Who is Leila?
Leila is a strategist and educator in the field of digital transformation and marketing strategy with PhDs in Business Economics and in Communication and PR.
Key Takeaways
Introduction to Leila. 0:00
What is the main challenge of being an entrepreneur? 4:57
The importance of having an open mindset. 7:53
What’s the launch date for the podcast? 13:10
Inspiration for the strategy of kindness. 14:43
Leila’s research and how it influenced her. 18:57
The definition of homeostasis. 22:39
There’s nothing as stable as change. 25:33
Valuable Free Resource or Action
Find out more about Leila at https://www.linkedin.com/in/leila-phd/
A video version of this podcast is available on YouTube :
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
Subscribe to our newsletter and get details of when we are doing these interviews live at https://TCA.fyi/newsletter
Find out more about being a guest at : link.thecompleteapproach.co.uk/beaguest
Subscribe to the podcast at https://link.thecompleteapproach.co.uk/podcast
Help us get this podcast in front of as many people as possible. Leave a nice five-star review at apple podcasts : https://link.thecompleteapproach.co.uk/apple-podcasts and on YouTube : https://link.thecompleteapproach.co.uk/Itsnotrocketscienceatyt!
Here's how you can bring your business to THE next level:
If you are a business owner currently turning over £/$10K - £/$50K per month and want to grow to £/$100K - £/$500k per month download my free resource on everything you need to grow your business on a single page :
It's a detailed breakdown of how you can grow your business to 7-figures in a smart and sustainable way
————————————————————————————————————————————-
Transcript
Note, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast)
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
leila, work, digital transformation, business, strategy, people, challenges, question, build, pitstop, instance, university, linkedin profile, innovation, coffee, collaboration, continue, kindness, homeostasis, digitalization
SPEAKERS
Stuart Webb, Dr. Leila Lunguleac-Bardasuc
Dr. Leila Lunguleac-Bardasuc
Thank
Stuart Webb
you Hello and welcome back to it's not rocket science five questions over coffee. I am just going to reach and get my coffee which is here at the moment it's in my it's in this mug at the moment I won't put any brand names up because we're not sponsored at the moment. But I'm here with Leila. Leila is, well, Leila has a really impressive career track record. And when I tell you that she has, she's a strategist and educator in digital transformation and marketing. She has got two PhDs. Now I know people that have got PhDs, but I've not come across somebody that has got so much brain power, they've managed to get two of them. But she's been recognised for her work in leading digital transformation initiatives, developing successful marketing strategies and driving innovation and growth in really competitive markets across Europe. And over the past eight years, she has created and sent a new business strategy called strategy kindness. And I think we're gonna get to the strategy of kindness in a little while. And that's about creating a culture of positivity and trust, where businesses and people can come together with a shared purpose. And so she's working with people like Future Processing, and Santi Anala. And she's also a professor of new business models in the master's degree in industry 4.0 in the university Europe of Europea, Europa, Madrid. So Leila, welcome to It's not rocket science, five questions over coffee. I hope that introduction, at least gave a small amount of credence to your incredible career. Thank you for joining us.
Dr. Leila Lunguleac-Bardasuc
Thank you. Thank you, Stuart, for having me. And hello, everyone. You know, I've been a follower and the fan of your sessions since a while now. And I'm really happy to join you today.
Stuart Webb
Well, I'm really pleased to get you on at long last Leila Leila. Let's start with with with my first question. So we talked a little bit about some of your work, who are the people you're trying to help at the moment, and what is one of the problems they've had, which you try and help them to solve?
Dr. Leila Lunguleac-Bardasuc
me working with people who can share feedback, especially with people that are open to communicate and explore and shift the fit their thinking, in order to build some some value both ways, and also to build networks of collaboration. It's very important for me, because I see collaboration as a process of sharing assets, and what they have as an asset, and what I can share with them, what is the value to the customer and what they can offer me in return. So I also think that one of the great qualities to have is to always be teachable, and it's needed for all parties. So for me finding the key people in businesses to join forces with and construct this mutual point in objectives. I think it's my main role. And one of the main challenges that I detected is how to get your message out there. When we both know there is a lot of noise making. It's a challenge and also to help how you can differentiate and show the purpose of your work. I think that's the companies and the people that I work with. They are all looking to offer something of value like technology with purpose acknowledged, that can improve our lives. And I think this is what really unites all the people that I work with, they are all set to help in the digitalization journey, sustainable digital transformation as well or themselves. They have embarked on this journey of digital transforming their business and they are in need of this type of partners and advisor to support and participate at each step of the way. So this is how I see my role bringing this businesses together and sharing this time type of note know how we know from the data that around 80% of digital transformation processes are failing. So in my work so far, I have noticed that the ones that do succeed, know how to communicate and they know how to build strong business relationships and trust inside and out meaning communicating trust building within your organisation and outside with the tone of the actors.
