Professor Isaac Getz is the professor of Idea, Initiative and Innovation Management at the EACP Europe Business School and author of a new book that gets right to the very heart of what it takes to do Great Work in an organization: Freedom Inc.

It’s a terrific book and follows on nicely from the previous interview with Bob Cialdini. The book tells the stories of organizations that are approaching work by thinking about how to work differently and succeeding because of this approach. The subtitle says it all: Free Your Employees and Let Them Lead Your Business to High Productivity, Profits and Growth. Isaac incorporates his own background of innovation but looks at a bigger picture of how work is evolving, and that’s what we talk about in this interview. We discuss:

• How the style of “liberating leaders” is the starting point for any Freedom Inc.
• The importance of people feeling intrinsically equal – and what that actually means
• The impact of a lessening of control from the top – and the impact that has on agility and ability to serve your customers

You can learn more about Professor Isaac Getz and his book at freedomincbook.com.

Listen to my interview with Professor Getz

Bob Cialdini is not just a man of influence, he is THE man of influence. His first book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, is a classic and is destined to remain a perpetual bestseller. And here’s why. As our world gets increasingly networked and matrixed, traditional lines of control and power are loosening and vanishing. Soon, influence is all you’ll have to get things done.

So it pays to understand how it works. And this interview will help. Amongst other things, Bob and I talk about:

• How a study in self-defence planted the seeds for his own Great Work
• What he learned by putting his principles of persuasion into action and giving them a ‘real world’ test.
• The least used of the six core ways to influence people – and how you can use this on everything from menus to career progression.

Bob is Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Marketing at Arizona State University. You can learn more about him and his company Influence at Work at www.InfluenceAtWork.com

Listen to my interview with Robert Cialdini

Dave Ulrich is a titan in the world of HR, a champion for HR to get out of the ‘comp and bens’ ghetto to have a strategic impact. I first met him when we were both speaking at a conference in India. A big crowd, all ready to be lectured for the day by Dave. And the session was electric. Dave found the perfect balance between sharing wisdom, being provocative and being playful with the group. He is a prolific writer, with articles and books on many aspects of HR and leadership, his most recent book is The Leadership Code: Five Rules to Lead By. Dave is a partner and co-founder of The RBL Group and is also a professor of business at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan.

Dave and his wife Wendy have written a lovely piece in Do More Great Work.

In this interview we discuss:

• the art of finding simplicity in complexity – and how that fits with system thinking
• the value of staying in a place of ambiguity rather than rushing to decisions
• the link between energy and engagement
• and why, at the end of the day, you shouldn’t take things too seriously

You can find Dave at on his website.

Listen to my interview with Dave Ulrich.

The tag-line for Penelope Trunk’s blog is ‘advice at the intersection of life and work’. That’s good, but quite frankly it undersells what Penelope does. For one things, she’s the founder of Brazen Careerist, a social network which helps young people manage their careers. Second, her blog is a no-holds-barred, deeply personal and often provocative look at her life and what it takes to be successful in business today. It’s a compelling mix of research, personal revelation and wise advice.

Penelope’s piece in Do More Great Work is as thoughtful and as provocative as you’d expect having read her blog.

In this interview we look at:

• The problem with our own ‘internal rules’ about how the world is run
• How wisdom is often found in the ‘in between parts’ and the moments of transition
• Why career advice is often best when it’s based on the ’stumbling around’ rather than the straight line
• How the risk of being real is more than worth it

You can follow Penelope on Twitter at @PenelopeTrunk and on her blog.

Listen to my interview with Penelope Trunk

My first job, when I finally stumbled out of university, was with a small creativity and innovation company. It was pretty fantastic – sort of a ‘Fast Company’ company before such a thing existed. And we truly felt that we were in the vanguard for making innovation and its attendant skill creativity important in organizations.

But vanguard? No, not really. Roger von Oech – now he was in the vanguard. He started his company Creative Think back in the mid 1970s and his book A Whack on the Side of the Head is a classic in the creativity field.

In this interview we talk about:

• The power of persistence, and some of the early struggles to get creativity seen as something that matters within organizations
• The importance of embedding creativity into the structures of your organization
• The role of the warrior in helping creativity flourish
• And a certain activity that can increase your ability to be creative (And David Rock agrees.)

You can follow Roger on Twitter at @RogerVonOech and on his website.

Listen to my interview with Roger von Oeck