Growth Hacking Culture

Episodes

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  CEOs Spend 5% of Their Time on People. Alain Bejjani Says That’s the Problem 02.11.2026 46m

  Most CEOs say people are their greatest asset. Alain Bejjani actually measured how much time they spend on them: less than 5%. The rest goes to balance sheets, asset returns, quarterly reporting. Then they wonder why culture falls apart when the market shifts. Bejjani knows something about market shifts. He took over as CEO of Majid Al Futtaim in 2015, a brick-and-mortar retail giant spanning 17 countries and serving 560 million customers a year. He spent five years rewiring the business for digital while colleagues questioned the urgency. When COVID hit, they were ready. Most competitors were not. His argument is sharp and backed by a career of doing it: the companies that win long-term are the ones that treat people as capital to invest in, not resources to consume. He calls this framework "Talentism," and his new book NEXT: Leading Through the New Realities lays out why it matters more now than ever, as AI reshapes every industry. In this conversation, Ivan Palomino and Alain Bejjani dig into what talentism looks like when it stops being a slogan and starts showing up in how a CEO actually spends Monday morning. In this episode: Why CEOs spend less than 5% of their time on the one thing that determines long-term success The real difference between human resources and human capital, and why renaming the department was a strategic signal, not a branding exercise How the global financial and tax system actively penalizes investing in people and rewards investing in assets Which human skills matter most as AI gets more capable: judgment, adaptability, and the learning mindset Why role modeling beats training programs. What toddlers can teach us about how adults actually learn The "jaws of culture": how organizational culture grinds leaders into conformity unless they break through Resilience vs. efficiency: how to sell redundancy to a board that only sees margins ⏱️ TIMESTAMPS 00:00 - Why the logic of “technology scales, people don’t” is exactly backwards01:56 - What is Talentism, and why did Bejjani bet on it over automation?04:41 - How garage startups dethroned billion-dollar balance sheets06:07 - Why investing in people is treated as expense while software gets capitalized08:21 - AI as the most life-changing invention since fire. And why that terrifies him10:45 - Judgment is still a human exclusive. For now12:43 - AI agents getting trolled: the brake pedal argument in real time13:32 - “People are our greatest asset” was bullshit before COVID. Is it still?15:05 - The tension between short-termism and long-termism that traps every CEO18:11 - Why labor is taxed 4-5x more than capital gains, and what it signals20:15 - Real leaders balance quarterly profits with building for tomorrow21:43 - The jaws of culture: they grind you or you break them22:27 - Nassim Taleb, skin in the game, and the systems that reward the wrong behaviors24:42 - “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” Why sustainability reporting failed25:46 - The four new realities every leader must face at once30:02 - CEOs should manage strategy like a portfolio, not a single bet31:16 - Which human skills actually matter as AI takes over tasks?32:07 - Raise your employees like you raise your kids. Start with values, not skills34:17 - Role modeling: why what people observe beats what they hear36:26 - “The world will never be as slow as it currently is”37:25 - There is no adaptability pill you can buy on a shelf39:29 - What toddlers teach us about leadership. We learn 50% of everything by age three41:49 - Monday morning: the first concrete thing a CEO should do44:20 - How Majid Al Futtaim was ready for COVID when competitors weren’t48:27 - When you don’t have a burning platform, the CEO should become one50:17 - Stakeholder capitalism: creating value beyond the balance sheet This one is for the CEO, CHRO, or people leader who suspects their organization says the right things about talent but hasn't changed where the time and money actually go. 🔗 Conn
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  The Full Spectrum Workplace: Stop Saying Hybrid ft. Agustin Chevez 30.10.2026 36m

  Return to office debates are asking the wrong question. Architect and workplace researcher Dr. Agustin Chevez walked 900 km alone from Melbourne to Sydney to rethink how we work. He explains why hybrid is the wrong word, why great ideas need intermittent isolation, why cost per visit is a dangerous metric, and how to design a full spectrum workplace by designing work first. For HR leaders and CEOs stuck debating office days.
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  Stop Hoping for Creativity, Start Designing for It | Neuroscience of Creativity, Innovation & AI ft. Coral McConnon 25.10.2026 40m

  Creativity at work is a process you design, not an event you schedule. Coral McConnon, innovation strategist and author of The Breakthrough Brain, explains what neuroscience really says about how creativity works, and why most brainstorming sessions still follow a method from 1953. Ivan Palomino and Coral cover the right brain creativity myth, the four rules of divergent thinking, why the best ideas often come in the final third of a session, and how to use AI as a devil’s advocate without narrowing your thinking. She also shares her 5 C’s for building the conditions where creative teams do their best work. For HR leaders, L&D professionals and anyone who runs innovation workshops and wonders why the ideas never go anywhere.
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  Quiet Contributors and the Recognition Gap: What Companies Keep Getting Wrong | Greg Roche 19.10.2026 46m

