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What is one of the least understood roles of a consultant or advisor? Believe it or not, it's giving permission. Now before you jump to conclusions, let's be clear here that we're not talking about permission in the literal sense. But it's nonetheless true that companies and individuals often hire consultants to confirm, validate and sometimes even provide external justification for a decision that they have already made. Today’s episode of BTO is all about the process of making decisions and the role consultants play in that process. Using this as a starting point, we discuss: - External validation and the impact of confirmation bias: What kind of advice are people really looking for, and what are the contexts that can prompt them to seek a seal of approval? - This behavior on both an individual and institutional level: are companies – and some consulting firms – any different than individuals in this regard? - What to do if someone comes to you to validate a decision and what to do if you think it’s the wrong one - What constitutes a “wrong” decision, and is that really an objective assessment or a subjective one? - How to provide opinions and advice with tact and diplomacy We finish by talking about how to help people shift how they feel about their decisions. The process of making good choices is a complex one, and this episode is all about the persuasion piece that is often overlooked when we build fact-based cases for a certain option. If you want to take your decision-making to the next level, join us for this lively conversation on the power of permission.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could reduce life to a simple set of equations? Well, if that idea is appealing you just might be in luck. Today’s episode of BTO is all about work and life equations. The conversation was prompted by a provocative post that Mike made recently about his formula for knowing when to leave a job. It was expressed, rather elegantly, as: Current job (joy - pain) < potential job (excitement - fear) There was more to it than that, but that notion - of reducing complicated considerations into symbolic equations - caught people’s imagination, and it prompted us to do a whole program about our favorite such algorithms. Here are just some of the ones we discuss on the show: - Happiness = pleasure + purpose over time (h/t to Paul Dolan) - Life Design Principles = Authenticity + Agency - “Happiness is wanting what you have, not getting what you want” (singer - and philosopher! - Sheryl Crow) We also break down why these simplifications are so appealing to us today. We all want formulas and algorithms to make sense of our world, but also to help us navigate it. As thinking tools are influenced by pop culture and the zeitgeist, the ubiquity of the PC and now the mobile phone has made us all a bit more inclined to think like a computer, we argue. Finally, we’ll tackle their limits. Equations are seductive thinking tools, but they can be dangerously reductionist. While it’s tantalizing to believe that we can “rationalize” emotions and transform them into algorithms, the truth of the matter is that life is not that black and white. There’s a lot of grey in those equals (=) deductions/minuses (-) and multiplications (x), so we need to be careful in applying - and relying - on these mental shortcuts. Here's one final equation: Listening to this episode = learning cool new algorithms for work + life!

People have egos, but organizations appear to have them, too. How else can you explain Blockbuster's hubris in shrugging off the offer by a then-fledgling company called Netflix to join forces, the disastrous decision by Borders to outsource their e-commerce business to Amazon or the infamous 1962 decision by a Decca recording executive to pass on signing an unknown, 4-person Liverpudlian band “because guitar bands are on their way out”? As author Ryan Holiday put it well, “ego is the enemy” - of everything from sound business strategies to talent spotting and even, as we'll explore in this show, of being a good consultant. In today’s episode, we tackle the issue of overconfidence and how people and organizations fall prey to it at their peril. As the country song goes, it’s hard to humble … but it pays to keep your ego in check, to be “professionally paranoid”, and to not be afraid to be the dumbest person in the room.

What’s the most useful skill you can have in your utility belt these days? For many people - including McGill Desautels Faculty of Management Strategy Prof Corey Phelps - that superpower is problem-solving. As we have pivoted from a manufacturing-based economy to a services and knowledge-based one, our work “product” has shifted from the physical to the increasingly intangible - from making widgets to “building” presentations and spreadsheets. At the core of these new activities, however, is the attempt - and hopefully, ability - to solve a thorny problem that’s plaguing our company or client. In a special episode of “Boiling the Ocean”, we sit down with Professor Phelps to discuss his new book, “Cracked it!: How to solve big problems and sell solutions like top strategy consultants”. In a wide-ranging chat, we discuss: • The differences between problem-solving and making sound decisions (hint: it’s more subtle than it seems) • His 4 S Framework (of course there is a framework! We’re consultants after all …) • The one problem-solving step you probably aren’t consistently thinking about • The two reasons why this is a critical skill set for everyone - not just strategy consultants or those who aspire to be one • How you can apply this thinking to your everyday problems • … and who authored the better aphorism on the power of preparation - Albert Einstein or Abraham Lincoln? Dive into this episode to learn how to quickly build up one of the critical skills of the 21st century - and join the conversation about whether or not we all have to become professional problem solvers …

