Boiling The Ocean

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 lives to create the conditions for our best work? Today’s episode is all about that topic, and our starting point is probably the least practiced but most useful "life hack" out there: getting a good night's sleep. We dig into its role in our productivity as cognitive athletes, and how to get enough of it. Using this as a starting point, we also discuss: - How much sleep do you really need? Separating fact from fiction - Different phases of sleep and the danger of waking up too early - The restorative power of nature - Givi

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

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 algor

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 consultant

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”

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 a

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 strate

​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

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 managemen

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

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. i

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 surprisin

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 defin

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

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 hug

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 hug

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 super