  Quiet contributors deliver results. But corporate recognition programs, performance reviews, and promotion criteria were built around visibility, not value. The recognition gap between introverts and extroverts in the workplace is costing companies their best talent, and most HR leaders cannot even see it happening. Greg Roche is a total rewards and compensation expert with 20+ years at Fortune 500 scale, former VP of Compensation at UnitedHealth Group, and founder of Retention and Rewards Partners. He is also a self-described introverted networker who built his entire consulting practice on the introvert-friendly career strategies he teaches. In this conversation, Ivan and Greg break down how employee retention, engagement surveys, and reward systems consistently overlook quiet performers, and what leaders need to change to close the gap. In this episode: Why compensation committees picture "charisma" when they read words like executive presence and stakeholder influence, and how that filters out quiet high performers The feedback Greg received multiple times in his career: "you don't talk enough in meetings," and the specific technique he developed to turn that around Why interview performance correlates almost nothing with job performance, and what hiring processes should look like instead How disengagement in introverts looks identical to their default mode, and why traditional engagement surveys miss it entirely Greg's 5-leader method: a concrete, introvert-friendly framework for building career visibility through one-on-one conversations The case for fractional and consulting roles as a legitimate career path for introverts who are exhausted by the "work around the work" Why discretionary effort is a better measure of engagement than activity, and how confusing the two costs companies billions This one is for the quiet contributor who delivers results but feels invisible, and for the HR leader who suspects their best talent is slipping through a system that was never built for them. Connect with Greg Roche LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregsroche/  Free resource: 5 Tips to Create a Culture of Connections https://www.retentionandrewards.com/gift  Book: The Fast and Easy Guide to Networking for Introverts https://a.co/d/09epBrT2   ---- Ivan's latest article: Am I Ready to Start a Business After 45? A Behavioral Scientist's Self-Test https://www.ivanpalomino.net/post/am-i-ready-to-start-a-business-after-45-a-behavioral-scientist-s-self-test  Growth Hacking Culture is a top 5% global podcast exploring the neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral science behind leadership and workplace culture. Hosted by Ivan Palomino
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  Good Delegators Make the Best AI Users | Fractional CAIO, Judgment & AI Adoption ft. Sean Campbell 15.10.2026 52m

  Most companies hand AI adoption to IT. That is the wrong call. Sean Campbell, CEO of Cascade Insights and AI professor at George Fox University, explains why the real AI skill is delegation, not technical knowledge, and why organizations need a different kind of leader to own AI strategy. Sean introduces the concept of fluid intelligence: the ability to delegate well to humans is what predicts who will delegate well to AI. He breaks down the fractional Chief AI Officer role, why 84% of organizations still have not redesigned their workforce for AI, and what ”agentic washing” looks like in practice. The conversation covers fear as the real barrier to adoption, why Gen X professionals may be the generation best positioned for AI, and why judgment and critical thinking remain the skills no machine can replace.
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  Grit vs Grip: The Body Signs You’ve Crossed the Line | Burnout, Rest & Nervous System ft. Pauline Nguyen 12.10.2026 48m

  Grit turns self-destructive when you can’t put it down. Pauline Nguyen on grit vs grip, body signs of leadership burnout, and rest that restores performance. Pauline ran Red Lantern, the most awarded Vietnamese restaurant in the world, for 25 years. She also worked 80 to 100 hour weeks until stress made her hair fall out. Her way out was not to try less. It was to learn the difference between grit, a fire you choose, and grip, a fear that has you and never switches off. Pauline escaped Vietnam by boat at three years old. Today she coaches CEOs and founders on conscious leadership and nervous system regulation, and is the author of The Way of the Spiritual Entrepreneur. In 2026 she was named Global Transformational Leader of the Year. In this episode: Grit vs grip: why one has an off switch and the other does not Three body signs your drive has turned self-destructive: jaw, breath and sleep Why companies promote the leader who never stops, and what it costs the team Why rest is a weapon, and the seven types of rest most leaders skip How to build nervous system regulation from micro moments, with no extra hour What to strip out of grit (martyrdom) and what to keep (the fire) This one is for the high performer who cannot stop, and the HR leader watching their best people run on fumes. Key moments:08:46 Grit has an off switch, grip does not18:32 Three body signs that grit has turned to grip28:28 Rest is a weapon, not a spa day30:52 The seven types of rest41:28 What to strip out of grit 🔗 Connect with Pauline Nguyen Website: https://pauline-nguyen.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/paulinenspeaks/ (DM the word ACTION to get the Sovereign Leader System) Book: The Way of the Spiritual Entrepreneur: https://pauline-nguyen.com/product/the-way-of-the-spiritual-entrepreneur/  Ivan’s book, Expired? The Science of Staying Indispensable in a World Obsessed with New, is live now: https://a.co/d/0e29LDC9  If this episode was useful, a quick rating or review helps more people find these conversations. Growth Hacking Culture is a top 5% global podcast exploring the neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral science behind leadership and workplace culture. Hosted by Ivan Palomino
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  Above the Line Leaders Use AI for Flow, Not Busywork | Focus, Deep Work & The Flow Multiplier ft. Jared Quoyeser 05.10.2026 45m

