What Works

Dec 12 2024 392 ep. 36 mins 614

What Works Podcast artwork

"Work" is broken. We're overcommitted, underutilized, and out of whack. But it doesn't have to be this way. What Works is a podcast about rethinking work, business, and leadership as we navigate the 21st-century economy. When you're an entrepreneur, independent worker, or employee who doesn't want to lose yourself to the whims of late-stage capitalism, this show is for you. Host Tara McMullin covers money, management, culture, media, philosophy, and more to figure out what's working (and what's not) today. Tara offers a distinctly interdisciplinary approach to deep-dive analysis of how we work and how work shapes us.

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EP 484: The Freedom to Buy

Dec 12 2024 27 mins

So, health insurance is in the news. And so is Americans' feelings about it. I got to wondering how we ended up with this terrible health insurance system in the United States. I uncovered a fascinating story about the marketing campaign that sunk Truman's national health insurance program in the 1940s. I also discovered some interesting parallels to popular marketing messages amon

EP 483: Avoiding Acquiescence Bias

Dec 05 2024 21 mins

A problem, question, or challenge is often more than meets the eye. But we're biased to accept how an issue is initially framed. We acquiesce to the original terms. That's called acquiescence bias. When we don't counteract our acquiescence bias, we miss opportunities to get to the root cause or think creatively about a challenge. Today, I share 3 ways to resist acquiescence bias as

EP 482: Seeing Software

Nov 21 2024 17 mins

Do you see your software?Do you see how it influences how you run meetings, brainstorm ideas, fulfill your responsibilities, and communicate with others? Do you see how its text boxes, radio buttons, tabs, search results, and menus train you to think? Do you see it, or do you just use it?Footnotes:"The impossible dream of good workplace software" on Decoder "Practico-inertia" by Ro

EP 481: Preservation in the Post-Information Age with Sari Azout

Oct 25 2024 29 mins

Stop me if you've heard this before: we're overloaded and overwhelmed by information. There's more content than you could ever hope to consume. More scientific theories, philosophical concepts, and art forms than you could ever hope to engage with.Enter personal knowledge management (PKM). It's a modern term for an ancient practice—how one collects, preserves, and utilizes knowle

EP 480: Exceedingly Complex Systems

Oct 17 2024 20 mins

In management cybernetics, there are 3 types of systems: simple, complex, and exceedingly complex. The systems we pay the most attention tend to be, you guessed it, exceedingly complex. In this episode, I explore what that means for how we do our work and run our businesses—and what happens when we forget that people are exceedingly complex systems, too.Footnotes:Cyberboss by Cra

EP 479: A Theory of Resourcefulness

Oct 10 2024 17 mins

You've probably heard of a scarcity mindset. Maybe you've even been accused of having one! In this short, I explore the false binary of scarcity and abundance mindsets to propose a third way: resourcefulness.Footnotes:"Thought-terminating cliché" on WikipediaAdam Tooze on The Ezra Klein ShowInformation on the US tax gap"Breaking boundaries to creatively generate value" in The Jour

EP 478: Data Never Speak For Themselves

Sep 26 2024 23 mins

We're constantly bombarded by data. And it's easy to think that with the right clues, we could answer the ultimate questions of life, the universe, and everything.But data aren't facts. They're not a secret code. Data are media—they mediate our interactions with the world around us. To make them useful and meaningful, we need a critical framework for working with data as media. T

EP 477: Here's a tip

Sep 20 2024 28 mins

Today's episode is about tips. As in gratuity. Wait, wait, wait! Where are you going?I know, you probably don't receive tips for your work. Maybe you don't live in the US, and you're thinking, 'What is this American BS about tips?'Well, when I first heard about Trump's (and then Harris's) proposal to eliminate federal taxes of tipped income, my brain went a hundred different places

EP 476: Cult Value

Sep 12 2024 18 mins

If a chatbot writes your novel, did you really complete NaNoWriMo?Two niche internet panics caught my eye over the last couple of weeks: a bungled AI policy by the organization that promotes National Novel Writing Month and a viral story about people hiring Strava surrogates to run for them so they can claim the kudos. And those two stories got me thinking about the ways that we de

EP 475: Values aren't chains; they are wings

Aug 22 2024 7 mins

Inspired by the current vibe shift, I'm interrupting my rebroadcast of the Self-Help, LLC series with an interlude about values—personal values, business values, American values, even Christian values. And it's about what is so often misunderstood about values. Values aren't chains; they are wings. ★ Support this podcast ★