Boss Level Podcast
75 episodes - English - Latest episode: over 1 year ago - ★★★★ - 6 ratingsBoss Level is a podcast on people and organizations aiming for the boss level. Boss level is the status a person or an organization achieves by making a better quality of life for themselves and others by doing what they need to do regardless of all the haters and obstacles out there.
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Episodes
Laura Tarkka on working in M&A, then becoming CFO and CEO
November 08, 2022 03:00 - 35 minutes - 32.7 MBSponsored by Vincit.
Zoe Chance on influence
October 25, 2022 03:00 - 25 minutes - 23.4 MBThanks to Nordic Business Forum for making the interview happen. And thanks to the sponsor of the season, Vincit.
Rutger Bregman on human nature
June 15, 2022 04:00 - 39 minutes - 44.7 MBMy guest is Rutger Bregman from Holland. He’s a historian and an author. His books Humankind and Utopia for Realists were both New York Times Bestsellers. You might also know him from a viral video of a speech he did in Davos or from an unaired, but leaked interview with Fox News that completely pissed off the host Tucker Carlson. We discuss how how we should move to a more benevolent view of human nature and how that would change the way we run our companies. Sponsor link: MinnaLearn
Josh Seiden on outcomes over output
May 31, 2022 03:50 - 29 minutes - 40.3 MBJosh Seiden is a designer, strategy consultant, coach, author and speaker. He helps clients launch new products and services, and to create more agile, entrepreneurial organizations. He's the author of Outcomes Over Outputs and co-author of Sense & Respond and Lean UX. We discuss why it's important to focus on the outcomes of the work we do and not on the output. You can learn more about Josh on his website. Sponsor for the episode: - MinnaLearn - Go here to join the exclusive Boss Level...
Kati Levoranta on Power-to-X
May 17, 2022 02:00 - 30 minutes - 42 MBMy guest today is Kati Levoranta. Kati is currently a Partner and Executive Vice President at P2X Solutions. Previously she was the CEO of Rovio and she has a background in law. She’s also on the board of Finavia, an airport operator company, Juuri Partners, a private equity company and OP, a large banking group. We talk about what Power-to-X means and how building plants differs from digital services. We talk about contracting, learning and how to keep yourself in good working order. Spon...
Elements of Agile that improve your EBITDA - an interview with Olli Salo
May 03, 2022 02:00 - 42 minutes - 58.4 MBEpisode links: Article on Boss Level Podcast in HS Visio Olli Salo Sponsor: Swanlake Strategy
Otto Hilska: When you don't know what to do with your life, start a company
April 21, 2022 02:30 - 42 minutes - 38.7 MBSome of topics covered in the discussion are: What's it like negotiating an exit? How does the operating model of a company change as it grows? What are the fundamental balancing acts in product development? Benefits of asynchronous communication Limits of self-organization Links: Swarmia Smartly Flowdock Sponsor: Swanlake Strategy
Stan McChrystal on risk preparedness
April 05, 2022 03:00 - 43 minutes - 39.8 MBAn interview with retired US Army general Stanley McChrystal. We talk about how to prepare for risks. This episode is sponsored by Swanlake Strategy. Further listening: My previous interview with Stan McChrystal Eeva Vilkkumaa on decision making
John Seddon on Agile, the most dysfunctional management fad there is
September 25, 2019 02:00 - 25 minutes - 23.4 MBAn interview with John Seddon, the inventor of 'The Vanguard Method' and managing director of Vanguard consultancy company. The Vanguard Method is a way of helping organizations move from command and control towards systems design. In this episode we talk about Johns new book: 'Beyond Command and Control'. We also continue on topics we discussed previous time John was guest on Boss Level. Links for the episode: Vanguard Method What is the Vanguard Method? John Seddon explains (video) Jo...
Timo Lappi on shaking up traditional industries
June 05, 2019 02:00 - 40 minutes - 37.1 MBAn interview with Timo Lappi, CEO of Heltti and Co-Founder of Fondia. Links for the episode: Heltti Fondia Timo 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...
Aaron Dignan on Brave New Work
May 16, 2019 03:57 - 31 minutes - 45.8 MBAn interview with Aaron Dignan, the author of Brave New Work. Links for the episode: Brave New Work Aaron 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 S...
Jeff Gothelf on sense and respond
May 02, 2019 02:00 - 20 minutes - 19.7 MBMy guest is Jeff Gothelf, the co-author of Sense and Respond, Lean UX and Lean vs Agile vs Design Thinking. Links for the episode: Jeff's website Jeff on Twitter Mirette's blog post on Yle 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:...
Cliff Hazell on going beyond cargo culting
April 03, 2019 03:06 - 31 minutes - 29.2 MBLinks for the episode: Cliff 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
Sami Honkonen and the future of this podcast
December 20, 2018 03:00 - 6 minutes - 5.96 MBThis 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.bosslevelpodca...
Jussi Markula on Teal organizations
November 27, 2018 03:00 - 23 minutes - 21.5 MBMy 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...