  AI brain fry drains focus, flow state, and deep work, and it starts when every tool meant to save you time becomes another inbox. Jared Quoyeser lived it, with 14 Slack messages, WhatsApp, Teams, and three AI assistants all competing for his attention. He knew the answer was a system, not another tool. Jared Quoyeser spent more than two decades at Intel, where he led teams and managed billions in revenue, while competing as a professional endurance athlete in cycling and triathlons. Today he is co-founder and managing partner of the Louisiana Impact Fund, a speaker, and the author of The Flow Multiplier: Building Peak Performance Systems with AI. He has spent thirty years chasing flow state, and he now teaches high-performing executives how to reach it on command. In this conversation, Ivan and Jared unpack why the same AI that can sharpen strategy can also bury a leader in noise, and why the line between above the line and below the line leaders is the system they build before they add the tools. In this episode: Why AI can turn into a second, third, and fourth inbox, and what 14 open screens did to Jared's focus The difference between above the line and below the line leaders, and why a "second brain" either amplifies one or floods the other How AI meeting transcripts and note takers are quietly making leaders absent from the meetings they attend Why the system comes first and AI comes last, starting with the 1A, 1B, and 1C priorities Jared writes down before he opens email Practical ways to protect deep work: the phone out of arm's reach, the Brick, the basket exercise, and a one-hour block as a starting point Why recovery is a performance strategy, and how Jared plans rest across the week, the quarter, and the year like an athlete's season How to define productivity on your own terms, and how cutting research from 40 hours to 4 hours (his example) frees time for judgment This one is for the executive or people leader who keeps adding AI tools to a full calendar and wonders why the days feel busier while the thinking feels shallower. Connect with Jared Quoyeser: LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jared-quoyeser Book: The Flow Multiplier: Building Peak Performance Systems with AI ---- If Jared's point about defining productivity on your own terms struck a chord, and you are an experienced professional aged 45 or older wondering whether building something of your own is your next chapter, take a look at my Prefounders Bootcamp Silver Edition. It is a four-week live cohort on founder psychology and decision-making that ends with a readiness verdict, a financial runway analysis, and a personalized action plan. The next cohort starts Monday, November 16, 2026. Details at https://silver-bootcamp.ivanpalomino.net/ Growth Hacking Culture is a top 5% global podcast exploring the neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral science behind leadership and workplace culture. Hosted by Ivan Palomino
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  Capability Debt: The Hidden Cost of AI Shortcuts with Rahim Hirji 30.09.2026 52m

  Every AI shortcut your team takes is borrowing against skills they no longer build. Rahim Hirji calls it capability debt: the accumulated cost of decisions not made, learning not done, and judgment not exercised because the machine got there first. Like technical debt, it's invisible until the system breaks and nobody knows how to fix it. Rahim spent seven years researching over 200 organizations across 30 countries and came back with a warning: AI is not coming for your job, it is coming for your judgment. A former edtech executive who scaled Quizlet to 60+ countries, he wrote SuperSkills: The Seven Human Skills for the Age of AI (Kogan Page, 2026) to map the capabilities that become more valuable, not less, as AI takes over the process work. In this conversation, Ivan and Rahim unpack how capability debt builds silently inside teams, why curiosity is the first skill AI quietly kills, and what separates organizations that design for AI from those that drift into it. In this episode: What capability debt is, why it's invisible, and how it mirrors technical debt in its ability to quietly bankrupt a team's decision-making capacity How synthetic seniority lets junior employees produce senior-looking output while skipping the judgment reps that make seniority real The drift vs. design framework for spotting whether your organization is making AI decisions deliberately or just accepting algorithmic defaults Why curiosity is the first human skill AI outsources, and what happens when people stop formulating their own questions before going to the machine The HATS/HATE model (Humans At The Start, Humans At The End) as a practical alternative to the vague "human in the loop" standard How to tell, five years from now, whether an organization designed well: people will be asking "who decided this, and why?" as a reflex, not a compliance exercise Why super skills are capabilities you practice, not competencies you learn in a training session This one is for the HR leader, L&D director, or senior executive who has already rolled out AI tools and is starting to wonder whether the team is getting faster or just getting thinner. 🔗 Connect with Rahim HirjiBook: SuperSkills: The Seven Human Skills for the Age of AI (Kogan Page), available on Amazon and at all good bookshopsWebsite: https://www.thesuperskills.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rahimhirji   📘 Rahim's book SuperSkills is not another "soft skills matter" argument. It is a research-backed framework built on 200+ organizations, giving you the specific human capabilities that become more valuable as AI takes over the process work. 🔔 If this episode was useful, a quick rating or review helps more people find these conversations. Growth Hacking Culture is a top 5% global podcast exploring the neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral science behind leadership and workplace culture. Hosted by Ivan Palomino 
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  Shadow AI: How to Use ChatGPT and Agents at Work Without Waiting for IT | Anna Berkman 27.09.2026 45m

