 There is a lot of focus and pressure lately to show the impact of design, how it's creating value and contributing to the goals of an organization. But could it be that we're overlooking an indicator of success, a key metric that not only pushes companies forward, but also challenges us to do meaningful work that stands the test of time? In this conversation, we're going to explore what that metric could be. Here's the guest for our conversation. Let the show begin. Hello, it's Alamo and this is edition 193 of the Service Design Show. Hello brave change agent. Welcome back to the Service Design Show, the show where we explore what's beneath the surface of service design, what are the hidden things that make the difference between success and failure, all to help you design great services that have a positive impact on people, business and our planet. And I'm your host, Mark Fontaine. Today, we are joined by Alan Moore, an author, speaker and the founder of the beautiful design project. There are many different ways companies measure success, though the most important one will often be profit. Yes, being in business means that you need to earn money, but earning more money just can't be the end goal. We're painfully seeing the consequences of acting this way. So what could be an alternative goal? Alan suggests that it might be beauty. Beauty and everything. Beauty as the ultimate metric. Now the reality is that you won't find beauty as a KPI in most businesses today, but this doesn't disregard its importance. So what if we wouldn't be designing to just earn more or to consume more? Instead, what if we would be designing and striving towards more beauty in our work and in our businesses? If this sounds like a naive romantic idea that's never going to fly with your organization or you're wondering how you're going to make the business case for it, I'd say grab your notebook because this is far from just wishful thinking. Over the years, Alan has collected dozens of inspiring examples of beautiful organizations and built an extensive toolkit that helps you to bring beauty into the design equation. So I invite you to join me at the campfire to learn from Alan about the people who are already doing it and the success that they are seeing, the ways to finance this approach towards a more beautiful business and how we can take the first step today to start this journey. I already hear the fire crackling, which means it's time to get comfortable and give our full attention to the stories Alan has to share with us. Welcome to the show, Alan. Thank you very much, Mark. It's a real pleasure to be here. I was recollecting the year in which we met. It must have been 2007, 2008? Yeah, 2007, I think it was. In the days when I still had a very different career than I do now, I think you had a different career back then as well. I did. I did. I think I was already in transition, perhaps, but from the world of marketing, advertising, although design had always been a part of my life, but of course what I was seeing was is the whole business ecosystem was going to be fundamentally changed by this little thing called the mobile. Back in 2007, I actually was in Helsinki in 1992 when I saw mobile to left me take off and that was when this realisation of the absolutely exponential impact that a technology can have on society and on the economies and the way that we run businesses and things. So I was absolutely seduced by the potential and I suppose in those days, perhaps like you were, I was a digital evangelist in believing that these wonderful devices would actually be a form of liberation from maybe the world that we were in. It didn't quite work out that way. We were romantics back then. We were romantics, absolutely. We were romantics. Well, I think we should never lose that sense of hope and optimism about the potential of what our world could be like is how I feel about it. Yeah, it was a fun ride back then. So you already gave sort of a short history of your career without getting into too much detail because that's what the rest of the conversation is for. Could you give us a glimpse of what you're doing today? So today I still describe myself as a designer, but that's a designer of many things. I'm an author, two books, which really are fundamental to the work that I'm currently doing now do design why beauty is key to everything and a book called Do Build, How to Make and Lead a Business of World Needs. I founded a thing called Beautiful Business and just recently co-founded the Beautiful Design Project, where we say that our mission is to design the designers for a more regenerative future. And that's what gets me out of bed on a Monday morning, Tuesday to Friday and sometimes over the weekend as well. Nice, great. And that's definitely something that will dive into much deeper later on. Before we do that, I'm always curious to know, was there a moment that you got in touch with service design? Do you recall the moment that you sort of heard about service design? I suppose it's always been on my periphery, as I said, you know, my I mean, when I think about it and it's partly to do with my age, but we were, I suppose, really pioneering in terms of how we thought design would work in a whole variety of different ways. And for me, you know, I felt I was always, you know, we were designing services. We were designing products. And so to me, it just seemed a natural state of how you you went about your your your business of design, I suppose. And but over the