 Thank you for joining us tonight, and thank you also for hopefully some of you joining us all over the world on the stream We're just live streaming this event From downtown old town in Stockholm Yay On the sea. Yeah, this is a little bit of a dream come true for me Me and Mikkel I remember us talking about this idea that we had over a year ago What if we could get the best that people that we could find the most brilliant minds we could find and bring one of the most inspiring topics to them I Remember was talking about that because we're actually in Stockholm in November Which is traditionally the month of announcements or October I should say For the Nobel Prize, and it's actually awarded not even a kilometer away from here in downtown Stockholm in the city hall This is by no means a Nobel Prize but The big but if there was one I wouldn't hesitate to consider some of the people that we have on this stage Which is a great honor and an exciting evening for me And hopefully something that's going to excite us all and inspire us about the future because that is a topic for tonight the future of work and having a conversation among noble minds about that and The way we want to do this is to make sure that this gradually becomes a more participatory Experience for all of us in here as we move forward through this evening So don't think for a second that just you just gonna sit there for a couple of hours listening Like a cinema. No, this may actually involve you guys So by that I just want to turn over to Mikkel Goethe Who's helping us to range this evening and this is kind of a continuation of the two days, right? Yes, so we have this we're on a boat actually and we've been rocking this boat for two days We've had the agile people yearly conference and the theme this year have been the future of work and This is kind of a post the conference event that we open up. So we get We really have to see all of you here and also we are doing this in collaboration with more networks We thought about inviting more people but to scale it we need to invite More networks instead So if we have the agile people, but also have the engineering leadership Stockholm team or community and we also have the food cafe Community so please come up here on stage and join us so we can hear a little bit more about what Kappa community you have Hello I'm not going to talk too much about our community because I think most of you are probably familiar with it already But to shout out first of all to Mikkel for bringing this lineup here. This is I'm not going to swear, but it's amazing So thank you for that and also to one of our co-organizers for sponsoring tonight So dreams give it up for did the at the very back. Thank you so much did that Hey, I'm I'm Ellie. I'm the food the food cafe Stockholm community manager and Food cafe is sort of it's a concept. It's a company that tries to make it easier for small user groups to meet up regularly, so we really value the sharing of knowledge particularly within the tech industry and We find that in user groups too often all of the responsibility is left up to one leader to try and find a venue and a sponsor and food and drinks And so we kind of handle that for them for free. So we give the venue and pizza and beer And we connect them to a larger tech network And we hope that by doing that these user groups are going to meet up more regularly they're going to learn more from each other and Eventually they're going to create more cool cool stuff together So we do that for free for them and then we connect with long-term partners of food cafe The kind of sponsors that don't just like pounder geeks with the recruitment and advertising But they really do want to help fund the sharing of knowledge And they make what we do possible. So we run events here in Stockholm that go to Tia And we just want to support you guys because we think you're sharing knowledge, which is at the same values as us And so we're giving out free drinks if you haven't already got one Come find us later. We have plenty of spare cards but yeah, we think what you're doing is epic, so keep doing it and Yeah, thank you very much for coming here So this is about sharing. It's about meeting and then it's about community So with that we want to turn the attention to the stage and our Participants up here So I just want to mention that we have a hashtag agile people if you want to tweet or interact somehow especially if you on the livestream So My guests I would like you to make a short introduction or yourselves. Let's start with you Susan. Yeah You don't want to start. I don't mind starting. My name is Susan Basterfield. I am from Inspiral in Outerro, New Zealand, and it's a privilege to be in Stockholm once again Amongst friends and I feel it's such a privilege to see so many faces that I Recognize and to be on the stage with noble minds who are also friends and people I love and that's a real privilege and Tonight's going to be fun. I think that we're going to dive into some deep stuff But we'll keep it light at the same time. I'm just honored to be here. Maybe we can start with James Okay, well my name's James Priest. I've had the pleasure and privilege of Speaking at agile people conference yesterday on the topic of organizational agility at scale And also the future of work and organizations So I spend most of my time right now sharing about a topic. I'm very passionate about It's a kind of practical guide for practices that organizations can use and it's called sociopathy 3.0 I shall refer to it as S3 throughout this evening is less syllables and more simple But beneath that I'm just immensely Why I'm here is that I'm immensely passionate about this topic not so much of organizations per se But around the potentiality of us as human beings to have meaningful healthy collaborative Relationships I anticipate our potential is extraordinary and I suspect what we have achieved for now is just a small portion of what's Possible Yeah, so I'm here in service of that this evening and over the last days and I imagine probably for the foreseeable future to come My name is Doug Kirk Patrick. I Have been privileged to spend the last 28 29 years working in and with completely self-managed enterprise with no human bosses the only boss being the mission statement of the enterprise and Today I work with a new focus strategic group and I spend about half my time traveling all over evangelizing about the future of work speaking and writing And I spend the rest of my time working with companies and leaders To help them smash hierarchies and create self-managed Ecosystems that allow people to thrive and do their best work Everyone my name is Vanita Roy When you meet me you can call me Bonnie. I come from Northwest Connecticut. I live on a horse farm I have a Non-profit 501c3 educational institution institution which focuses on adult learning and Over the years, I've realized that people like yourself have so much capacity We have so much untapped capacity and there's like a gap between Where we are and really we're so close to the future. We want to see we can almost taste it Right, so when you're with people you can get this sense it like yeah, yeah, you're exchanging can you can almost taste it? So I want to close that gap. I think we have Window of opportunity. It's really opening up now and so My business organization is an initiative of my educational institution and that business organization is called app associates Where I talk about some of this stuff in a business context and I'm very very happy to be here Take the mic maybe Okay, hello everyone my name is Joshua vile and I'm an entrepreneur and educator and a programmer passionate technologist and for the last seven or eight years. I've been helping grow a entrepreneurial network called Inspiral mostly based in Altea Row in New Zealand, but people all around the world and A long-time fan of the thinking of all the people on this stage And it's just an absolute delight and joy to be able to dive into ideas that I'm so excited about And I'd say that for me I'm very excited by how we work and how we do things but also passionate about what we work on because I didn't think doing the Wrong thing really well is worth than doing nothing at all. So I'm very passionate about how can we do the right thing really? Well when it comes to working together Thanks everybody just a few technical notes. There is a board here to the Right of me to the left of you for questions that might pop up for you during during the evening You'll also notice that there are a couple of spare chairs on the stage that we expect to be Filled by several of you during the course of the night. So steal yourself up and prepare for that I'm going to do something a little bit risky maybe for a live stream straight off and just Invite everybody in the room here and also those that are watching via the live stream to just take a moment and Reflect and and write down if you if you can the answer to this question And that's what's living in you right now? What's most alive in you right now? I'm not going to ask you to share it, but it'd be lovely if you could reflect on that For one minute. I'm going to keep my promise to the audience that I'm not going to ask you to share But I certainly am going to ask these noble minds to share What's alive for you? What's living in you right now? So it was a really wonderful invitation and So something came up for me that that I hadn't actually thought in this this way before so I pay attention and that is I'm feeling a sense of Service being of service being in service, but in a different way. What came up was this sense of like I Don't it's not up to me to decide how I'm in service is Up to me to participate with like James and Doug and you and how have you all Shape the service that I'm providing So it was a kind of an interesting Re-enactment of that notion for me that I think is shaped by our What we've experienced in the way we've shared over the last couple of days Okay, I think I can follow from that so one thing that's come up for me in Kind of preparation for this evening is this term noble minds and As I was coming here tonight racing from one thing to another I thought oh wow, but I I want to be a humble mind You know, I really want to I the I don't know if you have this experience, but the older I get the less I realize I know I guess that's learning something new I know much less now than I knew 20 years ago for sure So this is one thing that was around for me and and I kind of peace with that. I think humility was a Journey I had to go on and I suspect that we need to discover arrogance before we can truly embrace humility actually So that topics around and the other thing that was around is a very practical need I have and I'm going to take care of it right now because I rushed in and I didn't have a chance to get water And I was sitting with this sense of thirst and I thought wow this physical need I have for water right now is so strong that I can barely focus on anything else And why am I not getting up to get water? And I thought well because the rules are we're on stick I don't want to walk in front of these people Yeah, because the rules are that we're live streaming and I should sit here like a noble mind in my Leather armchair You know and and do what's expected of me. I thought but I can't do what's expected of me I'm going to die of thirst in a minute. So could you excuse me a moment? And and the other thing that came once I acknowledged that I thought well, that's very interesting, you know in the context of Work and and being with people it's like how important our basic needs are as human beings And when they're not taken care of how distracting that is and how it impedes capacity to do what's expected Yeah, so it's a kind of paradox because I'm doing what's expected and not taking care of basic needs And then I can't do what's expected So this was very interesting for me for a moment and the one other thing that came having acknowledged it Like all Experiences when they're acknowledged, you know, they kind of move on and something else happens was very much connected to what you said this sense of openness and and like not knowing What this is about not knowing? What I'm here for other than just to acknowledge this space and being surrendered to whatever emerges So this was my experience in those moments. So I think I'm about the need of All of us as human beings to manage the important polarities in our lives And I think one of the most important ones is the objective Versus the subjective So the objective is the domain of facts and data and equations and Knowledge and the subjective is the domain of intuition and emotion and understanding and depth and it's our job to manage the Transcendence between the two domains and the way we do that is through our bodies And we have to be able to translate the objective into the subjective and back out into the world And it's really the job of each and every one of us as human beings and they're they're