  Shadow AI is what happens when employees stop waiting for IT and start using ChatGPT and AI agents on their own to get real work done. Most advice about AI at work still comes from IT: what's banned, what's risky, what needs sign-off. This episode flips that. Anna Carina Berkman, known as Architect Anna, has trained over 5,000 professionals and built her work around what she calls the AI Advantage Gap, the space between people who've heard of AI and people who can actually use it to get ahead. In this conversation, we get specific about what that looks like for one employee with no budget, no mandate and no one telling them what to do. Anna is a former architect and chief marketing officer who moved into AI strategy and speaking after watching the same pattern everywhere: most people treat AI as a smarter Google, ask it a question, take the answer, move on. That ceiling is exactly what closes the gap between someone getting marginal value from AI and someone using it to save hours a week, before their company has even written a policy. Ivan and Anna get into where the real line is between what employees can do with AI without asking IT, and where that stops being okay. They cover the settings most people never touch that quietly train an AI model on your private conversations, how to build a personal AI curriculum instead of waiting for corporate training, and the specific tools and workarounds Anna uses to save herself 35+ hours a month. In this episode: How to figure out your personal AI Advantage Gap using Anna's five-part framework (fluency, strategy, operations, governance, culture) The ChatGPT data setting almost everyone leaves switched on that trains the model on your private conversations, and how to turn it off How to use interview style prompting to build yourself a custom learning curriculum for any skill, in any AI tool What an AI agent actually is versus a chatbot, and a real example of one building a working tool from scratch in under seven minutes The "Gamma workaround" for generating full presentations without ever touching private company data How Anna cut her own content workflow from 40 hours a month to 5 using a simple AI pipeline The one AI habit Anna wants banned immediately, and why "AI isn't a mind reader" is the most useful thing you can remember when a response comes back generic This one is for the employee who's been told to wait for a training budget or an IT approval that may never come, and who wants a real head start starting today. Connect with Anna Berkman:Website: https://markitect.co/ Podcast: The Impossible Entrepreneur (Spotify, Apple, Amazon, YouTube) https://www.youtube.com/@ArchitectAnna/  If this episode gave you a real place to start, Anna's approach in this one is simple: close one gap at a time. On a related note, my own book, Expired? The Science of Staying Indispensable in a World Obsessed with New, digs into exactly this, how to keep closing your own gaps before someone else closes them for you. It's live now: https://a.co/d/007vIzVE  If this episode was useful, a quick rating or review helps more people find these conversations. Growth Hacking Culture is a top 5% global podcast exploring the neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral science behind leadership and workplace culture. Hosted by Ivan Palomino
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  Dr. Melisa Buie on the FREE Method for Turning Failure Into Growth 21.09.2026 42m

  Somewhere in your past there's a failure you still carry, a moment that convinced you of something about yourself that was never actually true. Dr. Melisa Buie calls it a life sentence, and she built an entire framework, the FREE Method, to help people finally set it down and turn failure into growth instead of shame. Melisa Buie is a physicist by training, with a PhD in Nuclear Engineering and Plasma Physics from the University of Michigan. She's also the co-author of Faceplant: FREE Yourself from Failure's Funk, bringing a scientist's precision to one of the most human problems there is. In this conversation, Ivan and Melisa dig into the actual mechanics of fear, why some failures turn into life sentences and others turn into lessons, and how the FREE Method, Focus, Reflect, Explore, Engage, helps rewrite that story. In this episode: Why your brain treats a bad presentation like a physical threat, and what your amygdala actually does in that half second The three types of fear a single failure can trigger at once: identity, safety, and belonging How the FREE Method works step by step, and how to apply it the next time you mess up Why toddlers fail constantly and never quit, and what changes between childhood and adulthood The difference between a failure and a life sentence, and how one bad moment becomes a permanent story Why leaders need to stop collapsing failure and fault, and what to ask instead of "what happened" How showing your own real faceplant, not the sanitized version, changes how safe your team feels to fail This one is for anyone still replaying an old mistake in their head, and for any manager who wants a team that tells them the truth before it becomes a bigger problem. Connect with Melisa and get her book, Faceplant: FREE Yourself from Failure's Funk: https://a.co/d/0gDVPsSD Reach out to her directly: https://melisabuie.com/    If turning a setback into your next chapter is a topic you can't get enough of, Ivan's own audiobook, Expired? The Science of Staying Indispensable in a World Obsessed with New, is streaming now: https://open.spotify.com/show/4nLTkV3iX6RBAJ2CwCcXdf?si=eff0b23e223e44f3  Growth Hacking Culture is a top 5% global podcast exploring the neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral science behind leadership and workplace culture. Hosted by Ivan Palomino 
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  Consciousness Over IQ: What Actually Wins in an AI Workplace with Bruce D. Randall 17.09.2026 38m

