The Bleeding Edge Podcast

In this episode we talk to Katie Ledger.  As a corporate coach Katie  helps to develop leaders and teams that perform under pressure and consistently achieve inspirational levels of achievement.  With the team at Complete, Katie is bringing a new way for coaches to develop capability in their clients based on data, research and insight that has been built up over the last 70 years.

It is called the Complete Values for Practitioners and it step changes the nature and impact of coaches or consultants delivering team performance improvement by using a developmental approach.

Unlike traditional personality tests, the Complete Values Profile is a developmental assessment. It defines a leader’s current level of development and, crucially, where someone needs to focus to unlock a new level of performance. That means it’s perfectly suited to a coaching intervention.

Katie takes us through what the values system is and what role it plays in helping us understand the world.

Many brands are closing stores and moving purely online, unable to bear the cost of expensive physical stores.  Simon Calvert sets out what retailers should be doing to win the battle of staying relevant and accessible to customers.

We walk in the footsteps of a thousand generations…what sort of world are we leaving for the next generations?  This is the question that Jamie and Sara, founders of Wyapa Wuurrk, set out to answer and in the process created a movement based on the philosophy of earth connection practice.  It is all based on ancient Indigenous wisdom that focuses on taking care of the Earth as the starting point for creating Earth Mind Body Spirit well-being.    Living in harmony with their environment is what sustained Australian Aboriginal people to be one of the world’s oldest, continuous living culture – for over 100,000 years!  Jamie and Sara are clear that this practice can sustain us for another 100, 000 years if we just open ourselves to this lifestyle shift.

Jamie is a custodian of wisdom passed down from Aboriginal Elders and in his own journey he realised that every human being once lived on this earth in harmony with the environment.  Many cultures lost this way of life long ago. Aboriginal culture survived longer than most and this gives us the opportunity to recreate this earth connection practice.  I have personally sought out nature for most of my life, finding my happiest moments deep in a forest or a long way up a mountain.  This conversation with Jamie and Sara helped me make sense of this intense feeling I have to surround myself with nature and how to truly embrace this every day. Wyapa, means "connected country" and through a combination of Earth mindfulness, narrative meditation, a series of physical movements and taking action to look after the planet, Wayapa® provides a sense of belonging to the Earth while creating holistic well-being.

Perhaps the most striking aspect of the Wyapa experience is that you can do the mind, body and spirit work but if you don't connect to the earth then you will likely be living with a feeling that something is missing.  Our route to the future is through our past and I personally can't wait get around a campfire with Jamie and Sara.  I hope you enjoy this episode exploring what it means to be deeply connected to the planet and how this might just be the catalyst to bring all of our wellbeing practice to bear as we look to go beyond survival and actually thrive with the planet.

In this episode we talk to Danijela Prahovic about the strength based approach to building resilient teenagers and helping them to find their inner spark and start their life into adulthood with purpose.  Danijela has devoted her life to helping teens and young adults navigate the complex transition into adulthood. She has founded InnerSparQ, a digital platform to provide a self-paced programme that teaches vital life skills to adolescents.  Danijela loves to talk and as she says, she can talk underwater but one thing she does even better is to listen to the problems and challenges teens and your adults are facing.  She has distilled her experience into tools and techniques and particularly strength cards to help then learn life skills through a process of positive reinforcement and blended learning all accessible through a series of online resources.  Danijela's mission is to make this content accessible in a low cost manner but to make sure that they can start to take accountability and choose the way they feel that best serves them.  With 50% of mental health issues surfacing in early teens it is easy to see what drives Danijela to help many to find a better way of growing up and showing up.

In this episode we speak to Emma Buratti, defender of beautiful sound and voice coach extraordinaire.   Emma unveils that 38% of communication is in your voice, and most people are under investing in training their voice to truly unlock their charisma and communication potential.  

