Making Business Art Ezequiel Williams

Big complex problems don’t necessarily have to be overwhelming. My guest and applied anthropologist, Ellie Snowden, harnesses the power of small stories to help people in organizations turn big intractable problems into manageable ones. She argues that one-size-fits-all solutions don’t work. Instead, we can create much more impactful interventions by quickly gathering many small and granular stories related to a complex problem and then bring together multiple expert perspectives to envision the best path forward. The approach employed by Ellie and her colleagues is helpful in identifying what is truly needed to effectively address a big complex problem while opening fresh possibilities for the future. 
In this conversation, Ellie and I discuss her unique approach to work at The Cynefin (pronounced kuh-nev-in, it’s a Welsh word) Company; how she uses a software tool called SenseMaker to gather stories and facilitate collaborative problem-solving work; how studying medical anthropology, yoga, and massage has shaped her approach to her work; and her take on embodied knowledge, humanizing business and doing meaningful work.    
 
ABOUT OUR GUEST 
Ellie Snowden works at the Cynefin Company as a senior research consultant focused on enabling clients to make use of distributed ethnography (SenseMaker®), and participatory sense-making methods.  The Cynefin Company is a centre for applied complexity: bridging principles from the natural sciences, with narrative inquiry. 
Ellie's academic background is in the anthropology of social development and transformation, with a specialism in medical anthropology.  After working as a qualitative researcher in public policy and employment research, she found herself coming back to her roots and joining the Cynefin Centre in 2016.
Ellie currently leads development of the Centre’s Health Programme. Some of her more recent projects include: identifying drivers of child and early forced marriage with the Women’s Refugee Commission in the Philippines and Zimbabwe; an oral history of Nurses experiences during COVID-19 with the Royal College of Nursing (Northern Ireland and Scotland).  The work currently in development is focused on how best to support the healthcare workforce in the years to come.
Ever a proponent of embodied knowledge and exploring the epistemological and ontological possibilities of different modalities of health and healing, Ellie is also a trained massage therapist and yoga teacher. 
 
ABOUT MAKING BUSINESS ART 
Making Business Art is a podcast for curious people where we explore how to make our work more meaningful and enchanting for ourselves and the people we serve. We draw lessons and inspiration from entrepreneurs, designers, scientists, creative leaders and artists about creating remarkable experiences that light up our customers and our teams.
This podcast is the creation of and hosted by me, Ezequiel Williams. I am an entrepreneur, innovation strategist, facilitator, and business designer. I help leaders and teams see their challenges differently and find ways to deliver value that are more desirable and satisfying for the people they serve. I am very curious and love to learn about how things work, what makes people tick, and how to create more joy in the world. 

Instagram: @MakingBusinessArt

Is there an aspect of your work you find beautiful? While we might not think of beauty as a property that arises in many domains of work, my guest and sociology professor, Brandon Vaidyanathan, is finding beauty at work in unexpected places. After unexpectedly stumbling into the topic of beauty at work during research projects, Brandon is now devoting time to explore how we might expand our understanding of beauty and how it shapes us in our work and personal lives. 
In this conversation Brandon and I discuss his Beauty at Work project, how it got started, his journey into sociology, and how he is bringing people from different disciplines together to explore how beauty works and what it looks like in the workplace.  
If you find some aspect of your work beautiful and want to share, tell us about it here: 
https://forms.gle/wcPUEc6bXVaUEZNWA  
 
ABOUT OUR GUEST 
Dr. Brandon Vaidyanathan is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Sociology and Director of the Institutional Flourishing Lab at The Catholic University of America. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Business Administration from St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia and HEC Montreal respectively, and a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Notre Dame. Dr. Vaidyanathan's research examines the cultural dimensions of religious, commercial, and scientific institutions, and has been widely published. He is author of Mercenaries and Missionaries: Capitalism and Catholicism in the Global South (Cornell University Press, 2019) and co-author of Secularity and Science: What Scientists Around the World Really Think About Religion (Oxford University Press, 2019). He is also the founder of Beauty At Work, a media platform which includes a YouTube channel and podcast exploring how beauty can both foster and inhibit our flourishing in a variety of domains, such as science, food, business, religion, justice, and more. 
Website: www.beautyatwork.net  
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@beautyatwork 



