Growth Hacking Culture

Ivan Palomino
  • 5.0 (1)
  • Self-Improvement
  • Updated Weekly

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.

  1. 1d ago

    Quiet Contributors and the Recognition Gap: What Companies Keep Getting Wrong | Greg Roche

    Quiet contributors deliver results. But corporate recognition programs, performance reviews, and promotion criteria were built around visibility, not value. The recognition gap between introverts and extroverts in the workplace is costing companies their best talent, and most HR leaders cannot even see it happening. Greg Roche is a total rewards and compensation expert with 20+ years at Fortune 500 scale, former VP of Compensation at UnitedHealth Group, and founder of Retention and Rewards Partners. He is also a self-described introverted networker who built his entire consulting practice on the introvert-friendly career strategies he teaches. In this conversation, Ivan and Greg break down how employee retention, engagement surveys, and reward systems consistently overlook quiet performers, and what leaders need to change to close the gap. In this episode: Why compensation committees picture "charisma" when they read words like executive presence and stakeholder influence, and how that filters out quiet high performers The feedback Greg received multiple times in his career: "you don't talk enough in meetings," and the specific technique he developed to turn that around Why interview performance correlates almost nothing with job performance, and what hiring processes should look like instead How disengagement in introverts looks identical to their default mode, and why traditional engagement surveys miss it entirely Greg's 5-leader method: a concrete, introvert-friendly framework for building career visibility through one-on-one conversations The case for fractional and consulting roles as a legitimate career path for introverts who are exhausted by the "work around the work" Why discretionary effort is a better measure of engagement than activity, and how confusing the two costs companies billions This one is for the quiet contributor who delivers results but feels invisible, and for the HR leader who suspects their best talent is slipping through a system that was never built for them. Connect with Greg Roche LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregsroche/   Free resource: 5 Tips to Create a Culture of Connections https://www.retentionandrewards.com/gift  Book: The Fast and Easy Guide to Networking for Introverts https://a.co/d/09epBrT2   ---- Ivan's latest article: Am I Ready to Start a Business After 45? A Behavioral Scientist's Self-Test https://www.ivanpalomino.net/post/am-i-ready-to-start-a-business-after-45-a-behavioral-scientist-s-self-test  Growth Hacking Culture is a top 5% global podcast exploring the neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral science behind leadership and workplace culture. Hosted by Ivan Palomino

    Quiet Contributors and the Recognition Gap: What Companies Keep Getting Wrong | Greg Roche

  2. 6d ago

    Good Delegators Make the Best AI Users | Fractional CAIO, Judgment & AI Adoption ft. Sean Campbell

    Good AI delegators were good human delegators first. Sean Campbell on why fluid intelligence, not technical skill, predicts who thrives with AI at work. Sean spent 25 years running Cascade Insights, advising companies from startups to Fortune 500s on market research and competitive intelligence. When AI hit, he noticed a pattern: the leaders who struggled to delegate to people struggled even more to delegate to machines. The ones who already trusted others with important work picked up AI tools faster than anyone expected. Sean is CEO of Cascade Insights and an AI professor at George Fox University, where he teaches an MBA course blending AI, entrepreneurship, and critical thinking. He has consulted with organizations across industries on AI strategy and workforce transformation. In this episode: Why your IT department should not lead AI adoption What a fractional Chief AI Officer actually does and who needs one Fluid intelligence: why delegation skill predicts AI success The "depth of AI water" framework for assessing job impact Why Gen X may be the generation best suited for AI Judgment and critical thinking as the irreducible human skills This one is for the leader who knows AI matters but cannot figure out who in the organization should own it. Key moments: 02:30 Why IT should not lead your AI strategy 08:00 The fractional CAIO role explained 18:00 84% of organizations have not redesigned for AI 30:00 Fluid intelligence: good delegators become great AI users 36:00 Why Gen X might be the best AI generation 42:00 Judgment as the skill AI cannot replace Connect with Sean Campbell: Website: https://www.cascadeinsights.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/seancampbell/    Experienced professional thinking about starting something of your own? The Pre-Founder Bootcamp, Silver Edition helps you decide before you commit: silver-bootcamp.ivanpalomino.net   If this episode was useful, a quick rating or review helps more people find these conversations. Hosted by Ivan Palomino

    Good Delegators Make the Best AI Users | Fractional CAIO, Judgment & AI Adoption ft. Sean Campbell

  3. Oct 12

    Grit vs Grip: The Body Signs You’ve Crossed the Line | Burnout, Rest & Nervous System ft. Pauline Nguyen

