we had a fully embraced world economy. Today we have a full global and connected economy, one that has spirited our growth but also brings with it certain risks because we are so globally connected. Now we are now living those risks. The pandemic is hitting the entire economy, and maybe the big guys will survive, with government help, but what about the local businesses? They are being hit the most. Local busin...

A recent Forbes article published research by the Carnegie Institute of Technology which indicated only 15% of financial success actually comes from knowledge or technical skills. The remaining 85% of success comes from the ability to effectively communicate and negotiate with others, and a lot has to do with body language and habits. We sometimes have habits and act in certain ways that we do not even recognise in ourselves, and these behaviours can have either a positive or a negative effect o...