ABOUT MAKING BUSINESS ART 
Making Business Art is a podcast for curious people where we explore how to make our work more meaningful and enchanting for ourselves and the people we serve. We draw lessons and inspiration from entrepreneurs, designers, scientists, creative leaders and artists about creating remarkable experiences that light up our customers and our teams.
This podcast is the creation of and hosted by me, Ezequiel Williams. I am an entrepreneur, innovation strategist, facilitator, and business designer. I help leaders and teams see their challenges differently and find ways to deliver value that are more desirable and satisfying for the people they serve. I am very curious and love to learn about how things work, what makes people tick, and how to create more joy in the world.
Instagram: @MakingBusinessArt

Have you ever thought about what gets in the way of teams achieving the results they want? My guest, Andres Marquez-Lara, makes the case that it’s not due to a lack of tools or technology, but rather due to miscommunication, misaligned agendas, ego and conflict. Or, as he calls it, “messy human stuff.” Andres is a leadership development and collaboration expert who combines his training in clinical psychology with his background in improv and theater to create connections that help people come together and get past the barriers that get in the way of accomplishing great work. 
In this episode Andres and I discuss how he works with leaders and organizations to navigate the “messy human stuff” that gets in the way of team engagement, trust, alignment, and the achievement of organizational goals. We also talk about how he learned to use skills from improv and theater to build community, how creating trust is an ongoing activity, the importance of self-awareness for leaders, the lessons he learned through his experience as an immigrant, and his book writing experiment using Chat GPT. 

 
ABOUT OUR GUEST 
Andres Marquez-Lara is Founder and CEO of UFacilitate. He helps high-performing teams in nonprofit and philanthropic institutions deal with the “messy human stuff” that creates silos that put their mission at risk by breaking down barriers to collaboration across people, departments, and organizations.
Andres is Adjunct Faculty at the Executive Master in Policy Leadership (EMPL) and Master of Policy Management (MPM) at the Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy, Adjunct Faculty at Georgetown University Institute for Transformative Leadership and a Guest Lecturer at the Georgetown University’s Latin America Leadership Program (LALP). He is also a Senior Fellow at the Center for Excellence in Public Leadership (CEPL) at George Washington University, and an Advisor at the Emergence Project for Purposeful Entrepreneurship at Stanford University. 
He was named one of the emerging social innovators of the year in North America by Ashoka and American Express back in 2014. He also received the George C. Askew Award from the American Academy of Certified Public Managers for his exceptional curriculum when he worked at the DC Department of Behavioral Health. He earned a BA in psychology from Duke University, and a graduate degree in clinical community psychology from the Universidad Catolica Andres Bello in Caracas, Venezuela. He lives in the triangle area in North Carolina with his wife and two young children.
Download Andres’ book “Facilitating Leadership” here: https://www.ufacilitate.com/book/
 
ABOUT MAKING BUSINESS ART 
Making Business Art is a podcast for curious people where we explore how to make our work more meaningful and enchanting for ourselves and the people we serve. We draw lessons and inspiration from entrepreneurs, designers, scientists, creative leaders and artists about creating remarkable experiences that light up our customers and our teams.
This podcast is the creation of and hosted by me, Ezequiel Williams. I am an entrepreneur, innovation strategist, facilitator, and business designer. I help leaders and teams see their challenges differently and find ways to deliver value that are more desirable and satisfying for the people they serve. I am very curious and love to learn about how things work, what makes people tick, and how to create more joy in the world. 
Instagram: @MakingBusinessArt 

