The Balancing Act with Andrew Temte, PhD, CFA

What if change fatigue isn’t a weakness to push through, but a signal worth listening to? 

In this episode of the Balancing Act podcast, Andy speaks with Cassandra Worthy, founder and CEO of Change Enthusiasm Global and author of Change Enthusiasm: How to Harness the Power of Emotion for Leadership and Success. 

A chemical engineer who spent nearly fifteen years at Procter & Gamble and led organizations through two multi-billion-dollar acquisitions, Cassandra makes the case that traditional change management was built for a world that no longer exists — one where change had a beginning, a middle, and an end — and that the emotions leaders are told to check at the door are the most useful data they have. 

Tune in to episode 262 to hear the mentor’s line that redirected her entire career, the three-step framework she built out of fear, frustration, anger, anxiety, and grief, and her advice to a leader whose integration plan is solid, whose town halls are done, and whose best people are checking out anyway. 

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What kind of company do you need to become when intelligence itself is no longer scarce? 

In this episode of the Balancing Act podcast, Andy speaks with Brian Solis, head of global innovation at ServiceNow and co-author of Infinite: How Visionary Leaders Transform Today’s Businesses into AI-Forward Companies. 

A digital anthropologist and nine-time bestselling author, Brian has spent three decades in Silicon Valley mapping each major wave of technological change — and his warning here is that AI is quietly repeating the central failure of digital transformation. Companies digitized without ever transforming. Now they are automating without reimagining, and the gap between those two choices is going to decide which of them still matters in ten years. 

Tune in to episode 261 to hear why the org chart is giving way to what Brian calls a work chart, what an AI-native company already looks like in Silicon Valley today, the name he gives to what happens to your thinking when you hand it to a machine, and his answer for the capable, experienced leader who is quietly afraid of becoming obsolete. 

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What if the real risk of AI isn’t that it takes your job — but that your company only ever uses it to cut costs? 

In this episode of the Balancing Act podcast, Andy speaks with Dave Wright, Chief Innovation Officer at ServiceNow and co-author of Infinite: How Visionary Leaders Transform Today’s Businesses into AI-Forward Companies. 

Dave started out as a mainframe operator in the 1980s and has spent the last fifteen years helping enterprises rebuild how work actually gets done. His argument is that most AI implementations stall for a reason that has nothing to do with the technology — leaders reach for AI to automate the past rather than to create room to invent the future. 

Tune in to episode 260 to hear why the handoffs between departments are where AI efficiency goes to die, what separates the companies getting real transformation from the ones that just get busier, and Dave’s advice to the VP sitting on six months of pilots with nothing to show for them. 

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What are you pretending not to know about your own leadership — and what is it costing you? 

In this episode of the Balancing Act podcast, Andy speaks with Mike Staver, executive coach, Speaker Hall of Fame inductee, and author of Leadership Isn’t for Cowards and the just-released Navigating Crazy. 

For more than thirty years, Mike has helped leaders close the gap between their good intentions and their actual results. His case here is that most of the stress we carry doesn’t come from our circumstances at all — it comes from the distance between what we expected and what actually is, and from the things we know to be true but keep living as though we don’t. 

Tune in to episode 259 to hear the high school choice that cost Mike two brutal weeks and set his work ethic for life, why acceptance and approval are not the same thing and why confusing them keeps capable leaders stuck, and the coaching conversation Mike would have with the person who looks successful from the outside and is quietly running on empty. 

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What if the problem isn’t that you’re distracted, but that nobody ever trained you in the one thing you can actually control? 

In this episode of the Balancing Act podcast, Andy speaks with Dr. Justin Anderson, founder and CEO of Premier Sport Psychology and author of Intentional Attention: The Science and Practice of Focus Under Pressure, a licensed psychologist and certified mental performance consultant who has spent more than twenty years with NFL quarterbacks, Olympians, and executives. 

His case is that attention is more controllable than confidence or emotion — a trainable skill rather than a fixed trait — and that for people who never really stop, the question is no longer how to find work-life balance but how to recharge while running. 

