Beautiful Questions with Tuli & Alma

Kelly Ross is a consultant and executive coach with 25 + years of experience helping teams and organizations with Learning and Change challenges. After 15 years working nationally and internationally with McKinsey, she opened up her people strategies firm, Ross Associates, 13 years ago to help leaders and teams navigate change and learn in the process. In our conversation with her, Kelly shares about her uncommon career path, the differences between consulting and coaching, how to create the ideal learning experience, and the value of investing in the 'people side' of business.

Denis Beausejour is an experienced business leader who is committed to helping other leaders build great organizational cultures where their people feel recognized and appreciated. As a managing director at OC Tanner, he has grown his expertise in all things Employee Recognition and culture and in this conversation we get to glean his wisdom on those topics. Join us in this fun and engaging conversation with Denis and learn more about how you can drive recognition within your organization or team!

Key topics: Knowledge Management, Building Learning Communities, Team Learning, Design Practices Jeff Merrell and Keeley Sorokti are knowledge management designers and practitioners. They build learning communities, design learning experiences and better ways of working and , and have been thought partners for 10+ years. We got to talk to them about their experiences, advice and best practices for all things knowledge management, design, learning and learning communities within organizations. Tune in to learn from Jeff and Keeley's generous wisdom!

Join us in this enlightening and fun conversation as we delve into James's remarkable journey from IT in higher education to the dynamic realm of Learning Experience Design (LXD) and startups. James is our friend, and a seasoned strategist and innovator in edtech with more than 20 years of experience. He shares his insights on the distinctions between LXD and instructional design, the advantages of this paradigm shift, and strategies for crafting exceptional learning experiences. Tune in for our exploration of the evolving landscape of learning and design!

Happy 2024! We start off the year with our incredible guest Dorie Blesoff, who has over 45 years of experience in the Learning & Organizational Change space. She has been (or is) a Chief People Officer, an executive coach, an adjunct professor at Northwestern University, a learning & development consultant, a Dean, and even a singer/songwriter! In this conversation, we explore beautiful questions like: -What does it mean to be fully human (at work and beyond)? -What are the best ways to successfully lead people through change in organizations? -Why is managing transitions more important than 'managing change'?

We had a great conversation with Brandon Wilks, our friend and an experienced consultant in organizational culture, strategy and employee engagement and founder of LVD Strategies. Brandon shares about his journey as a child of Jamaican immigrants-from high school football in Florida, sociology at Harvard, consulting and DEI work at large firms, then his pursuit of an M.S. at Northwestern--to founding his own practice for building equity and engagement into workplace cultures. His uniques insights and approaches to this type of challenging work makes for a fantastic conversation we hope you enjoy as much as we did!

Ryan Smerek, PhD., is an author, professor, and researcher in organizational development who recently released his latest book, titled "Speaking Up at Work: Leading Change as an Independent Thinker." In this conversation, we discuss his journey into organizational development, his research and writing process, and then he shares some of his best nuggets from both his first book as well as his newly released book. Join us!

Tuli and Alma are joined by Organizational Consultant Shereen Sater for a wide ranging and entertaining conversation about organizational culture, toxic cultures, and gen z in the workplace.

We took a little pause, but we're so happy to be back!! This conversation is all about getting to the "so what?" behind Alma's recent research on team narratives. We explore (beautiful) questions like: what is the role of story in building effective teams? Why should team leaders pay attention to how people make sense of their work team experiences? How can connection routines foster positive team storytelling and why does that even matter? Join us!

In this episode of Beautiful Questions, Tuli & Alma learn from Bob Tweedie, a Learning & Development Leader and Northwestern University Instructor, for a fascinating discussion on learning, training, and workplace development. Bob presents a clear framework for properly running an L&D initiative at work and has a plethora of experience to back it up.  Bob Tweedie is VP of Leadership & Learning at Revantage, A Blackstone Portfolio Company. He is an authentic and humble leader with many years of experience analyzing, designing, delivering, and evaluating talent development initiatives. Bob, who arrived in the US by way of Scotland and France, shares lessons about working on multicultural organizations and teams. Bob also shares lessons on great mentors and learning through failure, correction, and trying again. He shares some great stories from his experience, teaches us a lot in this interview, and is very generous with his knowledge. We learned a ton from Bob and hope you will join us!

On this episode of Beautiful Questions, Tuli & Alma host BK Simerson, EdD for a fascinating conversation about why strategy matters and what it means to be a strategic thinker and leader in organizations today. B. Keith Simerson has provided consultation to professional services firms and to corporate clients spanning 18 industries, branches of the U.S. military and governments across the word. Simerson is the author of 5 books. His most recent, Leading with Strategic Thinking (John Wiley & Sons, 2015) can be found at: https://www.amazon.com/Leading-Strategic-Thinking-Effective-Leaders/dp/1118968158/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_2?keywords=bk+simerson&qid=1677041095&sr=8-2-fkmr0

We're so happy to kick off our 2023 season with this conversation with Eric Fridman: a friend, Northwestern instructor, executive coach and all around inspiring human and professional. In our talk with him, we explore the power of beautiful questions, silence as a communication tool, personal branding, and what it means to have work-life alignment. (Spoiler: we're still figuring it out, too)  Get your notebooks ready, Eric shares quite a few gems in this episode!

Is abusive supervision in the workplace more influenced by individual factors or by organizational culture? Join us in this episode as Tuli shares how he chose to explore this question in his recent research, what he learned from it and how these insights can be applied practically. Bonus: we kick off the episode with dramatic readings of short essays we wrote on the topic of learning back in 2020. 

In this episode, Frances Poe shares her research on curiosity at work and some of her most salient lessons about organizational change. We loved hosting Frances and hope you join us by listening! 

Your favorite podcast hosts are back! This time, they have a wide-ranging discussion about the challenges and opportunities of working on teams. Come hang with us as we chat about Learning Teams, Team Reflexivity, Psychological safety, and more, and stay for the excellent banter and corny jokes.... 🤓

In this episode, Alma and Tuli host their first guest, Chels Watkins! Chels is a recent graduate of MSLOC and works as a Management Consultant in Northern California. In this fascinating conversation, we cover topics like continuous discovery, design justice, and outputs vs. outcomes. In addition to their professional competence, Chels has the gift of clearly being able to explain complex subjects. We learned a ton from Chels and are excited to share this episode with you.  PS: What Tuli is "showing and not telling" at the beginning is his new haircut! He chopped a lot off, check out the Youtube video for the proof. 

In this Pilot Episode, Tuli and Alma share their podcast origin story and then explore different ways of answering the question "WTF is LOC?" with the help of some friends from the MSLOC community.