Are you spreading your e's and a's?  Apparently I do and I had no idea it was something I could control.  Emma sets out the 6 steps she uses to coach clients and offers a unique insight into the power of building a voice note by note.  What is the secret? Stop everything that impedes the voice of you mind by stripping back your dialect, cleaning your voice up to create an upright sound column instead of swallowing your own voice or pushing it through your nose.  Sound travels in the vowels, a, e, i, o, u.....  so flip the consonants and focus on your vowels as everything else is impeding your ability to communicate effectively.

Training your voice correctly is all about repetition, but you need have someone to help you interpret what good sound sounds.  Like any muscle you need to practice and warm up but you need to do it right to become a true athlete of the voice.  While it takes 6 to 12 months to really make an impact, Emma shares stories of helping podcasters and CEO's with tips and techniques that can shift your capability in just 2 hours. 

Emma spent 10 years of building her voice note by note to finally achieve an E flat.   She is carrying on the tradition of her mentor, Alma Caesari who is now 96 years old and she is sharing this skill with the world through her programme "the voice of your mind".

If you produce more air than sound and find your voice in strange places then you will now doubt find Emma's voice a delight to listen to and as intoxicating as I did.

Jennifer Letorneau is a relationship coach and she recently released her playbook for new dads that want a deeper connection with their family.  Life changes, limited time and lacking that deeper connection that you both crave? ....Jennifer has the answer and we explore the highs and lows of being a dad, family life and just what you can do to make sure you grow an even stronger family unit.

Jennifer talks about her own experience of success and failure in marriage and she has a hugely positive message about how being a dad is about having a profound impact on the generations to come.  As a father this really resonated with me and while I am not calling for a relationship coach just yet I think I would be very happy to set aside my own discomfort for the sake of building an environment that my wife and children can thrive in.   That is the power of Jennifer's message!

Vincent Hynes is the founder of total movement and has created a blueprint to engage with your body.He teaches people to practice his base to face programme to maintain joint health and mobility.  Getting a range of motion is key but Vincent is more concerned about giving people the skills to treat themselves and he has been experimenting with moving his treatment practice online.  His focus is extensive and operates on 3 areas providing a holistic approach to maintaining a strong body  Keeping your muscles toned, maintaining your mobility and breathwork are key and Vincent shares what he has learned from trainers such as Steve Maxwell and breath coach Patrick Mckeown and how he has integrated this into a lazy trainer programme requiring just 20 to 30 minutes twice a week.

We talk deeply about the change in physical training and treatment and Vincent tell us the answer to your health is under your nose. We breathe 20 000 times per day and doing it wrong can keep your sympathetic nervous system in a state of stress.  Vincent shares his stories of the benefits of barefoot walking, training to avoid injuries and his experience and using technology to take his decidedly hands on business to the world through Zoom.

In this episode...Eradicating Back Pain with preventative care...saying no to cut and swallow pain management techniques and remove 85% of all back pain related sick days...circa 10% of the total sick days!

Dr. Barry Harpur is an Osteopath and a researcher with University of Portsmouth where he is leading a defining study that will set out the global standard for assessing back pain and developing pro-active maintenance programmes.

Why does this matter?  In the UK 12.5% of all sick days are due to back pain.  The UK spends £12.5bn a year treating back pain and the US spends $100bn on treating back pain with over 500 000 spinal fusions every year.  "So what" you say....I know I did until you hear Barry telling you that 85% of all backspin is not specific.  There is no diagnosis other than back pain.  What are they treating them for he asks?  They are treating them for pain and operating on them when we know the source of it is somewhere else.  Once you have gone under the knife you have had it!  So as with so much about human health it is lifestyle related.

Sedentary lifestyle, smoking, overweight, stress are all contributors.  Yet, we have control over it and this is where Barry brings some real hope.

Our bodies are built for entirely different movement regimes than we enforce today.  Barry sets out that our forward orientated view of the world needs to be supported by training on 3 plains of movement and in the episode he shares some of his finding into the backpain phenomena and his work on injury prediction.

