Announcing The Indigo Podcast: An Exploration of Human Flourishing at Work and Beyond

When Chris Everett and I formed Indigo Anchor in 2018, we knew we would be a different kind of management consulting firm.  We would not be interested in fancy suits, not interested in churning out reports that were unhinged from real change. Nor would we be interested in peddling the latest organizational pop psychology.  

What we wanted to do was bring evidence-based approaches and strategies from academia, the military, and successful enterprise organizations to clients that were truly ready for the change required for improvement.

Fast forward to 2019, we’ve stayed true to these values and have had tremendous success where our competitors have previously failed.  And we’ve received validation that we are indeed “different.” We are “bold” … “challenging” … “funny” … “intense.” We’ve had clients laugh, cry, cheer, yell, and yet ultimately succeed when they thought success was elusive. We’ve gotten results for every client on every engagement leaving them with increased revenue, increased profits, happier employees, and happier boards of directors.  When approached, we only take on the work if we know we can leave the organization better than we found it.  

We’ve turned work away when organizations have floundered in describing the results they’re seeking, when they’ve wanted a solution that won’t fix their problem, or when their ask has been unrealistic. 

While we’re obsessed with quantifiable results, we also have a soft side that revels in the complexities of humanity with all of its intangibles and idiosyncrasies.  We are lovers of people and community. We have a higher purpose beyond the bottom line, and that is to see people flourish at work and beyond. 

In many of our engagements, clients have taken us aside to tell us how the communication and leadership skills we’ve taught has helped them in their marriages, with their children, and with their extended families. 

So, we started thinking to ourselves that we and our clients should have a place to learn from each other and invite others to do the same. We did not want this to be a sales pitch or marketing ploy for our company; however, we wanted the community to be distinct.  

How were we going to do this?  Forum-style like Reddit? Conversations or groups on LinkedIn? Start a Facebook page? As we discussed our options, preferences, and talents as well as who our audience would be and their preferences, we landed on the format of a podcast.  

Why a podcast? 

We liked the idea of podcasting for several reasons: it’s interactive and it’s digestible when you live a busy life on the go. We saw it as a way to extend beyond ourselves and engage in conversations that are essential to building community. We also anticipated that our audience likely includes those who already listen to podcasts and would enjoy that format.  

We are proud to announce The Indigo Podcast, which is set to launch Nov. 4, 2019.  It’s an informative, real, quirky, and somewhat irreverent resource for executives, managers, leaders, and anyone else interested in flourishing … in the world of work and beyond.  

During the last several months, we have been putting our heads together to come up with the best content that would be the most useful to our audience. We’ve recorded several episodes already. 

In every episode, we’re seeking to do some combination of the following:

• promote the flourishing of people and organizations

• bridge the gap between social science and management practice

• provide an antidote or counterpoint to the ever-increasing overly simplistic reductionist approaches to work and life

• feed the curiosity of people who want to make the world a better place through work

• inspire listeners to become lifelong learners and bold difference-makers

Initially, the podcast will feature me along with my fellow co-founder and principal at Indigo Anchor, Chris Everett.  We will also feature interviews with respected experts and other people of interest. The first several episodes will be on the subjects of thriving in the face of bad management, flourishing in a turbulent operating environment, agility and why it matters, and exploring why managers derail and how to avoid it.  

Our style is rather different from many of the business, management, or leadership podcasts that currently exist. Most notably, we recognize that the world is messy and that solutions often require a nuanced view of reality. Most of life does not lend itself to lists of easy steps to follow or “silver bullets” that fix everything. Our conversations, therefore, are fairly in-depth. And while we often provide perspectives and evidence-based ideas that our listeners will find immediately useful, our overall goal is to help our listeners think, learn, and maybe even laugh a little.  

We’re hoping that listeners and subscribers will find our podcast to be a refreshing resource for proven tools in the areas of management, leadership, human resources, organizational behavior, dealing with change, organizational culture, hiring, process improvement, organizational agility, and related topics. 

The Indigo Podcast launches Nov. 4, 2019 on iTunes/Apple Podcasts, Spotify, GooglePlay, Stitcher, TuneIn, and Castbox.  

