The Conversation Factory

Today I talk with Demetrius Romanos, SVP of Design & Development at Ergobaby. Demtrius has been my boss, my client and is also my friend! Demetrius has worked on leading design on products of all shapes and sizes, from chocolate bars to medical devices and from laptop bags to baby carriers...and everything in between. I'm excited to share a deep conversation about design leadership. We discuss how...

"Stop thinking about drawing as an artistic process. Drawing is a thinking process. If you want to think more clearly about an idea, draw it." This is the simple essence of Dan Roam's message. Dan has written five best-selling books about visual thinking and storytelling. Back of the Napkin was one of my seminal texts, Show and Tell is a blockbuster if you want to learn how to tell better stories....

Diane Mulcahy is an advisor to both Fortune 500 companies and startups, is a regular contributor to Forbes and is the author of the bestselling book "The Gig Economy: The Complete Guide to Getting Better Work, Taking More Time Off, and Financing the Life You Want"   Diane was early to the party: When she started teaching MBA students a course on these ideas, some people thought she was talking abo...

Conversation Analysis is a powerful tool that looks at large numbers of conversations to help build insights about what works and what doesn't.  Elizabeth Stokoe is a Professor of Social Interaction at Loughborough University, and shares some key insights from her excellent book, Talk, the science of conversation and her well-received TedX talk. As she suggests in the opening quote, any conversati...

I'm so excited to share this conversation with Oscar Trimboli, author of Deep Listening, a lovely book/card deck.   We talk about the costs of not listening, the opportunities that are created when we listen and why hearing what's unsaid can transform your work and life.   In our western conception, we have speaking and listening, a basic duality.    Oscar describes our normal conception of listen...

I'm thrilled to *finally* share my conversation with the amazing and electrifying Nikki Silvestri. We connected back in early March and recorded our conversation in late May, at the height of the quarantine. It's been a process to find the time to sit with this deep conversation and pull together some insights for you. A friend shared Nikki's work with me and I was hooked - Nikki was setting up a...

Innovation Theater.    Have you ever been guilty of performing innovation theater?   My guest today, Tendayi Viki, is a partner at Strategyzer (the company behind the business model canvas and other innovation tools) and defines Innovation Theater simply as:   ACTIVITIES THAT LOOK LIKE INNOVATION BUT THAT CREATE NO VALUE FOR COMPANIES   So: A workshop that creates enthusiasm with no follow up. A H...

I'm so excited to share my conversation with Casper ter Kuile. He has a book coming out this month, The Power of Ritual. He breaks down the architecture of ritual and how to bring more intentional ritual into your work and life. I love the four "categories" of ritual Casper lays out in his book- those for connecting with yourself, rituals that connect you to others, nature, and to something transc...

Today I share my conversation with Ron J Williams. Fast Company rated him in the top 100 most creative people in business...back in 2012! He's started some serious ventures - SnapGoods was an early vanguard in the sharing economy - and he's also helped companies large and small get proof (rather than stay in conjecture) on their business ideas with his consultancy ProofLabs.    He's currently work...

Today I talk to Gayle Karen Young Whyte, former Chief People Officer for the Wikimedia Foundation and currently part of the faculty for the Leadership programs at the Full Circle Group. Together, we unpack the ideas of Conversational Leadership. In a conversation, there are usually at least two points of view, and movement forward comes through a give and take. The world asks things of us, and we...

Finding an opening quote from my conversation with Ayse Birsel – One of Fast Company magazine's 'World's Top 15 Designers' and author of Design the Life You Love was a challenge, mostly because I delighted in re-listening to each moment of it. In this opening quote, Ayse is talking about the joys of having a process that guides her in her design journey.    Her wonderful book, Design the Life you...

On today's episode, I talk with Cameron Yarbrough, the Co-founder of Torch , a leadership development platform integrating coaching, behavioral science, and agile feedback. Cameron is also a licensed therapist and p rior to starting the company, applied his knowledge and learnings to executive leadership coaching, working with high profile founders like Reddit Co-Founders Alexis O'Hanian and Steve...

full transcript and show notes at https://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/2020/a-game-changing-solution-to-gender-inequality Eve Rodsky is working to change society one marriage at a time with a new 21st century solution to an age-old problem: women shouldering the brunt of childrearing and domestic life responsibilities regardless of whether they work outside the home. In her New York Times be...