I quote Barry:  We have an epidemic of backpain and and once you push the button on surgery it is game over.  We need to work on a preventative care programme to really make a difference.  Here are 2 examples:

If you cannot laterally sidebend evenly left and right have a 60% chance of developing non specific back pain

People with no curve in their back or a very large curve, hyper-lourdosis, have 15% more likelihood to develop non specific back pain.

But we can influence these areaeas and reduce the back pain.

Barry is building an app that will be able to support a very quick clinical test based on the most valid and reliable tests which he will teach people while creating a standardised test that can be used by all healthcare  practitioners worldwide.  How they asses back pain will be standard but how they treat it will be their own treatment protocols.

The industry is run by financial gain and pain is designed and built in the mind yet with this new protocol there is a better model for healthcare to test.  How this standard for backpain develops will be fascinating.  Imagine reducing the 12.5% of sick days that are attributed to it by 85%!!!

There are 6 key exercise that Barry teaches for people to help themselves. " We build the body from the ground up.  If the foundation is off, the feet or the ankles , it will manifest up the spine and throughout the body" . Train people in full range of motion so that when they unexpectedly move in that way that they do not injure themselves. 

Barry has a fundamental understanding of the problem of backpain at such a profound level that you have to think that anything we are getting this wrong .....remember 500 000 spinal fusions in the US alone!  and that we have such a simple solution for.... must surely be able to break free from the bleeding edge and make it into our daily routine.

Dr. Barry Harpur practices out of the Kinesis Clinic in Portsmouth and runs a Digital Academy called Backpain36O.clinic

Your first instinct might be to think that corporate training going virtual is not the most riveting subject to be listening to but that was until Corrina Towers started talking about it. Corrina leads training engagements for First Friday and specialises in building high performing sales teams in retail, life sciences and property development.  Her clients have included business such as Tesco, Polo Ralph Lauren and she has recently developed a virtual training capability for several clients that were in the midst of implementing new systems when lockdown happened.

Any significant change in an organisation has to pass through a training stage before new systems and ways of working can be implemented.  Systems Training in particular is typically a complex blend of new technology, features, process and sometimes even new roles.  Training out this complex combination has typically relied heavily on face to face training sessions but not any more.

The model has been re-invented to move to a full virtual delivery and a deluge of new virtual delivery skills, optimised content and technologies are required to make it work.

Corrina shares her observations about what has changed and we discuss in some detail:

What are the componenets of a virtual traning model

What is different about the way that we deliver

What technology do we need

What skills do people need

When does virtual training work

When does it not work

What does the future hold for traiing… if we are going t go virtual with everything and we will ceratainly see that this a

Corporate training has shifted to a new model.  Face to face and lecture style training has it's place but the virtual movement is proving a point that it can be done with being physically present.  But it is not straightforward and there are many more ways to fail if you don't put in the right foundations, content, capabilities and technology.

What has stayed the same is that training is best done in groups.  Small teams that can learn and develop together.  Group size is key and we talk about the interesting features available on platforms such as Teams and Zoom.    The bigger the group the more people can hide in the shadows.  How you Involve them, engage them and make connections is still key but done with completely new skills.  

We even discuss Zoom fatigue...Zoomed out and Teamed Off.  All of this and more on the Bleeding Edge of Virtual Training Delivery.

5 million properties are rented through council or or housing associations every year and the recent evolution of the industry has sparked major shift in a customer experience.  Jordan Wheat has been at the forefront of this shift and he works with a diverse group of Housing Associations and and Property Developers to implement the Microsoft D365 CRM solution.   Jordan leads business development within this industry vertical for Crimson Technology in the UK and having worked with a variety of the most advanced players in the market and he has a unique point of view on the changes in customer expectations and the opportunities for Housing Associations in particular.  The perfect storm of changing consumer expectations, the need for efficiency, the promise of digital technology and the need to drive sales means HA's and developers are invested in change as they look to digits sales, marketing and customer service.

