HeyJaredThe Bottleneck Podcast
Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman of Ogilvy UK, and Elfried Samba, CEO and Co-Founder of Butterfly Effect and former Global Head of Social at Gymshark, explore the hidden blocks that slow teams down, from flawed strategies to missed cultural signals and outdated thinking.
- Indexed episodes, last 90 days
- 4
- Latest publication
- Aug 19, 2026
- Audience
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- Earliest in this view
- Jul 16, 2026
Latest episodes
Rita McGrath with Rory Sutherland on why big companies kill their best ideas (opens the original)
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Rita McGrath has spent her career on a question most companies would rather not answer: can a large organisation genuinely innovate from the inside, or does it only ever buy in what threatens it?In this episode she joins Rory to explain why big companies are so bad at handling uncertainty. Rita's argument is that firms run new ventures by the same rules they use for the business they already understand, and it kills them. No advantage lasts, so the replacement has to be in development long befor
Sir Richard Harpin with Rory Sutherland and Elfried Samba on how he built a £4.1bn business (opens the original)
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Sir Richard Harpin started with £50,000 and turned it into HomeServe, a business he sold for £4.1 billion. In this episode, he joins Rory and Elfried to break down the nine steps behind that journey, from copying the right ideas to knowing when to say no. From staking your claim in a market nobody else believes in to the "not-to-do list" that kept HomeServe focused, this is a masterclass in bootstrapping, mentorship and building something built to scale. Follow Rory Instagram: @rorysutherland_cl
Joe Martin with Rory Sutherland and Elfried Samba, recorded live at MAD//Fest (opens the original)
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Joe Martin founded Tickle, a platform that lets people save an ad into their phone wallet instead of buying right now. Live at MAD//Fest, he joins Rory and Elfried to ask a blunt question: why do so many companies chase the same metrics as their competitors, and end up looking exactly like them? They trace how optimising for what's easy to measure can work against what actually makes a business succeed, from a CPG brand that got an outstanding result and refused to repeat it, to Soviet factories
Faris Aranki with Rory Sutherland and Elfried Samba on IQ, EQ, FQ and why smart teams still fail (opens the original)
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Faris Aranki has spent 20 years studying why some strategies succeed and others quietly fail, working with some of the smartest, best-funded teams in the world.In this episode, he joins Rory and Elfried to explain trust, relationships, judgement and restraint. None of these show up on a spreadsheet, but are critical in the best performing teams.The conversation moves through Faris's own framework for measuring progress, and into the wider question of why organisations are so good at counting the
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