Barry O'Reilly on enabling a culture of experimentation
November 13, 2018 03:00 - 35 minutes - 32.5 MBMy 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 expe...
Gary Hamel on strategies and bureaucracy
October 09, 2018 02:00 - 38 minutes - 35.1 MBMy 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 segm...
Eeva Vilkkumaa on decision making
September 25, 2018 02:00 - 35 minutes - 32.2 MBMy 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 behi...
Kaisa Hietala on changing the oil industry
June 19, 2018 02:00 - 34 minutes - 31.5 MBMy 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 renew...
Leyla Acaroglu on designing a sustainable future
June 05, 2018 02:00 - 24 minutes - 22.8 MBMy 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 m...
Troy Hunt and Have i Been Pwned
May 22, 2018 02:00 - 34 minutes - 31.5 MBMy 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 ...
David Allen and Getting Things Done
May 08, 2018 02:00 - 33 minutes - 30.4 MBToday'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 a...
Björn Wahlroos on leading organizations
April 24, 2018 02:00 - 37 minutes - 34.5 MBMy 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: Mail...
Joshua Kerievsky and Modern Agile
March 27, 2018 02:00 - 33 minutes - 30.5 MBMy guest today is Joshua Kerievsky, the CEO of Industrial Logic, a Modern Agile consultancy. He has also started the Modern Agile community and has been a prominent figure in the agile community since the early days. His background is in software, but through his experience in agile methods, he has worked on a much broader range than just the software. We walk through some of Joshua's history and talk a bit about how that came out in the form of Modern Agile community. We'll finish with a t...
Annu Nieminen and The Upright Project
March 13, 2018 03:00 - 38 minutes - 35.1 MBMy guest for this episode is Annu Nieminen, the CEO and founder of The Upright Project. We talk about Annu's work history at McKinsey and Kasvuryhmä and about Annu's newest project, The Upright Project. Currently we measure companies using mainly financial indicators and, obviously, that’s just one piece of the pie. The Upright Project is trying to fix that and is working on building ways to measure the impact of companies more holistically. Basically they’re hoping to create a set of metri...
Christopher Avery and The Responsibility Process
February 27, 2018 03:00 - 39 minutes - 36.2 MBFor this episode, my guest is Christopher Avery, the man behind The Responsibility Process. The Responsibility Process is a model to help you recognize unproductive mental states and help you take responsibility. I learned about The Responsibility Process from Christopher roughly 7 years ago and it has stayed with me since. It’s one of my go-to tools personally and I often use it with teams. We discussed about how one can learn to use The Responsibility Process and how it is useful model f...
Teemu Arina on biohacking
February 13, 2018 03:00 - 32 minutes - 29.6 MBMy 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...
Markku Kulmala on earth systems
December 19, 2017 03:00 - 34 minutes - 32 MBMy guest is Markku Kulmala. Markku is one of the most prominent scientists in the world in the field of atmospheric and earth system sciences. At University of Helsinki, he leads a research group that has more than 35 published papers in journals Nature and Science. Markku is the person you want to learn from on the topic of climate change research. We talk about how they do their research, what their initial results show and how they’re hoping the results help humankind fight climate chang...
Henrik Kniberg on going climate neutral
December 12, 2017 03:01 - 38 minutes - 35 MBFor this episode, my guest is Henrik Kniberg. Henrik is a prominent figure in the agile community. If you’ve seen the video on Spotify engineering culture, that video is created by him. He has also authored several books on agile. Henrik is also one of the early guests of the the podcast and the previous episode we did was about two years ago. Back then we discussed Henrik’s agile coaching work at Lego and Spotify and how he helped his kids win a robot battle against experienced programmer...
Leila Janah on extreme poverty
December 05, 2017 03:00 - 20 minutes - 18.4 MBToday 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 Agile...
Bjarte Bogsnes and Beyond Budgeting
November 28, 2017 03:00 - 50 minutes - 45.9 MBI’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, Beyon...
Harri Valpola on third generation artificial intelligence
October 31, 2017 03:00 - 33 minutes - 31.1 MBThis 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...
Bengt Holmström on incentives and transparency
October 17, 2017 02:00 - 44 minutes - 40.4 MBToday’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 ...
Hilary Mason on machine learning
October 03, 2017 02:00 - 38 minutes - 34.9 MBToday’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 Fas...
Troy Magennis on forecasting and risk management
September 19, 2017 02:00 - 53 minutes - 49.3 MBWhile 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 se...
Katri Saarikivi on empathy in digital communication
September 04, 2017 23:02 - 28 minutes - 25.9 MBMy 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 Twitt...
Sara Öhrvall and the impact of digital technologies
June 20, 2017 02:00 - 35 minutes - 32.8 MBToday, 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 fi...
John Seddon and freedom from command and control
June 06, 2017 02:00 - 27 minutes - 25.2 MBJohn 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 a...