  AI replacing high performers is not the scenario most companies prepared for. They planned for entry-level jobs disappearing. But when a two-day AI output matches what your best analyst produces in four weeks, and nobody in the room can tell the difference, the people most exposed are the ones who never had to build resilience, because raw intelligence was always enough. That's the argument Bruce D. Randall makes in his book The End of Smart. Bruce is an author and technology thought leader working at the intersection of AI, quantum computing, and human potential. He has built functional AI apps with zero coding background, written white papers breaking down quantum computing for non-technical audiences, and spent twenty years developing a meditation practice that shapes his view on consciousness as a workplace skill. In this conversation, Ivan and Bruce explore why corporate hierarchies built on "hire smart, reward smart, promote smart" are breaking, and what replaces intelligence as the thing organizations should actually be developing in their people. In this episode: Why AI replaces high performers before it replaces underperformers, and what makes top talent so exposed The real story of an analyst report recreated by AI in two days that nobody could distinguish from the original How middle management is being hollowed out as AI automates reporting, compliance, and data aggregation What consciousness over intelligence means in practice, and how intuition becomes a learnable competitive skill Why the bottom rung of the corporate ladder is disappearing and what that means for new graduates How quantum computing and AI combine into hybrid systems, and why leaders need a basic grasp of both The critical thinking gap: why universities still produce knowledge storage and not the judgment skills the market demands This one is for the senior leader or HR professional who senses the rules are changing but hasn't found a framework for what replaces intelligence as the thing you hire, train, and promote for.   🔗 Connect with Bruce D. RandallWebsite: BruceDRandall.AIBook: The End of Smart 📘 Ivan's book Expired? The Science of Staying Indispensable in a World Obsessed with New is live now. More at https://a.co/d/06jcYtVV  🔔 If this episode resonated, a quick rating or review helps more people find these conversations. Growth Hacking Culture is a top 5% global podcast exploring the neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral science behind leadership and workplace culture. Hosted by Ivan Palomino
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  How to Respond When You Get Interrupted in a Meeting | Andrea Wojnicki 14.09.2026 45m

  Getting interrupted in meetings, or talked over right before someone else repeats your idea and gets the credit, happens more than most people admit, and to some people a lot more than others. Dr. Andrea Wojnicki is a Harvard-trained executive communication and personal branding coach, host of the Talk About Talk podcast, and a Harvard Business Review contributor who has spent her career studying exactly why this happens in meetings, and what to say the moment it does. In this conversation, Ivan and Andrea break down the psychology of interruptions, the double standard between how men and women get judged for the same behavior, and the specific phrases and body language that shut an interruption down without sounding defensive. In this episode: How to respond when someone interrupts you in a meeting, the exact words and body language, without pausing or sounding defensive Why interrupting is about power, not manners, and who gets interrupted most as a result Assertive or aggressive: why the same behavior gets judged differently for men and women, and how to navigate it The impossible tightrope women face in leadership, with two real examples of controlling the narrative instead of fighting it Internal versus external self-awareness, the communication skill that separates average leaders from exceptional ones When to let an interruption go, and when it's actually a power play worth confronting How meeting leaders and allies can build a culture where interrupting isn't tolerated This one is for the woman who's tired of being talked over in meetings and wants a response that actually works, and for any leader who wants to fix this dynamic on their own team. Connect with Dr. Andrea Wojnicki:Website: talkabouttalk.comLinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/andreawojnickiHer book, Let Me Introduce Myself, on building your professional identity and personal brand, is out in 2027. If you've ever felt like your ideas get overlooked until someone else says them louder, that's the same territory I explore in my book, Expired? The Science of Staying Indispensable in a World Obsessed with New, out now at ivanpalomino.net/expired-book-ivan-palomino. If this episode was useful, a quick rating or review helps more people find these conversations. Growth Hacking Culture is a top 5% global podcast exploring the neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral science behind leadership and workplace culture. Hosted by Ivan Palomino.
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  Why 40% of Company Failures Are a Leadership Problem, Not a Product Problem | Dane Hudson 09.09.2026 42m

  Most leaders assume when a company stalls, the problem is the product, the market, or the team. It rarely is. After 25 years as a global CEO and mentoring over 150 of them, Dane Hudson keeps arriving at the same uncomfortable answer: the ceiling is usually the person running the company. Not their strategy. Not their product. Their leadership — and the gap between how fast it's growing and how fast the business is. The problem is that gap is invisible until the damage is already done. Dane Hudson is the founder of Impactful Leadership and author of Discipline Beats Vision a hands-on playbook for CEOs who need to grow as fast as their companies do. In this episode, Ivan and Dane unpack why leadership is the hidden variable behind most startup failures — and what disciplined leadership actually looks like in practice. In this episode: Why 40 to 55% of companies fail and Dane's hypothesis that 40% of those failures trace back to the leader, not the product The moment a CEO becomes the biggest risk to their own company Why the Optimism Trap is more dangerous than pessimism and how to catch yourself in it What "Monday ready" leadership looks like: meeting discipline as a signal of accountability culture The four people every CEO needs in their corner — and why the one they always forget matters most Why leaders who stop being relentless students fail before they realize it Newton's Third Law applied to leadership: every behavior produces a response — are you choosing yours? This one is for the CEO or senior leader who knows their company is growing but quietly suspects their leadership hasn't kept up. 🔗 Connect with Dane Hudson https://danehudson.com/  | https://impactfulleadership.com/ Book Discipline Beats Vision: https://amzn.asia/d/0aVgtDWY   📖 Ivan Palomino's book on staying indispensable in a world obsessed with new: Expired? is now available in English and French edition   Growth Hacking Culture is a top 5% global podcast exploring the neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral science behind leadership and workplace culture. Hosted by Ivan Palomino    
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  Sarah Rozenthuler: The Psychology of Purpose in the Age of AI 06.09.2026 47m

