Ten years ago, one company cropped up in all the business books – SouthWest Airlines. They’re still a brilliant company of course, but their story is well known. The new story is Cirque du Soleil, a 25 year old overnight success.

The Cirque recently visited Toronto for their marvelous and jaw-dropping show Ovo. Through a series of lucky coincidences, I got to interview Scott Wallace, the General Manger of that show. I’ve always wanted to peer under the Big Top and learn a little of how this amazing company worked.

Scott showed me around, and here’s what we discussed:

• The secret to how you manage 200+ people from 15 different countries
• How to balance providing support and removing responsibility
• How insights into a good village help to structure the running of the travelling troupe
• Ways of keeping things fresh when you’re running the same show night in and night out.

You can follow the amazing Cirque story at www.cirquedusoleil.com

Listen to my interview with Scott Wallace

I’ve just returned from the TED conference in Palm Springs. One of the most fun bits was spending time with Tara Hunt. I have high regard for Tara, not just because she’s a fellow Canadian, but because she hangs out on the edge of what’s happening with business and stirs things up. She’s a social media star – but not just as a “I know about the technology” but from the point of view of “How does this matter to us as humans?” and “How does this help us build and shape community?” She is the author of The Whuffle Factor about how social media impacts the way business is done now, and plans to call her next book “Happiness as Your Business Model.”

In our conversation, we discuss:

• Why business seems to operate in a way antithetical to how we are wired to live and operate as human being
• The deeper roots of happiness – and why that matters in business
• The balance between numbers and community
• How to start building your community around you and your business

You can follow Tara on Twitter at @missrogue and check out her (brilliantly named) website www.horsepigcow.com

Listen to my interview with Tara Hunt

Dr. Lance Secretan is one of the world’s foremost thinkers about leadership.
He weaves together different strands of experience to bring his knowledge to the world, having been a CEO of a Fortune 100 company, an acclaimed business school professor and an accomplished skier.  Of his fourteen books, I’ve been most influenced by his recent ones, Inspire! and One: The Art and Practice of Conscious Leadership and the way they have focused on the concept of higher ground leadership.  Lance has won the International Caring Award and the McFeely Leadership Award.

In this interview Lance and I talk about:

• The CASTLE principles – six fundamentals concepts that underlie higher ground leadership
• The power of love in organizations – and why it’s not “California woo-woo” stuff
• How to harness the art of focus to tackle big challenges
• What it means to unlearn – and why it’s critical for future success

You can follow Lance at his blog

Listen to my interview with Lance Secretan

Laura Berman Fortgang is truly one of the pioneers in the personal coaching field. She has a number of books to her name including Now What?: 90 Days to a New Life Direction and her most recent The Little Book of Meaning (and no doubt you can immediately see why Laura’s such a great fit with great work.)

Laura was one of the very first personal coaches to be featured on national television including an appearance on Oprah. And on top of running a company that provides coaching and training, she is also an ordained interfaith minister.

In our conversation we:

• hear about the moment that shifted her to expand her practice from coaching to training as a minister – and the importance of listening to the call of Great Work
• get into why “meaningful work” isn’t all about becoming Mother Theresa – but finding it in the life you currently live
• talk about how your schedule tells you more about your life than you’d care to admit

Listen to my interview with Laura Berman Fortgang here

The interviews are all between 25 and 30 minutes long.
You can either download them here as mp3s, or go to iTunes, type in “Great Work Interviews” and you’ll see them all there.
You can follow Laura on Twitter at http://twitter.com/@LBFcoach

Jonathan’s job title is Chief Renegade Officer. And it’s not just a fancy title. Jonathan spent time as a mobile DJ, a hedge fund lawyer and a highly successful entrepreneur in the health business starting up his own yoga studio. He’s taken that hard-earned wisdom and written a best-selling book Career Renegade: How to Make a Great Living Doing What You Love and is building a community of people who want to “work happy and live well” at CareerRenegade.com, you’ll see the subtitle there, the thing that sums up the site, is “work happy, live well”.

In this interview you’ll hear:

• how Jonathan made the biggest leap in his entrepreneurial career – on September 10th 2001 (and what he did about it)
• talk about the one big question that should frame your next career move (and yes, it’s a classic Great Work question)
• tackle the whole topic of courage – what it is and what it isn’t
• learn what it really means when someone says, “You can’t do that!”

Listen to my interview with Jonathan Fields here

You can follow Jonathan on Twitter at http://twitter.com/@jonathanfields