Best of MBS

Nancy Duarte is the co-founder and CEO of Duarte, an agency based in Silicon Valley that has been at the forefront of the revolution to improve communication. In our conversation, we explore the power of the three-act structure, different types of stories and the problems they solve, and how to start and finish any story with grace and aplomb.

Michael Leckie believes that our ability to learn and engage with our fellow human beings is the catalyst for transformation. In this interview, he reflects on giving people the tools and the space that can spark change.

When you are up to your eyeballs in the Good Work you do every day, it’s sometimes impossible to figure out how to level up and get to your Great Work. That’s why I’m excited to be speaking to Whitney Johnson, the author of Disrupt Yourself: Putting the Power of Disruptive Innovation to Work, as well as Dare, Dream, Do: Remarkable Things Happen When You Dare to Dream. Whitney’s a recognized thought leader on driving corporate innovation through personal disruption. (Be sure to tune into her Disrupt Yourself podcast.)

In this conversation, we really get into:

Dr. Alexander Osterwalder is one of the world's most influential innovation experts, and is an author, entrepreneur and speaker. He is the founder and CEO of Strategyzer. He shot to fame with his business model canvas, a tool used by millions worldwide. In our conversation we talk about what it means to me to create an ambidextrous company; the role of the CEO in innovation; some examples from his library of different business models; and the power of a gravity creation model.

Today, I'm speaking with Dr. Marcia Reynolds, who was the fifth global president of the ICF, the International Coach Federation, and is currently on the global board as a director.

Did you know that over 80% of the world’s employees are disengaged at work? That figure is both enormous and depressing. Unfortunately, too many workplaces can be a mediocre environment — the kind of environment that saps people’s spirit, engagement, motivation and life.

That’s why I’m thrilled to talk to Ron Friedman, PhD, the author of The Best Place to Work: The Art and Science of Creating an Extraordinary Workplace. In this conversation we explore:

Dr. Edy Greenblatt is a resilience pioneer, a work/life balance expert, and a coach supervisor. She has a joint PhD in organizational behaviour from the Harvard Business School, and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, where she specialized in dance. In our conversation we dig into what, exactly, a dance anthropologist is; how to find those behaviours that nourish and deplete us; and Michael gets some coaching on dealing with a particularly annoying pile of paperwork.

Meet Mark C. Thompson, the founder of Sir Richard Branson's entrepreneurship centres, New York Times bestselling author and executive coach. In this interview, he shares how "business as usual" is essentially dead and buried, and, as leaders we need to be the instigators of our own change. See how he outlines what's needed to be able to scale ourselves and our organizations to greater heights.image

Before writing the powerful and transformative book Body of Work, Pamela Slim was best known for her Escape from Cubicle Nation, an impassioned plea to organizations to let people do Great Work — or let them go free. That’s when I first interviewed Pam, just a little over six years ago.

I’m revisiting this interview with her in our 300th-episode series because I think there is a lot we can learn about finding our own Great Work.

Share your favourite takeaway from this or any other Great Work Podcast by either commenting below or tweeting me @BoxofCrayons with the hashtag #GWP300 for your chance to receive a gift from me. This is the last week we’ll be giving away coupons for a free ebook version of The Coaching Habit as part of the #GWP300 celebration.

In our interview, Pam and I talk about:

Tom Kolditz is the founding Director of the Doerr Institute for New Leaders at Rice University, named top university program by the Association of Leadership Educators. The Doerr Institute is his fifth successful leader development start-up. His book In Extremis Leadership: Leading as if Your Life Depended on It has become one of the go-to texts for leading in the COVID-19 crisis. In our conversation we dig into the process for evaluating risk in a snapshot moment; the power of a premortem; how to enroll the most junior person in a room to create diversity of thought; and why feelings matter in a time of crisis.