  Six extra hours a week. That's what AI has reportedly handed back to people using it well. The real question isn't the time, it's what they do with it. Chartered psychologist Sarah Rozenthuler has spent nearly two decades studying how humans talk to each other about what actually matters, and she's noticed something: more people are turning to AI to think out loud about their purpose, their leadership, their next move. Sarah is a leadership coach and the author of three books on purpose and dialogue, including Now We're Talking, shortlisted for the Business Book Awards, and Powered by Purpose, with a foreword by former Unilever CEO Paul Polman. Her clients include Standard Chartered Bank, BP, and Saïd Business School at Oxford. In this conversation, Ivan and Sarah test whether talking to a machine can genuinely help someone get clearer on their purpose, or whether it just becomes a comfortable way to avoid the real conversation. In this episode: Why AI can be a legitimate rehearsal room for a hard conversation, and the exact moment it turns into a hiding place instead The difference between AI as a clean reflective mirror and an echo chamber that just agrees with you Why 70% of managers avoid the difficult conversation, according to Sarah's own research, and whether AI makes that better or worse What "crucible moments" are, and why the clearest sense of purpose usually comes out of the hardest experiences, not a chatbot Why some leaders say AI is freeing up hours while others feel like they've lost time policing AI's mistakes This one is for the leader who's already talked to AI about a hard decision and isn't sure if that counts as cheating or just good preparation. Connect with Sarah Rozenthuler: Website: https://sarahrozenthuler.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarah-rozenthuler/ Books: Now We're Talking and Powered by Purpose   📅 Join Ivan on 10th September: a free live session, The 7 Fears: What Employees Actually Think About AI, decoding what 36,165 employees actually said about AI at work, across 5,000 companies. Limited to 40 senior HR leaders, recording sent to all registrants. Register: https://luma.com/x10qnpqq Growth Hacking Culture is a top 5% global podcast exploring the neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral science behind leadership and workplace culture. Hosted by Ivan Palomino  
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  Nicholas Janni & Amy Elizabeth Fox: What Comes After Human-Centric Leadership 30.08.2026 41m

  Nicholas Janni and Amy Elizabeth Fox, authors of Leading in Chaos, explain why human-centric leadership has hit its ceiling, and what comes next. For fifteen years, leadership development meant one thing: build emotional intelligence, train empathy, create psychological safety. It worked, until it didn't. Some of the most self-aware, emotionally intelligent leaders on the planet are still freezing under pressure, still overcorrecting in a crisis, still making the wrong call. Not because they lack empathy. Because empathy was never the missing piece. Nicholas Janni has spent over 25 years advising CEOs and senior leadership teams worldwide and teaching at top business schools, including IMD. His book Leader as Healer won UK Business Book of the Year. Amy Elizabeth Fox is Co-founder and CEO of Mobius Executive Leadership, and has spent two decades running trauma-informed, transformational leadership programs for Fortune 500 executives and professional services firms. Together they wrote Leading in Chaos, their account of what leadership requires in a world stuck in permanent crisis. 📖 About the book Leading in Chaos: Portals to a New Future argues that today's polycrisis, institutional fragility, and sustained uncertainty demand more than better tools or best practice. Janni and Fox call it next practice: a shift from control to coherence, from speed to presence, and from purely cognitive leadership to a wider, embodied intelligence. Drawing on decades of work with senior teams, the book blends vertical development and trauma-informed practice into a practical case for how leaders can regulate themselves well enough to lead clearly through chaos. In this conversation, Ivan Palomino asks them to define what actually comes after human-centric leadership: a deeper form of consciousness built on vertical development, trauma-informed leadership, and nervous system regulation, not just more empathy training. In this episode: Why fifteen years of emotional intelligence training plateaued, and what CHROs got wrong measuring its impact The real difference between a leader who is calm because they are regulated, and one who is only suppressing panic Why the average person spends just 5 percent of their day in a state of flow, and what that reveals about modern workplace culture What vertical development and trauma-informed leadership actually look like in practice, without a single hour on a therapist's couch How hyperarousal and hypoarousal quietly hijack a team's best decisions under pressure Why boards are no longer willing to tolerate high-performing but harmful leaders, and what replaces that old model A simple two-minute practice that changes the quality of every meeting a leader runs This one is for the CHRO who invested heavily in emotional intelligence training and still isn't seeing the culture shift they were promised, and for any leader who suspects the old playbook has quietly stopped working. 🔗 Connect with Nicholas Janni and Amy Elizabeth Fox 📘 Book and Course, Leading in Chaos: https://leadinginchaosbook.com/ 🌐 Nicholas Janni: https://www.nicholasjanni.com/  | LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicholas-janni/ 🌐 Amy Elizabeth Fox / Mobius Executive Leadership: https://www.mobiusleadership.com/  | LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amyelizabethfox/  🎙️ More from Growth Hacking Culture Podcast home: https://podcast.ivanpalomino.net  Newsletter: https://simplyhuman.substack.com    📘 If this episode resonated, you might enjoy Ivan's own book, Expired? The Science of Staying Indispensable in a World Obsessed with New, on why experience is still your biggest asset in a workplace obsessed with novelty: https://www.ivanpalomino.net/expired-book-ivan-palomino  Growth Hacking Culture is a top 5% global podcast exploring the neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral science behind leadership and workplace culture. Hosted by Ivan Palomino.
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  Why Hiring A-Players Doesn't Build Winning Teams with André Martin 23.08.2026 49m