In this episode I talk to Jordan about the latest license free chat bot offer from Microsoft and the 5k, 5 day implementation that they are currently offering.  We also discuss what is driving the shift in customer expectations, the technology needs and the sheer complexity of the business model driving change in Housing Associations

The scale of change is massive and it is not just in social housing but also in the property developers.  All the big developers have invested heavily in gaining a single view of customer, digitising the journey and gaining access to data and insight during the marketing, seles, contracting, tenancy, ownership, repairs and maintenance and in the case of Housing Associations this could also cover a host of social services such as managing social care facilities.

Shortly nearly all new builds will be managing the customer sales process on a CRM and a customer portal and most likely with a chatbot starting the process!  That is what it looks like on the bleeding edge of property.

In today's episode we talk to Jo Mulcahy who is the founder of the Boutique Owners Network and a Director of Kings Road Fashions Boutiques.  The boutiques are part of a family business that has been serving market town communities in the UK with boutique fashion for over 30 years.  The business was built around retail stores with no online presence.  With lockdown the stores stopped trading overnight.  Armed with an email list of local customers Jo and the team set about reaching out to people to let them know that they were open in a virtual setting.  This was followed buy videos modelling the clothes and providing rich descriptions of the fabric, the feel and drape of the cloth.  Online consultations and fitting followed as well as a YouTube channel, online ordering, Facebook groups and lots of activity on Instagram.  Customers say they love the personal attention.  

This back to basic and 1:1 customer engagement is something quite unique to boutiques.  The process of buying clothes in this environment is typically a considered process.  When the boutique team understand the customer intimately from a shape, fit and colour scheme point of view they can easily out-perform even the most sophisticated AI product selector that Amazon can muster.  Somehow I can't see technology rivalling this level of personal care in choosing something that you know makes you feel great and look great and you have a relationship that can span a fashion lifetime.  Jo is pioneering a digital revolution in how she and the team build a meaningful engaging relationship with the customers around her.  The direct exposure to the brand through the videos and consultations is increasing the face time that clients have and this is the key to building trust for any brand.  Jo also leads a lot of the customer interactions herself and she can make very quick decisions to respond to what they need.  

When Kings Road Fashions Boutiques do open again,  customers will be able to reserve a time to visit , secure that they will have parking and will be able to shop in a safe and personalised environment.  

Enabled by digital, a new model is emerging and the owners of these boutique businesses are hyper innovating the retail model. Customers like it and there is a chance that some of this will become a permanent part of how they do business.  Jo has taken some significant steps to connect with a local customer base and the technology opens up the opportunity for international trade.  I am interested to see how this might evolve.

The opportunity for the small independent fashion is enormous as they can pivot and evolve in new ways.  Jo explains that the leader and team can work together to very quickly make changes.  In just a few weeks,  Jo has activated her email list, enabled bookable appointments, free delivery within 10 km’s, launched Personal Online Consultations and played a role in connecting her community providing the very experience that we invented fashion for in the first place and that is to make people feel great by looking great.

At a time when retailers are imploding all around us, this is an inspiring story at the bleeding edge .....intersecting customer relationships, fashion, the retail experience and digital.  Jo helps a network of Boutique Fashion owners and they carefully share strategies that work.  We look forward to seeing how far they go with this new level of customer engagement.

In this episodewe are talking all things fashion Manufacturing, Supply Chain and Retail with Jacqui Gray. Jacqui has been developing sourcing capability for international retailers for the last 15 years and has managed a network of several hundred suppliers for Tesco Sourcing and Shop Direct and managed the delivery of several $ billion dollars of goods at cost and many more billions at retail. She currently runs a team on the ground in China and Bangladesh and has a strong sourcing network in India, Myanmar, Cambodia, Vietnam, Turkey and Bulgaria.

What Jacqui does not know about clothing sourcing does not need to be known she has some impressive milestones in her career having built largest commercial sourcing hub within Tesco in Bangladesh and Pakistan as well having played a key role working with government, NGO’s Supplier Groups and Retailers to build a sustainable industry. Based out of Shanghai Jacqui shares her unique insight into the world of fashion.