    Grit turns self-destructive when you can’t put it down. Pauline Nguyen on grit vs grip, body signs of leadership burnout, and rest that restores performance. Pauline ran Red Lantern, the most awarded Vietnamese restaurant in the world, for 25 years. She also worked 80 to 100 hour weeks until stress made her hair fall out. Her way out was not to try less. It was to learn the difference between grit, a fire you choose, and grip, a fear that has you and never switches off. Pauline escaped Vietnam by boat at three years old. Today she coaches CEOs and founders on conscious leadership and nervous system regulation, and is the author of The Way of the Spiritual Entrepreneur. In 2026 she was named Global Transformational Leader of the Year. In this episode: Grit vs grip: why one has an off switch and the other does not Three body signs your drive has turned self-destructive: jaw, breath and sleep Why companies promote the leader who never stops, and what it costs the team Why rest is a weapon, and the seven types of rest most leaders skip How to build nervous system regulation from micro moments, with no extra hour What to strip out of grit (martyrdom) and what to keep (the fire) This one is for the high performer who cannot stop, and the HR leader watching their best people run on fumes. Key moments: 08:46 Grit has an off switch, grip does not 18:32 Three body signs that grit has turned to grip 28:28 Rest is a weapon, not a spa day 30:52 The seven types of rest 41:28 What to strip out of grit 🔗 Connect with Pauline Nguyen Website: https://pauline-nguyen.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/paulinenspeaks/ (DM the word ACTION to get the Sovereign Leader System) Book: The Way of the Spiritual Entrepreneur: https://pauline-nguyen.com/product/the-way-of-the-spiritual-entrepreneur/  Ivan’s book, Expired? The Science of Staying Indispensable in a World Obsessed with New, is live now: https://a.co/d/0e29LDC9  If this episode was useful, a quick rating or review helps more people find these conversations. Growth Hacking Culture is a top 5% global podcast exploring the neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral science behind leadership and workplace culture. Hosted by Ivan Palomino

    Grit vs Grip: The Body Signs You’ve Crossed the Line | Burnout, Rest & Nervous System ft. Pauline Nguyen

  4. Oct 5

    Above the Line Leaders Use AI for Flow, Not Busywork | Focus, Deep Work & The Flow Multiplier ft. Jared Quoyeser

    AI brain fry drains focus, flow state, and deep work, and it starts when every tool meant to save you time becomes another inbox. Jared Quoyeser lived it, with 14 Slack messages, WhatsApp, Teams, and three AI assistants all competing for his attention. He knew the answer was a system, not another tool. Jared Quoyeser spent more than two decades at Intel, where he led teams and managed billions in revenue, while competing as a professional endurance athlete in cycling and triathlons. Today he is co-founder and managing partner of the Louisiana Impact Fund, a speaker, and the author of The Flow Multiplier: Building Peak Performance Systems with AI. He has spent thirty years chasing flow state, and he now teaches high-performing executives how to reach it on command. In this conversation, Ivan and Jared unpack why the same AI that can sharpen strategy can also bury a leader in noise, and why the line between above the line and below the line leaders is the system they build before they add the tools. In this episode: Why AI can turn into a second, third, and fourth inbox, and what 14 open screens did to Jared's focus The difference between above the line and below the line leaders, and why a "second brain" either amplifies one or floods the other How AI meeting transcripts and note takers are quietly making leaders absent from the meetings they attend Why the system comes first and AI comes last, starting with the 1A, 1B, and 1C priorities Jared writes down before he opens email Practical ways to protect deep work: the phone out of arm's reach, the Brick, the basket exercise, and a one-hour block as a starting point Why recovery is a performance strategy, and how Jared plans rest across the week, the quarter, and the year like an athlete's season How to define productivity on your own terms, and how cutting research from 40 hours to 4 hours (his example) frees time for judgment This one is for the executive or people leader who keeps adding AI tools to a full calendar and wonders why the days feel busier while the thinking feels shallower. Connect with Jared Quoyeser: LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jared-quoyeser Book: The Flow Multiplier: Building Peak Performance Systems with AI ---- If Jared's point about defining productivity on your own terms struck a chord, and you are an experienced professional aged 45 or older wondering whether building something of your own is your next chapter, take a look at my Prefounders Bootcamp Silver Edition. It is a four-week live cohort on founder psychology and decision-making that ends with a readiness verdict, a financial runway analysis, and a personalized action plan. The next cohort starts Monday, November 16, 2026. Details at https://silver-bootcamp.ivanpalomino.net/ Growth Hacking Culture is a top 5% global podcast exploring the neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral science behind leadership and workplace culture. Hosted by Ivan Palomino

    Above the Line Leaders Use AI for Flow, Not Busywork | Focus, Deep Work & The Flow Multiplier ft. Jared Quoyeser

