Working/Broken
Welcome to Working/Broken with Nick Richtsmeier and Brad Farris. Every episode, we examine a trend, bias, or hot topic affecting business leaders and ask the question: Is it working? Or is it broken?
Much of what is broken in the world impacts our business and our leadership. We can’t fix all that, but we can learn to respond and lead differently. Business leaders have been hard-wired and trained to chase trends, follow conventional wisdom, and find any way possible to simplify the endless list of hard decisions they have to make.
So the ecosystem of “hacks” and “best practices” fills to overflowing, leaving you at a loss for a sorting mechanism: What applies to you? Where have bias or assumptions skewed the gurus? What actually applies to you?
The spectrum of what’s working and what’s broken isn’t fixed. It’s custom. To not just your situation, but you as a leader and what you’re bringing to the table. And while you try to follow the rules given to you, part of the magic of succeeding in leadership is knowing what’s for you and what isn’t.
So come join us. We’re gonna laugh. We’re gonna challenge. We’re gonna wrestle. Together.
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Nick Richtsmeier is a catalyst for change in organizations that rely on trust to deliver their services. If your advisory, education, or professional services firm needs to accelerate growth, visit CultureCraft.com to find out how he can craft a growth strategy that’s made for you.
Brad Farris coaches leaders of creative professional firms to become the people they need to be to lead the agency they aspire to grow. Find out more at AnchorAdvisors.com
You can find additional resources at WorkingBroken.com.
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Working/Broken
Remix Culture and the Scraped Internet
In this introspective and timely episode, Brad and Nick take on a deceptively simple question: Do we really own our ideas anymore?
Prompted by Nick’s recent experience of having his writing lifted and reposted—sometimes respectfully, sometimes not—the conversation weaves through authorship, digital ethics, AI scraping, and the deeper emotional terrain of publishing on the internet. What begins as a conversation about plagiarism quickly becomes something bigger: a meditation on intellectual generosity, attribution, and the meaning of creative work in a remix culture.
Nick wrestles with the tension between wanting his writing to matter and his desire to be part of the conversation his work sparks. Brad adds reflections on how creative inspiration often flows from one source to another and how acknowledging that is more art than science.
In this jam-packed discussion, they also hit:
- How human creativity works (messy, layered, integrative)
- The rise of AI and its flattening effect on original voice
- The emotional whiplash of going viral
- Why traditional publishing may be a spiritual balm in an age of digital entropy
At the core: the internet changed how we think about ownership. AI is changing it again. So where does that leave creators, thinkers, and leaders trying to say something real?
Referenced Resources:
- Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson
- Definition of “Palimpsest”
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Have a business topic you want us to decide if it's working or broken? Have a question about the episode? You can email us at podcast@culturecraft.com.