years, obviously, that became a specialism. And it was only really, I don't know, 10 years ago or something that I started to clock that this was sort of becoming a discipline. Or be it, you know, one that I just felt was something that I instinctively did now, whether that's right or wrong, I don't know. But so, yeah, yeah, I think so, something along those lines. Thank you. Thank you for sharing, Alan. Before we dive into the topic, we have a lightning round. I spiced up the questions a little bit, and it turns out that the lightning round is more difficult than it was, but I still want to challenge you. I have five sentences for you to finish. And basically the first thing that comes to your mind, we won't try to go much deeper into it. Are you ready for it? I'm ready to go. All right, please finish this sentence. The thing that always makes me smile is a beautiful experience. Next one. My greatest fear is that I won't achieve the goals that I've set myself. All right. The hardest lesson that I've learned so far is no matter the provocation, it's never wise to respond in anger. All right. If I could meet one historic figure, it would be. That's a tough one. Oh, wow. I'm going to have to pass on that, I think, because I just... Fair enough. I can't think who that person would be. If anyone comes up throughout the conversation, feel free to sort of break it. Let's do the final one. And that might, I'm expecting, be a very good segue into the rest of the conversation. Please finish this sentence. Our world needs more. Beauty. I sort of had a hunch that that would be your answer. Let's talk about beauty. The beautiful design project, beautiful business. You have a strong conviction that beauty has the power to change the world. Could you tell us a little bit more about that? Well, I think that the writing of due design was very interesting because actually the title was Why Beauty is Key to Everything. And I sat down and I wrote that book from the heart from what I knew to be true. But I really wrote it for myself as a form of homecoming. How do I come home? When at a period in my life, I felt very lost. And then what happened was, is my publisher called me up, Miranda, two weeks after the book came out and we're not a big, you know, they're not a big publishing company. And she said, you've given me a real problem. And I said, what's that? And she said, well, the book is sold out. And that wasn't part of the business model. And of course, it was it was very sweet, but then strange things started to happen. People sent me stuff. People sent me emails, messages just saying, you know, this book has really touched me and changed, you know, the way that I'm seeing the world. So that kind of gave me a really clear indication there was something very important going on here. So specifically to your point, beauty is foundational to all life. And the reason why I say that is because the laws of the universe are said to be beautiful. Einstein's theory of relativity, Paul Dirich's theory about how subatomic particles connect over, you know, time and space across vast distances and universes. And so the actual the physics of actually how our world, our cosmos, our natural world operates are all said to be beautiful. Ill reflection, I kind of felt that nature runs the longest R&D projects we've ever known, and she's created the conditions for all life to thrive without wasting a single atom. So I was thinking that if we really wanted to, you know, hang around for a bit longer, like all eternity as a species on this planet, then maybe we should learn from nature's playbook. And it's partly why I make the argument that beauty is the ultimate metric. Funnily enough, there was very famous Greek philosopher Platinas, who said beauty is the only thing we know by instinct. And if we go back actually to the laws of the universe, you know, we don't have an extra molecule in our body that makes us different to everything else. And so if if beauty and the idea of beauty being connected to regeneration, creating the conditions for all life to thrive, then we do know beauty by instinct. And there was a great American philosopher, Hordo Emerson, who said that beauty gets us out of surfaces and into the foundations of things. And so I think this is it. It's incredible restorative power. And of course, it's a word that we use all the time. On the other hand, it's not a word that we use in business. It's not a word that we use when we think we're being serious and sensible and all the rest of it. But what I have seen is that it is such an empowering and powerful philosophy. But it's actually also connected to the mechanics of actually how our world works. So for me, it's not an abstract idea. I think it comes from really understanding the interconnectivity of our of our world. It touches on also ethics. It touches on our societies. It touches on the cultural relationships that we have when we create the world. And so whichever way you look, I think that we are hitched to beauty and a whole variety of very exciting ways. That was a great intro. Now, what I was wondering and I would love for you to sort of take us back to the moment when your journey into beauty started and maybe it was from the day you were born. But I'm like, not everybody is so passionate about this topic as you are. So we're really curious, like what happened? And you mentioned homecoming. Can you share a story on that? I arrived at a moment in my life where I felt incredibly lost. I'd moved. I'd always say, I'd say I see myself