Growth Hacking Culture

Most workplace advice treats people as the problem. Growth Hacking Culture starts from the opposite premise: if your best people are disengaged, burned out, or leaving, the system is broken, not them.Hosted by Ivan Palomino, this top 5% global podcast brings you unfiltered conversations with the people rewriting the rules of work: executives from Apple, Goldman Sachs, and Zappos, organizational psychologists, neuroscientists, and founders who’ve built cultures that perform without burning people down.No corporate wellness fluff. No recycled leadership clichés. Just the behavioral science, psychology, and uncomfortable truths behind workplace culture, employee engagement, and leadership that actually works.For HR leaders, CHROs, founders, and executives who suspect the standard playbook is the problem.

100 episodes

14d ago latest

weekly cadence

English language

▶ Play latestRSS feed Website Education Self Improvement Business Management

https://podcast.ivanpalomino.net/feed.xml

Episodes 100

Nicholas Janni & Amy Elizabeth Fox: What Comes After Human-Centric Leadership
9h ago · 41:00
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 advis
Why Hiring A-Players Doesn't Build Winning Teams with André Martin
7d ago · 49:54
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 p
Dr. Audrey Tang: Detours, Dopamine, and the Science of a Life Not Scripted
14d ago · 45:23
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
John Nieuwenburg on Building Systems That Don't Need You in the Room
18d ago · 39:20
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 q
Julian Reeve: Unmistakable Identity, Burnout, and Why AI Recovery Is the Same Skill
21d ago · 45:32
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 c
The Neuropsychology of Power: What Happens to Your Brain When You Lead
26d ago · 53:08
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 le
How to Leave a Toxic Job Without Losing Yourself | Jeff Davis
1mo ago · 40:02
There is a version of you that walks into a job feeling capable, energized, and sure of who you are. And there is a version, months or years later, who can't remember when that confidence left. Nobody names the moment. There usually isn't one. Just a slow accumulation of small cuts that eventually add up to a person who doubts themselves. Jeff Davis has spent years collecting these stories. He's an award-winning author, TEDx speaker, and mental health advocate whose latest book, The Courage to Leave: Breaking Free from Toxic Workplaces, pulls back the curtain on toxic work cultures through raw
Colette Molteni: Emotional Intelligence for People Who Think in Systems
1mo ago · 42:41
If you think in systems, empathy probably never made sense as a soft skill. It felt vague, unquantifiable, impossible to debug. But what if it is not a personality trait at all, just a system you have not built yet. Colette Molteni spent 20 years working inside data analytics, sales operations, and engineering teams before founding Empathy Elevated. She does not ask technical people to become someone they are not. She gives them a framework: a repeatable, practiceable system for reading a room, managing a hard conversation, and building trust, the same way you would approach any other technica
Wisdom Over Intelligence: A World Champion's Framework for Smarter Decisions | Andres Kuusk
1mo ago · 37:11
There is a version of you that works harder, thinks faster, and still ends up in the same place. Not because you lacked the ability — but because the process producing your decisions had a flaw you never examined. And the smarter you are, the longer it takes to notice. This conversation is about that flaw, and what it actually takes to correct it. Andres Kuusk is a seven-time World Pentamind Champion, the most successful all-around mental strategist in recorded history, a PhD economist, and C-suite executive. His book, Unlocking the Success Puzzle, draws on decades of high-stakes competition a
From Bottleneck to Coach: Brad Sugars on the Leadership System Most Organizations Never Install
1mo ago · 46:24
Most senior leaders do not know they are the bottleneck. They think they are the standard. They are in every key decision, every escalation, every thread that matters. And they have quietly trained their teams to wait for them. It does not feel like a problem. It feels like leadership. Brad Sugars is the founder of ActionCoach, the world's largest business coaching firm operating in 1,000+ offices across 80 countries, and author of 18 books on business, leadership, and organizational performance. For 30 years he has worked with executives across 80 countries who built high-performing reputatio
How to Diagnose Employee Disengagement Instead of Just Measuring It with Dustin Snyder
1mo ago · 38:53