Tune in to episode 258 to hear the job Justin didn’t get that redirected his entire career, what context switching is quietly costing you on a day spent bouncing between projects and new tools, and why a book about training focus ends with renewal — and what that actually looks like for someone who can’t simply take more time off. 

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What if the fastest way to fail at AI is to treat it like a race? 

In this episode of the Balancing Act podcast, Andy speaks with Don Gregori, Chief Operating Officer of First Factory and author of The Emergent Leader: A Guide to Brand Building, Leadership, and Self-Mastery. 

Don makes the case that leadership starts on the inside and that most AI failures are leadership failures wearing a technology costume — that empathy is operational rather than soft, that bolting AI onto a process you have never questioned is the fastest route to the pile of projects that quietly fail, and that the leader who runs on four hours of sleep is not being tough, just expensive. 

Tune in to episode 257 to hear the rocket-booster moment Don credits to his wife rather than to any career move, the advice he gives a newly promoted manager who is terrified of breaking the very thing that made them good, and why a book about building durable companies ends with the durability of the leader. 

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With a wave of accountants heading for retirement and AI reshaping the profession, is accounting still a smart career bet? 

In this episode of the Balancing Act podcast, Andy speaks with Hugh Martin — founder of Procountancy and a CIMA Case Study specialist who prepares finance professionals in more than 45 countries to earn the CGMA designation. 

Together they get behind the acronyms to management accounting itself — the “business partner” role, why a U.S. CPA might add the CGMA, and the human skills no algorithm can replace. 

Tune in to episode 256 to hear why Hugh tells a nervous twenty-year-old that accounting is still worth it, how the CGMA builds the business acumen that earns a bigger seat at the table, and the two-euro rounding error he’d tell his younger self to stop losing sleep over. 

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What does a country actually lose when it makes it harder for the world’s top talent to build a life there? 

In this episode of the Balancing Act podcast, Andy speaks with Vasanthan “Vas” Ramakrishnan — founder and principal consultant of Ascend HSI Advisory Partners, who helps high-skilled scientists, engineers, researchers, and founders navigate the extraordinary-ability pathways into the U.S., and who earned his own green card the same way. 

Together they draw the line between wage arbitrage and genuine talent mobility — and make the case that a freer flow of skilled expertise tends to make economies stronger, not weaker. 

Tune in to episode 255 to hear how Vas turned a job lost during COVID into an award-winning global nonprofit, why he tells anxious American workers that keeping talent out won’t protect them, and the reframe at the heart of his work: he doesn’t make his clients extraordinary — they already are. 

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What if you've been chasing success backwards? What if joy isn't the reward you earn after hitting your goals — but the foundation that makes hitting them inevitable? 

In this episode of the Balancing Act podcast, Andy speaks with Bose Akadiri — motivational keynote speaker, corporate trainer, and founder and CEO of Goal and Grind LLC, where she's known as “The Joy Amplifier.” 

After a decade leading corporate social responsibility at Boeing, Salesforce, and JPMorgan Chase, she wrote The Stay Joyful Method to make the business case for joy — not as a feel-good perk, but as a strategic advantage that drives retention, sharpens clarity, and moves the numbers leaders actually care about. 

Tune in to episode 254 to hear why the strongest performers spend time backstage before they take the main stage, how the “joy bubble” becomes a force field when work gets hard, and what it looks like to lead with joy that has a spine — joy that's results-driven and impossible to dismiss as soft. 

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In this episode of the Balancing Act podcast, Andy speaks with Suzie Bishop, vice president of product development at The Center for Leadership Studies — the global home of the Situational Leadership® Model — and co-author of the newly released Situational Leadership®: The Model for Leading Others, Navigating Change, and Unlocking Performance. 

A Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coach who has spent more than a decade modernizing the world’s most widely used leadership framework, Suzie makes a deceptively simple case — the best leaders don’t lean on one great style; they read the person in front of them and adapt to what the moment actually requires. 

Tune in to episode 253 to hear why the well-liked “nice boss” who delegates everything can quietly leave people stranded, the first move for a newly promoted high performer who’s about to fall flat, and the humbling parenting moment that reframed how Suzie thinks about leading people who have already outgrown your instructions. 

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