Business Drivers by Fahren

Our guest for this episode  is Kurt Schmidt, a long time leader in the software development space. He’s a partner at Foundry, an innovation and design firm that helps companies grow through better experiences. Kurt also have a popular podcast the Schmidt List. He’s also an author and expert on networking to grow your career.  In this talk we go a little deep into Kurt's story, how he his start as a pro BMXer, a small business owner and the lessons he learned as the son of a small business owner who was also a pastor.  You’ll also get some great tips on how to be a better listener while networking, and you’ll get a great sense of how a purpose-led leader connects over empathy, honesty and desire to put good out into the world.  Hope you like this convo with Kurt! You can buy his book "the Little Book of Networking: How to Grow Your Career One Conversation at a Time" on Amazon, here.  You can reach Kurt via: His website: https://kurtschmidt.me/ His consulting group: https://schmidtconsulting.group/ Foundry: https://www.foundrymakes.com/  His podcast: https://kurtschmidt.me/schmidtlist/ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/schmidtlist

Alison Gretz has been an artist, a designer, a UX expert, a product team leader and, now, a coach and teacher for Human Centered leaders. This is a great conversation about the difference between teacher, coach, mentor and advocate. Also, we learn how to develop a sense of curiosity and fearlessness in your team. Finally, we address burnout and how to get through it.  Alison offers coaching and cohort-driven classes for those focused onhuman-centered work like product leaders, designers and UX teams. Recently, she's introduced an "Accelerator" for design professionals.  You can learn more about Alison and her offerings at designbydesign.co

Today our Guest is Leilani Bloomquist, an independent consultant who focuses on digital transformation, product team leadership and innovation. Leilani is sort of a quadruple threat: She knows innovation She knows product development and management She knows how to guide change in an org And, she’s seen the good and bad of digital transformation I really appreciated this talk. The clarity of Leilani’s thinking, the empathy and intelligence she brings to her work shouldn’t be surprising given all the work she’s done in education and healthcare.  She’s also got unique insights into doing transformational product work in highly regulated industries like healthcare and financial services. I think you’ll find that she’s got a cool ability to help teams be in two places at once: The practical reality of now, and the optimistic opportunity of the future.  And, as someone that has a love/hate relationship with jargon I really liked her points on mentorship, helping teams find a common language to cut through the fog of jargon.

Our guest for this podcast is Olivia Luterbach, Director of Strategy at Superhuman. This was a lot of fun, because we got meta, so I got to  nerd out with a strategist about how strategists do strategy.  We covered some of the  stuff you might expect, like briefs and why Olivia doesn’t use them - but we got some interesting answers to familiar questions.  We talked about how the job of a strategist is to find the right problem to solve, and how digital strategy is becoming, ultimately, a holistic business strategy.  We also talked about the benefits of working with private equity backed firms and the unique needs they’ve got.  We also talked how startups inside large orgs are different than other startups. Finally, we talk about the transition to strategy leadership vs. being an individual contributor.  This one was so good even I listened to it twice.  Thanks for tuning in.

Our guest for this podcast is Scott Allen Scott is the vice president of interactive marketing and strategy at Ameriprise Financial. At Ameriprise, Scott leads a broad team that focuses on creating great digital experiences that drive results for clients and some prospects. Disclosure here, Scott and I worked together on the same team at Ameriprise a while back, so we've got a working history. I love this conversation for a couple of reasons. One, it's a great example of how modern organizations are dealing with digital transformation, especially transformations that have been going on for a while. Additionally, this is a good peek into how firms and highly regulated industries are working to build agility. We also get into the role of senior leaders and how in this case, they're doing a great job of providing support to the grassroots efforts to weave new ways of working into the org. There's also a super nugget in here about the rationale for moving to product orgs and how it came from the top hint. Your finance folks will get anxious listening to this, and you're gonna like it. So thanks for tuning in.