as a designer. I see the world as a designer. I'd always say I see myself as a designer. I see the world as a design challenge. I see our creativity being really, you know, it needs to be used to redesign and recreate what we have. But I was very lost and, you know, I'd walked away from various professions or, you know, ways of working. Because I saw the devastating consequences of living and working within a neoliberal economy. So I asked myself, how do I come home to what is really true to me? So how do I find my authentic self, which maybe is a base from which I could work? And I sat with that question for a long time with great intention, but also with a great deal of patience. And I arrived at this profound experience. I'm seven years of age. I'm on a beach in Cornwall. It's a family holiday. And I see my mom, my father, my brother and my sister. And my mom was always a very anxious woman. And when she got anxious, it made me very anxious. You know, she still does that to me, you know, and she's 86. But she was on the beach and, you know, she was barefooted, laughing, playful, joyful. It kind of weirded me out a little bit. But it was intense on that reflection to see someone so transformed and beautiful and joyful, I suppose. And then I thought about my dad who, you know, worked his entire life with his hands. He was wartime, educated, dyslexic. But he was a man of huge emotional intelligence, an incredible, compassionate person. He was always there for us. There was no patriarchy in our house. I, you know, we say, you know, you could have put a risler paper between my mom and my dad. And so there was this incredible unit. And then I thought about my brother and my sister, who I always, you know, had great love and affection for. And then I saw myself. And I don't know if you kind of imagine it's like a drone shot. So there's this seven-year-old boy with long blonde platinum hair in red trunks bending down, playing with his toys on the beach. And then this drone is put in back. And then you see this entire family. And then you see this vast, beautiful beach. You see this beautiful sea, this beautiful sky. And what came to me as this incredible epiphany was, I was at one with those I love the most. I was at one with myself. And on my journey, I've not always been one with myself for a variety of different reasons. And I was at one with the natural world. And that incredible sense of this synergistic relationship between all of those things, me, the society, the community, the natural world, the only word that could describe that was beauty. And that to me was the homecoming. And that's when I thought, well, I'm going to write my way home from this. And I just got up every day and I just wrote what I believe to be true as a human being, as a leader, as a designer to think about big questions around time, our relationship to the natural world and try and condense that into something which anyone and everyone could understand. And so I made a decision and I'd written a book prior to do design called No Straight Lines, which at one point was 160,000 words. It had 150 footnotes and all the rest of it. I said, I'm going to do something really different. I believe in the power of storytelling and I believe in being really honest. And so I said there would not be a single negative idea in this book. And it's not that the book is happy-clappy, but it has to be, there has to be a grounding, a foundational grounding of potential in that book. I said that I would only use what we in English would call thruppity words. So rather than using long, clever words, you try and use the language as simply as you possibly can so that anyone could put that, pick that book up and understand exactly what it is that you were talking about. And the last one was is if it only took 50 words to say what I wanted to say, I would just try and make them the best 50 words I could write, no padding, strip it down to its utility, but like poetry to try and keep that essence within those words that somehow there was a vibrancy within them that would be empowering for other people to read. So the book's in its eighth reprint. It's translated into a number of languages around the world to somehow or other maybe being the messenger I was being successful with telling that story. Thank you for sharing and the power of storytelling absolutely comes through here. You mentioned the books and you took us back to the moment where you sort of had the epiphany that it's about beauty. If I recall correctly, the first book came out in 2016. That's right. Could you share with us a bit how your thinking has evolved over those last seven, probably eight, nine years around this topic? Absolutely. Well, I mean, at the end of due design, I wrote about businesses being beautiful. And use two examples of businesses in that and books. When you write a book, a book, a book, there's so much hard work that goes into it. But funny enough, actually, what you're really doing is just laying down the foundations for something that evolves and develops over over time. And I didn't do any research for the first book. I literally wrote, as I said, well, I believe to be true. Then because of the interest, I started on a much deeper inquiry. And what does it mean to be a beautiful business? How does that kind of work as a consequence of having that inquiry? And so I started to look at a whole range of businesses. And by business, let's just say it's the business of getting stuff done. So it could be a hospital. It could