  Every organization wants to hire the best. Stack the roster with top performers, invest in individual excellence, let talent density do the work. It sounds like a winning strategy. The research says otherwise. Dr. André Martin is an organizational psychologist, former Chief Talent Officer at Mars, and author of Collective Confidence: The Winning Formula Behind the World's Most Unbeatable Teams. He has spent decades studying hundreds of teams across radically different environments, from submarine crews to Olympic gymnasts to Silicon Valley startups, and his findings keep pointing to the same place: the teams that win are not the ones with the most talent. They are the ones that believe they can figure it out together. Ivan and André dig into why collective confidence outpredicts individual performance, what six principles every unbeatable team shares, and how the way we hire, onboard, and develop people is built around a model that stopped working years ago. In this episode: Why collective confidence is a stronger predictor of team performance than individual talent, backed by decades of research The three types of confidence (individual, contributory, collective) and why organizations invest in the wrong one Six principles shared by every unbeatable team André studied, from Navy crews to gymnasts to startup founders How a Burning Man camp leader's philosophy of "make everyone the boss of something" reveals what corporate hiring misses Why teams that learn together retain nearly 100% while solo learners lose 70% in three days (the Ebbinghaus curve hack) The trust formula with four variables where self-interest is the denominator that can destroy everything else What André would fix first as CHRO: not culture programs, but onboarding and the leadership team This one is for the leader who looks at a talented team and thinks: we should be performing better than this. For the HR professional who suspects that stacking resumes is not the same as building a real team. And for anyone who has been on a scrappy squad that somehow outperformed everyone's expectations and wondered why it worked. 🔗 Connect with André Martin LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/docmartinpdx Book: Collective Confidence (Amazon): https://www.amazon.com/Collective-Confidence-Winning-Formula-Worlds/dp/1966280084 First book: Wrong Fit, Right Fit Newsletter: More Than the Sum (on LinkedIn) ----  Growth Hacking Culture is a top 5% global podcast exploring the neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral science behind leadership and workplace culture. Hosted by Ivan Palomino   Ivan Palomino's new book Expired?: The Science of Staying Indispensable When Your Company Bets on Youth is now availble https://a.co/d/036NVnVe    
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  Dr. Audrey Tang: Detours, Dopamine, and the Science of a Life Not Scripted 16.08.2026 45m

  Most of us were handed a script before we were old enough to question it. A school told us what to study. A parent told us what success looks like. A career ladder told us which rung comes next. And somewhere along the way, we confused following the script with actually living. This conversation with Dr. Audrey Tang starts with a simple but unsettling question: what if the detour was never the problem? What if the belief in a straight line was? Dr. Audrey Tang is a Chartered Psychologist, leadership trainer, and award-winning author of The Leader's Guide to Resilience and The Leader's Guide to Wellbeing (winner, Business Book Awards 2024). For years she has worked with leaders and organisations on the psychology behind performance, confidence, and behaviour change. Her own life, which has crossed teaching, performing, writing, broadcasting, and building a charity, is anything but linear. Ivan and Audrey explore the neuroscience behind why we default to linear thinking, why the corporate habit of setting fixed goals makes us worse at life, and what it actually takes to build confidence in the face of the unexpected. In this episode: Why the brain fills in narrative gaps automatically, and how Gestalt psychology explains our obsession with sequences and conclusions The difference between happiness and relief, and why "I'll be happy when I achieve X" is one of the most common traps we fall into How parental scripts get installed early and how to start asking whose critical voice you are actually hearing The skills vs. strengths distinction: why getting promoted on things you are good at but that drain you is one of the quietest career crises there is How dopamine reinforces the wrong behaviours, keeping people climbing ladders that lead somewhere they never wanted to go Why "follow your passion" can tip into obsession, and the better question to ask: what problems do you want to solve? The stretch zone framework: how small daily discomforts build the resilience to handle real uncertainty without panic What to do when you are stuck in the mess right now, cannot see the point, and do not know where to start This one is for the experienced professional who suspects the path they are on was never quite theirs, and is ready to ask what comes next. 🔗 Connect with Dr. Audrey Tang Website: https://www.draudreyt.com/ Book - The Leader's Guide to Resilience: https://a.co/d/064klLMC  📘 Ivan's new book Expired? The Science of Staying Indispensable When Your Company Bets on Youth — for the 50+ professional navigating relevance, visibility, and what experience is actually worth. Launching September 2026: https://www.ivanpalomino.net/expired-book-ivan-palomino  Growth Hacking Culture is a top 5% global podcast exploring the neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral science behind leadership and workplace culture. Hosted by Ivan Palomino
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  John Nieuwenburg on Building Systems That Don't Need You in the Room 12.08.2026 39m