For years, we’ve been given the message that the working world no longer has a place for generalists and that we all have to become “experts”. Is that actually true? And perhaps more crucially, will that remain true in the coming decades, as companies and organizations are buffeted by the changes wrought by artificial intelligence and automation? In this week’s show, we tackle the “Specialists v Generalists” debate head-on. What we uncover is that while society undervalues generalists, it does so at its peril. Contrary to conventional wisdom, people who cultivate broad interests and pursue eclectic career paths are going to be rewarded in a world where AI and algorithms increasingly take over “expertise”. This episode covers everything from Isaiah Berlin’s famous “the fox versus the hedgehog” framework, how we should regard curiosity as a 21st-century superpower, and why generalists, rather than specialists, are better at making predictions. As always, we’ll explore what this all means “at the unit of one” - in other words, how this is news you can use for your own company or career.

Gordon Gekko famously said in the movie “Wall Street” that “greed is good.” While it’s probably politically incorrect - and definitely not woke! - to say that today, a version of that mantra still exists in a somewhat more sanitized form. Companies these days - especially tech startups - preach that “growth is good”, and that scaling quickly is the only metric that matters. Silicon Valley CEOs trumpet market share and revenue growth over profitability, as if to paraphrase that trope about sharks: if companies are not growing, they’re dying. But is that actually true? And is true for all companies? On today’s episode of “Boiling the Ocean”, we examine this view and stress-test it from a number of angles. We cover everything from the trendy concept of Blitzscaling to the increasing weaponization of cheap capital as well as the concept of a “right-sized” company or organization. Our conclusion? Well, you have to tune in to find out - but let’s just say that we have our usual contrarian take on such topics, and as always we try to give you a few ideas on how to apply this notion to your company or career.

In a very real sense, Mike and Ion give advice for a living. Perhaps you've sometimes wondered how well they practice what they preach, and whether - as the somewhat inelegant phrase goes - they eat their own dog food? In this episode, we discuss and in some cases debate the tips, tricks, and techniques from the world of management consulting that we regularly apply to our world. This is a more important conversation than it might seem at first blush. Contrarian philosopher Nicholas Nassim Taleb calls this “Skin in the Game”, and you should be looking for it in your consultants, but also financial advisors, car salesmen, and real estate agents among others. The adage to "do as I say, not as I do" is all too prevalent in society today, so it's useful, we thought, to list the parts of the toolkit we discuss on this podcast that we actually use on a consistent basis. From making sleep and exercise a top priority to enhance our cognitive fitness (Ion) to regularly using two-by-two matrices for his business strategy - and sometimes his kids (Mike), we really nerd out big time in this episode. If that sounds like good times to you, welcome to nerdapalooza!

​Have you read an article recently that preached work-life balance? Of course you have. It’s a hot topic today as we all struggle to manage all of the competing interests in our lives. But is “balance” the right frame to use, and having equal parts of work and life (that’s what “balance” means, after all) the right objective? We don’t think so. In the latest episode of “Boiling the Ocean”, Mike and I break down this problem to try to understand what we’re really trying to achieve. We argue that the notion of balance is almost impossible to accomplish and that a perfect equilibrium between work and life leads to less satisfying outcomes.​ ​We realized this when we observed that our happiest moments in work and life - times when we achieve “Flow” or being “in the zone” - are actually moments of intentional but temporary imbalance. Rather than balance, what we really want is the ability to be truly present in everything we do. We are seeking meaningful, uninterrupted, “all in” experiences at each end of the work/life spectrum, which will naturally cycle at different times.​ ​We make an impassioned argument that we should stop seeking balance and aim for work-life integration instead. When we have the time and space to go deep in either work or play, we are imbalanced - but that’s where we find focus, flow, and fulfillment.​ ​In the end, the goal is not “balance” in the traditional sense, its integration of those pieces. Work-life integration is more akin to a puzzle where all the different pieces fit together in aggregate. It’s an understanding that each week might bring a different combination of things to attend to at work or in your personal life, but it evens out over time into a portfolio of quality experiences. The important thing is to be as present as possible in the process. Tune in to this episode to consider rejecting the myth of balance and learn just how to integrate your work and life.