completely separate It's why we don't talk about poetic engineering or or scientific love. They're just two different things And we have to be able to manage between them Back to this one the green lights on and everything all right I think so what's alive for me? It changes with it with something that everyone says and I was initially thinking about You know that the lovely saying of like if you always do what you've always done You'll always get what you've always got that kind of vibe of what needs to change in our systems in terms of our Global way of being in terms of our legal structures in terms of our company policies What needs to change in all of our systems that are external to us and external to me for Us to have different experiences and different outcomes because I think many people would like to have different experiences and different outcomes so I started to think about that and One of the things that I love when James was speaking was that just the there would have been a time when Like an event called noble minds and being called a no one important stage would have made me feel deeply uncomfortable and I think there's lots of times where this my experience of the world is very it's just so self-focused It's just so me. This is how I feel and how I think and then it's the Build the invitation to transcend that and it just doesn't matter and it's just this whole sense of thinking about Outside world thinking about that and losing the sense of self in it is I think something that's very much alive for me the idea of how can we Be individuals and be active and be in service and participate But how can we lose our sense of self in that and how can we actually explore what selfless Feels like as a as a verb rather than as an aspiration That's something that's that sparking up from this conversation for me. Yeah, so that really inspires me in a big way. Thank you Yeah, so as humans we have a certain way that we organize our perceptions of the world and we make mental models and one of the things we do is we de-animate the objective world and This is I Think something that is Going to change and it's on the horizon. So what do I mean about that? We we ran into this problem in terms of ecological management Right, so how can I manage the ecology and you see it's a systems type of thinking where I've Deanimated the system or the ecology that I'm in you see this problem in management science all the time that managers think They can stand outside of their team and manage it. So within the team They are living active actors, but I treat them as a system. I de-animate them so One of the things that's very profound practice is to see that that is merely a choice your mind and your mental models making So when you said you get up to drink the water the water was actually water is very animating so I saw this this Planet Earth video once and it talked about when the water comes into the serengeti The mass migrations of all the herds and the language was the herds were moving to the water But what I saw was the water had the power to animate all these animals to it Right and so coffee Coffee moves millions of people especially in Switzerland every morning And you start to see that the world that this is actually just a mental model What we consider to be subject what we consider to be actor and what we we de-animate And I think this is some I think what you're touching on that there's a way in which we get re-enchanted with the world when we stretch and choose and open ourselves to a different Expression of different participation One of the microphones is going I want to celebrate the use of the word re-enchantment and I think so much when I think about the future of work and what excites me is people being re-enchanted and passionate like you were when you were child about going to work and about doing things with other people and that that opportunity to be re-enchanted in groups and To that that's just deeply exciting for me. I Think that that makes me think about What what do we think is? preventing us from fully showing up fully showing up in our lives and and fully showing up in work to be open and receptive and having the posture of a child that's you know, I don't know On the on their first Christmas morning. I think it has something to do with biology Ian Robertson wrote a book the wintery fact how power affects the brain and so We learned that when people exercise command authority in the workplace or elsewhere They get a shot at dopamine in the brain people become literally addicted to power. So That's why we have democratic institutions in the world It's a pattern of checks and balances so we can try to arrest some of these negative tendencies that that hold us back as As human agents and human actors in the workplace and elsewhere. So I think that has something to do I'd like to jump in on that as well just to take another angle So I spent ten years working with The term that's given officially is at-risk young people so children and young people and there was two kind of broad Categories of kids that I work with there were the kids who were super vulnerable like that their life choice or their kind of Defense mechanism was to remain vulnerable because in many of those cases They they had experienced abuses of power and for them to remain meek and small Was to reduce the potential to suffer in the way that they had before So these were the kids that were school phobic. I said they were the smart kids I mean, I think everyone should be a bit school phobic, you know, I really have concerns about the Institutionalization of human beings in certain aspects of socialization, but that's probably a topic We can come back to later But the other side was the kids who had taken the opposite choice, you know, and that was basically to disown Vulnerability, you know, they had suffered so much in their lives You know, there's this story of the bully that becomes the bullied Yeah, they suffered so much in their lives that they made a decision to not be vulnerable again And what they did if you look at vulnerability as something to be owned or something to be pushed away They put that vulnerability onto others by bullying those others by putting those others down But basically making everybody else carry that vulnerability for them So there was kind of a like sacred contract between the vulnerable kids and the the kids who identify with power so ten years was really like a Thoroughly insightful Journey for me to understand something about power and vulnerability No, this is a polarity that's relevant for every one of us because we're all born vulnerable And we will all die for sure and we are vulnerable to death at any moment And all of our strategies are basically in the endeavor to sustain our existence for as long and as well as possible Sorry to put it so bluntly, but I mean that's the bottom line This is the nature of our predicament and what I observed working with these kids was the kids who identified with Vulnerability they could really see the value in Having more power. They just had a very good reason not to own it Yeah, I see it would be good for me to step up James I see it would be good for me to speak up, but I just I'm really really scared to do it But the kids who disowned vulnerability Yeah, for them to understand that the the value of being open to be impacted again That was a whole nother story, you know Because for them for them to even like consider that possibility was to open themselves up to that risk of harm It was that was the trajectory that would take them back into their trauma and back into their wound You see and so we have a very interesting social system, you know, because like especially in the corporate The corporate sector. I mean that some say the corporate entity is like a psychopathic entity You know, it's got all the rights of a human being and it doesn't care. It doesn't give a shit I mean to put it bluntly. Yeah, and these kids on the surface at least they didn't care deep down They cared a lot. Yeah, but on the surface they didn't care either and you know in the extremes We see people who completely disassociate from vulnerability from empathy, you know So this is like at the extreme periphery of this kind of circumstance and they grow up To enter into the world and the ones that are able to kind of tick the boxes in the academic Journey and kind of make their way to the top. Well, they they naturally filter up and up through the system so we end up with a kind of The cream of the of the top the people who cared least, you know So they were able to make those hard decisions In order for that organization that that careless entity to sustain itself and to thrive and it feeds on Anyone who has more vulnerability than it, you know, these kids fed on anybody who was more Vulnerable than them and they just stayed away from anything that looked bigger than them So there's this very natural kind of distillation and hierarchy and and I think it's really important for us Before we get into kind of labelling Whether these things are good or bad Is to understand some of the the deeper Stories that we can all connect to here and though the relationship of power to vulnerability We talk about empowerment one final point here. What's your definition of empowerment? You know People talk about empowering people. You can't empower people No, what you can do is you can support people to have an experience of an environment where they feel safe enough to dare to use their power in service of vulnerability in creative ways for me This is empowerment power in service of vulnerability and if I think about human collaboration in essence all Human collaboration is in service of human needs But a lot of organizations today They're in services of a few human beings needs and screw everybody else and I wonder in the future Is it possible that we can shift that center of balance to a far greater number of organizations? That are really focused to the essence of why they exist and that is to create value for us You know, it's like us creating value for ourselves us nourishing our own capacity to thrive To co-create and to grow I think bouncing off that for me that a lot of what attracted me to the world of self-management in the beginning was I'd had Experiences of having power over other people in the employment sort of place and the responsibility of having power over other people And it kind of sucks like that's it's it's it didn't feel good And it was a hard way to work and the whole idea of having power with people is a completely different game And it's amazing experience to have power to change your world and to have colleagues who have the power to change their worlds and To negotiate consent and how we act together and how we work together is so very different from the burden of Responsibility when my power affects other people and they don't have a voice in that or their power affects me And I don't have a voice in that and that that possibility Attracted me very much to this world and it's why I continue to pursue it so much Yeah, so I had one response and now it's shifted and moved on so I just go to what's coming up for me now and that is Yeah, so I think one of the reasons why we don't we as this community itself talking about people like ourselves now Don't show up is because there's a part of us that knows we're complicit We're complicit with conventional hierarchy. We're convict complicit with status quo Sonomic policy and consumerism. So this is something that if we're really honest with ourselves is true and The philosopher Roy Bashkar Who died recently once said he said the The modern society is build on On the back of slaves And when I first heard that I thought of oh, that's not much different than the pyramids You know I used to when I was a kid I was like why did all those people you know hundreds and thousands of them like carry rocks Like wouldn't it be just easier to like bludgeon the guys to death? You know, I just like couldn't understand why this whole effort and energy went to the privilege of the few and when Roy Bashkar said that I thought about the pyramids and then the next thing I thought of was yeah all those blue collar workers all those slaves And then I was on the airplane coming back from the symposium where he had said that and then it hit me Those aren't the slaves The well-paid managers and the educators and the people that buy in and and I just Realized that that we were all complicit. We were slaves So you see how that that that that movement went from me from you know projecting in the past to oh, yeah I can see these poor laborers. They're obviously slaves. They don't get paid a lot. They do a lot of the work But what he was saying is that we Capitalism in our world is built on really the backs of this Class of people because we are really quite the productive information class now and I was like oh my god Now I understood why those real slaves in in Egypt walked every day to produce the pyramids so I think what prevents us from