  5. Sep 30

    Capability Debt: The Hidden Cost of AI Shortcuts with Rahim Hirji

    Every AI shortcut your team takes is borrowing against skills they no longer build. Rahim Hirji calls it capability debt: the accumulated cost of decisions not made, learning not done, and judgment not exercised because the machine got there first. Like technical debt, it's invisible until the system breaks and nobody knows how to fix it. Rahim spent seven years researching over 200 organizations across 30 countries and came back with a warning: AI is not coming for your job, it is coming for your judgment. A former edtech executive who scaled Quizlet to 60+ countries, he wrote SuperSkills: The Seven Human Skills for the Age of AI (Kogan Page, 2026) to map the capabilities that become more valuable, not less, as AI takes over the process work. In this conversation, Ivan and Rahim unpack how capability debt builds silently inside teams, why curiosity is the first skill AI quietly kills, and what separates organizations that design for AI from those that drift into it. In this episode: What capability debt is, why it's invisible, and how it mirrors technical debt in its ability to quietly bankrupt a team's decision-making capacity How synthetic seniority lets junior employees produce senior-looking output while skipping the judgment reps that make seniority real The drift vs. design framework for spotting whether your organization is making AI decisions deliberately or just accepting algorithmic defaults Why curiosity is the first human skill AI outsources, and what happens when people stop formulating their own questions before going to the machine The HATS/HATE model (Humans At The Start, Humans At The End) as a practical alternative to the vague "human in the loop" standard How to tell, five years from now, whether an organization designed well: people will be asking "who decided this, and why?" as a reflex, not a compliance exercise Why super skills are capabilities you practice, not competencies you learn in a training session This one is for the HR leader, L&D director, or senior executive who has already rolled out AI tools and is starting to wonder whether the team is getting faster or just getting thinner. 🔗 Connect with Rahim Hirji Book: SuperSkills: The Seven Human Skills for the Age of AI (Kogan Page), available on Amazon and at all good bookshops Website: https://www.thesuperskills.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rahimhirji   📘 Rahim's book SuperSkills is not another "soft skills matter" argument. It is a research-backed framework built on 200+ organizations, giving you the specific human capabilities that become more valuable as AI takes over the process work. 🔔 If this episode was useful, a quick rating or review helps more people find these conversations. Growth Hacking Culture is a top 5% global podcast exploring the neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral science behind leadership and workplace culture. Hosted by Ivan Palomino

    Capability Debt: The Hidden Cost of AI Shortcuts with Rahim Hirji

  6. Sep 27

    Shadow AI: How to Use ChatGPT and Agents at Work Without Waiting for IT | Anna Berkman

    Shadow AI is what happens when employees stop waiting for IT and start using ChatGPT and AI agents on their own to get real work done. Most advice about AI at work still comes from IT: what's banned, what's risky, what needs sign-off. This episode flips that. Anna Carina Berkman, known as Architect Anna, has trained over 5,000 professionals and built her work around what she calls the AI Advantage Gap, the space between people who've heard of AI and people who can actually use it to get ahead. In this conversation, we get specific about what that looks like for one employee with no budget, no mandate and no one telling them what to do. Anna is a former architect and chief marketing officer who moved into AI strategy and speaking after watching the same pattern everywhere: most people treat AI as a smarter Google, ask it a question, take the answer, move on. That ceiling is exactly what closes the gap between someone getting marginal value from AI and someone using it to save hours a week, before their company has even written a policy. Ivan and Anna get into where the real line is between what employees can do with AI without asking IT, and where that stops being okay. They cover the settings most people never touch that quietly train an AI model on your private conversations, how to build a personal AI curriculum instead of waiting for corporate training, and the specific tools and workarounds Anna uses to save herself 35+ hours a month. In this episode: How to figure out your personal AI Advantage Gap using Anna's five-part framework (fluency, strategy, operations, governance, culture) The ChatGPT data setting almost everyone leaves switched on that trains the model on your private conversations, and how to turn it off How to use interview style prompting to build yourself a custom learning curriculum for any skill, in any AI tool What an AI agent actually is versus a chatbot, and a real example of one building a working tool from scratch in under seven minutes The "Gamma workaround" for generating full presentations without ever touching private company data How Anna cut her own content workflow from 40 hours a month to 5 using a simple AI pipeline The one AI habit Anna wants banned immediately, and why "AI isn't a mind reader" is the most useful thing you can remember when a response comes back generic This one is for the employee who's been told to wait for a training budget or an IT approval that may never come, and who wants a real head start starting today. Connect with Anna Berkman: Website: https://markitect.co/  Podcast: The Impossible Entrepreneur (Spotify, Apple, Amazon, YouTube) https://www.youtube.com/@ArchitectAnna/  If this episode gave you a real place to start, Anna's approach in this one is simple: close one gap at a time. On a related note, my own book, Expired? The Science of Staying Indispensable in a World Obsessed with New, digs into exactly this, how to keep closing your own gaps before someone else closes them for you. It's live now: https://a.co/d/007vIzVE  If this episode was useful, a quick rating or review helps more people find these conversations. Growth Hacking Culture is a top 5% global podcast exploring the neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral science behind leadership and workplace culture. Hosted by Ivan Palomino