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To learn more about The Indigo Podcast, visit: https://www.indigotogether.com/indigopodcast  

Indigo Anchor is a management consulting firm serving clients across a wide range of industries, sectors, sizes, and locations.  Visit: https://www.indigoanchor.com/

Ben Baran, Ph.D., is probably one of the few people in the world who is equally comfortable in a university classroom, a military uniform, or in a corporate boardroom advising top management teams. He is an award-winning assistant professor of management at Cleveland State University, a co-founder and principal of the consulting firm Indigo Anchor LLC, and a commander in the U.S. Navy Reserve. He regularly consults leaders and organizations across a wide range of sectors and industries. He earned his undergraduate degree from Villanova University and his master’s in industrial and organizational psychology and Ph.D. in organizational science from The University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Connect with Ben on LinkedIn. For more, visit: www.benbaran.com 

For additional information, contact Ben Baran at ben@indigoanchor.com

The Higher Calling of Managing People

As my students can attest, I have a tendency to get rather enthusiastic in the classroom. The reason for that is twofold: (1) I find the topics I teach rather interesting and important and (2) I think that if I expect anyone else to get excited about the material, then I have to demonstrate that excitement myself. 

And there’s one part of one class lecture in particular when I get especially fired up. 

It’s in my concluding comments regarding the topic of job satisfaction. In the lecture, I’ve already talked about what job satisfaction is—a pleasurable emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one’s job or job experiences—and three “buckets” of factors that influence it. These buckets, as I describe them, are (1) factors that make us each different from each other including personality, (2) factors about the job, the work, and the work environment; and (3) factors about the degree of fit between people and their jobs or between them and their work organizations. 

We also talk, of course, about why job satisfaction matters. It goes far beyond “a happy worker is a good worker”—which isn’t particularly true (some people are very happy precisely because they can get away with doing very little and still get paid). A more compelling reason is that job satisfaction is consistently related with people’s commitment, or attachment to their organizations. 

But the part of the class in which I start to thunder away with an extra dose of enthusiasm is when I discuss “job satisfaction and the big picture.” 

This is when I touch upon what I consider the higher calling of managing people. 

When we’re in a supervisory position over other people in an organization, that role comes with specific responsibilities to the organization. We’re expected to plan, organize, direct and control the output of those people and ensure that what they do aligns with organizational objectives. 

But we also, as supervisors of others, have a unique opportunity. We have the opportunity to control many factors about how people are appreciated and recognized. We sometimes have the opportunity to influence how the work is structured and assigned, and sometimes we’re able to influence the nature of the work itself and the environment in which it’s completed. 

Namely, if you manage people, you can have a tremendous influence upon the job satisfaction of the people who work for you. 

And that’s important not just because they might exert some more effort or be more committed to your organization. 

It’s important because job satisfaction contributes to two factors in people’s lives that are of the utmost importance. Our level of job satisfaction contributes to our:

• Health (here’s some supporting research), and to our
• Life satisfaction (here’s some supporting research). 

As a manager of people, therefore, you have the opportunity to make people’s lives better. By being a high-quality supervisor, you could be helping people have lower blood pressure. You could be helping them be less stressed and, as a by-product, have better relationships with their spouses or children. 

That’s huge, folks. 

Steve Jobs is often quoted as saying that "We're here to put a dent in the universe." That sounds nice, but most of us aren’t in organizations or positions in which we have a good chance at really doing that. 

But we do have the chance to put a dent in the universes of the people who we work with and supervise. We have the chance to make their worlds better and literally improve the quality of their experience on this planet. We can do this every single day in the simple interactions we have with each other.

Therefore, the big point is that being a manager is a privilege and an amazing opportunity to influence peoples’ lives positively. 

And I think if all supervisors thought about this for a few seconds at the beginning of every day, we’d have a big influence on the world of work.

And collectively, that would indeed “put a dent in the universe.”

Find this thought provoking? Leave a comment, like and share!

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About Ben Baran
Ben Baran, Ph.D., is probably one of the few people in the world who is equally comfortable in a university classroom, a corporate boardroom and in full body armor carrying a U.S. government-issued M4 assault rifle. Visit: www.benbaran.com.