Mats and Ariel Andersson talk about, corporate thoughts and ideas, expectations, interviews ahead and TCC inception.  Going below the surface, beyond the usual topics and discussions, they look to take you on a path of new discovery through depth and authenticity.  Both the corporate conscious and unconscious are present at every turn.  Here, they hope to connect people around the world with thoughts and shared conversations with people from every rung of the ladder.

If you enjoyed this episode, get the more detailed show notes and more at @ www.thecorporatecorner.net

Mats interviews Mike Kubena, former member of PwC Global Strategy Council and CEO of PwC Central and Eastern Europe. A truly inspiring and thoughtful man on a reflective journey. Mike’s journey started from San Antonio, Texas, where he grow up, and started his career and moves to where he left, as a 26 year old, to embark on a very successful career that took him to Russia and Eastern Europe.  We discuss:  Cultural differences in the work place, self awareness as a leader, how to retain key talents, the role of HR, the reality of performance appraisals and targets, how to lead thousands of people at one time, whether or not managers should make themselves redundant and much more.

Meet Shuchi Tandon. She has a unique story. She grew up in India and moved to Prague, Czech Republic to study university and there she started her first job for the development center of the German Stock Exchange in Prague. After that she moved to New York, USA and started to work as a consultant for Goldman Sachs and then moved on to work as a software developer for the insurance company, Geico. 

We discuss how it was to move from a European company to Goldman Sachs, the difference in work life balance between Europe and USA and how it is to be a working mom with a 6 month old baby. 

We also discuss cultural differences between India and US and Europe and how difficult it is to be on a working Visa in US.

In this episode Ariel and Mats are back small talking about various recent experiences.

Ariel and Mats talk about their reality over the last few months, the podcast launch, podcast as a media and they as well extensively discuss recruitment from both sides of the equation.

Podcasting has been a challenge.  Yet, has played an important role, creating some balance during the unexpected delay in finding the next right position/work for Mats.

Mats talks about his experience, in past, being the recruiter and how it feels to be on the other side.  Being the one on the hunt for a job has gifted Mats with new experiences:  The new recruitment reality where half of the time you get no feedback, other times you sometimes get very explicit feedback and then you have the recruitment portals where there is more often a hassle to get to the last page and last, but not least, the one company who surprisingly followed up with a survey about the recruitment process. 

Ariel and Mats talk about how Mats nearly got a job in Amsterdam and how tricky it is being an intuitive manager without easy expression of your soft skills and having intuitive knowledge in a world thirsty for KPIs and hard facts to measure everything.  In an era where we talk about the importance of a "diverse team", when will this truly include intuitive skills that bring and have already brought great provable success?

Katri Lampinen from Sweden, an expert on stress related questions at the workplace is our guest today. She talks about how the holiday season is creating sky rocketing figures in the long term sickness leave after the December holidays in Sweden. 

She also reflects on some causes on why people are so stressed and what can be done about it at the workplace, both for managers and employees. 

Finally she gives some tips on what you can do to start the year of on the right foot!

The Corporate corner meets with Tony Schiavo a Wall Street FinTec CTO.

We look at Tony’s career that took him to several Wall Street banks and how he was part of transforming the electronic trading systems in these banks for the last decades. 

We talk about the challenges of managing people, how to lead by influence and the difficulty of having to lay people off.

Tony talks about how he took a year off from Wall Street to work on the relationships that had been suffering during his career and how he went to a 10 day silent retreat in Canada and what that is doing to this technology man from Wall Street. 

Finally, we talk about recruitment and the peculiar thing Tony and his team is looking for in a person and also about his current job at TruMid where he has created an organization without processes and where he likes everyone in the company, which is such an unusual thing to hear, these days. 

In this weeks episode we meet David Dostal, a German entrepreneur who values freedom above anything else in life.

David was born in Germany the year after his Czechoslovakian parents flew the communist regime in Czechoslovakia and this has tainted David's life in his quest for freedom.

We talk about his dream of setting up his own company and how he, as a 25 year old, succeeded with that in Switzerland after having failed to do it in Germany where there was much more bureaucracy for creating a company.

We hear about his experience as an investor and how he, for the first time, saw the Corporate world from the other side and realized the difference between an entrepreneur and a manager.

He also talks about Fetview, the company he started, in Czech Republic, that is using the cloud to store and securely share patient and medical data between doctors and patients, etc and is revolutionizing the work for gynecologists and patients in 30 countries.

David also tells the story of how he, as a teenager, improved part of the Mercedes production line in Stuttgart and he gives some valuable advice to young students and entrepreneurs.

For detailed  show notes go to  The Corporate Corner website.

Mats & Ariel are back talking in The Cororate Corner, this episode.

They share TCC’s first reviews on Apple Podcasts (yeah!) with the listeners and also share some more suprising feedback they had from their first episodes.

Ariel shares her view on how each of us have a unique story to share regardless of which position we have in the hierarchy of society, and that we all tend to focus on the more famous, and seemingly succesful ones, and that for some people, it is easy to feel small in comparison.

Ariel is also reiterating one of her favorite topics, the unique skills we all bring to the table but sometimes without being aware of them. Mats confirms that for him it is much easier to share something that you have learned, rather than being aware of a natural skill.

Mats talks about the importance of, at least for himself, not geting stuck in a past view of yourself or that it has to stick forever. He is so often saying "When I grew up in Sweden it was like this bla bla" that he is getting tired of hearing himself use this truth as an excuse for current attitudes and behaviors.

Mats also mentions a great book that he has read, Surrounded by Idiots  by Thomas Erikson (not yet in English) which is currently facing a lot of critique, in Sweden, for not having enough psychology degrees and scientific backing.  Mats thinks it is a great book that can ease a discussion in a group if you share the color model thinking that the book is explaining. 

Overall, a full TCC week and another dynamic guest, next week.