This year marks BSG's thirtieth anniversary. As I thought about how to mark it, I kept coming back to the part of this work I've valued most: getting to know leaders at real inflection points, and seeing what leadership looks like when it's being tested.
That reflection became a podcast.
What Talent by Design is
Talent by Design is a podcast from BSG and Talent Sequencing. A new episode arrives every other week and takes up one of the major talent questions we see in our work: how organizations lead strategic change, what AI is doing to the way leaders are developed, and the leadership decisions inside PE-backed growth companies.
Each episode draws on our research and experience alongside established frameworks, from Kotter's eight stages to Heifetz's distinction between technical and adaptive change. The aim is practical. It's a way for busy leaders to take in the ideas by listening, rather than sitting down with a white paper.
Start with Episode One, How to Lead Successful Organizational Transformation, a walk through the established frameworks behind leading change.
How we made it, plainly
The two hosts, Hugh and Elle, are AI-generated voices. We build each episode with Google's Gemini Notebook, formerly NotebookLM, from written work our teams have produced over many years: guides, research, and articles. The voices are synthetic. The thinking is not.
I would rather say that plainly than leave you to wonder, so every episode opens with a short note from me saying so, and a person on our team reviews each one before it is published.
Leadership: Lessons Learned
Once a month, the format changes. In Leadership: Lessons Learned, I sit down with an executive I've had the privilege of knowing or working with. There are no AI voices and no rehearsed talking points, just the two of us for 30 to 45 minutes, talking about the lessons that only come from having been through it: what worked, what didn't, and how those experiences changed the way they lead. We are recording the first season this fall.
How to listen
You can listen to every episode, read the transcripts, and subscribe at talentbydesign.talentsequencing.com. We're adding Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and other platforms, and links will appear on that page as each one goes live.
If there is a leadership question you'd like us to take on, or a conversation you think belongs in Leadership: Lessons Learned, I'd be glad to hear it.