Most of us have been disenchanted with the world of work at some point in our careers. But what if the culture of our organizations actively encouraged better communication, creativity and experimentation in pursuit of creating much better solutions for the people we serve? My guest and creative leadership consultant, Arne van Oosterom, is sought after by leaders who seek to foster that environment for their teams.  
In this conversation Arne and I discuss how he helps leaders and teams stretch the boundaries of what they think is possible. We explore Arne’s path to becoming the entrepreneur and creative leadership consultant he is today, including how dyslexia shaped how he engaged with the world, how he learned to overcome the fear of failure, and how he incorporated what he learned as a musician, visual artist, photographer, and comedian into businesses he founded. Arne’s story is an example of how the skills and tools from the world of art can help us transform ourselves and how we show up and lead in the world of work. My hope is that, like me, you find Arne’s story a source of inspiration that helps you reframe any personal limitation, recognize your different abilities and talents, and find ways to bring them together into a more creative, integrated and more satisfying expression of yourself.    
 
ABOUT OUR GUEST 
As an accomplished creative facilitator, leadership coach, trainer, and keynote speaker, Arne van Oosterom has devoted his career to sparking inspiration and empowering individuals and organizations worldwide. In 2006, he founded DesignThinkers Group and DesignThinkers Academy. Today, these organizations stand at the forefront of the innovation landscape, with thriving teams spanning over 25 countries. Aiming to push boundaries even further, Arne launched Blue Sky Republic in 2020. This initiative serves as a nurturing sanctuary for change agents, innovators, generalists, misfits, and open-minded thinkers, all collaborating to redefine the realm of possibilities. His expertise commands attention from a broad spectrum of clients, including startups, governments, and industry titans like Under Armour, Coca Cola, Volkswagen, BOSCH, Philips, SAP, ING Bank, Estée Lauder, Cartier, and L’Oréal. Arne’s mission is to inspire, educate, and build connections, challenging traditional thought patterns and paving the way for a brighter, more innovative future. 
 
ABOUT MAKING BUSINESS ART 
Making Business Art is a podcast for curious people where we explore how to make our work more meaningful and enchanting for ourselves and the people we serve. We draw lessons and inspiration from entrepreneurs, designers, scientists, creative leaders and artists about creating remarkable experiences that light up our customers and our teams.
This podcast is the creation of and hosted by me, Ezequiel Williams. I am an entrepreneur, innovation strategist, facilitator, and business designer. I help leaders and teams see their challenges differently and find ways to deliver value that are more desirable and satisfying for the people they serve. I am very curious and love to learn about how things work, what makes people tick, and how to create more joy in the world.
Instagram: @MakingBusinessArt

What is a restaurant, or product, or a hospitality experience that you love and would highly recommend to a good friend? What was it about that brand that really hooked you, and what would you say about it to somebody else? 
My guest and branding strategist and storyteller, Cheryl Farr, points out that a brand is not so much about what we say about ourselves, but what other people say about you. Or to echo the words of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, a brand is what people say when you are not in the room. 
In this conversation Cheryl and I talk about how she helps teams create brands people trust and love, and her path to learn and get really good at her craft. Her journey reminds and teaches us how we can connect the dots among our different passions and experiences to create a work life we love while helping others put their best foot forward. Cheryl brings a rare and refreshing depth of care, commitment, insight and wisdom to her approach to brand creation and strategy. This conversation is peppered with insights and tips, and I hope you come away with as much inspiration and takeaways as I did. 
 
ABOUT OUR GUEST 
Cheryl Farr is the Founder and Chief Strategist for SIGNAL Brand Innovation, a brand consultancy and strategic design agency dedicated to creating and activating brands people love. She founded the firm in 2009 to help organizations and leaders align their brands with their business strategies and take great leaps forward. Her success stories include Fairmont Hotels and Resorts where she helped position the brand for expansive worldwide growth, the Polti Group where she led the creation of an innovative new consumer trending methodology to guide product and marketing innovations for the nation’s largest homebuilder, and Cornell Hotel Society where she crafted the ultimate rallying cry for the world’s largest and most influential hospitality alumni network. 
Cheryl has led multiple brand development and repositioning initiatives as part of mergers and acquisitions, most notably in the technology space. She is a former travel writer and editor for recognized guidebooks like “Frommer’s,” “for Dummies” and Travel + Leisure. 
Cheryl holds master’s degrees in business and history from Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration and Columbia University. She is a writer and a public speaker on topics related to branding and creating winning experiences for customers and employees. She is also passionate about mid-century architecture and design and lives in the mid-century modern mecca of Palm Springs, California with her husband, Tony, and their talkative Shih Tzu, Harry Carson, who incidentally has his own Instagram handle, “@HarryCarsonSpeaks.”