Today I'm sharing an interview with self-described On-Air Personality on SiriusXM and Idiot Grand Random.  Grant has had  a long-time career in radio: In college he was hired to board op Christmas music for WLS-FM in Chicago when it was transitioning from Talk to Country music. He was at the controls the day the station flipped to "Kicks Country," which was really cool in a geeky radio kind of way...

Today I share my deeply lovely conversation with the amazing Esther Derby, Author, Coach and author of, most recently, 7 Rules for Positive Product Change. Esther started her career as a programmer, and has worn many hats, including business owner, internal consultant and manager. From all these perspectives, one thing became clear: our level of individual, team and company success was deeply impa...

Influence and Leadership aren't things you turn on and off...it's a muscle you have to practice all the time. And while being "on" all the time might sound exhausting, Stacey Hanke, my guest today, suggests that the key to leadership is being consistent. Leadership and influence is something you practice "monday to monday" and every day in between. Stacey is the author of Influence Redefined and Y...

Today's conversation with Dorie Clark taught me some essential lessons about how to build a following around one's ideas - which is no surprise - Dorie has given several excellent TEDx talks on just this topic, and I'll summarize my insights from our conversation in a moment.  I learned something more surprising during my conversation with Dorie - that she is living her principles, constantly. I a...

Questions need silence. Great questions are provocative. Great questions defy easy answers. Answering them takes time - they can be the work of a lifetime or a workshop. A great question can guide an organization, a Design Sprint or an educational program. Great Facilitators ask great questions - on purpose.   In this episode I sit down with the effortlessly scintillating Nancy McGaw, Deputy Direc...

Daniel Stillman Interviews Ian Altman I am so thrilled to share this conversation with author and speaker Ian Altman about a conversation we all have to contend with one way or another - sales! Everyone sells something at some point, whether it's in a job interview or a client presentation...and at some point everyone is going to be sold to. Ian's book, Same Side Selling, asks "Are you tired of pl...

Today we are talking to my friend and client Jason Cyr, Director of Design Transformation at Cisco. We have a wild and rambling conversation about designing conversations on at least three scales: as a facilitator of workshop experiences, a designer of design processes and as a leader of a transformation effort in a larger organization. Like anything else, conversations can be designed with a goal...

Hey there Conversation Designers! Today I'm talking with Author, speaker and advisor Greg Satell about going beyond innovation to driving transformation. His recent book, Cascades, is about how to create a movement that drives real change and he's teaching a workshop in Austin November 21st with my friend and podcast guest Douglas Furgueson.   Greg is also the author of Mapping Innovation, which w...

Have you ever found a framework, a diagram, that perfectly summarized an important and subtle idea? That somehow made that important idea concrete and easy to talk about?   That's why I'm really excited to share today's conversation with Emily Levada, Director of Product Management at Wayfair. We'll dive into a Trust/Communication Map that, as a manager of a huge team, helps her navigate an essent...

Today's conversation is with my dear friend Jocelyn Ling, a tremendously talented Business Model Specialist in the Office of Innovation at Unicef. She's  currently on sabbatical from the Organizational Innovation consultancy Incandescent. She's been an interim biotech CEO, an investment consultant at the International Finance Corporation, the private investment arm of the World Bank Group, and eve...

Innovation. We love to talk about it, everyone wants it. Innovation is critical for people and organizations to grow. But we all mean different things when we say it. Today I have a conversation about how innovation is a conversation with Brian Ardinger. He's the director of Innovation at Nenet (which owns my student debt! Hi Nelnet!) and the host of InsideOutside.io, a community for innovators an...

Hey there, conversation designers! Today I'm sharing a conversation with Larissa Conte, who I connected with last year at the Responsive Conference in New York. Larissa is a transformation designer, systems coach, and executive rites of passage guide through her business, Wayfinding. Larissa specializes in facilitating aliveness and alignment across organizational scales to cultivate power that se...