The manufacturing industry in fashion has been entirely shut down over the past months and workers are slowly starting to come back to factories.  As production gets underway Jacqui tells us about here experience of retail and consumers in China and what we can expect as European and US retailers start opening up.  There are some interesting observations from and industry insider and there is aa sneak peak of social distancing fashion just at the end!

In this episode we speak to Dr. Steve Cayzer about Team Based Learning, a highlight effective framework for teaching large groups using peer based learning techniques.  Dr. Cayzer is  a senior lecturer at the University of Bath teaching students across a range of MSc programmes covering innovation, project management, product development and sustainability.  He is a board member of the Team Based Learning Collaborative and runs a community of practice in the University of Bath and beyond.  Dr. Cayzer has a PhD in computational neuroscience from Cambridge and a degree in physiology. 

Team Based Learning (TBL) has been around since the late 1970's and a body of work has built up around the effective application in higher education.  Having experimented with TBL since 2017, Dr Cayzer has replicated some of the staggering results promised by this method in his own courses at Bath University.   This precise and prescriptive framework for learning and development is delivering on average of 20% higher test scores across the student body.  Not only are the individual performance scores better but teams are also able to solve complex problems that they would not be able to solve as individuals.  The process works as follows:

In TBL activities, individual students are initially provided with lecture content and prescribed reading etc. This will cover the basic concepts and principles. A ‘flipped classroom’ method applies where the responsibility of initially learning  of the content is placed outside of the classroom and is the accountability of the student. After the content is consumed students are assessed on their individual mastery of the content via an assessment. Following the individual testing, students retake the exact same test (closed book) in their pre-assigned teams, and submit a single best answer for their team. This time, the team immediately finds out if their team consensus submission was correct or not. Following this session, the teams are given a practically oriented problem and apply the knowledge gained so far in order to answer questions related to the case. One of the advantages of TBL, for faculty, is that it is a well-defined, structured process that, if followed, will give good academic results and can serve to minimize the variability of the content expert.  

Students have to follow the process and the team based activities means that many problems that individuals may have, are triaged by the group.  This means that clarification lectures that follow the group activities, can focus on the  2 or 3 key problems that are common across multiple teams on the course.   

As a whole, the body of available evidence suggests that TBL is an effective method of instruction that results in improved learning outcomes for students.  Dr Cayzer is driving the expansion of the the method and working collaboratively with industry and other universities to build awareness, understanding and adoption.  It might be a silver bullet but it is not without its challenges. It takes dedication to convert course content and    Dr. Cayzer gives us an inspiring look at the bleeding edge of higher education and what impact if might have on development in the corporate world as well.

In this episode we speak to Arn Terry about how to make a living off social media.  Arn is a career recruitment consultant for the IT Contract market.  When he found that his business disappeared overnight as a result of C-19 he put a plan in motion to build a sustainable income through social media.   After a few short weeks, Arn was pulling in $360 per day and he is well on his way to understanding how to leverage social media to create the lifestyle business he has been searching for.  He will forever be the 360 Dollar Man and he will show you how to replicate this small but sustainable success.

He is not one to rest on his laurels as his mantra is "Can I" which stands for constant and never ending achievement.  Arn is just getting started and he is offering free calls to help people set-up their own social media funnels.  We cover the following in our discussion:

Why you don’t need a website

Where to get content

How a blog can make you money

How to set-up a youtube channel that can make you money

How you can get paid from Amazon and Google using affiliate links and adsense

This stuff is so easy he is even showing his kids how to do it and run it on autopilot.  In the future Arn will be pointing his new found skills to IT Contract Recruitment...so watch this space.

Linkedin, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest but not TikTok for now. Book your free 45 minute how to set-up a blog that you can monetize.