ABOUT MAKING BUSINESS ART 
Making Business Art is a podcast for curious people where we explore how to make our work more meaningful and enchanting for ourselves and the people we serve. We draw lessons and inspiration from entrepreneurs, designers, scientists, creative leaders and artists about creating remarkable experiences that light up our customers and our teams.
This podcast is the creation of and hosted by me, Ezequiel Williams. I am an entrepreneur, innovation strategist, facilitator, and business designer. I help leaders and teams see their challenges differently and find ways to deliver value that are more desirable and satisfying for the people they serve. I am very curious and love to learn about how things work, what makes people tick, and how to create more joy in the world. 
Instagram: @MakingBusinessArt 
 

What do you think about emerging technologies with Artificial Intelligence? It’s a topic that some people find distressing, others are cautious or curious, and some, like my guest Rick McCawley, see enormous potential for creativity and productivity. Rick believes that AI can help us do away with boring grunt work while amplifying our creativity, productivity, and our ability to express ourselves. Since the release of a number of AI-based tools to the public in 2022, Rick has racked up thousands of hours applying AI to his expertise as photographer, designer, professor, and author.  
In this episode Rick and I discuss how he is integrating AI into his work, the distinction between AI as a tool and what it really takes to make work that connects with and moves people, his thoughts on how we can benefit from AI, and lessons he is passing on to his students and sharing with the broader community. I believe that showing is greater than telling, and Rick’s growing body of work with AI truly does show us the door to broader horizons. I was inspired by this conversation and I hope it sparks your curiosity to explore how these tools can help you make your work more meaningful and enchanting for yourself and the people you serve.   
 
ABOUT OUR GUEST 
Rick McCawley is a Photographer, Design Thinker, and Senior Professor of Graphic Design & Photography at Broward College in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida for the past 23 years. 
During his 13-year tenure as a staff photographer for the Miami Herald (1980-1993), Rick’s assignments included covering the first space shuttle launch, photographing four Presidents, and the Pope. He was part of the Miami Herald’s Pulitzer Prize-winning team for public service in 1993. His photographs have been featured in prominent publications worldwide, including Time magazine, Bunte, The New York Times, and numerous others. 
Rick is an accomplished publisher with more than 28 books on Graphic Design, Photography, and Fine Art to his name. His latest works include the "Top 100" book series, covering categories such as Underwater, Travel, Photojournalism, and Fine Art. 
As the head of his consulting firm, Digital Renaissance, Rick specializes in providing training and developing digital arts curriculum for universities in the Southeast U.S. Furthermore, Rick is a founding member of The Miami Street Photography Festival and frequently serves as a lecturer at the events. 
He holds an MA in Photography from Barry University and an MFA in Graphic Design from Florida Atlantic University.
You can learn more about Rick’s work at: https://bit.ly/m/RickMcCawley  

 
ABOUT MAKING BUSINESS ART 
Making Business Art is a podcast for curious people where we explore how to make our work more meaningful and enchanting for ourselves and the people we serve. We draw lessons and inspiration from entrepreneurs, designers, scientists, creative leaders and artists about creating remarkable experiences that light up our customers and our teams.
This podcast is the creation of and hosted by me, Ezequiel Williams. I am an entrepreneur, innovation strategist, facilitator, and business designer. I help leaders and teams see their challenges differently and find ways to deliver value that are more desirable and satisfying for the people they serve. I am very curious and love to learn about how things work, what makes people tick, and how to create more joy in the world. 
Instagram: @MakingBusinessArt