Karl Edwards presents Working Matters

Category: Audio Downloads

  • Listen In -> Visionary Leadership with Marion Skeete #1: Rethinking the Role and Responsibility

    There’s a lot of talk about leadership but not many leaders are making much of a difference.

    Stuck within paradigms based on power and prestige, leaders are at best recycling the latest fad or at worst resorting to fear-based patterns of conquest and control.

    Enter our guest, Marion Skeete, for a new discussion series on Visionary Leadership.

    Marion Skeete is the founder and president of LegacyMakers International, a movement committed to empowering leaders to influence their community and culture.

    Join Marion and I as we rethink leadership in terms of helping people see a future that is both of their own creation and within reach.

    The maps that we have relied on to get us where we are today may not be sufficient for the journey ahead. Hence the value and importance of visionary leaders to help us articulate new ways of seeing, speaking about and maturing into a different and better future.

    We don’t need new commanders-in-chief who pretend to know where we, the people, need to go; but thoughtful, serving leaders who will empower us to step into the futures that we want to build for ourselves and our families.

    Visionary Leadership with Marion Skeete
    Week #1:  Rethinking the Role and Responsibility
    Week #2:  Thinking Outside the Box
    Week #3:  Inspiring and Catalyzing Change
    Week #4:  Respecting and Involving People
    Week #5:  Cultivating a Language for Change

    Listen in.

  • Listen In -> Technology… When Less is More #5: Collaborating Effectively

    Work, organization and communication all come together when we collaborate with others.

    Do our technology tools facilitate our efforts or complicate them? Propel us forward or hold us back? Enhance our effectiveness or stymie it?

    It’s easy to get the thinking process backwards when it comes to what technology will help us best collaborate with others.

    In this week’s discussion, Jorge and I turn the thinking around and and suggest that different expected outcomes require different methods of collaboration.

    It therefore becomes counter-productive to begin with choosing a technology solution.

    Confusing? Listen in.

    Joining this series mid-stream? Catch up on the entire series here.

  • Listen In -> Technology… When Less is More #4: Communicating With Purpose

    Do you find yourself sending an email, leaving a voicemail and texting your message just to make sure you get through?

    With such a wide repertoire of communication options available today, we should be communicating more effectively, not less.

    And yet.

    How do you choose which communication method or technology to use for your various purposes?

    In this week’s show, Jorge and I discuss whether we’ve got the cart in front of the horse when we assume the best way to communicate is always by using the latest technology.

    Listen in.

    Joining this series mid-stream? Catch up on the entire series here.

  • Listen In -> Technology… When Less is More #3: Getting Organized

    Are you buried underneath your own organizational system?

    Do your categories, folders, tags, and lists confuse more than direct? When do all your organizational tools merely become your next mess?

    Organizational software can become the next mess to tend. As if you didn’t have enough to do already.

    When is it more work than help to add another tool to the tool chest?

    The answer is different for each of us depending on our working styles, relative affinity for technology, and our specific practical needs.

    Join Jorge Rosas and I as we discuss how to think about the interface between technology and getting organized.

    Listen in.

    Joining this series mid-stream? Catch up on the entire series here.

  • Listen In -> Technology… When Less is More #2: Getting Work Done

    More features does not mean getting more done.

    Do you spend more time writing your report or formatting it? More time using your software or learning how to use it?

    The point is, you’re trying to get work done. You’re looking for tools that will help to that end.

    Having all the features may or may not help get you there. And should those layers and layers of features, in fact, get in the way, then they have become your sabotaging enemy instead of your facilitating friend!

    How do we think about what tools we need to best get our work done?

    Listen in.

    Joining this series mid-stream? Catch up on the entire series here.

  • Listen In -> Technology… When Less is More #1: Slave To Your Tools?

    Do you work for your tools or do they work for you?

    Imagine a hammer and a saw telling a carpenter how to build a house. Silly image?

    Not if the tools involved are your workplace technology.

    More often than not, our computers, our telephones, our word processors and databases are dictating the terms by which we can access their benefits.

    We become unwitting partners in this unfortunate role reversal by shopping for the latest, fastest, most versatile, most interconnected devices available. As if having the most features meant having the best tool.

    Not so.

    Join me and our special guest, Jorge Rosas, in a new series on Technology… When Less is More. Jorge is a passionate early adopter of all things tech, programmer, webmaster, musician, and producer of the Working Matters podcast.

    We dare to suggest that you are the carpenter, and it is the house that you want to build that determines what tools will best serve you and not the other way around.

    Technology… When Less is More
    Week #1: Slave to Your Tools?
    Week #2: Getting Work Done
    Week #3: Getting Organized
    Week #4: Communicating with Purpose
    Week #5: Collaborating Effectively

    Listen in.

  • Listen In -> Good Leaders in Bad Times #5: Creating a Culture That Get Results

    One of our recent Questions of the Week was, “What disincentives to taking the initiative would a visitor observe in our company?” (Watch it here.)

    As we conclude our audio series on Good Leaders in Bad Times, we take a look at the workplace as a cultural system. (Our passion, I know. It might be risky to listen this week.)

    We are all familiar with the workaholic workplace culture. We know the fear-driven cultures, the cultures of panic, and the cultures of boredom. We know the workplaces where everyone wears masks of competence and works in splendid isolation as a result.

    We know the cultures of finger-pointing and blame-shifting. We know the workplaces that are always running at 100 mph, the ones who are always a day late and a dollar short, and those which have so many rules no one can use their judgment in making a decision.

    But what about a culture of results? What if, in the very fabric of how you went about your days, how you communicated with each other, and how you approached complex and difficult issues, you created a culture of getting results?

    What if?

    Listen in.

  • Listen In -> Good Leaders in Bad Times #4: Reporting To Your Team

    What if you measured your effectiveness as a leader by the effectiveness of your team?

    At first blush there’s nothing unusual about the question. Leadership is measured by one’s ability to achieve results.

    At issue though, comes in the process of achieving those results. For whom do you really work?

    Are you looking back, over your shoulder, at those higher on the organizational chart? Or are you looking forward, at those who report to you?

    In this week’s show, Claudia and I suggest that leaders who report to their teams have a better chance of achieving results in tough times than those who report to their official bosses.

    Listen in.

  • Listen In -> Good Leaders in Bad Times #3: Training People to be Better Than You

    Come on now. Do you really believe that you got the promotion because you know more than everyone else on the team?

    If you have a “more than” mentality about the tiers on the organizational chart, then this episode is for you.

    The question becomes, whose skills, capacities and energies are you quenching if you have to know more than everyone else on the team? What talents and expertise are you missing out on by not being able to hire those who have more experience than you?

    This week Claudia and I discuss the value of training people to be better than you. Imagine with us the breadth and depth of skills and experience you could amass if you didn’t need to be better than everyone else!

    Listen in.

  • Listen In -> Good Leaders in Bad Times #2: The Issues Behind the Problems

    The problem can seem so straightforward. A runaway complainer. A mounting cost overrun. A slipping schedule.

    What if the problem, though, were merely a symptom of something deeper needing attention?

    What if addressing the problem on the table was actually preventing you from looking deeper, asking more probing questions, exploring what values and practices were creating the breeding grounds for the issue at stake?

    In this week’s show, Claudia and I discuss just this dynamic. Good leaders in bad times don’t settle for relieving symptoms. They dig deeper than the presenting issue and solve for underlying causes and confront systemic dysfunction.

    Listen in.