Stuart Webb
So you're really facilitating that communication and you're trying to bring that communication from both within the business and outside of the business to bring together those strong partnerships that you need for transformation to you, you need for innovation to really start to be to take hold within within the business.
Dr. Leila Lunguleac-Bardasuc
Exactly. And to add to that, if I were to put my academic hat on now, as a as a university teacher, this is something that we're fanatical about, we also see as a main as a main challenge. And so we detected this as a challenge. So what we did is developed a curriculum that combines the soft skills and technology skills. So our focus is to best form the future leaders who are capable to detect the main challenges that their customers are, are facing. And well, to put it in a nutshell, and then respond to your question, I think the main challenge is to understand the challenges that your clients are facing, and an entire process.
Stuart Webb
I think it's interesting, isn't it before the before we started talking, we were sort of sharing some of the some of the differences if you like, between the businesses we work with and the students we work with, because, as I was saying, we do a little bit of helping some students. And, you know, I often see that when you get into the student population, they have absolutely no fear, they have nothing that they believe can hold them back. And yet, when you get into a business, there's an awful lot of barriers that need to be broken down before you can really see communication, and you can see trust be built because those barriers have somehow built up in businesses and trying to sort of bring that collaboration together is so much more difficult it would appear when you get into into a business.
Dr. Leila Lunguleac-Bardasuc
Yeah, I think that it's, it's true, and how you build that. So that is also a challenge how you start building on it. To define something of value. What we do at the university is to train our students with real life situations, for instance, and innovative methodology. And we see also in my work with other companies that you might work with students, to see technology and innovation as something that can help you achieve your goal, not the ultimate goal. So you have your ultimate goal, your objectives, and use technology to help you support that.
Stuart Webb
So So and I know we've got a number of people listening to you talk at the moment. And if people want to sort of bring a question to you, I'm more than happy to feed them onto the stage and let you answer them later. But but perhaps you could talk a little bit about the sort of mistakes you see businesses making, that you are trying to help them to overcome.
Dr. Leila Lunguleac-Bardasuc
Sure, maybe that's a mistake. But when you're trying to build this type of collaborations, you really need to have this open mindset. And to be open to share know how in order to receive something like we are doing now something that we've been doing in in our talks for a long time. And this generates value. Also, you need to know that it takes time. And it's not something that can be built right away and overnight. And it depends on the type of type of the problem. But because in this case, what I mentioned, it's a very complex problem that needs constant effort and involvement. Without help, I think that it's almost impossible to construct. And the same if we think of digitalization or sustainable digital transformation, especially when we think about SMEs, how can we help them find solutions to their problems? It simply cannot be done from what I've seen so far, if we are not aware of their challenges, and why would SMEs for instance, ask us for help. So this is why I started working together because he mentioned in when you presented my work to work together with Future Processing in the innovative tech space, and with something aligned industry 4.0 And smart manufacturing space, because we want to gain a fundamental understanding of the business challenges. So what is preventing them to take the business to the next level?
Stuart Webb
You've mentioned you've mentioned those two to two companies that you're working on at the moment. And I know you've got some some, some great, some great offers and things coming up. And I'm just going to sort of put your LinkedIn profile at the bottom here because I know there are some events that you're going to be running which I think it would be great for people to hear about what it is you're hoping to do in those events and and hopefully, that they're open to people to join in and hear you talking about this sort of thing in the future.
