Making Business Art

Ezequiel Williams
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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.

  1. 4D AGO

    #029 Making Learning Stick in Organizations with Mark Boccia

    Most of us have sat through a mandatory class, training, or presentation at work that was pretty terrible. Worse yet, we probably felt like a hostage waiting to escape. Going through this type of experience hinders our individual ability to learn and causes teams to struggle to adopt new skills and ways of working.  Fortunately, my guest and global learning leader for Amazon, Mark Boccia, is dedicated to designing learning experiences that engage people and make learning stick. Mark balances pragmatism and business acumen with a human-centric lens to create educational programs that connect with people’s heads and hearts.  In this conversation Mark and I discuss his approach to making learning effective, insights on creating memorable learning experiences, the importance of empathy and storytelling, and pragmatic advice on being clear on business priorities, managing stakeholder relationships, and overcoming organizational barriers.    ABOUT OUR GUEST  Mark Boccia is a visionary Senior Learning and Development Leader who garners the highest engagement across all levels of the workforce. He has held senior leadership roles at global marquee brands including Marriot, Royal Caribbean, and Amazon.   Throughout his career, Mark has been sought out based on his success as an intuitive partner and internal consultant. He is adept at 1:1 leadership conversations that translate strategic objectives into learning solutions for complex business issues and opportunities. As a cross-functional leader, Mark has cultivated and built trusting relationships and invested in frontline employees to C-level executives for immediate and long-term results.   Mark is recognized for maintaining expertise and performance as a coach and mentor.

    1h 29m

  2. FEB 6

    #028 Choreographing Work: Lessons from Dance with Renatus Hoogenraad

    Ever heard the idiom “It takes two to tango”? For service design facilitator and executive coach, Renatus Hoogenraad, the spirit behind this idiom has a more literal meaning. As a former professional ballet dancer and someone trained in applied improvisation, Renatus pays special attention to how we show up and use our bodies at work. He thinks of work as an ongoing choreography where a form of dance is happening in the interactions among team members.   Renatus’ perspective is a refreshing counterbalance to what many of us have been trained to do at school and work: live in our heads. We are led to believe that relying on our intellect will help us succeed while downplaying intuition, emotion, and relational skills that are key to achieving meaningful breakthroughs in any domain. If you look into the lives of legendary innovators, you will find that their breakthroughs were not solely a byproduct of thinking, but that other human faculties were key to their achievements.   In this episode Renatus and I explore his approach to being more embodied at work, how to unlock better creative collaboration through greater embodied awareness, and how he applies learnings from his previous life as a professional ballet dancer to helping people be more connected and in sync at work.  I hope this conversation inspires you to explore what being more embodied at work is like for you, and sense into what transformation you may be able to unlock for yourself and how you relate with others.  *A special thanks to Karen Faith for her creativity and voicework in this episode.   ABOUT OUR GUEST  Renatus Hoogenraad, formerly active in the world of Performing Arts, now enjoys helping organizations develop the human-centric aspects of "working better together," creating a culture that people care for. Specializing in service innovation facilitation, combined with coaching, emotional intelligence, and leadership training, he finds fulfillment in witnessing people become world-class facilitators of co-creative work processes.   He is passionate about developing authentic and charismatic people and teams at all levels who use human-centric work approaches for the benefit of their organizations and their lives.   Born and raised in the Netherlands, Renatus speaks English, French, Dutch, and enough German to order a beer. He studied Business Administration and Performing Arts and is an accredited Coach.  Learn more about Renatu’s work at Sparks Sàrl.   https://www.sparks.ch/   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