  Picture the busiest person you know. First to answer email, last to leave a meeting, always available. Now ask yourself: are they actually the best decision maker in the room? John Nieuwenburg has coached hundreds of leaders through exactly this contradiction, and his answer might surprise you. John spent decades working his way up in retail, eventually running a $3 billion operation as company president. That experience taught him the busiest executives are rarely the most effective ones. He's now spent 20+ years coaching leaders using the Socratic method, helping them ask themselves better questions instead of handing them answers. In this conversation, Ivan and John unpack what actually separates leaders who scale their impact from those who just scale their hours, and why the answer has almost nothing to do with working harder. In this episode: Why the captain of a rowboat, a yacht, and an aircraft carrier all need a completely different definition of "work" The difference between personal trust and structural trust, and why only one of them scales past ten people What "delegation debt" costs you when you keep saying "it's just faster if I do it myself" Why Jeff Bezos treats 5 good decisions a year as a successful year, and what that means for how you spend your time The real difference between being available and being accessible, and how to protect blocks of real, focused work How to run an executive update using BLUF (bottom line up front) instead of a 50-slide deck nobody reads Why culture is defined by what a leader tolerates, not what's written on a wall, and how to build one worth keeping This one is for the leader who's proud of how busy they are, and quietly wondering if that busyness is actually working against them. Connect with John Nieuwenburg Website: w5coaching.com   Coming Soon: The Culture Signal: a free online session for senior HR leaders on what your people actually fear about AI, and what to do about it Register on https://luma.com/x10qnpqq    Growth Hacking Culture is a top 5% global podcast exploring the neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral science behind leadership and workplace culture. Hosted by Ivan Palomino  
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  Julian Reeve: Unmistakable Identity, Burnout, and Why AI Recovery Is the Same Skill 09.08.2026 45m

  At 43, at the peak of his career as music director of Broadway's Hamilton, Julian Reeve had a stress related heart attack. The two things driving it, workaholism and perfectionism, are the same two things now deciding who thrives with AI and who burns out trying to outrun it. Julian Reeve is a keynote speaker, executive coach, and founder of Perfect Equilibrium. He spent years helping high achievers reclaim their health and their sense of self after getting trapped in what he calls the achievement machine, and he built his own AI assistant three years ago to help him do exactly that. In this conversation, Ivan and Julian reframe AI not as a threat but as a mirror, and unpack why burnout, perfectionism, and the fear of being replaced all trace back to the same root cause: confusing skill with identity. In this episode: Why Dr. Christina Maslach's six drivers of burnout reveal that overload was never the real problem for most people The difference between skill (what AI already does well) and capability (what only humans can do), explained through a plumber standing in your kitchen Julian's three pillars of "unmistakable identity," identity, creativity, and judgment, and why none of them can be trained the way skills are Why 95% of people believe they're self-aware while the real number is closer to 12%, according to Dr. Tasha Eurich's research Martin Covington's self-worth theory and why perfectionists are structurally the most vulnerable to burnout What "acceptance and permission" mean in practice, and why recovery is about doing less, not more Why Gen Z may need to know themselves at 20 the way Julian needed to know himself at 40, and what that means for the future of entry-level work This one is for anyone who has built two decades of career on being reliable, consistent, and hard to fault, and is now watching a machine do that part faster than they ever could. 🔗 Connect with Julian Reeve: julianreeve.com | Human Capability Indicator: free download Book: Captain Perfection and the Secret of Self Compassion https://amzn.eu/d/03J6jm4x TEDx: Julian Reeve perfectionism  https://youtu.be/mi-kD8_dyKw?si=HV6GbumnEKrHpS5B  --- 📘 Ivan Palomino's book Expired? is available now in English. The science of staying indispensable when the world keeps moving the goalposts. → ivanpalomino.net/expired-book-ivan-palomino   Growth Hacking Culture is a top 5% global podcast hosted by Ivan Palomino, exploring the neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral science behind leadership and workplace performance.
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  The Neuropsychology of Power: What Happens to Your Brain When You Lead 04.08.2026 53m

  Power changes everyone, especially leaders, whether they realize it or not. Discover the hidden neuroscience behind how authority rewires your brain, alters your behavior, and can transform you in ways you never expected. In this episode, Ivan Palomino speaks with leadership expert Nick Kinley, a former forensic psychotherapist whose work spans prisons, boardrooms, and decades of research into power. Together, they unpack what really happens in the brain when people gain authority: why power can boost confidence while also reducing empathy, distorting decision-making, and making even strong leaders more vulnerable to blind spots. You’ll learn:- Why power affects everyone, not just “bad” leaders- How authority changes brain structure, chemistry, and behavior- Why leaders often overestimate how open people are with them- The role culture and context play in amplifying power’s effects- What organizations can do to detect and reduce the negative side of power This conversation is especially relevant for founders, executives, managers, HR leaders, and anyone interested in leadership, psychology, and workplace culture. If you want to understand how power shapes behavior and how to lead without losing your values, this episode is for you. Nick Kinley is the author of The Power Trap, an evidence-based look at how leadership changes people and what to do about it. Listen now to explore the neuropsychology of power and what it means for the way you lead.   The latest book of Ivan Palomino on the psychology of the midlife is now available: Expired? https://a.co/d/0hV4tNnu