Most organizations know something is wrong long before they run a survey. The sense that good people are pulling back, that processes are harder than they need to be, that the same conversations keep happening in the same conference rooms without anything changing. The survey confirms it. And then, usually, not much else happens. The problem is not the data. The problem is that most organizational listening tools were built to measure sentiment, not to trace its origins. They tell you where it hurts. They have no mechanism for telling you why. Dustin Snyder spent fifteen years in labor relatio
Fix Work, Not People | Burnout, Job Design & What Good Work Actually Looks Like ft. Dr. Kat Page
2mo ago · 39:35
What if burnout isn’t a people problem — it’s a design problem? Organizational psychologist Dr. Kat Page has spent two decades studying why workers break down — and her answer challenges everything most organizations do about it. A poorly designed job, she argues, is worse for your mental health than unemployment. And every wellbeing program that treats the symptom is quietly giving the organization permission to ignore the cause. In this episode, Kat and host Ivan Palomino dismantle the resilience myth, expose the moral injury hiding inside everyday corporate dysfunction, and get practical ab
The Shame Loop Keeping Smart People Stuck | Burnout, Executive Function & Breaking Free ft. Frankie Berkoben
2mo ago · 47:28
Burnout isn't a motivation problem. It's not a willpower problem. And if you're one of the smartest people in the room — it might be happening to you precisely because of how good you are. Executive coach Frankie Berkoben has spent years inside Google, Airbnb, and the most demanding startup environments in Silicon Valley. She works with engineers, founders, and product leaders who are genuinely brilliant — and burning out faster than anyone around them. In this episode of the Growth Hacking Culture Podcast, Frankie and host Ivan Palomino unpack the hidden loop that traps high performers: the s
How to Become a High-Impact CHRO: Mindset, Habits & Career Moves That Actually Work | Tom Emery
2mo ago · 43:19
Most HR leaders never make it to Chief People Officer — and those who do often struggle to create real impact once they get there. The difference isn't technical expertise. It's mindset, habits, and knowing exactly which career moves accelerate your path to the top. In this episode of Growth Hacking Culture, Ivan Palomino sits down with Tom Emery, founder of Hex and author of People People: Reach Your Potential as a Chief People Officer. Tom spent over 20 years in HR leadership across financial services and wealth management before building a coaching practice dedicated to helping HR leaders a
How HR Leaders Can Actually Use AI to Kill Admin Work (2026) with John Sansoucie
2mo ago · 35:18
AI use in HR climbed to 43% in 2026, yet most HR leaders still spend the majority of their day on spreadsheets, manual reconciliations, and transactional work that adds zero strategic value. In this episode of the Growth Hacking Culture Podcast, John Sansoucie, CEO of Cognet, shares a practical roadmap for HR leaders who want to implement AI in HR, eliminate admin overload, and finally operate as a strategic function inside their organization. If you are searching for real HR technology strategy advice that goes beyond vendor demos and buzzwords, this conversation delivers exactly that. John h
HR Leaders Will Soon Manage Humans and Agents. Most Aren't Ready. | Tami Rosen
2mo ago · 39:34
The job description for HR leader just changed. Again. Not the version that added culture after COVID. Not the version that added AI literacy after ChatGPT. The version that nobody has written yet — the one where you are responsible for a workforce that is part human, part agent, and entirely your problem to lead effectively. Most HR leaders are not ready for this. Not because they lack intelligence or intention. Because the function has spent decades being handed other people's problems and called a support function for it. And you cannot build the commercial acumen, the technical fluency, an
Stop Measuring Culture. Start Changing It. How AI Makes the Difference | Omar Shbaro
3mo ago · 34:59
Most HR leaders already know the survey isn't working. They know because they've seen the same deck three years in a row. They know because the workshops got scheduled and nothing changed. They know because the employees who participated last year are participating again this year with slightly less enthusiasm and exactly the same frustrations. And yet the survey gets launched again. Because it's what you do. Because the contract renews. Because nobody has been given a credible alternative. Omar Shbaro has spent years building that alternative. As CTO of VAI Solutions and creator of CultureSim
The System Is Pushing Out Your Best People. Here's Why Age Is the Hidden Culprit | Lucy Standing
3mo ago · 41:39
Most organizations lose their most experienced people without ever understanding why. Not through dramatic exits or public conflicts. Through a quiet, cumulative process of being overlooked, underinvested in, and gradually made to feel that what they bring no longer fits. And by the time anyone notices, the knowledge, judgment, and institutional memory they carried has walked out the door with them. Lucy Standing has spent years studying exactly this. As founder of Brave Starts — one of the UK's leading communities for over-50 professionals navigating career transitions — and author of The Age