    1h 35m

  3. JAN 7

    #027 Work with Love with Chris Baer

    Life at work can feel dull, transactional, and exhausting. Fortunately, it does not have to be that way. In fact, our work can be turned into a vehicle for transforming how we relate and connect with others, while making other areas of our lives feel bright, inspired and nourishing.  For this minisode I’m bringing back innovation and leadership development expert, Chris Baer, to discuss “working with love,” a key foundation of his leadership development work through his Mandala Institute. Chris’ work focuses on helping leaders develop more relational skills so their organizations can have better culture, more wellbeing, higher performance and growth.  In this conversation we unpack how “love” is not soft or about little pink hearts, but a powerful and demanding force that helps us grow and engage more deeply with our teams and other people in our lives. Developing the inner skill of working with love will transform your life at work and elsewhere.   If you are looking for inspiration to reimagine approaching a process of transformation to make work and other areas of your life feel bright, inspired and connected, this conversation is for you.  If you want to hear more about Chris’ backstory and thoughts about developing “inner skills for outer results,” check out our conversation in episode 14. You can find Mandala Institute online at mandala.institute.    ABOUT OUR GUEST  Chris Baer is the founder of the Mandala Institute, an organization that helps leaders create humanistic and innovation culture in teams and companies. He is an expert on innovation strategy, engaging and growing talent through coaching, as well as design methodologies. Chris is also a co-founder of Sunstone Therapies, an early-stage medical company dedicated to alleviating emotional distress in patients through trial psychedelic therapies. Chris also played a key role in the creation of the Bill Richard’s Center for Healing, a state of the art facility designed expressly for psychedelic therapy in the medical setting. Prior to Mandala and Sunstone, Chris served as Vice President of Global Leadership Development and Learning Experience at Marriott International overseeing talent and executive development. In other Marriott roles, Chris led customer experience initiatives encompassing brand and digital consumer product development. Contributions included brand creation (Moxy), brand revitalization (Marriott Hotels), and customer experience strategy and execution (the Ritz-Carlton), as well as the development of Marriott’s enterprise innovation framework. Prior to Marriott, Chris led an international marketing firm, and consulted to Fortune 100’s on digital strategy, product management and user experience. Formally trained as an industrial designer at RISD, Chris employs design methodologies to business challenges and has brought design thinking to executives and their product teams globally. Chris holds a leadership coaching certification from Georgetown University’s Institute for Transformational Leadership (cohort 45), and coaches top executives seeking to bring forth transformation within themselves, their enterprises and beyond. An internationally acclaimed artist, Chris is also a contemporary abstract painter and creates works in glass and mixed media. Chris lives in Washington DC with his family.   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

    27 min

  4. 10/15/2024

    #026 Extraordinary Benefits of Understanding Others with Karen Faith

    Henry Ford once said that “if there is any secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from [their] angle as well as from your own.” What Henry Ford was talking about is practicing “cognitive empathy” also known as “perspective taking.” My guest and founder of Others Unlimited, Karen Faith, teaches people in organizations how to be more successful by learning and practicing “cognitive empathy” to achieve better results in communication, trust, culture, collaboration, and many other benefits.  In this conversation Karen and I talk about different types of empathy, her empathy training curriculum, the benefits of practicing “cognitive empathy,” the importance of personal boundaries, developing what she calls “unconditional welcome,” self awareness, practicing ethnography, and the arc of Karen’s professional journey from musician, to performance artist, to the present day, and the influence of her training in the arts on her work with organizations. Karen also shares her reflections on making business into an art form and how she has transformed deep personal pain into gifts she uses to help people change and grow.   ABOUT OUR GUEST  Karen Faith is Founder and CEO of Others Unlimited. She is an ethnographer, strategist, and creator of the Others curriculum. Her findings, talks and workshops have guided initiatives at Google, Indeed, Intuit, Applebee’s, The NBA, The ACLU, Blue Cross Blue Shield, The Federal Reserve Bank, The Nelson- Atkins Museum of Art, and more. Karen is an alumnus of the Hyper Island Business Transformation course in Stockholm, Sweden, and a recipient of the Dwight Conquergood award for ethnographic research at Performance Studies International in London. She has taught her approach to students at Penn State, Juilliard, Chapman University, University of Michigan, Kansas State University, and the National University of Singapore School of Design. She’s presented at SXSW Interactive in Austin (2018 and 2022), DesignUp in Bangalore (2019), HOW Design Live in Chicago (2019), and the 4As Stratfest in NYC (2019, 2021, and 2023). Her TEDx talk on Unconditional Welcome has received nearly 2M views. 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

