It can often feel as though there is no escape from being constantly “switched on” in our hyperconnected world. Our cellphones render us reachable at all times, and we feel the pressure to make every moment a productive one. But is constant activity good for our productivity? The short answer is a resounding no. Peak performers practice something that most of us don't: they regularly rest and recover in order to do their best work. So how can we establish a healthy rhythm to our working...

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...

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...

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”...

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...

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...

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...

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...

​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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

What if I told you that one set of thinking tools could help you failure your organization and future-proof your career; could I interest you in something like that? The toolkit in question is called Red Teaming, and it’s a powerful set of questions and processes imported from its origins in the military to increasingly widespread use today in business and of course management consulting. You may know this idea from other terms that describe its philosophical approach, from “alternative...

You are a brand. Accept it. Whether we like it or not, we all leave distinct impressions on people the second we meet them as well as over the years we’ve known them. That means that you have a brand. We all do. And it follows you around. In a world where we change industries, careers, and geographies more frequently than ever before, jobs and titles are temporary; the only thing that is permanent is your reputation - your brand. The question is: have you tried to intentionally shape it, or...

In this episode, we take a hard look at the cult of hyper-efficiency in contemporary capitalism and the impact it has on companies as well as individuals. As consultants, we are often called in to help organizations and people become more "efficient". Usually, that means eliminating lots of things. Many of the biggest management fads of the past few decades reflect this trend: just-in-time management, zero excess inventory, 6 Sigma defect correction, dynamic or surge pricing. But while...