What Zappos Knew About Trust and Failure That Most Companies Still Refuse to Learn | Megan Petrini
3mo ago · 48:52
Most organizations say they have a safe to fail culture. Then someone actually fails. And you find out very quickly whether they meant it. Megan Petrini spent years at Zappos — one of the boldest cultural experiments in corporate history — watching the difference between an organization that genuinely treats failure as data and one that just puts it on the values poster. As a certified professional in talent development, a trust at work practitioner, and author of Manage to Fail, she has spent 16 years studying the habits that quietly destroy team trust and the conditions that actually rebuild
Stop Blaming Resistance: What Actually Kills Organizational Change | Jeff Wetherhold
3mo ago · 40:03
Seven out of eight organizational changes fail. Not because the strategy was wrong. Not because the timeline was unrealistic. Not because the employees were difficult. Because nobody on the leadership team knew how to have the real conversation that change requires. Not the announcement. Not the update. The one where you sit with someone's ambivalence, listen to what's underneath the pushback, and help them find their own reasons to move forward. Jeff Wetherhold has spent over 20 years studying exactly this gap. As a Harvard-trained behavioral science researcher, certified change practitioner,
The Scoreboard Doesn't Lie: How to Build a Team That Wins Consistently | Jamison Carrier
3mo ago · 37:26
Most leaders think they have a talent problem. They don't. They have a clarity problem. When winning isn't defined, performance becomes an opinion. And when performance becomes an opinion, the wrong people get rewarded — not because the system is broken, but because nobody built a scoreboard in the first place. Jamison Carrier has spent decades doing the unglamorous work of building performance-driven teams across some of the most competitive environments in business. As founder of Team NavX and author of Building a Championship Team, he's seen every version of this problem play out — and he k
The Communication Gap Nobody Talks About: How to Lead and Be Heard Across Every Generation
4mo ago · 54:43
There's a conversation happening in most organizations that nobody is having out loud. Experienced professionals going quiet in meetings. Younger leaders assuming everyone speaks the same language. Messages that land perfectly with one part of the team and completely miss another. And somewhere in the middle, a slow leak of engagement, trust, and performance that shows up on the bottom line long before anyone names the cause. Lee Caraher has spent decades at this exact intersection. As a CEO, author, and one of the clearest voices on multigenerational leadership, she's watched the same communi
Your Meeting Starts Before You Walk In — Master Presence with Amy Reczek
4mo ago · 52:09
You've done the work. Hit the targets. Delivered consistently. And yet somehow, when the promotion conversation happens, your name isn't the first one that comes up. It's not about performance. It's about presence. And most of us were never taught the difference. Amy Reczek has spent years helping professionals bridge that gap — not with grand gestures or personal branding frameworks, but with something far more accessible: the small moments most of us are sleepwalking through every day. The elevator ride where your phone is out and the CEO steps in. The conference lobby where you're staring a
Lisa Woodruff on How to Manage "Invisible Work" and Reclaim Your Mental Clarity
4mo ago · 47:31
In the modern corporate world, we have been sold a lie that if we just find the right app or work an hour longer, we will finally catch up. For many of us, work feels less like a ladder and more like quicksand—the more we struggle, the deeper we sink into a pile of invisible work that never makes it into the official job description. In this episode, we sit down with Lisa Woodruff, founder of Organize 365 and author of Escaping Quicksand. Lisa has spent her career deconstructing the science of productivity and executive function to help people reclaim their most valuable asset: mental clarity.
Working Parents Have the Highest Burnout Rates in Your Company. Here's What to Do About It | Rosina McAlpine
4mo ago · 47:21
Every HR leader knows the numbers. Absenteeism. Turnover. Declining performance. What most won't say out loud is who's driving them. Working parents. Not because they're less committed. Not because they can't handle pressure. But because we built the modern workplace for a reality that stopped existing decades ago — and nobody has had the courage to redesign it. Dr. Rosina McAlpine has spent over a decade working with hundreds of organizations and hundreds of thousands of working parents on exactly this problem. As CEO of Win Win Parenting and a former university researcher in work-family inte

