How I Work

Latest Episodes:

Inventium's CEO Michelle Le Poidevin on our secret weapon for recruitment, being a remote CEO, and working a four day week Aug 19, 2020

Show notes

Today's guest is Michelle (Mish) Le Poidevin. Mish has been the CEO of leading behavioural science and innovation consultancy, Inventium (the consultancy I founded and still work in) since May 2019. Mish is passionate about creating the environment and structures for people to do their best work. She has led (and learnt from!) many of Inventium's pioneering people practices such as the move to a holocracy structure, unlimited annual leave, and most recently, the four day work week and the compilation of the Australian Financial Review Best Places to Work list. She has also led the strategic transformation of Inventium and the development of new digital business models. She holds an MBA specialising in innovation and technology from The University of New South Wales (AGSM) and has been successfully working remotely full-time since 2018.

This episode is like a behind-the-scenes look at how Inventium functions and the various experiments we have trialled over the years to make Inventium an awesome place to work.

We cover:

Why Mish loves being a “remote” CEO
How working remotely helps Mish think upstream
Carving out time for creative and strategic thinking
Inventium’s Four Day Week experiment
How Mish has reduced the amount of Shallow Work in her life
The benefits of having a Virtual Assistant
Working to your chronotype
How we managed staff redundancies via Zoom during COVID
The importance of bringing back routines to work during a time of uncertainty
Why we fired all our managers at Inventium
Mish’s biggest learnings in running a holocracy
Inventium’s secret weapon for recruitment
How we use OKR’s for setting company and individual goals
Why we deliberately link OKRs to pay rises
How we can replace water cooler moments in the remote working world
How the idea for the AFR Most Innovative Companies list came about
Inventium’s latest project: the AFR BOSS Best Places to Work list.

Nominate your company for the AFR BOSS Best Places to Work list.

Connect with Mish on Linkedin.

Visit https://www.amanthaimber.com/podcast for full show notes from all episodes.

Get in touch at amantha@inventium.com.au

If you are looking for more tips to improve the way you work, I write a short monthly newsletter that contains three cool things that I have discovered that help me work better, which range from interesting research findings through to gadgets I am loving. You can sign up for that at http://howiwork.co

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

My Favourite Tip: Four Day Week pioneer Andrew Barnes on how to spend less time in meetings Aug 17, 2020

Show notes

My favourite tip from my chat with Four Day Week pioneer Andrew Barnes was on how to spend less time in meetings.

You can find the full interview here.

Visit https://www.amanthaimber.com/podcast for full show notes from all episodes.

Get in touch at amantha@inventium.com.au

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Rice University Professor Scott Sonenshein on how to clean up your meetings, decisions and inbox Aug 12, 2020

Show notes

My guest today is Scott Sonenshein. Scott is a New York Times Best-Selling Author and Professor of Management at Rice University. I came across Scott’s work a few months ago when I read his second book, Joy at Work. Scott wrote Joy At Work with bestselling author and Netflix star Marie Kondo, whose cleaning methods I’ve used in my own home over the years. In Joy At Work, Scott and Marie offer stories, studies, and strategies to help you eliminate clutter and make space for work that really matters.

In this interview, we cover:

Three questions to ask yourself to figure out if a meeting really matters
How to dramatically reduce the number of meetings in your work life
How to diplomatically extract yourself from meetings
The one thing you need to ask for before every meeting
How to decrease the number of low stakes decisions in your life
How delegation can improve decision-making
How to activate the subconscious part of your brain to make better decisions
Scott’s daily problem solving ritual
How Scott uses routines to boost creativity
How Scott cleaned up all the digital clutter from his phone
Why it’s so hard to change your behaviour around email
How to clean up your inbox
How to make it easier to stick to “batch checking” emails
Scott’s “spark joy” folder

Learn more about Scott right here. And grab your copy of Joy At Work.

Visit https://www.amanthaimber.com/podcast for full show notes from all episodes.

Get in touch at amantha@inventium.com.au

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

My Favourite Tip: Bloom creator Glen Dolman’s on how to inject creativity into a writers' room Aug 10, 2020

Show notes

My favourite tip from my chat with Glen Dolman was about his strategies for injecting creativity into a room full of writers.

You can find the full interview here.