Showing up is we have to figure out this This game we're playing with ourselves in terms of knowing that we're complicit and only then Only till we reconcile then we won't be you know right now Most people have one foot in one place and one foot in another so that that's that's what comes up for me Just a riff on the empowerment question. I Would Actually argue that employee empowerment is an oxymoron When you think about empowerment programs that have been around for the last quarter century They all talk about people with power Lending their power to subordinates who have less power And the problem with that scenario is that what you alone can be repossessed at any time So employees really don't have power It can be inked away You either have it or you don't and that's a big part of why I'm a believer in self-managed Organizations at their core Where people have all the power they need from the first day they start work to acquire resources Build relationships and to do their best work in collaboration with others I knew I got it wrong. He said it was built on the create creativity of the slaves That's that was why it was so the creativity of the slaves that were continuously creative in the way we adapt to these things So thank you because I just realized that What he said which is got more juice. I was impressed with how you were extracting that distant memory from your noble mind I do that and you'll be waiting half an hour because it's like chasing a slippery ball up a pole up a tube So what I want to I want to pause it. It's a theory. Yeah, I don't know if this is actually true But I from my point of view, I suspect that it is so I'll put it out there and see what you think but I Worked a lot in the past. I trained as an integrative counselor and I worked around this theme of psychology of selves And it basically was built around the notion that the psyche is multiple I don't know if you've ever noticed like if you're with with your beloved It's like you behave in a very different way to when you go for the job interview Well, I mean depends on the job interview, right? But but generally speaking, it's like a different part of you shows up in in one context or another context. Have you noticed that? Yeah, okay. I mean right now I'm inviting your mind No, I'm inviting you to reflect but earlier we invited like just to be aware what's alive in you And maybe something else happens and you'll go out and have coffee later And maybe you put on your face to meet somebody and yeah, so we're kind of constantly shifting energy and if we come back to like one fundamental polarity the one I mentioned around power and vulnerability I And this idea of Complicity with the status quo It's like if I look internally at my own psyche what something I discovered I did a lot of therapy and personal work and I Became aware of the fact that I was dominated in my system by a very narrow set of beliefs And it was a very strong hierarchy and there were very good reasons for those rules because they were based on my past Experiences and what got me kind of acceptance what generated value for me in my life And and what was kind of shocking for me as I became an adult was to realize that There were people in the world who are completely different to my familiar context like family culture and so on and I and I Rapidly began to discover that my habitual patterns and strategies won't really working anymore And and and so I would try and find people who were like me You know and I could feel safe with and then I'd fall in love with somebody who was completely opposite and For a while it'd be beautiful and then I'd find myself looking in the mirror of something that I felt so uncomfortable around and The work I did was basically to kind of reintegrate these different aspects of myself and and to do it The pre-requisite was I made vulnerability conscious You know that I went behind these strategies to find out what am I afraid of what is it that I'm fearful of? That like keeps me identified with these certain behaviors and prevents me from being able to access other aspects of myself opposite aspects of myself that bring value to and When I came across sociocracy this was back in 2000 and I was quite deep into this work and I and I looked at sociocracy and I realized well. It's inviting people through Intention to create a space where diversity of voices could be hurt You know like this tension of opposites could be externalized in the space And and before we come down one way or the other in a kind of binary dual way of dealing with the world It's like instead to hold that tension and what happens is something emerges It's like a creative space in which something emerges where choice becomes realization instead of something that we make or do It's kind of like a transition from a try binary consciousness or dual consciousness to Triune consciousness, and this got me thinking about power because I was looking at organizations I thought wow a lot of organizations. They're just like my my Intra psychic universe has been you know, it's like this dominant rule system that commands everything If if I remain identified with that will probably lead to my early demise or kind of lots of miserable Circumstances, and I thought it's exactly the same thing. It's fratful It's externalized and I zoomed out more and I looked at the world at large and I thought my goodness It's the same thing. We're living in this dualistic construct And there's this kind of dominant system like power concentrated to a few ideas and a few kind of constraints and And over time itself perpetuates and builds and everything else gets kind of pushed down And there's lots of reasons will not to be like this and not to be like that because it's just so vulnerable. It's just so frightening and I Saw Occupy I saw people angry. I saw people polarized, you know, and we talk about the naught point Not one percent and and people are so angry about it. And I and I realized oh, we're just energizing that because Basically saying you're more powerful than me and whether I kind of comply with you or I rage against you It's the same thing. I still project power onto you somehow. Is this making sense to you? It's like we project power onto something and in doing so we give it power So I thought what what should we do instead and then I looked at what I'd done instead What what I did instead was through a very challenging and Painful and kind of spiral journey of discovery and resistance and denial and discovery and resistance and denial and you know It's like it's a very painful thing sometimes to grow, you know because we have to be vulnerable somehow and and I realized that we are complicit in the maintenance of this system and we're not going to change it through banging against it You can't change it by going against it because it just energizes it more. So what is it? We need to do Well, what is it you need to do? What is it? I need to do? What is it? We need to do is like take the power back But not take it back to use it to bash the other people over the head with because then we just become the part of the Same problem, you know, but I mean take the power back consciously in service of vulnerability for ourselves So that we can live a life with greater integrity with greater self-compassion and greater compassion for others And in doing that one person at a time you can't do it on mass, you know It's a personal choice and it's a personal journey But in one person at a time doing this it's kind of like the matrix, you know It's like just pulling the plug out and saying I'm not gonna feed that system anymore And for every person that does it that system is a little less powerful And the system seeks to keep people plugged in and it gives many reasons many incentives You know, and if you're not gonna bite the hook and swallow the incentives and it gives you many threats instead It's a self-perpetuating system, but it's just a reflection It's just a reflection of our own inner psyche. It's the external the internal state manifest on the external So for me when I think how can I change the world and what is it that needs to happen? I know what I can do for me more now, but when I look at all of you I think wow, I really hope that you realize this too, you know, because I can't do it on my own This is something we need to do together and it takes many of us and this system as it is today would cease to be in this moment if The majority of people made a different choice. There is No group of people no military force on the planet Earth today That is as powerful as the majority of people on planet Earth who in some way right now project their power out onto some external Entity because if everybody today said no more now we do it differently. It would change in an instant me I think just bouncing off the changing minds and the Doing it one person at a time. It's like an individual can make changes in that school But I think when you get small groups of people like any kind of company You can create an ecosystem where we can all change our minds in a group together and changing the whole world system That's you know big ask but changing a single company and let's say let's just do stuff differently Let's just have a different social contract with each other is entirely possible And I've seen so many groups of people which just try and opt in and create a different kind of world together in One go and that's that's not hard. That's not scary and there's actually lots of upsides for doing it And I think that it's those organizations and those people sharing their stories with each other Which is why it feels like there's so many people who are stepping into this world of self-management because it's not a new world Companies have been doing this for decades and years and there's lots of examples in history You can draw from but what I'm seeing now is that more and more people are actually drawing on those examples and sharing their learnings With each other and it feels like there are these energies and these ideas just cropping up which it feels like there's a Renaissance of sort of self-management and of Decentralized organizing and that sort of work makes me feel like maybe we're getting maybe sort of getting to figuring out what the answer to what Ezra Pan was pondering on last century when he talked about Wondering why we are so good at organizing to face threat, but we're not particularly good at organizing for emergent potential We think about maybe what that could look like in an organization I think it has a lot to do with language To achieve a desired Superior future state from where we are today is Going to take a shift in our consciousness and in our language as a job of all of us as leaders and colleagues to Use words that you know, we may be hard-pressed to define on the spot You know mindfulness consciousness transcendence Polarity all these terms Are going to be crucial and I think it's the job of us to use these kinds of words to and Oscillate back and forth between the current state and the desired future state through the use of transcendent language In order to help people find meaning and purpose Because that's the only way I think we're going to be able to find the power to get us from from point A to point B Yeah, so what I'm thinking of is something that I learned that may be helpful and that is So previously I talked about this gap it seems so close you can almost taste it, but I think as Exemplars or trainers or teachers we tend to discount the little micro steps that people make and we We we want the whole the whole thing to close at once and so What I've learned to do I said this organization is called all blur insight center and what what we do there is It's a kind of facilitation and some of you that were in the workshop This afternoon noticed that someone will say something and it sounds cool But you when if you listen correctly actually has a really cool insight and I will say this is a really big insight Because the person themselves Don't know that they've had a really big insight right and you can see them using just the way they use Language in a different way or they've switched the polarity or something and and in group processes will come out naturally But we need to pay attention and Immediately reflect back. This is a big insight and people will go on and they say no no no this is a big insight and so we can help people because These emerging ways of being are not happening because we talk about it We talk about it because we actually see it happening and so our The transition is to be able to see as it emerge and reflect back But this is a big step and you see it happen naturally and self-organized itself in this team This group went farther than I would have expected or sometimes Teams don't struggle so hard, but they don't know and they don't know that they've broken through a certain thing So I think if we can continue to reflect those Those steps are you know the gap it will be built on on that. So I think that's part of it