Lorna Corbyn has been helping retailers improve their merchandising and and supply chain operations since the late 90's (as she reminds us).  We talk about the potential of autonomous  supply chains, AI and the new cool that is Analytics and Data Science and how these new tools are changing the way we approach buying, merchandising and supply planning.

Connectivity is key and we talk about the new models for collaboration and just how far we can with black box AI, how to achieve agility and maintain adaptability.  Lorna thinks we are at key moment in the evolution of retail. While adaptability is key we try to imagine what the future might look like while reminiscing about a time when it was all about stores and you would not even think of keeping stock in the warehouse.  The model has flipped today and we reflect on how retail is migrating towards shared selling platforms, show-rooming and keeping your stock in the warehouse so that you can maintain your adaptability to get the product to where the customer is.

This was a big episode and we kept recording even after I signed off so carry on listening for some bonus material.

In this Episode we speak to Stuart Hazel, co-founder and Chief People Officer at the Food Supply Network, a marketplace that streamlines communication and trade between all Manufacturers, Distributors and Buyers.  This innovative platform provides restaurants, hotels and retailers the opportunity to join a marketplace where producers of food and beverage goods make their product available to movers and buyers on one feature rich platform.

Brand owners list their products and distributors making it easy for buyers to identify the products they are looking for and the manufacturers/distributor combinations that can deliver to the buyers location.

Brand promotions and loyalty programs are available from the manufacture to the buyer regardless of the distributor that is is used. The features include a user friendly ordering system with live pricing and stock availability that allows buyers to order from all their suppliers in multiple sectors with a single login.

Can this multi-sided platform change the way that FMCG companies interact with their distributors and buyer.  Find on this Episode of the Bleeding Edge Podcast.

In this episode we focus on some of the headline stories in Retail with Victoria Ward.  Victoria is a retail consultant and specialises in helping retailers transform their operating models with a focus on merchandising.  Victoria has been responsible for sales targets of 180m p/a and she knows the opportunities and pressures that retailers are facing right now.

There are some exceptional retail stories right now. Primark recording 0 sales due to their pure play store format, down from 650m per month.  The business has furloughed 68 thousand staff and faces a changed retail environment when stores open.  Cath Kidston will not open it's 60 store again, instead focussing only online and on wholesale, others like BooHoo are booming.  Things are changing in Retail and Victoria sets out how she sees consumer behaviour changing in the face of C-19.

Listen to this episode to find out what is going to happen to this seasons fashion, hear about the Spanish retailer that is re-inventing the department store experience during lockdown and more.

Welcome to the Earth Day Special with Francesca Shirley.  Francesca joins us on the 50th celebration of Earth Day and talks to us about her latest solar project with Namene changing air quality for millions.  Eradicating kerosene lamps is her mission and the Namene light is the solution.

On the show she makes a big commitment to scaling the number of led lamps that she wants to distribute and we set a target to get 1440 units sold  and donated from this episode.  Check the show notes for details.

Francesca has a masters in  Optics and Photonics from Imperial College London and she is focussing her skills in plasmonic techniques to enhance scattering of light within thin-film GaAs solar cells.  This means she can maximise the performance of led lights and that is exactly what she is doing with Namene.

She was awarded the title of Photovoltaic Specialist by The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers for the momentum that continues from her research and the journey is only just getting started with a goal of distributing a 100m units and move the dial on air quality for people in 3rd world countries relying on kerosene lamps to provide lighting.

Francesca says....

At the Namene Solar Light Company, I am continuing my mission to help people harness the power of the Sun. We are working towards eradicating kerosene lamps with our multi-award winning SM100 Solar Light. Helping young people across the globe access the knowledge and solutions we all need to reverse the multiple crises we currently face through our new Schools Program: Solutions For Climate Revolution.

We talk to Dr Alan Watkins about what happens next.  Alan is a polymath, top leadership development coach and author of 7  books including his latest one Change the workplace change the world...the HR (R)evolution.  