Dr. Leila Lunguleac-Bardasuc
Thank you You're thinking I would really love to share that. So please feel free to reach out on LinkedIn if you want to learn more about any of these actions or events that I'm taking, so please feel free to drop me a message. And I would be really, really happy to hear from everyone joining joining us today. I think that the main reason why all this initiatives are taking off is that they're based on the same belief of collaboration and idea sharing. And because I built them, not on my own, but alongside other collaborators, mentors and business partners. And as some resources are where where can we take it from here, I would like to invite everyone to join future series of events and get togethers that are coming up, the first ones are coming up in May. We are designing this in order to start building this kind of networks and collaborations that we talked about and apply the strategy of kindness. So if for instance, you are into finance, FinTech digitalization sustainability, the first event in the series will bring together on the 25th of May. In the afternoon, I think it's going to be five CT will bring together some top experts in FinTech, cybersecurity digitalization and leaders in finance, and they will discuss opportunities and challenges for sustainable digital transformation. So this one is organised together with Future Processing, you can find it on LinkedIn or again, just drop me a message and I can send you the invite. And if you are in manufacturing, together with Centinela, we are building a series of podcasts and get togethers that will start also in May, we do not have the date yet. So please keep in touch, and I'll share the details if you are interested, we want to discuss and see how we can overcome challenges in the industry. And also how we can increase the productivity and sustainability and manufacturing operations. And another event is the Friday coffee, which you're very familiar with. So we focus on collaboration, creativity. One when people come together at a Friday coffee, they have the opportunity to connect with others from different sectors and share this ideas with we do not have a specific topic and in mind, you can find a coffee and inside the digital transformation community on connects platform for instance, you can also drop me a message and the Friday coffee actually turns two years old. And we have the celebration on Friday. And I know Stuart you're going to join us this this Friday. So if you if you want you to join me and Stuart and progressive the group that we usually get together on Friday, this is also something I would very much like to invite everyone here to
Stuart Webb
I'm just gonna I'm just going to repeat those dates just in case anybody wasn't actually able to catch them. So that's the 25th of May, you're going to be talking to finance professionals, people like that you're in conjunction with Future Processing, that's going to be available to people on your LinkedIn profile. So they'll see details of that then you're also starting the podcast in make podcasts a brilliant strategy, Leila, congratulations on taking that one. I can't I can't think of anybody that enjoys one of those more than me. And that's a really a really great strategy. So look out for the podcasts that I'm sure Leila will be posting on her LinkedIn profile. Once again, go to the LinkedIn profile, say on Friday coffee. Well, what can I say about Friday coffee, a an interesting and eclectic group of people that normally seem to somehow end up discussing AI and the impact of AI upon their world. So really great things. Um, thank you, Manuel, for Manuel's just committed that. What a great, what a great series of topics and upcoming events. Yeah, you'll be busy later. But I think that's a good thing. If I'm honest, I think that's a really great thing. And congratulations on all of those. Can I just turn to my fourth question now we've now we've we've we've talked about that because I think there's there's there will be a really great, it would be really great to understand what was it in terms of either a book or a course or strategy which really drove you to understand some of this. There's this need for collaboration, this strategy of kindness within within business that sort of drove your your thinking about it.
Dr. Leila Lunguleac-Bardasuc
Well, actually a lot of things so I do get my inspiration from from many different sectors like from music to sports, to science fiction and fantasy books, for instance. So we know the quote that today's science fiction is tomorrow's science Pack. Wrong Isaac Asimov. And also Ray Bradbury says that science fiction is the most important literature in the history of the world. Why is that? Because it's the history of ideas, and history of our civilization birthing itself. So I get a lot of inspiration from there, I think that it has built since I was little it has built its has built the path that I'm currently on. And in strategy, for instance, I'm also influenced by several sports like Formula One like football and snooker in terms of the reaction to change the use of data, for instance, in decision making, from creating the competitive advantage and how you manage a team, and learning from your opponents just to name a few. I actually just wrote an article on strategy similarities and what we can learn from Formula One race strategy, and you can find it on the Future Processing blog. And I will continue on this with ESG. And sustainability in Formula One, race teams and data analytics. So this just to put it in a nutshell, but I think that if I am to look at the major influence, for the strategy of kindness and how I started developing it, it has been my mother and her study of living organisms, because she's a biologist. And she's, yes, sure that you can relate and you can have a lot of things to talk about and to expand on this. So now, you know that the strategy of kindness is, is inspired by by similarities between open biological systems, and what we can learn from them to apply in companies or organisations. And I've learned that organisations are open biological systems. So they also transform all the environmental factors. And they do this exchange with the environment because and it becomes one of the essential conditions right for the existence of the system to be able to do this exchange. So according to her, it creates this dynamic balance of balance and a permanent movement. And the organization's have distinct properties and characteristics of open biological systems. And I'm sure that I'm keen to hear from you on this, like attributes like self regulation, historical character, information, integrity, rights, and the dynamic balance.