One of the things that bounces for me when I hear that quote about being motivated by fear or hope it's one of my friends and colleagues runs one of the Action station in New Zealand and they're they're like a vase or change to org like big citizen mobilization to change policy and company behavior and They send out an email of like something bad is going to happen and try and stop it all these people respond They try and send out an email of let's try and make something new and good that we haven't seen before much less people respond and That's that's okay. That's how humans work One of the things I think that is really important when we're building systems for humans is to acknowledge our innate Biological biases and how we work like if you have power over other people you will get a hit of dopamine You'll get addicted to that. That's just the way things are if I feel Fearful if I feel existential threat I'll be very motivated to remove that threat and that motivation will be higher than if I see something I want and I want to chase that that's how humans work. That's okay, and Instead of saying I wish the world was different it's about acknowledging what things are just how they are and what are we going to do with that information and You know because I might be more motivated if I'm fearful, but I'll also take fewer risks I'll fall back on things which I'm more likely to that I think will work and I'll behave in a more constrained way and That doesn't give you a great outcome when you're trying to invent a new future So if you're trying to invent a new future from fear, it will be less creative less innovative and less likely to happen But trying to create a new future from hope trying to create a new future from love from aspiration much more creative much more Expansive and that's how humans work. So learning how we work individually and how we work in collectives I think is one of the ways to actually cause a change we want to see in the world Yeah, I think we have to hack our dopamine system. I think it's possible I think the whole system is constrained both by evolution and Conditions, but I think it's hackable. I think I think it's plastic and so you have people doing neuro hacker neuro hacking and Doing a lot of these trying to create feedback loops because I think our dopamine systems are basically kind of screwed up Yeah And you could actually realize this in meditation at first. It's very hard You have to work against your dopamine system But then there's a phase switch where the things that are actually good for you give you hits a dopamine And then you start building these virtual biological cycles so I don't want to get too hung up on the Deeply wired biology certainly of a of our brain is very but I think this dopamine system is much more Susceptible to retraining Yeah, so so well what I was reflecting on as you shared this is the idea It's like I get a dopamine hit now for hacking my dopamine system Yeah, so I still get I still get the hit, but it's a conscious hit now instead of an unconscious one, right? I'm gonna try this It's quite amazing What we're learning about human biology If you get a chance, I recommend Paul Zaks the little moral molecule and the importance of oxytocin in the body and and the benefits of a hug With another human being last a good solid 20 minutes. So encourage everyone to hug someone I'd like to shift text just slightly here and I'd love for the noble minds to answer a question that sits with me Constantly is the organization actually think a thing or is it merely a construct of our mind? There we go and in in that context or not is it possible for an organization to transform or The organizations that we're imagining for the future do they can they only be Manifest as emergent entities so I'd say that an organization is a thing as much as our laws are a thing So if you think about the imaginings of humankind many monies just imagined like it really just there's nothing real in money Physically, there's no molecules which make money happen. There's no laws of gravity or physics which make money a thing It's just we all imagine it together quite strongly and that if you just start to say Money's not a thing in a mad and you don't buy into that imagination life becomes a lot more difficult for you And but you know even more than money legal structures are more of an mad They're still just imagine there's nothing in physical reality about laws But if you just stop paying your taxes or if you start killing people then things will happen to you because of other humans Belief in those things and so while it's not a thing it still makes sense to reason about it as a thing sometimes and I think that the idea of organizations is that yes, there's there's nothing there as an organization, but The imaginings are weaker than money and laws, but and so you can reimagine them more easily. There are a bit more plastic they're less brittle and That but for the people inside of them as they imagine them longer and longer they become habitual so I think of organizations more as collective habits just like money is a collective habit and that you can Reset those habits together, but it takes a lot of consciousness and effort because if you ever tried to change in the habit You're addicted to it's not easy It's not trivial and you can learn about habits and do it more easier or do it easier Then that's great And but if you have a group of people who understand habits and habitual thinking you can make organizations much more agile And you can say oh the thing we're imagining together. Let's change it quickly and easily with a lot of skill and craft. I Don't think organizations are real. They're just concepts Teams are just concepts companies are just concepts Human beings are real human beings are the ultimate reality Only human beings can act only human beings can think only human beings can make decisions So I'm not sure what The concept of organizations are is going to look like a hundred years from now who knows When you look at the Technologies that are converging right now Between blockchain and nanotechnology and virtual reality and artificial intelligence and genetic engineering and all the rest Who knows I mean we may not have organizations a hundred years from now We may all just be transacting with each other and in some kind of a blockchain block chainification of employment who knows so I Think we need to embrace the unpredictability of the future and Adapt to it as it goes forward just like human beings have throughout history What about my second question can do you believe that organizations in Conceptual organizations as they exist today can transform into Something that is fully Potentiated or do they need to start from scratch? I think the concept can improve certainly Because as it is constructed today, it doesn't fully validate Human beings or or their voices and so that's why I embrace And encourage self-management because it's all about protecting the voices of individual human beings in the environment so if organizations as concepts can evolve to respect the individual then I think we're in a better place I'm still thinking about this I Agree with the idea of organizations as a construct But why I'm a little bit derailed from the topic. I was coming back to something you said Bonnie I think in your presentation yesterday or maybe on the panel It was something around Like reframing how we see work and asking the question instead what works? And for me that they're really stayed with me I intend to quote Bonnie on this for the rest of my life because I think it's a really valuable So attribution attribution I'm going to attribute Bonnie for the rest of my life for this this phrase because I think it really gets to the I'm going to come back to the question, but I when I ask what works And I'm honest about that and when we have a conversation about it together what works and Probably helpful to be clear why we're doing something so that we know if it's working or not Yeah, we've got something to compare it to Then then we naturally start to evolve whatever we do. Yeah, because the whole thing becomes kind of improvement orientated so I see that fundamental for transformation of organizations today is Like or a prerequisites to be asking this question and not only to be able to ask the question But to have the the capacity and the resources to be able to act So I think anyone in an organization can look and ask the question what works and they're going to get a lot of immediate Feedback just from looking around at what's working and what isn't So the the habitual strategies aside and the the reasons why people stay entrenched in their roles and hold on to power or project power and so on aside, but Certainly this prerequisite of openness to improve on the basis of our kind of empirical Inquiry, you know in terms of what's actually working was not we got just a caveat here empirical I mean like it's empirical to recognize people saying hey, this really hurts and I don't like it You know like we can we can include that in the realm of what's empirical kind of feedback So I was in the workshop today and The privilege hanging out with 40 people for the day and in the morning we came together and I said why are you here? Like write down for yourself to key issues You're facing in organizations today that you would like to leave here with some insight around how to change Yeah, because it's not working or you see an opportunity and you don't know how to leverage it And you know these people there was 40 of us We spent about 17 minutes in total that's nine and three-quarter hours of human time, right? in Identifying the top two priorities grouping them together like each person Plustering them and then prioritizing a backlog of topics for us to address in the workshop And instead of just jumping in and going through the whole Time frame from beginning to end after the first five minutes we stopped and said what works What's going well? What do you appreciate? And the next question was and how could you improve? So people shared in the first pause a couple of appreciations a couple of improvement suggestions Okay, how much more time do you need? They said I don't know maybe three minutes four minutes five minutes So we took another three minutes. I think the second time we stopped again. What works? What goes well? What could you do to improve now? There were many appreciations and there were many improvement suggestions and we went through four iterations 17 minutes in total and at the end a new group of 40 people Had identified and prioritized a list of topics to address in that day And what was so interesting like the kind of they categorize the topics and I can't remember them all right now But there were things like collaboration trust communication values and so We were able to look at like learning outcomes in relation to these topics after 17 minutes of this experience And they realized well, we've built some trust. We've improved our communication We've evolved some basic collaboration skills together You know, we've kind of lived and expressed certain values It was such an amazing transformation of this group and the the key piece was just stopping to reflect And asking what works and what doesn't and if it's not working as the way We would wish then how can we improve it and having that inquiry together tapping collective intelligence It was a really awesome experience. And so I I'm not so much in the business of imagining the future organization I've got no idea as you were saying and who knows if we even have this But I can imagine human beings for the rest of the existence of humanity Asking the question what works and what doesn't and if it's not good enough like this, what can we do to change it? So I Don't know if an organization is a thing or not. I've written quite a lot about it But I think what's the purpose of the question and I and so something I know for sure is That if you think an organization is a thing Then your life is going to be one way at work and if you Think your organization is just patterns of human relating then you're going to have different choices and different ways of being at work and So I think we have the choice to use our minds to think of organizations in one way or another and I think that makes that's the difference that makes the difference and I just going to give you an example that's kind of Tangential, but hopefully it'll make meaning for you. So I listened to this story on NPR about a man who was involved in gangs in LA He grew up, you know, his brothers were already gang members. His cousins were gang members He married someone who was the sister of gang members and this was multi-generational so for him the gang was a thing a real thing and It's upheld by shared stories reproduced over time and it was an extraordinary episode because What happened to this man is he started to realize that it was not a thing and The first phase is But if I just left then my brother will kill, you know, there