be a health care system. It could be agriculture, food systems. It could be manufacturing. It could be a government department. And so I wanted to show also that beauty can be applied in any way we as human beings come together and organize ourselves. So just some clarification on that. So I started to look at what does that mean? Do we need a new set of metrics? How do we move from an extractive economy to a regenerative economy? How do we count the right things as opposed to the wrong things? How do we use design in a completely different way, I suppose, and perhaps service design then sits very much within that way of thinking? And that led me on to writing to build. And over the last 10 years, I think that we've looked at some of the most pioneering companies and organizations on the planet. And rather than having a very sort of sliver and niche, we're only looking at tech or we're only looking at agriculture or whatever, I want to show people that there's a really different way and a different way of learning what all of these things mean. So we looked at organizational cultures. We looked at technologies. We looked at the philosophy around design and designing. And that research has got it into some really interesting places and spaces where we really developed or I developed, I think, a much deeper and broader understanding of how we could help people think about the kind of way of how beauty as a reset, as a lens, as a philosophy could then be put into application for actually making things work in a better type of way. And now you told me that you sort of stopped writing and started to teach this stuff, design the new generation of designers. Yeah, so we say we want to design the designers for a more regenerative future. And to give people, I mean, it's quite interesting when you, let's say when you leave an industry or a way of working, you get very locked into a language and a mindset and a way of working. And I think the part of why we talk about the reset is, is the liberation of people's minds and philosophies and possibilities and potential. And that has to be as much an individual journey as a collective journey. But because of my background in design and having, you know, being given an extraordinary, you know, life career in working in so many different ways, I'm very keen to enable people to move towards that idea of application and giving them a framework and a way of working, which is going to get them to think very differently and to act very differently in the sorts of things that they do. So we go reset doing and then regenerating is the kind of, you know, overarching kind of principles that we work on. Could we dive into these three steps, stages, and sort of get a hunch about what it is you would, I'm especially interested in the research aspect. What are the limiting beliefs, the, I don't know, experiences that we have gone through that we need to reset? I think the idea that there is a philosophy that could be more energizing and more optimistic. So, you know, over the period of time, you know, I've read so much and we have a way of delivering that knowledge and that information that is actually very challenging for people, but actually ultimately giving them comfort that is a completely different way of thinking about the world and how they can be agents of change with within it. So in a sense, that's the reset. A lot of people that come on the programs that we run, talk a lot about that first part of the program is very important to them. Can I ask you a follow-up question about this? You mentioned there is a different way to look at the world. What's the difference? Well, let's say that you might say the only way that we can be active is within a world, within the, you know, the idea of growth for growth's sake and extractive economy. We can only work this way. All the other stuff around contribution, for example, asking big questions about, you know, how do I contribute to the world? In a sense, it's a form of freeing the reconnection to the sort of spiritual aspects of who we are as people. So we live in a very dominant, a world which is dominated by the idea of rationalism. Everything is rational. And this thing about thinking, overdoing, or the fact that, you know, all of those aspects of what makes human beings amazing need to be kind of reappraised or brought back into who we are as people. So I'm quite comfortable about talking about that stuff. Reconnecting people to the natural world, reconnecting them to themselves. You know, this idea that there's a different design model that we can learn from. So, as you know, biomimetics, biomimicry, looking at the mechanics of nature, which then informs the way that we think about manufacturing, for example, or the business models that are kind of created. And, you know, not everything needs to scale to be successful. Whereas actually, if you go to MBA school or, you know, other, you know, business schools or whatever, you're still taught that fundamental principle about growth and scale and speed. And so we are also very keen to sort of take those sort of, you know, design principles of the cosmos, the natural world, the people which are pioneering in their own, you know, businesses and organizations and say, these philosophies, these tools, these ways of doing are actually ways in which you too can contribute to the world. I mean, one of the examples that I write about and do build is Climeworks, which is the company which is building these machines that can suck huge