Stuart Webb
Yeah, no, I could, I could, I could spend several hours lecturing on it. But I am interested in noting that you're doing some things at the moment of Formula One. And it reminds me that about 10 or 11 years ago, I actually gave a talk. And the subject of my talk was how to increase team productivity. And the entire talk was based around a pitstop change in the Monaco Grand Prix that had taken place just the two or three days prior to that. And the whole thing was how do you this unit worked together to make that pitstop change? And I think it was eight seconds at the time, if I recall, so some years ago, no, do it in less than two but but they made a pitstop change in something like eight seconds. And I sort of worked through exactly how each of the members of the team cooperated, what they did, how they did it, how they communicated prior to the pitstop how they communicated after the pitstop how everything worked together to make that as efficient as it possibly could. And, and I think even at that I did actually bring in homeostasis, which is a cellular process, which brings equal balance of, of water essentially, between the inside and the outside of the cell and, and how you how you do that. So I absolutely understand how you're where you're coming from when it comes to sort of cellular systems and things like that. And I absolutely agree with you. There's an awful lot about biology, which we could learn, because a biological system exists within what is a very toxic environment. And yet, most of the day we get through and we you know, there are millions of things trying to essentially kill you every day. And you actually not only fight those off, but thrive. And it's that ability to sort of ignore the ignore the the environment, which could could well could well take you apart as a business and move in and thrive because you actually get everything to work together. So there's an awful lot of lessons that we could take into that as a biologist, I'd like to sit there and talk about sort of cells being taken over and the DNA and such like but we won't, we'll move into something much less, much less contentious and and I'll just ask you the final question of the of the, of the of the session, which is, you know, I've asked you three or four questions now and you must be itching to talk about the thing, the question that I should have asked you. So I'll ask you to ask the question. I should have asked and then answer it. So that we've got a real understanding of where you're coming from?
Dr. Leila Lunguleac-Bardasuc
Well, first, just to just to say that seeing the your passion and this and maybe we can join forces and publish an article together. I would really like that. Exactly, exactly. And on the question, well, if we have the audience here, I would really like to see if they have a question that they would like to ask. And we've seen some messages that,
Stuart Webb
yeah, well, as I say, Manuel, Manuel was, was asking a question, I don't know if anybody has got a question. I mean, I'll post one. Now, the your PhDs are in quite different subjects, do you find that there is an interaction between them, which is where you have been able to sort of draw inspiration from both?
Dr. Leila Lunguleac-Bardasuc
Yes, because the research that I did, and the first, the first PhD was on creating competitive advantage. So even if it's on the business economic side, too, I was trying to look at ways how you can gain competitive advantage to creativity and innovation. And the main research that I did was on universities, on private universities and see how they interact and gain this type of advantages. And the second one, even if it wasn't in communication, I focused on new strategies, new communication strategies, and new digital marketing strategies. Because and I had the chance to interview directors of communication and marketing from different universities, because I also based it on the university's pace of public universities this time, and it was very interesting, to say the least, because I was interviewing them before the pandemic, and during the pandemic. And I could notice this shift in strategy and how universities and needed to to adapt and how students needed to adapt. So I think this, this really brought them together, and be able to have a broader analysis on the education, the superior education system.