The world is accelerating and getting more and more complex with cycles running faster and faster.  Everything that can happen is happening and COVID-19 has accelerated 10 years.

Fear, regression, billigerence and aggression will be amplified.  Those that are in hiding will hunker down more.  Those people in change and transformation will use this as a catalyst and change more.  More chaos, more clarity.... the whole system has heated up.

Alan thinks we are waking up to the possibility that there is a new normal but the jury is out as to whether it will stick. If we cannot sustain a new normal then it will regress.  Our government systems, economic system, healthcare are all passed their sell by date and there is a great need for change.  To achieve that we have to change how we approach human development (I, We & It).  Alan sets out the fine balance of what happens next and a framework to approach the opportunity of developing the "I" and then the "We" in order to drive better quality IT solutions.

For business leaders Alan offers this.  The problem is 3 dimensional and the solution is 3 dimensional and it starts with developing you and then the quality of the human interactions in your team to get better quality solutions.

The gold for me in this episode is that if we stop "doing change" and start "being change" then we start to focus on the "I" and the "We" concepts that truly deliver better thinking and therefor better "It" solutions that can solve the complex problems we face.

Pieter is a serial sustainability warrior that always gets involved with game changing sustainability ventures. He talks to us about 2 sustainability ventures from Portugal…HullCare is an innovative hull wrap that does not kill marine life and lasts for more than 5 years, at least. ChaZeMo provides the most sophisticated and economically scalable electric vehicle charging solutions.

Pieter wrote an article recently on the Trophospheric vertical column of nitrogen oxide that is not showing on the map anymore due to our confinement and resulting in almost 0 traffic. We talk about why this is the reason for us to imagine a new world with an economy built around a model of balancing ecology and economy. We discuss the virtues of a circular economy, the availability of sustainable energy, charging infrastructure for a network of electric transport, smart grids, and many things you never new about marine sustainability and what that has to do with a ships hull.

There were many big ideas in this episode, but I thought this was gold: Using smart charging grids, using existing infrastructure and make vehicles and their owners an active part of the electric energy economy. Intelligent energy control systems are available now to install in office buildings, apartments and homes which offers a point to point solution for charging

Contact Pieter:

We talk to Gestur Palmason, top cop and leadership development coach in Iceland.  Gestur is currently leading a response team doing C-19 contact tracing in Iceland.  With a population of 365k people Gestur and the task force he works with are mobilising the country in tracking, isolating and managing those infected with the virus through the various stages of the infection.  In his normal life as a leadership development coach Gesture is moving people and teams who operate in high pressure environments to a different level of performance.  He works with many of the local corporates and shares a perspective of how the current lockdown will play out for iceland with a shift towards collective values and a planetary focus.  We explore the ideas of the cross border collective, co-operation between state and citizens in allowing what information they share and the importance of taking time for yourself. 

For live stats on C-19 in Iceland please see:

Matt Silver is the Head Teacher of Shaftesbury High School for complex needs children.  He sets out the problems that this marginalised group of children face as they end their schooling and move into the job market.  While most students face the prospect of never being employed, Matt and his team have found a way to turn this model the right way around with an approach that could put 95% of the children graduating from a complex needs school going into paid work.

By triangulating the efforts of the teachers, students and parents, the school has developed a culture of bringing innovation into the classroom with incredible results for the students, teachers, parents and business.  

Matt and the team are able to guide students towards digital businesses they can set-up and run during their last 2 years of school spending 400 hours learning the skills and building their business.  The school is currently building a series of hot desks for students  to continue their businesses from in familiar surroundings once they have graduated.  Is this a future model for schools to incubate the digital businesses of the future?

In this episode we talk to Dr. Danish Mishra about Organisational Newtwork Analysis ONA.   The ONA is a new way to look at how companies work and it reveals the hidden dynamics of the networks that drive performance.  DR. Mishra's work in Formula One identified that teams that leveraged their network performed better than the teams did not.  The best network wins but there is always a catalyst at play.