A podcast from Cultivated about words, work and the ideas hiding underneath both.
Every week, Word@Work takes a single word that we often use in work, and follows it back to where it came from - its history, its original meaning, the way we've come to use it, and what that tells us about the popular business of being at work with each other.
Because words aren't just labels. They carry assumptions, histories and ways of seeing the world. Look closely at a word like "deadline", "career", "amateur", "cultivate" or "strategy" and you often find an entirely new way of thinking about work.
Alongside Word@Work, the podcast brings ideas from the Cultivated library to life in audio: essays, field observations, conversations and explorations of work, communication, learning, creativity, attention, making and the journey from an idea to something valuable in the world.
The episodes are deliberately short.
Curious rather than preachy.
More interested in following a good question than delivering a list of answers.
For people who care about how work actually happens - and who enjoy discovering that there is usually a much more interesting story behind the words we use every day.
Gratitude - A way of seeing what often remains invisible (Word at Work Series)
This week's word at work is gratitude — and the fascinating side of it isn't the scheduled shout-out or the certificate ceremony. It's the recognition of the invisible base that's holding the whole thing up.
Drawing on David Whyte's reading of gratitude as a form of seeing, this episode looks at how most of what carries a business — the load-bearing communication, the quiet fixes, the translations between teams that couldn't otherwise hear each other, the people who often remain unsung — goes unnamed precisely because it works. And why a recognition programme, however well-meant, tends to pick off the visible tip while the base stays invisible.
The word gratitude comes from the Latin gratus — "pleasing, fitting" — long before it meant "thankful." Its deepest root means "to praise aloud." Gratitude was never originally a private feeling. It was a spoken recognition that something fit.
A short episode on gratitude as a discipline of attention, and the small question it leaves behind: what's carrying my work this week that I've stopped seeing?
The Word at Work is a weekly series taking a single word, tracing where it came from, and asking what it might mean for the work we actually do. New episode every week.
Read the accompanying article: https://www.cultivatedmanagement.com/gratitude-a-way-of-seeing/ (https://www.cultivatedmanagement.com/gratitude-a-way-of-seeing/)
16 Jul 2026
Craft - What the word reveals about where your real power at work lives (Word at Work Series)
This week's word at work is craft.
We've stuck the word craft onto almost everything — craft beer, craft fairs, hand-crafted, small-batch, artisanal — until it's gone soft around the edges and lost some of its meaning. Which is a shame, because underneath all of that, craft is carrying one of the best stories in the English language.
And it is a story about power.
https://www.cultivatedmanagement.com/craft-is-power/ (https://www.cultivatedmanagement.com/craft-is-power/)
10 Jul 2026
Portfolio - the discipline of what you leave out (Word at Work Series)
Most of us hear "portfolio" and typically picture two things: a trader's spreadsheet, or a designer's best work.
Trace the word back far enough — Italian porta foglio, "something that carries papers" — and a different meaning turns up. A portfolio was never really about the collecting. It was about deciding what was worth carrying in the first place.
This week we follow that word from leather case to investment fund to project board, and look at how something built for curation often turns into accumulation — a museum of things nobody remembers starting, kept because removing them feels harder than adding one more.
The better question was never "what should we add?" It's "what no longer belongs?"
A portfolio isn't a collection. It's a declaration — of what deserves attention, investment, and the outcome you're actually trying to reach.
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If this is the kind of noticing you enjoy, there's more of it daily in the public commonplace project (https://www.instagram.com/cultivatednotes) on Instagram — observations, quotes, thoughts and captures shared publicly. Public Commonplace Project - https://www.instagram.com/cultivatednotes (https://www.instagram.com/cultivatednotes)
There's also talks, workshops, articles, books, free guides and a weekly letter over on Cultivated.
Start here: cultivatedmanagement.com/start-here/ (https://www.cultivatedmanagement.com/start-here/)
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Score snapshot 15 Sept 2025
Podcast Authority Score: 54 / 100
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