Peter Sunde, co-founder of The Pirate Bay, Flattr and Njalla
May 23, 2017 02:00 - 47 minutes - 43.5 MBToday's guest is Peter Sunde, co-founder of The Pirate Bay, Flattr and Njalla. The Pirate Bay is an online index of digital content often used for sharing copyrighted material such as movies, TV shows or music. The Pirate Bay is possibly one of the world’s most resilient websites, since the authorities have been trying to take it down for more than a decade and yet it’s still running. Since The Pirate Bay Peter has worked on several things, such as Flattr, a way of making micropayments to ...
Tim Hwang, the busiest man on the internet
May 09, 2017 02:00 - 43 minutes - 39.8 MBFor this episode I sat down for a chat with Tim Hwang. Tim has been labeled by Forbes magazine as the ’Busiest Man on the Internet’. First, he started ROFLcon, which stands for Rolling On the Floor Laughing Conference. It was a conference that studied internet culture through memes. After ROFLcon, he founded The Awesome Foundation For Arts And Sciences. The foundation’s sole aim is to promote awesomeness in the universe. It has donated over 2,5 million dollars to various projects through g...
Risto Siilasmaa, the paranoid optimist
April 25, 2017 02:00 - 1 hour - 57.8 MBMy guest today is Risto Siilasmaa. Risto is first and foremost an entrepreneur and a paranoid optimist. He’s the founder and former CEO of cybersecurity company F-Secure. His current role in the company is Chairman of the Board. Risto is also Chairman of the Board at Nokia. He took on the role in 2012 when Nokia was in a very difficult situation and actually one topics we discuss is how he came to accept the offer. We start off with Risto’s programming background, then move on to the early...
James Hewitt on well-being and knowledge work
April 11, 2017 02:00 - 43 minutes - 39.4 MBStart of the new, fourth season! My first guest for this season is James Hewitt. James is the Head of Science and Innovation at Hintsa Performance. He’s a sports scientist and performance coach searching for fresh perspectives and new approaches to enhance the performance of people, products and projects. We talk about the Circle of Better Life, which is a model that covers all the important aspects of well-being. We talk about the science behind the methods they use and new and interestin...
General Stan McChrystal and a Team of Teams
February 14, 2017 03:00 - 44 minutes - 40.7 MBAs is suitable for the season finale, I have a very special guest. I’m interviewing retired four-star general Stan McChrystal. Former US Defense Secretary Robert Gates described McChrystal as "perhaps the finest warrior and leader of men in combat”. McChrystal took command of an elite military organization, Joint Special Operations Task Force, and transformed it from a rigid hierarchy to a network of autonomous teams. The teams were encouraged to act autonomously as long as their actions s...
Sari Baldauf and decades of lessons on leadership
January 31, 2017 03:00 - 53 minutes - 25.5 MBMy guest is Sari Baldauf. Sari was selected as the most influential female executive in the year 1998 by Fortune magazine. In 2002 the Wall Street Journal named Baldauf as Europe's most successful female executive. Sari joined Nokia in 1983 and held several executive positions there. From 1998 to 2005 she was the General Manager of Nokia’s Networks business. She sat on the Executive Board of Nokia from 1994 until January 2005. In the end of 2004 she resigned from Nokia for personal reasons....
Joshua Spodek and seven years of burpees
January 17, 2017 03:00 - 22 minutes - 20.2 MBIn this episode I’m interviewing Joshua Spodek. He teaches leadership at New York University, has a PhD in astrophysics and does burpees everyday. I think that’s a pretty amazing one line description for anyone. His book Leadership Step by Step will be released in a couple of weeks. We talk about his principles for getting things done, his routines, his views on leadership, and we do a five minute walk-through of his book. We end the interview with some empathy and book recommendations. Sp...
Akiko Naka and finding a job you love
December 13, 2016 03:00 - 29 minutes - 27.4 MBMy guest is Akiko Naka. She is the CEO of Wantedly, a Japanese social recruiting platform with 1,2 million monthly active users and a 100 employees. She’s passionate about helping people find work they love doing. We discuss her bold career moves, Wantedly’s business, decision making in organizations and strategies for finding a job you love. Sponsor link: Evervest: http://www.evervest.com/bosslevel Links for the episode: Akiko Naka on Twitter Wantedly Photo of recording setup at Slush...
Aral Balkan and ethical design
November 29, 2016 03:00 - 33 minutes - 30.9 MBIf I’m concerned about privacy, my guest today is probably ten times more so. Aral is an activist, a designer and a software developer. He’s one of the founders of Indie, a tiny social enterprise working for social justice in the digital age. He’s also the man behind the Ethical Design Manifesto. We talk about Aral’s view on the evolution of computing, current business models of cloud services and venture capital. We cover the Ethical Design Manifesto and its implications on the software we...
Jim Benson on Personal Kanban, Lean Coffee and collaboration
November 15, 2016 03:00 - 42 minutes - 39.3 MBAn interview with Jim Benson, the creator of Personal Kanban and Lean Coffee. We delve into Personal Kanban, which is an approach to dealing with the overload of stuff you need to deal with. We dig into into its two simple rules, visualizing work and limiting work in progress. We then walk through Lean Coffee, which is a simple and effective way to run your meetings. In the end we discuss Jim’s lessons on collaboration from his years in working to improve it in organizations. Sponsor link:...