    Shadow AI: How to Use ChatGPT and Agents at Work Without Waiting for IT | Anna Berkman

  7. Sep 21

    Dr. Melisa Buie on the FREE Method for Turning Failure Into Growth

    Somewhere in your past there's a failure you still carry, a moment that convinced you of something about yourself that was never actually true. Dr. Melisa Buie calls it a life sentence, and she built an entire framework, the FREE Method, to help people finally set it down and turn failure into growth instead of shame. Melisa Buie is a physicist by training, with a PhD in Nuclear Engineering and Plasma Physics from the University of Michigan. She's also the co-author of Faceplant: FREE Yourself from Failure's Funk, bringing a scientist's precision to one of the most human problems there is. In this conversation, Ivan and Melisa dig into the actual mechanics of fear, why some failures turn into life sentences and others turn into lessons, and how the FREE Method, Focus, Reflect, Explore, Engage, helps rewrite that story. In this episode: Why your brain treats a bad presentation like a physical threat, and what your amygdala actually does in that half second The three types of fear a single failure can trigger at once: identity, safety, and belonging How the FREE Method works step by step, and how to apply it the next time you mess up Why toddlers fail constantly and never quit, and what changes between childhood and adulthood The difference between a failure and a life sentence, and how one bad moment becomes a permanent story Why leaders need to stop collapsing failure and fault, and what to ask instead of "what happened" How showing your own real faceplant, not the sanitized version, changes how safe your team feels to fail This one is for anyone still replaying an old mistake in their head, and for any manager who wants a team that tells them the truth before it becomes a bigger problem. Connect with Melisa and get her book, Faceplant: FREE Yourself from Failure's Funk: https://a.co/d/0gDVPsSD  Reach out to her directly: https://melisabuie.com/    If turning a setback into your next chapter is a topic you can't get enough of, Ivan's own audiobook, Expired? The Science of Staying Indispensable in a World Obsessed with New, is streaming now: https://open.spotify.com/show/4nLTkV3iX6RBAJ2CwCcXdf?si=eff0b23e223e44f3  Growth Hacking Culture is a top 5% global podcast exploring the neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral science behind leadership and workplace culture. Hosted by Ivan Palomino

    Dr. Melisa Buie on the FREE Method for Turning Failure Into Growth

  8. Sep 17

    Consciousness Over IQ: What Actually Wins in an AI Workplace with Bruce D. Randall

    AI replacing high performers is not the scenario most companies prepared for. They planned for entry-level jobs disappearing. But when a two-day AI output matches what your best analyst produces in four weeks, and nobody in the room can tell the difference, the people most exposed are the ones who never had to build resilience, because raw intelligence was always enough. That's the argument Bruce D. Randall makes in his book The End of Smart. Bruce is an author and technology thought leader working at the intersection of AI, quantum computing, and human potential. He has built functional AI apps with zero coding background, written white papers breaking down quantum computing for non-technical audiences, and spent twenty years developing a meditation practice that shapes his view on consciousness as a workplace skill. In this conversation, Ivan and Bruce explore why corporate hierarchies built on "hire smart, reward smart, promote smart" are breaking, and what replaces intelligence as the thing organizations should actually be developing in their people. In this episode: Why AI replaces high performers before it replaces underperformers, and what makes top talent so exposed The real story of an analyst report recreated by AI in two days that nobody could distinguish from the original How middle management is being hollowed out as AI automates reporting, compliance, and data aggregation What consciousness over intelligence means in practice, and how intuition becomes a learnable competitive skill Why the bottom rung of the corporate ladder is disappearing and what that means for new graduates How quantum computing and AI combine into hybrid systems, and why leaders need a basic grasp of both The critical thinking gap: why universities still produce knowledge storage and not the judgment skills the market demands This one is for the senior leader or HR professional who senses the rules are changing but hasn't found a framework for what replaces intelligence as the thing you hire, train, and promote for.   🔗 Connect with Bruce D. Randall Website: BruceDRandall.AI Book: The End of Smart 📘 Ivan's book Expired? The Science of Staying Indispensable in a World Obsessed with New is live now. More at https://a.co/d/06jcYtVV  🔔 If this episode resonated, a quick rating or review helps more people find these conversations. Growth Hacking Culture is a top 5% global podcast exploring the neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral science behind leadership and workplace culture. Hosted by Ivan Palomino

    Consciousness Over IQ: What Actually Wins in an AI Workplace with Bruce D. Randall
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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.

Information

  • Creator
    Ivan Palomino
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    100
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Copyright 2026 All rights reserved Ivan Palomino.
  • Show Website
    Growth Hacking Culture