were so so many if then Reasons that went on his head. So that's the systemic thinker, you know But then if this then that and all these things are coupled and that kept him in for another couple of years Because he was afraid if he left then his wife would be punished and all this thing and then one day he just walked away just walked away and He was now reflecting about what a difference that made in this philosophy Jean gebser says That most of what we think is real are self-made cages So I don't know if an organization is a thing or not But I know it makes a big difference if you choose To make it a thing Or you choose to see the dynamic interactions between people as they arise moment-to-moment. I think it makes a big difference and You have the choice You get to choose body Incredibly great points there Your friend Peter Kesson Bob me is 90 years old now And he wrote an amazing book called freedom and accountability at work And he said everything everything starts with free will So the kinds of organizations we choose to associate with Depends on our free will the kinds of organizations we choose to create depends on our free will Everything starts there I had a friend who had a friend in a large tech company in Silicon Valley He said well my friend is just trapped in this horrible rotten job he can't leave because He's got to stay another year to vest in his pension benefits And I said no, no, he doesn't it's completely his choice Victor Frankel taught us, you know, even a prisoner being led to the gallows has a choice and how he reacts To the gallows so everything really is a choice everything is free will and Our exercise of free will will determine How fast we close the gap and reach our destination? Mm-hmm So with that invocation of free will I'm just curious if there's anybody sitting in our beautiful audience that is Holding a question that you'd like to offer to the noble minds and better yet Anybody from our lovely audience would like to come and join us on stage Come on up. There's two empty chairs. So there's room for two. Here's Kale Welcome Kale It should be on keep talking Does this Would you like to introduce yourself please and offer offer your question to the right Right, I'm Kale. I'm one of the co-organisers co-organisers of under nearing leaders Stockholm And basically my first question is how do you smash hierarchies in a hostile environment? That's not quite a hostile thing to do. I mean, I think that we are it was your phrase Doug wasn't it? Yeah Yeah Because I think like Traditional hierarchies a lot of the things that we're talking about right now in some cases It's been started from scratch like in in your case in your case It comes with the culture self-management But in like I would say 90% of the audience is in a different situation Where a traditional hierarchy is it's a fact of life and much of what we do to change those hierarchies is basically guerrilla movement So and you know sometimes you take over Cuba and sometimes you end up like chair in Bolivia kind of So so that's my question like how how do we transcend those limitations of trash traditional hierarchies? when we're limited by Basically the people in power being able to take that initiative away from us or at least You know have a very serious effect on our personal lives in terms of salaries and stuff that we like to get at the end of the month usually Okay, you probably won the much Right so So Peter Kassem bomb wrote an extremely influential article in 1991 fast company magazine. Do you have the will to lead? Actually Polly LaBarre and Jerry Hamels Associate wrote the article interviewing Peter and you know he explained that it requires a declaration of intent on the part of the person in power that I Want to make this change and I see this desired future state this destination. That's where I want to go I have the power to acquire the resources to dedicate to this journey and So that's what we're going to do and without that if you're just trying to make a change without the Imprimotor of the person who has the power to quash any change it will not succeed Yeah, I would thoroughly agree with this and then it's very valuable in those instances to ask the question How we want to spend our short precious lifetime in those kinds of circumstances and I want to come back to like the metaphor of the Intra psychic world. So when I was working with clients around this work of Basically like building relationship positive relationship with the hierarchy the internal power structure You couldn't go around it. You couldn't go under it as a kid story No can't go around it can't go over it can't go under it You just got to go through it and what that meant was that there was a need to build relationship directly with that center of power And in in the majority of cases I think these people in positions of power genuinely do believe that them doing what they're doing is what's best for the system and Unless they see a reason or some Example of something different Yeah, and or they have a very strong need for something different and it exceeds their capacity to facilitate the change They want to see then they're gonna just dig in and stay there Yeah, and at the same time so it brings up the question. Why you know, why are you holding a position of power? Why am I holding a position of power because if we can go in with that inquiry and Have that conversation and build rapport like genuine rapport not like Covertly all that's got to get you out of here. I want to smash you or you know smash this hierarchy But genuinely inquiry. Hey, what are you taking care of you know and what do you do well here? What's the value that you being in this position brings in our current paradigm, you know And what do you love to do and then getting into this inquiry? Okay? What's more difficult for you and what do you you're struggling with you know Then and you kind of find the cracks in the in the hierarchy where it's not working where it's because of course hierarchy You can't handle complexity with hierarchy not in an effective way No, you can just command and control and over time lose effectiveness So I think that this is this is one thing that I realized and it was exactly the same working with clients You know, it's like we used to have conversations with people's inner selves It was really awesome, and you'd meet a protector and they'd be like this, you know The good the client would come in and say hey, how you doing and see like I See you're pretty defensive, you know and the person would move over and like this is this was the game The kind of game we played it's called voice dialogue. It's very cool stuff I'll be like wow. I see you looking at me. Yeah, I'm looking at you Why are you looking at me? Well, because he's come in to do this therapy crap, and I'm really concerned, you know What are you concerned about? Well, I'm concerned he's gonna go digging around in stuff. He shouldn't be digging around him There's stuff he shouldn't be digging around it. Yeah, damn right. He doesn't know how to handle it. Okay Could you tell me a bit more about that? I'm not sure yet. I'm just gonna check you out for a minute It's fine. Take your time. I see that you're taking care of him. Yeah, that's right. I'm taking care of him Take your time. It's really not I honestly I feel really privileged to be here with you I'm it's I get a sense. It's an honor for you to show up with me You're right, you know, normally I'm in the background, but I'm taking care of things. I'm not gonna let anything slip I'm watching the whole thing. I've got it all Down yeah, and if he goes off rail anywhere, I'm there. I got it all covered Wow, that's amazing. How long you've been doing that for I've been doing it for almost a moment. He was born You get the picture Yeah, like there's a very good reason why that part is active in the system and is dominating the psyche And there's a very good reason often why this person in a position of power is dominating the structure and and that's There's very often a long game needed, you know and the long game and goes involves going via the why and involves building Genuine congruent relationship with these characters within the organizational system, you know and over time Having that conversation around where the areas of need are yeah, because this is the surest way I think that you will on board somebody into this. So I think There there there are Very very effective tactical maneuvers and I'll give you two I Charge you for the third one Sorry So okay, so and you know it's a discipline It's a practice is the self-practice is a discipline And so one is and we had a conversation about some of this I think I'm talking to a little more specific So one is you have to be very very careful to avoid the dominant discourse In other words, they actually don't have power The hierarchical leadership has inherent contradictory Contradictions that will destroy itself So this is something you have to know for sure and you have to understand that there's a lot of leverage points When you enter the dominant discourse that they have power over me They are limiting me you are actually helping them build that out of this so the first thing we do in my Foundation's workshop shop plug plug is we look at the dominant discourse. So I sat for example with the head of the Nature Conservancy and the first thing he said to me is oh, did you hear I got a promotion? I'm now in charge of nine thousand people and I said wow I can't even get my Chihuahua was to stop pissing on the floor That's amazing Right, but we just if you really look at it That is what I call an ear realist position. No one is in charge of nine thousand people So the first discipline is you try to change yours train yourself to not buy into the dominant discourse And so this is a practice. This is something we're teaching and there's there easy examples like that And once you get going, it's a very powerful tactic. So that's that's a kind of an external thing the second thing is that You need to This is the harder one. This is more of an internal one and that is You need to be able to Understand where your actions are Inside, okay, so I'll give you an example because I don't want to make it too conceptual because I lose people but so my theory on I used to tell my friends who that phase where all your friends are getting married and You'd see a lot of your Women friends that would get married and all of a sudden they had no more power and what they turn into is not Sheepish sheepish victims they turn into naggers So when you see someone who nags, it's because they are people who bought into the fact that the other person has more power That's what a nagger is and they don't they don't see that they're actually in the structure right so these two things three things under if you if you do the work to understand the inherent contradictions Those people are running scared that's helpful Work on using Language outside of the dominant discourse we call it a realist not an irrealist position and There's ways to to do that and the third thing is really chat that you're not your actions aren't being shaped By the assumption that this structure is in place and those are really those are three things It's not easy, but they're very practical and they're very powerful tactical tools So at least at least we're eating the eating the organism from you know We're the worm that eats from this way because the the edifice of power is also toppling down from other other types of pressures, but I think there's a lot of tactical tactical things you can do in The spirit of two things I would say that There's this most of us have a view of how humans work, which is I believe something so I do X So I have a belief or a drive or a need for something that causes me to do something else Inactuality what we do is I do something and I make up reasons to make that seem logical and sane And so that if you go to someone and say hey self-management and they're a manager They're just gonna hear threats. They're just gonna hear you have no value. You have nothing to add We're gonna do this without you. It's not a very productive start of a conversation Whereas if you go to them and say hey, let's get agreement before we do something or let's try this practice And you start to talk about behaviors and they go that sounds like a great behavior Let's do that together and if you do enough of them over time. They'll start to have a different beliefs And so I think the biggest thing I would say is if you are trying to change an existing Habitual structure don't talk about beliefs or ideologies talk about specific practices and why they're good and Layer them up upon each other and over time. I think it's possible. You can transform an organization. This is hypothetical I haven't done that. I've just started things for you. So my second piece of advice is Quit just just don't don't work there work somewhere else choose to take yourself and your energies into a situation Where you have more control? I like the