A headline in the Guardian recently blared: “the Top 1% of England owns 50% of the land”. Another article I read said that only 4% of its total digital audience pays the New York Times for its content, and yet this was a very good profitable year for newspaper. What unites these stories? A concept known by some as the 80/20 Rule and in Economics as the Pareto Principle. You may not know these names, but you need to know this principle - because it’s tremendously important power law that is as true in business as it is in real life. People wear around 20% of their clothes 80% of the time. The most frequently used 20% of the words account for 80% of word usage. 20% of your friends give you 80% of your overall enjoyment. In a nutshell, 80% of the outputs result from 20% of the inputs. Now the distribution is not always exactly 80 / 20 (it can sometimes be 95 / 5), but it remains shockingly true that a very small percentage of activities that you perform lead to the majority of what you accomplish. In management consulting, this power law is also a process. You’ll often find teams attacking a problem by saying: “let’s 80-20 this”. By that, they mean what is a quick and dirty - but effective - way to get at the gist of the issue. In this episode of BTO, we break down the 80/20 Principle, explain in roots in Italian Economics, and give examples of how you can use this thinking tool for everyday issues. Join us as we discuss one of the most useful ways to emphasize impact over activity, and how to harness the Pareto Principle to improve your business and your life.

Disruption may be the most over-used word of the 21st century, but there’s often a reason why something becomes a cliche: because it’s at least partly true. The world is changing so fast today that what might be a sound business - or business model - now may not stay that way for long. In this series of episodes, we discuss the dynamics of disruption and break it down to two basic mechanisms. In Part I, we tackled the twin notions of bundling and unbundling. Part II looks at the second way that people and companies can reinvent their businesses or business models: by turning their products into services or vice-versa. A car is a product, right? Not anymore. It’s increasingly a service (Uber, Lyft, Bird), and transportation as a service is taking off. Financial advice is a service, right? Not always. With Wealthsimple and other Fintech start-ups, it’s becoming a product. The same can be said of Meditation Coaching and the Headspace app... What does all this mean for you or your company? Ask yourself if you can turn your service into a product (which will allow you to scale), or your product into a service (which may allow you to charge a premium). This is a very useful mental model to view the world as well as your business or job. Not only will you able to foresee (and possibly fend off) disruptive challenges, we argue that it will also arm you with some tools to prepare for the biggest disruption coming towards all of us: automation. Tune in for Part II of a lively discussion on the promise and perils of Disruption, and then let us know what you think!

Disruption may be the most over-used word of the 21st century, but there’s often a reason why something becomes a cliche: because it’s at least partly true. The world is changing so fast today that what might be a sound business - or business model - now may not stay that way for long. Incumbent companies get “disrupted” when insurgent (often, but not always, start-ups) find a new way to sell an old product or service, all the while stealing market share or profit margin (or both). In this series of two-part episodes, we discuss the dynamics of disruption and break it down to two basic mechanisms. The first is inspired by legendary venture capitalist Marc Andreessen’s observation that there are only two ways to make money: bundling and unbundling. This is a simple yet deceptively powerful idea - one that you may not know through these labels but have definitely seen out in real life: When Apple reinvented the music business, it unbundled the one song from the whole CD that you used to have to buy to get it. iTunes gave you that hit for 99 cents and the rest is history. When Spotify reinvented the music business again, it did so by bundling those songs - and all the songs you could ever want to stream or listen to - into one monthly subscription. As you can see, Marc A is right: the evolution of business is, in some real ways, simply a continuous process of bundling and unbundling your product or service. in Part I, we tackle that first topic and apply it you, the company owner or free agent. In doing so, we hope to give you the tools to disrupt yourself … before someone else does it to you.