    1h 42m

  5. 09/10/2024

    #025 Reimagining Experiences in Physical Spaces with Josh Goldblum

    New technologies enable fresh opportunities to connect with visitors in physical spaces. But connecting with people in a way that feels authentic, trustworthy, engaging, and enduring takes a whole lot of passion, collaboration, and a deep love of story and craft. My guest and Emmy-award winning creative executive and entrepreneur, Josh Goldblum, has spent over 20 years honing his craft at the intersection of art, technology, and culture to create amazing technology-enabled experiences for cultural organizations and brands.  If you have visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Art Institute of Chicago, or the MIT Museum, chances are you experienced the work of Josh’s award-winning experience design agency, Bluecadet.  In this episode, Josh and I talk about Bluecadet’s collaborative approach to working with clients, what it takes to create new experiences that resonate deeply with audiences, building teams and communities, his early influences, and more. What I enjoyed most about this conversation is learning about Josh’s passion for fostering deep, authentic connection with people and the lengths that he will go to do it. Josh’s stories highlight how, regardless of the tools available to us, focusing on human connection is the secret sauce to produce exceptional work.  ABOUT OUR GUEST  Josh Goldblum is an Emmy-award winning creative executive and entrepreneur working at the intersection of art, technology and culture.  He serves as the CEO of Bluecadet, an award winning experience design agency that has overseen signature projects for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Nike, The MIT Museum, the Smithsonian and Google. He curates and hosts Futurespaces, an interview series focused on exploring innovation in contemporary experience design. Josh is a frequent speaker and moderator. He is available for select consulting projects in experience design and organizational transformation in the cultural sector.     His accolades include the Emmy, Webby, FWA, MUSE, IXDA, FastCompany, One Show, and more. Check out what Josh is up to here:  https://www.bluecadet.com/   https://futurespaces.com/   https://artwrld.com/    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

    1h 35m

  6. 07/18/2024

    #024 The Power of Applied Empathy with Michael Ventura

    If we want to be an effective leader, team member, and problem-solver, we must be skilled at understanding what is really going on with ourselves and others. My guest, entrepreneur and author, Michael Ventura, spent years refining an approach to help leaders and teams develop valuable perspectives that can be applied to solve problems internally and for their customers. Michael calls this approach “Applied Empathy,” and even authored a book with that title. This approach focuses on getting to know others and their challenges by actively engaging with them and applying what we learn to developing more effective and satisfying solutions.  In this conversation Michael and I discuss his journey in founding his award-winning strategy and design firm, Sub Rosa; how he developed the Applied Empathy approach; why and how he started a traditional medicine practice based on traditions of qigong and Nahua shamanic practices from Mexico; how his consulting work and traditional medicine work are connected; reflections on how to foster deeper connection with others; and the life lessons from his dog and how that led him to join the founding team at Kismet, a dog food company founded by celebrity couple John Legend and Chrissy Teigen.  Learn more about Michael at: www.consolidatedeggs.com  Instagram: @themichaelventura   ABOUT OUR GUEST  Michael Ventura is an accomplished leader, practitioner, and educator. As the founder of strategy and design consultancy Sub Rosa, he advised influential organizations from the American Civil Liberties Union, Goldman Sachs, Google, Microsoft, and Nike to well-respected institutions such as The United Nations and the Obama-Biden Administration. Alongside his thought leadership work, Michael serves as faculty at the Esalen Institute and in private practice working with individuals seeking personal growth and mentorship. His book, Applied Empathy (Simon & Schuster 2018) explores the intersectionality of these two worlds (leadership and self development) through the practice of empathy for each of us as individuals, for others, and for society at large.  He has served as a board member and advisor to a variety of organizations including Behance, The Burning Man Project, The Smithsonian’s Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, the United Nations' affiliated Tribal Link Foundation, and a variety of growth-stage businesses. He is a visiting lecturer at institutions such as The University of Michigan's Ross School of Business, Princeton University, and the United States Military Academy at West Point. An ardent steward of personal and professional development, Michael is frequently engaged as an advisor to leaders, teams, and corporate boards at moments of transformation and change.  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