idea of getting someone at the very top with all the power to say This is how we want it to be that then you have a lot more mandate But fighting against the system is hard. I think it's possible and I salute anyone who is attempting to do that If you find out ways to do it share it widely because that by far is the most common question I hear in this work is it's really good for you who are creating new worlds. That's great But inside this organization. I want to change it. I want it to look more like this and it's really tough I think that you know, I'm in the privileged position of Spending my making earning my livelihood by helping leaders with this question and I know Doug does the same thing and a debaunt Bonnie does the same thing James does the same thing There's not very many of us in the world doing this work right now, and there's not very many leaders that We've we either we've identified or have Who have made that inquiry public that are ready and willing to do that? So you talk about point zero zero zero zero zero one percent But I am confident that there are other leaders out there that are just Waiting to be heard and waiting to be loved into their potential in In this new in this new possibility So yeah, thanks Kelly So maybe when you're done asking your question and your questions answered you could go and take your seat Yeah, sorry and leave it open for somebody else Yeah, no, I think I just want to do it like an actuality check here as well because I mean I've heard many stories recently I mean one's closely associated to you You know where people I see people who are really passionate and invest a lot of energy and they get some kind of permission within the system Like this there's this term trim tab. I think it's really appropriate because we're on a boat You know, you've got the main rudder that steers the boat and then you got this trim tab for delicate maneuvering Right and most big boats have them and this term trim tab is a name a lot of people gave one instead of being a consultant or a Coach or a changemaker, you know, it's like I'm a trim tab and that the metaphor fits because it's like there's this frigging great boat You know, and you're trying to turn it very gentle like very gently but determinately and you put in years of energy And then somebody comes along who's got their hand on the big wheel and they just do that And the whole thing goes completely not just bat the other way But even past it in another direction and that's just heartbreaking and I think I Think it's probably inevitable in many cases, you know, and this brings me back to this question It's like what makes your heart sing? I'm frequently saying thank you so much Anyone who feels that their heart is singing bangin against closed doors for years and years, you know Making small changes that spread in some way and maybe In time lead to some kind of lasting change on a bigger scale, you know But if you're not blissed out doing that kind of thing, you know That's not rocking your boat to stay with the metaphor then you might want to think about doing something different Yeah, and I believe that both are important But I just want to challenge I think a certain attitude because because I have this attitude You can be immensely curious about, you know, something that seems impossible It actually seems impossible. You're never gonna smash the hierarchy. It doesn't really work And so for me that makes it more interesting to me and I'm not talking about bouncing my head because I don't experience it like that I experience it like what is it about this and where can we get in there and what are people about it, you know So if you have that kind of attitude then you may or may not fail But it's not gonna cost you like psychologically and and so I just want to also add that in the space because there is a way to be really interested in this persistent structure of human condition Without having it cost you whether you actually Win or not because it's a very interesting question Can I add something to this? I actually don't have questions much rather than comments to this Maybe I'll start with the presentation because I'm afraid it may take a bit of time, but it's My name is Ashot. I'm working in a company which tries to make cities more livable In that way it's an interesting description of what we do, but we make possible for people to park It's an easy description of a service we provide, but it's much more it to it that it is on the surface I've been listening to the talk With wide ears and even taking notes because there is there were a lot of interesting topics brought up during the conversation at some point actually within the last five minutes I found that there is somewhat of a Difference in how we talk about people who are in power When you mention managers you mention leaders and to me that sounds a slightly a different thing although both are present in our world or a Vastly different thing because managers sometimes are put on us by the organization by the structure and to which that Actually is your block. So you have to jump over a wall, which is your manager Sometimes it's also very interesting that I've came from a different environment to Sweden So I'm not originated from Sweden, but I've been in a very patriarchy Hierarchic environment while in Sweden Many companies are actually quite flat and That springs a big difference as to where you're jumping because I don't have to jump towards a specific Floor or a person the only limit I have is my fear of Losing something if I have something to lose shame if I have something to be shame for or buy somebody or my limits my personal limits and That makes a slight difference a big difference in some people's lives That's why sometimes I wonder is that the reason why the Nordics are sometimes called the happiest countries and With that there were some talks also about Values and I found it interesting that you brought up several of those we follow in the company and I'm not Propagating especially I'm not the name in the company per se because that's irrelevant here And I'm not bringing food for thought, but we found that there is an interesting Increase in happiness of the employees when we follow trust collaboration courage to change we also have this value which is really interesting is prestigious and Well, the manager uses prestige. This is like I'm your boss. I'm managing 9,000 people me as a As a person who would have that responsibility. I would have I had the instant Reaction that I I have to care for them. It's like I am responsible for them versus I am in charge of them indeed I don't like to give orders versus I would like to be a part of the team and I think that the difference between managers and leaders is that manager leaders actually chosen by the people So you can't go around and say I am the leader. No one would listen to you It's your values create that other people trust and trust you with Their opinions their beliefs and then you work with them not on top of them not Even for them you're a part of the team and when you were saying is that I Let's let's work together on this instead of let's do this There was also an interesting talk. I got or thought I got offer partly scampful meeting I was at the event. I like to join very various events and then at some point understood. Oh, it's another one of those Let's get quick rich quick schemes But I suddenly understood one couple of points were really interesting as that a person would not do much if they say I want to be rich Everyone wants to be rich. They just I just want to be rich, but there is a difference when people say I had enough of being poor It's the same goal the person is going to change something in their life But once the person changes that I had enough of this structure I had enough of this in my life Maybe I can change something and it can work from bottom. I think it can work from top as well within our organization if you call it We have a top-down approach and a bottom up as well But it does have to come from the top the question is can we as people as 9,000 people select Be able to change it in a way with a multitude being the majority the top that will be actually leaders Not our managers that we want to be Possibly slaves to them versus that we will be with them and we go for a common goal And if there is no ceiling above us, maybe we can work to stuff We can only are limited by basically I thought our imagination So somehow during the conversation all these topics are actually I'm not sure if I actually missed anything intertwined in this as Maybe it's how we see the organizations and structures as do we see them as managers Do we see the leaders among us and can we? Follow those actual people instead of following whatever is imposed on us with the society Maybe that's food for thought or a Conclusion I had but I really wanted to share it and see maybe that something someone can take it with them and change The way they perceive Thank you. Thanks. Yeah. Yeah, I feel like part of that for me is really just just riffing on I Think what James is saying about and from Bonnie, you know what what works and and the incumbency that we have to notice leaders in our midst Acknowledge them amplify them Give them our support give them our love and I think that's one of the ways that we can manifest that in I'm curious about this topic. We talk a lot In S3 around bottom archae. I don't think I don't know if it's a word you can check it out and see you know But like we talk about hierarchy, but what about bottom archae because if I if I kind of separate the cultural projection onto management From the function, you know, it's basically coordinating stuff and making decisions Yeah, and we're learning these days that we can shift decision-making to the group, you know, and that makes sense It's like bring together relevant stakeholders to tap collective intelligence So you open up the kind of silo thinking and you can really diverge, you know and Draw in as much value as possible and then converge somewhere in some kind of experiment and learn as you go So it's kind of applying agile mindset to how we do governance as well as how we do work So if we if we can shift decision-making to the people like the people Impacted by decisions being the ones to make and evolve those decisions Then what we're left with is this business of coordination and we see an agile as well It's like people can coordinate quite high level of complexity without any leaders. Yeah, we can visualize work We can prioritize work We can have boards of boards and you know, so there's a lot of techniques that we can use to get around that as well and But that but one of the things I see that's really essential for people to be effective at doing this Isn't to have no leaders But it's more about every person in the organization Recognizing themselves as a leader within their domain of accountability No domain of autonomy to respond Yeah, so I think I see this potential like we talk about decentralizing power decentralizing organizations that this idea that we're decentralizing leadership and So if I if I kind of bring that around to our current paradigm and I see well There's a lot of people in leadership positions then the idea of the facilitative leader I think is quite an exciting one You know, I would definitely be wanting to enable the facilitative leader to be there at the top of the system You know because their focus isn't on leading their focus is on Facilitating the realization and the skill sets of everybody in the organization So can I push this a little further? Is this interesting enough? So the notion of individual leader is part of the dominant discourse. There is no such thing No one in the world stands up and makes people do things There is no such thing as the individual leaders are 360s pretend There's a such a thing that the leader so so Ralph Stacey Has a lot of really good Writing on this the leader has a mental model that we adopt that I can say something And you receive it like a bit of information and it's an algorithm that you then do But in fact, it's much more complex than that. It's much. It's it's non-linear and That every every time I say something to a group of people if I'm a leader Then that gets interpreted in many ways and then it gets Restated and then people do things and then the outcome is actually something Different than that. We don't even notice because we The dominant discourse is there something as an individual leader and it doesn't exist because a leader is only It is in a complex relationship of human relating where people Give their trust or buy into alignment. There's some other thing happening And so even this is how insidious is there is that's that's a mental construct That is not real There is like people who think the the queen aunt is the leader, but when you really look at it You have to project that into it, right? And so if you can you so There's men so and I don't want to go on but this is exactly what what we do with the this this