In this second installment of a two-part episode, we revisit the idea of the power of a well-posed question. This time around, we explore how useful they are to influence people and implement solutions. As consultants, we are regularly asked by our clients to help them solve their most pressing problems. Part of that work is achieved in asking the right questions (which we tackled in Part I), but also in helping build support - what some in our biz call buy-in - for the solutions themselves. In other words, questions help us execute the answer as much as they enable us to arrive at them. How does that happen, exactly? Questions help you both understand the concerns of other people, but also signal that they are being understood. It’s in unpacking the underlying motivations of people - and especially what drives their resistance to the change that you’re proposing - that questions are most useful in influencing the results you are seeking to achieve. Agree? Or not convinced? Either way, tune in for a surprisingly lively discussion about how you have to ask to receive, achieve and even make people believe that the solutions you are suggesting are worth it. Along the way, we manage to name check Kim Kardashian (Mike’s contribution to the conversation) and Abraham Lincoln (Ion) in the same breath. You have to play it back to find out how that played out …

In this episode, we ask a lot of questions … about questions. When we thought about it, Mike and I realized that what we do in our jobs every day can be distilled down to trying to ask the right questions of organizations and the individuals who lead them. We probably aren’t alone in this realization. Maybe a good part of your work revolves around getting to the bottom of things for your boss or your company. In a world overflowing with information, the skill in asking the right questions is only going to become more valuable. But what does that entail exactly? In this first installment of a two-part set of episodes, Mike and I discuss: Why questions are more important than answers What are our favourite and most useful questions to ask of ourselves and our organizations How even seemingly “dumb” questions serve a smart purpose How to ask one simple question to help you decide whether or not to read that article your friend just posted The one question Warren Buffett taught Bill Gates to ask in order to define what success meant to him Tune in for a lively, provocative and occasionally light-hearted conversation on the amazing power of a good question.

As we write this in the third week of January, we bet that many of you reading this will have already broken a New Year’s resolution or two. Let’s face it: new year resolutions suck. But we still have to urge to do something - anything! - to feel prepared and goal-oriented for the coming twelve months. So what should we do instead? In this episode of Boiling the Ocean, Mike and Ion give our own takes on what other frames to use when thinking about the future and trying to set yourself up for success. We discuss a number of alternative models, from our friend Mitch Joel’s excellent idea of establishing values you want to live by to setting a “mission statement” in a few critical areas for the next year and ideally the next decade. The key takeaway is this: rather than set yourself for failure or disappointment, use the annual planning ritual as a rare opportunity to think about the Big Picture. Tune in for a lively discussion about the why and how of replacing your New Year’s resolutions for 2019 (it’s not too late, people!)

For our last episode of 2018, we decided to try something different (as we periodically do). For the first time ever, we took the show on the road and recorded a two-part interview with a guest (that’s a lot of “firsts”!). As faithful listeners know, BTO is the podcast where we apply the management consultant’s toolkit to everyday problems. But we realize that many other industries have mental models that can help us improve our work and life as well. From time to time, we will interview successful people in other professions and have them share what thinking tools they use to make business and personal decisions. We were thrilled to visit the offices of Shane Parrish in Ottawa for our inaugural foray into this format. Shane is the driving force behind one of the world’s most visited and influential blogs - Farnam Street (https://fs.blog/ and featured here in a recent New York Times cover story: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/11/business/intelligence-expert-wall-street.html) - as well as the host of the hugely successful podcast “The Knowledge Project” (https://fs.blog/the-knowledge-project/). In a wide-ranging interview split into two 45 minute episodes, Mike and I ask Shane about everything from his approach to learning, the power of second-order thinking and what lenses he uses to evaluate businesses to what he believes are the secrets to successful parenting and why he thinks Tom Brady became such an amazing QB. There is a lot to ponder here, but also some very concrete ideas to put into practice for your business or life. Tune in to learn about a bit more about Shane Parrish’s toolkit.