Visit https://www.amanthaimber.com/podcast for full show notes from all episodes.

Get in touch at amantha@inventium.com.au

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Things are pretty sh*t right now in Melbourne. Here are a few strategies that might help. Aug 05, 2020

Show notes

In today's episode, I cover 10 science-backed strategies to boost mental health. And here is a link to Worry Time (as mentioned on the show).

Visit https://www.amanthaimber.com/podcast for full show notes from all episodes.

Get in touch at amantha@inventium.com.au

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

My Favourite Tip: Guardian columnist Oliver Burkeman on how to stop procrastinating and get in flow Aug 03, 2020

Show notes

My favourite tip from my chat with Guardian columnist Oliver Burkeman was on how to stop procrastinating and get in flow.

You can find the full interview here.

Visit https://www.amanthaimber.com/podcast for full show notes from all episodes.

Get in touch at amantha@inventium.com.au

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Rachel Botsman on obsessing over the first few minutes of virtual presentations Jul 29, 2020

Show notes

My guest today is Rachel Bostman. Rachel is a world-renowned expert on technology and trust, and author of two bestselling books. Her first book was called "What’s Mine is Yours” which was all about collaborative consumption, and her second book, Who can you trust, explores how technology is transforming trust and what this means for life, work and how we do business. Rachel is a Trust Fellow at Oxford University and has been recognised as one of the “Most Creative People in Business” by Fast Company and as one of the 50 most influential management thinkers in the world. She is also the host of the podcast Trust Issues. And where you might have come across Rachel is via her TED talks that have been viewed by literally millions of people.

This is the second time Rachel has been on How I Work. Check out the first interview here.

In this chat, we cover:

The biggest challenges for her of working during lockdown
Designing virtual experiences
How Rachel has iterated her teaching at Oxford to create a great virtual experience for her students
The very first thing to get right before delivering virtual experiences
How to create the space for learning and thinking in the virtual classroom
How to give introverted people a voice in virtual workshops
How Rachel has made the switch from face-to-face keynote presentations to virtual ones
“Settling” people into the room for virtual presentations
How to create great poll questions
How Rachel structures a one hour presentation
How to finish a presentation so it promotes action
On being a teacher versus a preacher

Follow Rachel on Linkedin to get her biweekly newsletter Rethink

Check out her virtual experience design documents here:

- A Guide to Designing and Delivering Virtual Experiences

- A special edition of Rachel's Rethink Newsletter on the topic which can be read here.

Visit https://www.amanthaimber.com/podcast for full show notes from all episodes.

Get in touch at amantha@inventium.com.au

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Turbo-charge team collaboration in the remote working world Jul 27, 2020

Show notes

This episode looks at three simple strategies to improve collaboration in the remote working world.

Visit https://www.amanthaimber.com/podcast for full show notes from all episodes.

Get in touch at amantha@inventium.com.au

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Amantha Imber on doing a hard reset on her work habits Jul 22, 2020

Show notes

My guest today is…me! For the second time in the history of this show, I thought I’d turn the tables and share with you how I run my own workday. It's changed quite a bit in light of some very big changes in my life in 2019. The delightful and wise Dr Jason Fox joins me on the show to sit in the interviewer chair.

We cover all sorts of ground, including:

* The huge changes I have experienced in my work and life over the last year and how that has impacted my productivity

* Why I prefer smaller teams to bigger teams

* My team’s weekly rhythms

* The different work experiments Inventium is currently running

* Inventium’s move to a four day week and how the guidelines have been co-created by the team

* How I balance work and parenting as a single mother

* How digital distraction crept back into my life and how I dealt with it

* How we do goal setting at Inventium

* My daily and weekly rhythms

* Why I create rules for myself

* How I’m changing my email workflow

* How I think about downtime

Connect with me via Inventium, and on Linkedin and Twitter.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

My Favourite Tip: Ex-Google Ventures designer John Zeratsky on the calendar template he uses to plan his ideal day Jul 20, 2020

Show notes

My favourite tip from my chat with ex-Google Ventures designer John Zeratsky was on the calendar template he uses to plan his ideal day.

You can find the full interview here.

Visit https://www.amanthaimber.com/podcast for full show notes from all episodes.

Get in touch at amantha@inventium.com.au

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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