constant discipline about the dominant discourse So that that doesn't exist you have to make a mental model that there's some Individual leader and you're de-animated Relationship to that so I saw you wanted to jump in Josh about I just had one question Bonnie just a clarification if we look at What I'm saying in another way in terms of this idea of everybody Realizing themselves as a leader so I mean to lead themselves It's like to use their initiative and to act Without the necessity to fall back on someone else's kind of guidance that unless it is expedient to do so Is there another is there another word that you would give to what we're referring to as leader in this way Well, how would you describe it? Yeah, so I was just I was just making a forceful statement because we're supposed to talk in headlines I just realized Somebody sent it out to us in the emails I'm a rule follower. So I was just trying to follow the rules here. Yeah, unlike these people I'm a rule follower. So Yeah, so that that that looking at the concept of leadership as coming from the dominant discourse then creates Conversations that are generative that that we would then follow up on it's just the start But that's one very that's a big one to examine. Yeah, and then you ask well, what is the leader? My perspective would Be do what works like it's I think in some ecosystems and some communities talking about leadership will be really productive and The idea of everyone should lead some of the time and no one should lead all of the time That could be a really healthy conversation which prompts, you know, things moving in the way you want in other communities It might not be healthy It might be a big debate about what do you mean by leadership at all and it might just be counterproductive And I think that doing what works and using the language that works to create the change that you want would be the name of the game Just to rip on everything that's been said here I think that leadership can be so non-linear and so non concocted that it's actually invisible Even though you can feel it sense it as palpable Dr. Laurie Kane as a poet and a writer and a PhD and organizational development and she was on a hot team at Microsoft and they had carte blanche to go through the company and Drop into business units and and do work and make change And she said that on her team on any given day They felt leadership But they didn't know who the leader was on exactly It was completely invisible, but it was always present And to the question management the reason I've clubbed self-management is because it just merely recognizes the truth There were all managers in our lives already So if we know what to do at work and how to do it We don't need bosses to tell us Thanks, Cali. Thanks Ashok. We live room for two more people here. Thank you. Thank you There's a mic here They're going in a different direction Here comes one welcome Hey, you didn't Burn out punks it says on this t-shirt. So do you like to introduce yourself and offer your? Definitely this thing is on Maybe yeah, I'm CJ and I don't know nobody colleague of this guy And I'm very much into technology I read Kevin Kelly's what technology wants and the Regarding their development of the Technium and such And I see us talking a lot about people and organizations Where I am right now I Feel Huge demand for well what happens to be my particular skill, which is kind of nice for me not so nice for everyone that that try to attract that demand and Sorry fill that the need and I feel what technology is doing is Escalating the requirements of Competence and skill and increasing complexity I'm gonna read Bonnie's articles on on complexity with much pleasure. I'm sure but Using these Potentiating methods of organizations Are we gonna be able to do it fast enough or is the complexity of technology gonna topple over us What's your perspective? Should I comment on it would I so yeah, there's there's quite a lot of everything about this so Yeah, so Sorry tell a little story and that is it Way back when there was a big prize for Someone to figure out how to predict what how how the star how the planets Moved relative to relative to each other throughout the year in the sky and it was actually a very complex equation that tola me Won the price for right is very complex And he had that because the stars would move this way and then they would move in the night sky sometimes that way And he got it down so it could accurately predict the locations of all the planets in the night sky At every time of the year so that's a very complex equation he solved right so the more people started learning about Astronomy and stuff it created more of this complexity and then we all know the rest of the story Copernicus comes along he says why don't we just change the way we frame the problem? And now all of a sudden The equation is less complex, but it still has more explanatory power so it didn't reduce The situation it released the complexity so I say to managers So I say well, what is your company do these like zappos? They don't sell shoes. They don't make shoes I mean, what do they do? They you know that they they just process information I said so why is your company so complex and I'll tell them this story and I said well so did the Planets all of a sudden race around and rearrange themselves so they went around the Sun And so so the first question of complexity is you have to ask yourself is the complexity in The world or is it in your way? You're relating to the world. This is a very crucial question of our time in the second piece I've written a lot more but headline piece is in in what is I see happening is the technology is fantastic our dopamine systems are addicted to it and There's a sense in which we're trying to frame our problems by chasing the kind of technology We're chasing the kind of complexity that machines are good at handling so Infinite feedback loops and cybernetic systems But we're not designing for the kinds of things that people are good at doing so we have this false sense that we depend on Machines to solve complexity problems because we're actually Chasing the technological imperative and so that's another big reframe And so you know hopefully more of this is sussed out in my articles But it's a really another one of these things that you need to get on the other side of the question to truly do radical Transformation you can't buy into these kind of things that seem to be one case and maybe they're actually another case But it's a very very good question My view is that Technology gets baked in with the values of the society of the people that create it and that if you look at You know issues of our times and so on if you look at like gender equality in the workforce or if you look at global poverty and Distribution of resources on a global scale. They're not problems of technology and that we we actually have the technology We have the money we have everything we need to fix those problems Physically in terms of that kind of thing and that what we really need is people to behave differently for those problems to resolve So looking for the speed of technology to change things or yes It will change things but it will have the values baked into it unless we really look at humans Society and our relationships with each other So I think that it's very much a case of a yes and when it comes to technology and the future of work Yeah, so here's one of these prizes that someone should put out create technology that would reduce the complexity of people's lives That is a radically generative challenge That is what you should be working on. Please. I don't know how to do it But that's the shift that we need in a collective imagination What is technology for to radically release the complexity of our modern lives? Open up space so we can decide who do we want to be as a people? Don't chase the technology. Don't chase the machine. You're not going to win Yeah, I think technology will adapt we always have 400s and thousands of years But chasing technology for the sake of technologies a non-starter. There's no fundamental demand for technology There's no fundamental demand for computers Every business in the world In history and in the future is is organized to serve one of eight human needs There's food clothing shelter communication transportation Personal security entertainment and health care. That's it every business is organized to fulfill one of those human needs And so to the degree technology helps us do that better There will be increasing technology a great case study as the higher group based in Shandau China and They are all over the internet of things and so they're the world's largest appliance maker. They have 70,000 Employees they broke them up into almost 4,000 self-managed work teams and Every one of these teams is a mini innovation platform And they can go out and develop brand new products and services And if they can sell them to willing buyers and create a product or service They get to keep a big chunk of the profits they keep enough profits, and they're successful enough They can spin that company off into its own company with outside investors. It's an incredible Example of self-management adapting to the latest technology, and I'm aware I'm just going to repeat myself again But there's somebody who came very late to technology yesterday someone asked a question in one of the speakers who resisted Smartphones and I was one of four people who put my hand up mainly because it just freaked me out It was just seemed too complicated for me, and it didn't bring value to my life. So I really as Me personally I've gone to technology when it's brought value to my life And until then I've resisted it just because everybody else is doing it So I don't watch TV and I hardly watch any movies and I had a brick for years and you know That was my personal choice And I don't know why I kind of got indoctrinated into that worldview, but it's It was very much like need first and then response to that and I think for me This are then repeating again this question what works It's like if technology is of benefit to what we want to achieve to make our life simpler I think there's another way of saying what you're saying Bonnie then Then great let's use it for that and if it's superfluous to the requirement You know then let it be because there's plenty of other things to be doing and and why I think This conversation tonight has been dominated more by the human element is because I think that's where the deficit is right now I mean technology kind of evolves by itself. Yeah, it's like it's got its own kind of trajectory and movement I don't know so much about that. I can't speak in what I would consider to be an informed way about it But I just see it just keeps going somehow and and it's very distracting It's very easy to get caught up and it get addicted to those dopamine hits But where we're not looking a lot of the time is hey, what's happening here right now? What's important for us as human beings here right now look at the world right now? I mean, there's a shitload of things that we need to be addressing, you know And there's a there's a kind of sense of for me at least of some kind of urgency, you know and a consequence of Inactivity in the immediate future and so technology that can serve with that great But whereas the growth curve the growth curve is in how we relate with ourselves in more honest ways And how we relate with one another in more honest ways and how we learn to get over the hurdle of just basic decision-making So that we can build more healthy relationships build trust build communication and collaboration and deal with some of these issues that we're facing today Matias yeah, I'm gonna build a little bit on what CJ just brought up in terms of Big themes of change. I guess if you will we've had no as he mentioned technology and innovation kind of Editing exceeding rate spreading across the world But we also have two other polarities of I believe big themes of change and One of them is that the world is becoming more and more distributed and We see these in I believe in many different ways for example We have the internet obviously But where you can find your own subculture anywhere. So It's not just local geographically. It's local psychologically and socially we also see Movement towards decentralization. We in Europe. We have the Brexit. We also have the Catalan You know in Spain now trying to get some independence and we have some tension sometimes in the national structures and Another evidence of that is maybe, you know giving away the power kind of also reducing in terms of People are in most democracies voting less and less the participation in democratic elections and on a declining trend Maybe because people don't believe that giving up their power is giving them the outcomes They want and thus we have brexit and things the other big global trend that's also, you know counter to the decentralization of governance and Influence is globalization Which is