For our last episode of 2018, we decided to try something different (as we periodically do). For the first time ever, we took the show on the road and recorded a two-part interview with a guest (that’s a lot of “firsts”!). As faithful listeners know, BTO is the podcast where we apply the management consultant’s toolkit to everyday problems. But we realize that many other industries have mental models that can help us improve our work and life as well. From time to time, we will interview successful people in other professions and have them share what thinking tools they use to make business and personal decisions. We were thrilled to visit the offices of Shane Parrish in Ottawa for our inaugural foray into this format. Shane is the driving force behind one of the world’s most visited and influential blogs - Farnam Street (https://fs.blog/ and featured here in a recent New York Times cover story: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/11/business/intelligence-expert-wall-street.html) - as well as the host of the hugely successful podcast “The Knowledge Project” (https://fs.blog/the-knowledge-project/). In a wide-ranging interview split into two 45 minute episodes, Mike and I ask Shane about everything from his approach to learning, the power of second-order thinking and what lenses he uses to evaluate businesses to what he believes are the secrets to successful parenting and why he thinks Tom Brady became such an amazing QB. There is a lot to ponder here, but also some very concrete ideas to put into practice for your business or life. Tune in to learn about a bit more about Shane Parrish’s toolkit.

Do you ever find yourself stuck in a professional or personal rut? Have you or your business become more risk averse as you’ve gotten older and more established? The answer is almost certainly yes, and that’s the case for pretty much everyone (us included). But did you know that our tendency towards complacency is actually inherited from our days foraging on the savanna 40,000 years ago? Today’s episode looks at our relationship with risk and what economists call our status quo bias. Inertia is dangerous for both individuals and companies, and this impulse is actually counterproductive in our modern, fast-changing world. Tune in as we discuss how important it is to make intelligent bets from time to time - and how to think about change more productively.

Deciding what niche to occupy is one of the biggest decisions people make when charting a path for their organization or career. The fancy term for that is “positioning”, and we should all be better acquainted with the concept. We believe that positioning is the crucial intersection of strategy (intentionally choosing a position), execution (successfully occupying that spot) and marketing (getting others to believe and buy into it). Positioning is critical whether you have a product, as is the case with most companies, or if you are the product - such as when you’re a free agent.Tune in to this episode where we discuss the power of carving out a category of one and how to properly position yourself in any marketplace.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) seems to be capturing a lot of business magazine covers these days, but we might not be talking about this development enough. At least that's what one of the co-hosts of this podcast thinks. Ion believes that popular attention is too focused on unlikely doomsday scenarios like Skynet, HAL and "Her" while we overlook the seismic effect more ordinary AI will have on people, businesses and society - sooner than we realize. Mike is of a different opinion. He thinks AI is overhyped, and that until it helps him in tangible ways - like finding a parking spot in a crowded downtown - it will be more of a mirage than a momentous force for change. Tune in to this episode to hear some of the latest thinking on the real impact of AI, and treat yourself to a first for our podcast series: an actual debate rather than our usual genteel discussion. Ion and Mike go toe to toe on everything from how AI will affect ordinary people (or not) to what are the other technological forces that may be supercharging the next wave of AI-generated disruption ...

Without us realizing it, in some significant ways everyone is becoming a consultant these days. First, the obvious trend line is that the so-called gig economy is exploding, and some forecasts predict that within ten years, freelance workers may represent more than 50% of the U.S. working population. But it's not just that people are becoming their own bosses and building portfolio careers; the actual work style and skill sets that are increasingly prized in the current labor marketplace are mirroring the job description of a modern consultant. Soon, everyone will be asked to work in project-based sprints, spend a stint as part of an international team, collectively solve a set of complex problems ... and then start the whole process again. That is the life of a management consultant, and we believe that a lot more people will work and live like that in the future - whether or not they describe themselves that way. Tune in to this episode for a lively discussion on the future or work, the gig economy, portfolio careers and why it's going to be cool to be a consultant someday ...