Episodes

Reading the feed…

More Education shows

Easy German: Learn German with native speakers | Deutsch lernen mit Muttersprachlern

svmaudio.com

716 episodes · 8d ago

Growth Hacking Culture

Episodes 100

Nicholas Janni & Amy Elizabeth Fox: What Comes After Human-Centric Leadership

Why Hiring A-Players Doesn't Build Winning Teams with André Martin

Dr. Audrey Tang: Detours, Dopamine, and the Science of a Life Not Scripted

John Nieuwenburg on Building Systems That Don't Need You in the Room

Julian Reeve: Unmistakable Identity, Burnout, and Why AI Recovery Is the Same Skill

The Neuropsychology of Power: What Happens to Your Brain When You Lead

How to Leave a Toxic Job Without Losing Yourself | Jeff Davis

Colette Molteni: Emotional Intelligence for People Who Think in Systems

Wisdom Over Intelligence: A World Champion's Framework for Smarter Decisions | Andres Kuusk

From Bottleneck to Coach: Brad Sugars on the Leadership System Most Organizations Never Install

How to Diagnose Employee Disengagement Instead of Just Measuring It with Dustin Snyder

Fix Work, Not People | Burnout, Job Design & What Good Work Actually Looks Like ft. Dr. Kat Page

The Shame Loop Keeping Smart People Stuck | Burnout, Executive Function & Breaking Free ft. Frankie Berkoben

How to Become a High-Impact CHRO: Mindset, Habits & Career Moves That Actually Work | Tom Emery

How HR Leaders Can Actually Use AI to Kill Admin Work (2026) with John Sansoucie

HR Leaders Will Soon Manage Humans and Agents. Most Aren't Ready. | Tami Rosen

Stop Measuring Culture. Start Changing It. How AI Makes the Difference | Omar Shbaro

The System Is Pushing Out Your Best People. Here's Why Age Is the Hidden Culprit | Lucy Standing

What Zappos Knew About Trust and Failure That Most Companies Still Refuse to Learn | Megan Petrini

Stop Blaming Resistance: What Actually Kills Organizational Change | Jeff Wetherhold

The Scoreboard Doesn't Lie: How to Build a Team That Wins Consistently | Jamison Carrier

The Communication Gap Nobody Talks About: How to Lead and Be Heard Across Every Generation

Your Meeting Starts Before You Walk In — Master Presence with Amy Reczek

Lisa Woodruff on How to Manage "Invisible Work" and Reclaim Your Mental Clarity

Working Parents Have the Highest Burnout Rates in Your Company. Here's What to Do About It | Rosina McAlpine

Episodes

More Education shows

Easy German: Learn German with native speakers | Deutsch lernen mit Muttersprachlern

Stimmt's?

Arquivos Destaque - Deviante

Being Here

The Strong Life Project Podcast

レアジョブ英会話 Daily News Article Podcast

Episodes 100

Nicholas Janni & Amy Elizabeth Fox: What Comes After Human-Centric Leadership

Why Hiring A-Players Doesn't Build Winning Teams with André Martin

Dr. Audrey Tang: Detours, Dopamine, and the Science of a Life Not Scripted

John Nieuwenburg on Building Systems That Don't Need You in the Room

Julian Reeve: Unmistakable Identity, Burnout, and Why AI Recovery Is the Same Skill

The Neuropsychology of Power: What Happens to Your Brain When You Lead

How to Leave a Toxic Job Without Losing Yourself | Jeff Davis

Colette Molteni: Emotional Intelligence for People Who Think in Systems

Wisdom Over Intelligence: A World Champion's Framework for Smarter Decisions | Andres Kuusk

From Bottleneck to Coach: Brad Sugars on the Leadership System Most Organizations Never Install

How to Diagnose Employee Disengagement Instead of Just Measuring It with Dustin Snyder

Fix Work, Not People | Burnout, Job Design & What Good Work Actually Looks Like ft. Dr. Kat Page

The Shame Loop Keeping Smart People Stuck | Burnout, Executive Function & Breaking Free ft. Frankie Berkoben

How to Become a High-Impact CHRO: Mindset, Habits & Career Moves That Actually Work | Tom Emery

How HR Leaders Can Actually Use AI to Kill Admin Work (2026) with John Sansoucie

HR Leaders Will Soon Manage Humans and Agents. Most Aren't Ready. | Tami Rosen

Stop Measuring Culture. Start Changing It. How AI Makes the Difference | Omar Shbaro

The System Is Pushing Out Your Best People. Here's Why Age Is the Hidden Culprit | Lucy Standing

What Zappos Knew About Trust and Failure That Most Companies Still Refuse to Learn | Megan Petrini

Stop Blaming Resistance: What Actually Kills Organizational Change | Jeff Wetherhold

The Scoreboard Doesn't Lie: How to Build a Team That Wins Consistently | Jamison Carrier

The Communication Gap Nobody Talks About: How to Lead and Be Heard Across Every Generation

Your Meeting Starts Before You Walk In — Master Presence with Amy Reczek

Lisa Woodruff on How to Manage "Invisible Work" and Reclaim Your Mental Clarity

Working Parents Have the Highest Burnout Rates in Your Company. Here's What to Do About It | Rosina McAlpine