Fixable

How do you retain good people – and set them up for success in a dynamic, fast-moving environment? Promotion, job design, and clear career pathways are all part of the answer. This week, a pastor leading a growing church wants to know when is the right time to promote people and how to make sure they don't burn out. Anne and Frances deliver advice to help leaders embrace uncertainty and chart a co...

Whatever happens off-the-job comes with us to work, including our mental health. And having the right tools to talk about it is crucial to improving our experience of work. In this episode, Master Fixer and Harvard Business School professor Lauren Cohen joins Anne and Frances to deliver some surprising statistics on mental health and why it’s vital to have conversations about wellness in the workp...

Do ideas have the freedom to run in your workplace, or do they get caught in internal complexity? As companies grow, they tend to have more processes and stakeholders slowing down change. So what can you do to get things done? In this week’s episode, Anne and Frances help a rockstar Chief People Officer avoid her company’s bureaucratic tendencies and stay on the fast track to success. Tune in to l...

Do you feel like you’re hitting a wall at work? This week, Anne and Frances are joined by Master Fixers Bob Sutton and Huggy Rao. Bob and Huggy are professors at Stanford University and authors of “The Friction Project: How Smart Leaders Make the Right Things Easier and the Wrong Things Harder”. Together, the four discuss how anyone can eliminate the obstacles to doing their best work—and create c...

You have a fantastic idea, but you're going to need help with execution. Thankfully, that’s what your network is for. In this week’s episode, a listener who developed her own pilates equipment business comes to Anne and Frances for advice on how to turn a successful product into a scalable company. With a little help from Anne and Frances, Bree learns actionable ways to ask the right people for he...

You know what they say about unsolicited advice (don’t give it!) but when it comes to SOLICITED feedback, author and executive coach Kim Scott says: bring it on. Kim believes that when it comes to improving your life at home, work, and anywhere in between, it helps to ask for – and provide – kind, but radical, candor. In this episode, Kim shares what she’s learned about embracing candidness and ca...

Have you ever been caught in the middle of a tricky work dynamic, struggling to please everyone? Sometimes, the only solution is to realize it’s not your job to fix everything. This week, Anne and Frances talk to a listener who’s struggling to manage relationships with multiple bosses with competing priorities. Together, they chart a path for this superstar employee to make it clear she can’t solv...

Sure, we all want our work to speak for itself… but who will make sure your impact is truly seen and valued? This week, Anne and Frances are joined by Master Fixer Carla Harris. Carla Harris is a Senior Client Advisor at Morgan Stanley, the bestselling author of books like Expect to Win and Lead to Win, and an expert on building relationships at work. This week, she brings her wisdom to Fixable to...

Have you ever felt like something about your identity was getting in the way of your success? This week, a listener needs help pushing through the resistance she’s facing as a woman navigating a male-dominated workplace. Anne and Frances discuss what you can do when someone else’s bias is standing in your way. Together, the three uncover how you can find your agency in unexpected places – and why...

How do you find common ground with skeptical audiences? Robin Steinberg is the CEO of The Bail Project, an organization that advocates for abolishing cash bail and reforming the criminal justice system. She knows her work is vital, but public anxiety about crime and safety often gets in the way of lasting change. Robin Steinberg asks Anne and Frances how to communicate her mission to people who do...

What kinds of writing gets people to take action? In his book, “Writing Effectively for Busy Readers,” Harvard professor and this week’s Master Fixer Todd Rogers discusses his extensive research into the most effective writing styles. Todd talks with Anne and Frances about what it means to be "radically responsible" to your audience. Then he shares the best (and seemingly counterintuitive) writing...

How can you communicate confidence when the future is uncertain? Claire manages communications at a transportation company that’s going through major changes, and she’s tasked with making sure everyone—from C-level corporate executives to people out in the field—get the information they need. However, she finds herself competing with industry news cycles and word-of-mouth speculation to get people...

Hi everybody, new episodes of Fixable are back next week! In the meantime, we are bringing back this episode in case you missed it. Anne and Frances are joined by their first “Master Fixer," author Claire Hughes Johnson, who’s here to help you fix your meetings! Her book Scaling People: Tactics for Management and Company Building draws on her executive experiences at Stripe and Google and reveals...