also very evident, right? We have global challenges that we brought up here So they move towards reducing the distance psychologically socially in terms of communication It's a very evidently that that is actually happening. So these to me are two Felt big themes of change, but they seem to be at the opposite spectra So my question is What do you believe is also out there in terms of change? But also what is this going to mean for the future of organizations as we know them? What's going to have to change as these themes of change? develop in the future Yeah, so we have two things of change globalization and decentralization. That's felt in different ways What is going when what it's what is that going to mean for organizations in the future? I think that One of the most interesting way when we talk about technology. We often look at what does the technology do? Self-driving cars, what will that do car? You know and so on and What can I use those things to do and whatnot? But I think the a really interesting lens is how will that change me and how will that change us? The you know when we got the technology of writing it changed the way people remembered things and we stopped remembering things in The same way when we got the technology of cell phones who remembers phone numbers anymore And you know it changed us a little bit if cars drive us around What will that change in our sense of navigation in our sense of place in the world? So asking the question of technology of how will that change us at an individual level and a collective level? I think is one way of saying because the way we are shaped is how we're going to shape the organizations that we're part of and I think that There's so many different potentials there But one of them with the globalization is that if you look at economies such as a tourist economy where you go when you have a Transaction with one person and you never see that person again as opposed to you have a village economy We have a transaction with one person and you have the same one again the next day in the next day in the next day Different strategies become optimal. It's much more likely to be ripped off in a once-off economy Then it is to be ripped off in a repeat economy And so I think that the potential for technology to bring all of us together Where it's really easy for you to look at every past Transaction this person has done with other people starts to means it will change the way change our strategy So it's not a good strategy to rip people off because it's really easy for other people to find that out and the potential for Technology and bringing us closer to build a more honest society a more ethical society We're behaving in the right way is actually the smartest strategy Really enticing potentials and that reinforcing those technical trends are quite helpful likewise I'd also add that the technology of seeing the effects that I can't normally see Seeing that the way I live my life has effects on people on other side of the world and they might look really different for me and have very different Situations, but I can feel empathy for their situation and draw a link between the things that I purchased or the way that I live Affecting an island sinking in the Pacific or people losing their homes or mass migration Might make it more likely for me to change my behavior make different choices So though in the ways technology can make us more ethical and the way to do the ways that technology can make us more Have more empathy for people I think they're deeply promising trends that give me hope and the final one would be having access to the world's information Really easily means that we can get better at things quite quickly And it's just that that is actually a miraculous thing that we're building that can be a great tool So often there's and there is as many dystopic stories of a future technology in the impact We'll have on us as there are hopeful ones and the one that I would come back to that main offering is what works What serves us which stories will give us the world that we want and which stories won't I think the topic of Individualism and collectivism Coming at the end of our conversation It's like there's so many tangents that I can see we could go off on and and to summarize it I think what we need to do is Create a very Conscious and intentional balance between the two, you know So globalization that leads us to collectivism and the elimination of human freedom Is a horrible trajectory to go on and we've seen many examples of that historically in the world before and at the same Time radical individualism at some point will justify emergence of the same and it's how do we have we come back to Organizations on the local level. How do we grow organizations where individuals have a sense of autonomy of meaning of fulfillment? Where where we as individuals can thrive and grow and express our potential and our bliss and do that in a way That's constructive and benefit to others and at the same time when that activity Impacts on another in a way that causes some kind of harm, you know Or limitation of their capacity to do the same that we have the conversation at that interface And and and I don't think that's an easy thing to do And I don't think it's something that we can kind of attain and then sustain without ongoing maintenance over generations You know and it will be in some context easier for people and in some cultural circumstances easier for people than others But it's a global question. It's something that we need to all be considering, you know because the consequences of Polarizing into one direction or the other historically and I imagine for all time will always be quite horrid And we we have never been at a point before where we can understand the implications of that in such a profound and global way and Perhaps not at the point before where we have the capacity to address that in a global way And I think that whatever we discover and learn together and ultimately choose on that topic will determine our future in terms of freedom or On the other side, whatever you can imagine the other side of freedom to me Rod Collins wrote the book wiki management. He's a futurist Getting ready to write another book about the technology of the future and he actually believes that Decentralization technology like blockchain has the potential to reduce evil in the world Because it will be increasingly difficult to engage with the world Globally or locally unless you become a person of high trust and high reputation So in nineteen I think eighty nine the architect Christopher Alexander who invented the notion of pattern language Spoke at Uppsala, which I think is here in Stockholm, and it was early on close Well, it's close somewhere way not to people in Stockholm Well, is it in Stockholm? It's in Sweden. Just a little bit. Yeah, close close what knows a guy anyways, it's kind of interesting that it comes full circle because it was early in the software revolution and He and it's very humble way said that you know I didn't know a lot about software But that he had the impression that there was a choice that the people that the coders the digital the digerati were going to make a Very important choice for most of us and that is he saw that and this is where I'm actually hopeful about technology because he saw that By default this kind of technology Creates can create global control Right, so who owns the platform and stuff like that but he also saw that within us with a certain view it could create the conditions for Networked local control and so he talks he talks talks about So now so in my work we have this concept of federated autonomous zones so organizations to bring it back are actually semi-autonomous entities that can in the single-handedly Control these eight needs and then they network for more icing on the cake but that that So this creates a very anti fragile society and it forces people to have local commons But I don't think we can so I think technology has now given us the ability to do that And yet open up global access for information and all this other stuff So I see this is the best of both possible worlds to say what Access should be global in the free in the small enterprise of organizations should be local And I think technology gives us The potential to realize this for the for the first time so that's where I actually feel hopeful Thanks Thanks CJ. Thanks Matthias. We are coming to the end of our time this evening. It's gone really really fast Just I'd like to acknowledge the wonderful audience we've had this evening and I'd like to invite the noble minds to see if they can Check out with a reflection on how it's felt to be a noble mind how it feels to be a noble mind and What you would like our delightful audience in person and on the live stream to leave with this evening Whoever's feeling moved to speak first, please. I'll go first because I went last so I I don't know I'm more confused than ever and But it's been a love lovely evening, so I guess that's what it feels to be a noble mind confused integrated with Lovely lovely evening lovely experience, so thank you all for participating and very much appreciate it I want to thank my friend Susan Basterfield for her excellent facilitation tonight And thank all of you for hanging with us for two full hours. It seems like it went really fast and I guess just my final thought is We don't know what the future holds Let's embrace the unknowingness of it embrace the anxiety and enjoy the ride as best we can Okay, well, I'm glad that I inserted my humble mind when I was coming tonight And I I feel it's such a relief to surrender into not knowing and to surrender to that open space and I've learned a lot Tonight sharing with you and also hearing you folks that came up and inputted into here as well And I don't know if confusion is what's around for me. It's like it's more just a sense of Okay, well, this is how it is For now and I'm I'm perpetually hopeful You know, I even if we face our like most horrific demise, I'm still perpetually hopeful Maybe it's that thing of how you know, it's a choice how we go to the gallows. Yeah, but I imagine Yeah, but I imagine that's spoken from a perpetually hopeful person. Yeah, exactly Okay, but I imagine I imagine this the whatever happens next Beyond the kind of epic tragedy of Comet's hitting earth or something whatever happens next will be the consequence of our shared actions and inactions Yeah, I am absolutely sure this will be so and so I feel at peace with that And I'm at peace knowing that in each day I can just wake up and do my best to be the change I want to see and and it's such a privilege to be with all of you And and I suspect where we just open this conversation up We would discover we are in a room full of noble and humble minds So thank you so much for bringing your energy and resonance into this space What's coming up for me is the idea that I think most of us are conditioned to spend a lot of energy trying to be right or accurate or correct and that I think it's much the the idea of here, you know, what's true and seeking for truth But I think it's just better to be more useful and that instead of focusing on is this the right way or is this You know how the world works. It's just like is this a useful position? Is this a useful belief? Is this a useful habit and that looking for that, you know What works for you and what works in the context and what works for other people and copying that and sharing that for me That just feels like an inherently Better way of being so I appreciate that context of the conversation and yeah I'm at respect utmost respect for the thinking that folks have had and it's probably to spend time with you So one more word to the audience. I'd like to invite you to Reflect back on your reflection from the beginning of the session. What's most alive for you? What's enlivening you and invite you to take that into the foyer and maybe have that conversation With somebody you don't know or somebody that you do know over a drink I'd like to acknowledge Matthias and Mikhail for having this dream and just what a delight. It's been to Be with you tonight. Thanks very much And thank and thank you Susan and everybody else who's enjoyed Themselves, I hope With us here tonight and with that the first ever noble minds about the future work is concluded so what is going to happen now is there's time for a little bit of a mingle up in the bar and Yeah, what's going to happen there Mikhail? Yeah, we have more free rings So Say hello to me or Ellie over there. Yeah, you saw her before and I do We're trying to implement open tours participatory Organization within for cafe It's not that easy So if anyone would like to help me how to do budgeting without budget Come to me and try to help me out here because Ellie would like to have a budget in star com and I said no We just buy the shit you want You need so is that enough? I don't know and With that inquiry I invite you to the bar. Thank you very much for tonight