Episode 4

full
Published on:

17th Nov 2021

"It's Not the Place You Can Charge Into With Answers…"

"…Only the Place You Can Charge Into With Listening"—Dawie Olivier on dealing with crises, creating emotional safety, and fostering curiosity & creativity in a large corporate.

Also: full contact leadership, progressive learning mindset, reading widely, and journaling.

When we talk about experimentation with Dawie Olivier—an experienced leader, CIO/CTO, and an advisory board member to several tech firms—we end up talking about biases and how to deal with them, emotional safetycuriosity… and not at all technology. Find out why one set of these concepts is much, much more important than the other.

Last Episode, I did a deep dive into electronic decision markets and how they can help setting up experiments in your company.

Next Episode, we dive deeper into one theme from this week's interview.

Note: this is the contents of the full episode available on Business Games Premium. Public feed contains an abridged version.

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Contents

  • Introduction [00:00]
  • On Tragedies and Response [02:47]
  • On Corporate Might and Listening Before Acting [08:35]
  • On Strategic Effects of Crisis Response [12:57]
  • On Corporate Experimentation, Disruption, Fear, Anxiety, Risk, and Progressive Discovery
  • On Corporate Experimentation and Anxiety [15:00]
  • On Progressive Learning and Experimentation as Core Function of Business, Not an Add-On [16:58]
  • On the Value of Progressive Discovery in Overcoming Fear and Biases, and in Creating Fast Learning [18:52]
  • On Fear of Not Being in Control, and Making Bets in Ever-Changing Contexts [20:19]
  • On Problems to Be Solved and How They Relate to the Progressive Learning Mindset [22:22]
  • On History of Vulnerability in Leadership [27:33]
  • On Discomfort, Safety, and Creativity [30:07]
  • On Unlocking Curiosity and Its Role in Progressive Learning [32:19]
  • On KPI Versus Useful Measurement and Measures [40:16]
  • On Making Collective Decisions Around Senior Leadership Teams and Boards [46:21]
  • On Experimentation from the Senior Leadership and Board Tables [51:10]
  • The Homework: Read Widely and Do Journaling [54:55]
  • Rapid-fire Questions and Concepts [57:23]
  • Leadership BS [57:42]
  • Map Is Not the Terrain [59:08]
  • Gemba Technique [1:00:19]
  • Own Work of Dawie as It Relates to Corporate Transformation and Improvement, Leadership, and Board Advisory Work [1:03:37]

Links to Dawie's Work

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About the Podcast

Business Games
Make Better Decisions
An educational podcast where we apply game theory to business, to help you make better decisions under uncertainty.

Check out our website for the public Blog, Executive Newsletter, and Premium content: https://www.business-games.ai/

A combination of original content and guest interviews, packaged into seasons; every season revolves around a single topic.

All topics lead to making better decisions.

Designed for: Senior AND Aspiring Business Decision Makers. Are you a Solopreneur or a Student of Business? We've got content for you, too.

About your host

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Andrey Ivanov

Born in the USSR; grew up in West Auckland, NZ (Waitākere, Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa); spent all my 20s in Deutschland (Mannheim, Frankfurt, Berlin) & Italia (Milano); back "out West" in Tāmaki Makaurau. A "Westie", a JAFA, vaguely Germanic, Soviet-born, a Kiwi—all in that order and proudly so. Accent vaguely Germanic and fully my own, ja?

PhD (Economics) from Universität Mannheim (Germany) where I co-authored papers on pricing & industrial organization with McKinsey consultants. NOT AN EXPERT.

12+ years strategy consultant (Germany, Italy, NZ); grew own team to 7 employees; large, listed corporations hired my firm; longest return client relationships 7, 5, & 3 years (must've been doing something right, eh?). Occasional Master thesis supervisor.

As I learnt more from being "in" business, wanted to get back to teaching and share this experience; at heart, an entrepreneurial researcher & a researching entrepreneur, an experimenter, learner, an educator & a sharer. Argh, it sounds like I'm full of myself, eh? …

I take my work very seriously & I don't take myself seriously at all—is something I learnt from one of my early clients & one of the best leaders I had the privilege to work with.