Stuart Webb
And well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna leap in and try and see if Leila wants to sort of answer your question. So those of you are not familiar with the with the subject of homeostasis. Homeostasis is about the inside of a biological cell and the outside of a biologic cell or a biological organism reaching balance, essentially, it's it's the, it's a key feature of the way in which if we take in water, we don't end up sort of swelling, becoming a balloon, we actually wish we would if we if we didn't, if we didn't get rid of the wastewater that we don't need. But the thing which is really critical about homeostasis is it's an active process, it doesn't happen by doesn't happen. It there's a small amount of it, which happens just by sort of by normal diffusion, but actually, the body has to put in energy in order for that homeostasis to continue. And I actually think that, yes, certainly, a lot of organisations stop putting energy into their, for instance, their innovation strategy, which is one of the things that I focus a lot of my time on, a lot of companies get comfortable, and just sit there and say, Everything's great. We don't need to continue on, I guess, I guess later, you'd, you'd agree an awful lot of companies with their digital marketing strategy will say, it's great. We don't need to do so much anymore. We've got it right. And the problem is the world moves on. Things change in the outside environment. And your immediate response is one of hey, I don't need to fight this anymore. I can just carry on being what I will. And you know, if the world is if you know, if the economy is growing, even if it's growing slowly at one or 2% per year, if your business isn't growing at one or 2% per year, you're going backwards, because the world is advancing with you staying still. So you have to continue to put in energy to move your business forward to change things to look for the new things. And I am an advocate because a lot of I've done some work with companies, they go in and I do their innovation strategy, and they'll go great, we've done that now. My answer is no. This is a continuous energy. You need to continue to do innovation. It's not something you do and forget. It's something you continue to do on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. Lately, you must have something you can say in terms of How they must continue with their digital marketing.
Dr. Leila Lunguleac-Bardasuc
Yeah, it's an ongoing process. So this is why I also mentioned at the start of our session today, that you always need to be teachable to learn, and it's input and output. So what you've put in in terms of effort to build this type of relationship to build your marketing strategy, is what you're taking out of. So when you stop this, you also stop the continuous growth and build. Well, Bob Dylan said that there's nothing as stable as change. You're looking for one stable thing. That's that it's changed.
Stuart Webb
Brilliant. We've managed to bring science, we've brought communication and we brought Bob Dylan into the podcast. What else can you possibly want? From a podcast with Leila? Leila, thank you so much for spending just a few minutes with us. I am so Britt, I'm so brilliant. You managed to end it on Bob Dylan, I don't know how you did it. But that's just a skill that you have, which I think is great. I'm just going to bring us to an end by saying because I don't want to take up too much of less time, she's busy. As you can tell, she's got a lot of things to get on with. But if you would like to hear more about the sort of things we're doing on this podcast, go to this link, which is https colon, forward slash forward slash link dot the complete approach.co.uk forward slash newsletter, that's link dot the complete approach.co.uk forward slash newsletter, that will get you on to the newsletter list. And I send out a newsletter, which highlights and tells you about brilliant people like LELO, who are going to come on and give us this fantastic stuff on a weekly basis, Leila, I cannot. I cannot thank you enough. We have one question, which I'm just going to throw in now. How will the new tools of artificial intelligence are available affect the digital transformation process? And once you've answered that, I will let people go and you get on with your job.
Dr. Leila Lunguleac-Bardasuc
Well, not only the digital transformation processes, but I think that all our work, healthcare, and we just need to see an education, how we are going to implement that. So we need to learn how to use this tools, but in the same manner, so you have an objective, use these tools to help you reach that objective and do not make just like aI implementation or implementation of the surgeon to your overall objective. Because I think that this is where this is where digital transformation processes fail. So we need to see how to how to implement them how they can help us and just just use them for the purpose that we have to generate value. And to create this this type of value, I think that we are focusing on that we are able to do so. And thank you so much for your questions. Thank you for having me. And I'll see everyone next time I will be in the audience because I will. I'm looking forward to your future sessions and Stuart
Stuart Webb
Lila, I will only say if you want to spend more time talking about AI join Leila to Friday coffee, we spend a lot of time thinking about how AI will affect the working environment, how it will affect the way in which we work. We've had some brilliant discussions, which really do highlight the fact that too many people are using the use of AI as the destination rather than as the support to achieve their bit their business objective. And so, you know, les that's absolutely right. AI has to be the supporting tool in the way that workflow is a supporting tool in the way that things like Video Pro video calling is a supporting tool, use it as a tool, not as a destination. Leyla, thank you so much for your time. I really do appreciate the use of taking a very valuable 2830 minutes out of out of your day. And I really appreciate the fact that you've given us these pearls of wisdom. So thank you so much for that. Look forward to seeing you in the audience next time. Thank you so much.
Dr. Leila Lunguleac-Bardasuc
Thank you. Thank you for having me. Thank you everyone for joining
Share this post