    1h 25m

  7. 06/11/2024

    #023 How to Make Business Beautiful with Tim Leberecht

    If you could reinvent your organization and your career, what would you do? After many years of working with executives from prominent organizations, Tim Leberecht recognized and wanted to support people’s desire to feel a sense of belonging, dream bigger, stretch their wings and transform how they lived and worked. After publishing his first book, The Business Romantic, Tim took the leap to reinvent his career and life. He co-founded The House of Beautiful Business, a unique company that helps humanize organizations and build a more beautiful future. Today Tim is sought out by leaders of Fortune 500 companies and organizations across sectors who are seeking to develop a new playbook to align their work with a deeper sense of purpose and human connection.    In this conversation Tim and I discuss the work he does through The House of Beautiful Business; how his time as a musician and recording artists influences his work today; lessons learned as a C-suite executive; how to create beauty in business; the importance of cultivating imagination and conviction; and how the future of business might be outside of business.    ABOUT OUR GUEST  Tim Leberecht is a German-American entrepreneur, curator, and author, and the co-founder and co-CEO of the House of Beautiful Business, the global network for the life-centered economy. Previously, Tim served as the chief marketing officer of NBBJ, a global design and architecture firm. From 2006 to 2013, he was the chief marketing officer of product design and innovation consultancy Frog Design. He has spoken at numerous conferences worldwide including AI Masters, DLD, HSM Expo, New Cities Summit, Online Marketing Rockstars, Re:publica, SXSW, The Conference, The Economist Big Rethink, The Next Web, Unleash, Thinking Digital, WOBI, and the World Economic Forum. His TED Talks “3 Ways to (Usefully) Lose Control of Your Brand” and “4 Ways to Build a Human Company in the Age of Machines” have been viewed more than 3 million times to date. Moreover, Tim has delivered keynotes and workshops for many leading global brands, including at high-profile senior executive forums for Adobe, Airbus, BCG, Cap Gemini, Daimler, Deloitte, Galp, Google, IBM, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Merck,  Porsche, SAP, Siemens, Sky, UPS, and others. Tim served on the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Values from 2013 to 2016. He is a BMW Foundation Responsible Leader. He is the author of the book The Business Romantic (Harper Business, 2015), which has been translated into ten languages to date, and The End of Winning (Droemer, 2020). He is currently working on a new book about curation. His writing regularly appears in publications such as Entrepreneur, Fast Company, Forbes, Fortune, Harvard Business Review, Inc, Psychology Today, Quartz, and Wired. He is the co-publisher of the Book of Beautiful Business (2019), and the co-host of the Next Visions podcast with Porsche as well as the Tangier Memos podcast.   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.

    1h 37m

  8. 05/14/2024

    #022 Applied Improv for Better Leadership, Connection, & Communication with Belina Raffy

    Keeping up with the accelerating pace of change and complexity in our world can feel daunting. Fortunately, there are people like global improv consultant and comedy teacher, Belina Raffy, who can show us how to re-energize how we relate with our teams and bring more joy, creativity, and connection to our organizations. Belina makes the case that practicing improv is the gym to strengthen our ability to deal with complexity.  In this conversation Belina and I discuss the benefits we can derive from practicing applied improv at work and other areas of our lives, improv’s triangle model, the distinction between serious and solemn, how to let go of being constrictive and embrace being more expansive, genuine vs. toxic positivity, teaching activists stand up comedy to help them reach and connect with audiences, and the genius of her friend Tolu and how he devised a program to train CEOs through his office cleaning service.    ABOUT OUR GUEST  Belina Raffy is a global improv consultant, climate comedy teacher, and giggler, helping people and organisations to bring more love, expansiveness, and ability to engage with complex systems into our responses to climate and social issues. She has worked with many organisations including the science accelerator lab Frontier Development Lab (a collaborative partner with the European Space Agency and NASA), giz (a German sustainable development organisation), and the Inga Foundation (which applies a scientifically proven, organic agroforestry system that helps farmers thrive).  Belina has been designing and facilitating different forms of improv workshops for people working in sustainability since 2008 to help build collaboration, engagement, and our ability to engage with complex issues.  She was on the board of the Applied Improvisation Network for six years, co-chaired many of their international conferences, and initiated a collaboration between the Applied Improvisation Network and the Red Cross Climate Centre. Belina wrote a book, ‘Using Improv to Save the World (and me)’ about her experience of letting go of having a home and travelling to 11 countries around the world to facilitate applied improvisation workshops.  And since 2015, Belina has been delivering one of her favourite brainchildren -  ’Sustainable Stand Up’ - a course which teaches people working on climate and social issues how to use a loving form of humour to think more expansively about the issues they care about, and to communicate them in a more engaging way. In June 2023, Belina became a facilitator of the powerful peer-coaching tool the Flow Game, so she could help people gain clarity about their work and lives in a deeper way. Belina is based in Berlin, Germany and giggles a lot because she loves what she does.   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

    1h 31m
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About

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.

Information

  • Creator
    Ezequiel Williams
  • Years Active
    2022 - 2025
  • Episodes
    31
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2024 Ezequiel Williams. All rights reserved.
  • Show Website
    Making Business Art

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