This is an episode of one of our favorite shows, What's Your Problem? hosted by former Planet Money host Jacob Goldstein. Each week, Jacob talks to entrepreneurs and engineers about how they’ll change the world -- once they solve a few problems. We hope you enjoy Anne and Frances in conversation with Jacob while we're still on a short break. Find more about What's Your Problem at pushkin.fm And re...

This is another episode of one of our favorite shows, Leading Up With Udemy, hosted by Alan Todd, the Udemy Vice President of Leadership Development. We hope you enjoy it while we're on a short break! Roberta Matuson is a talent consultant and author of several incredible leadership books, including international bestseller Suddenly In Charge, Can We Talk?, and The Magnetic Leader. She discusses h...

Trust is the foundation for everything we do. So what do we do when it's broken? In this episode of TED Business, a familiar voice gives a crash course on the essential components of trust, and how to build them. Plus TED Business host Modupe Akinola explains how to apply those principles of trust with Black colleagues and others in the minority. And remember — if you want to be on next season Fix...

This is an episode of a podcast we hope you'll love. On After Hours, Harvard Business School professors Mihir Desai and Felix Oberholzer-Gee discuss and debate current events that sit at the crossroads of business and culture. In this episode, Felix and Mihir discuss how Sam Altman was fired and reinstated over the course of just a few days. Was the board right to dismiss Altman? Does the turmoil...

Hi Fixable listeners! We are going on a short break before we bring you new episodes of Fixable. In the meantime, here is another podcast we thought you’d love. It’s an episode from ReThinking with Adam Grant, another podcast from the TED Audio Collective. Carla Harris is a fierce leader, a devoted mentor, and a dynamic speaker. A Wall Street veteran who has been named one of the most powerful Bla...

Hi Fixable listeners! We are going on a short break before we bring you new episodes of Fixable. In the meantime, here is another podcast we thought you’d love. It’s an episode from TED Talks Daily, another podcast from the TED Audio Collective. Resumes are a mainstay of the job application process — despite little evidence that they actually help job-seekers or employers get what they want. So wh...

How do you balance what works professionally with other goals and needs? Curtis Sittenfeld is the bestselling author of Prep and Romantic Comedy. Though she has found great success as a full-time writer, Curtis wants more interpersonal connection than what she often gets from her very isolated approach to writing. In this episode, Anne and Frances talk to Curtis about how she can build more commun...

Do you want to feel more confident about speaking up at work? This week, Anne and Frances are joined by a Master Fixer: “Think Faster, Talk Smarter” author Matt Abrahams. Matt is a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and an expert in communication. In this episode, Matt gives Anne and Frances a wide-ranging playbook for how to be a better, less anxious communicator, including how...

How can you be caring at work while still maintaining personal boundaries? Gina Gutierrez, founder of the audio erotica app Dipsea, loves her close-knit team — but she’s worried that she might be acting too much like a parent as opposed to a boss. In this episode, Anne and Frances show Gina how to empower both herself AND her team while establishing limits at work. Transcripts for Fixable are avai...

How can you make change in your workplace as a newer hire? That’s the problem Al is dealing with. He's an enthusiastic middle school teacher who is finding that his more senior colleagues are hesitant to embrace change and address bias in education. In this episode, Anne and Frances discuss ways Al can empower himself to be a change maker in the community and have more productive conversations wit...

How will AI change the way you work? This episode’s caller A.J. Jacobs is a journalist and author who has written books like The Year of Living Biblically, The Puzzler, and Thanks a Thousand. He's built a career off of his creative ideas, but the rise of ChatGPT has made him concerned whether there’ll still be a place for his work as technology gets more advanced. In this episode, Anne and Frances...

How can you make sure everyone on your team is on the same page? That’s the question posed by this episode’s caller, Luís Martín. Luís is the founder and CEO of an early stage startup, and he’s noticed some tension between his older employees and their Gen Z colleagues due to their different work styles. With the help of Anne and Frances, Luís gets to the root of the problem: when a company lacks...