quantities of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. There's, you know, they're not saying ours is the only solution. We are a contributor to a way collectively of trying to address net zero climate change and all the rest of it. In fact, their purpose is actually very interesting with the story behind that. But the interesting thing is, is that, you know, they worked for it. They worked at a very, or studied at a very prestigious engineering school in Switzerland. And everyone said these machines could not be made. So you might as well give up. But they proved that actually these machines could be made. And they proved that actually with a lot of work, there could be an exponential growth in terms of the quantities of CO2 that could suck out the atmosphere. But then people said there's not a business model for carbon. You can't make money out of carbon or carbon capture. And it's really interesting in the way that they go about doing that. But their principle is, is actually they say that anyone and everyone can contribute to carbon capture. It's one of those things which is so overwhelming for people, you know, where do I start? So they run a service model now where it's not the machines that they're making their money from. They sell their services now to large organizations or even an individual. So you can spend five euros a month in the knowledge that you are taking physically X amount of carbon out of the atmosphere and putting it two and a half thousand meters into the ground where over a period of two years, that then becomes solid rock. Right. So, you know, for me, this is sort of that idea of really going for changes in the way or, for example, if you take agriculture, the model of the only way that we can farm is through, you know, killing the soil. We're actually not feeding them. You know, we're not feeding the soil. We're feeding the plants. The lack of biodiversity ultimately means actually the soil, the communities, the societies around them become depleted. And it's already proven, for example, that big agriculture really is failed as a model. And of course, they will look down at you and say, well, of course, you can't feed the world unless you run it on a regenerative model. And you go, no, that's your narrative. And you want to hold that narrative. And so in a sense, the reset is saying, we will give you some stuff that is going to push you, you know, intellectually, spiritually, whatever. But also we're going to show you how that powerfully connects to different models and the way that we can think about anything and everything that we need to flourish and thrive in this world. And that to me is where, you know, innovation becomes interesting. And to ask those questions, you know, we developed, I developed 13 design questions, which really push people and organizations to think very differently about the nature of what it is they do. I've got no problem with people making money. We've always done it. We've always traded with toolmakers. I don't want to tell people they have to stop doing things. I just want to show them that there is a far better way that you could be doing things. And we have enough examples through, you know, the research that we've done with these very different ways of looking at, yeah, you know, health care, governance, anything and everything that, you know, of what it means to run a modern economy. No one's perfect. There's not a kind of, you know, there's no get out of jail card in a sense. But we say that if you become a beautiful business designer, you're being given a different language, different capability, maybe a different community, where you can see so much more in terms of what it is that you can create and fight up fight against those dominant narratives. I mean, we only have to look around the world of us today. And, you know, there are certain people that really want to hold onto some very powerful narratives, which actually divisive rather than inclusive. Yeah, yeah. So, let's imagine that I follow along and this has opened up my opportunity space, my solution space, I have a different perspective on what success looks like how we quote unquote measure success. And now my hands are starting to itch. I want to put this into practice. What are some steps that you take people through and do stage. Well, we've got to we use the we use the 13 design questions as a means to really interrogate the kind of I suppose the the relevancy of what it is they want to create. And so the first question is does it matter. And, you know, a lot of people talk about purpose is a lot of books talk about purpose but I say, you know, there's a man in the Kremlin he's got a lot of purpose but I don't think you really need that because he's not really asking how he contributes to the world. And so even this is a very powerful framing question is, does it matter does it matter to the world does it matter to me. So it's really finding something like, like, with Jan Verzbacker, who was one of the co founders of Klein works, you know, or is really asking that question, does it matter. And so therefore, even though people say, well, your technology will never work, but they say but the mattering is so important that we have to find a solution to do that. Second question is, is it transformative and a light against these things we can give examples of people organizations whatever in all walks of life, which have really found answers to those questions. Is it regenerative. So having gone through the reset and understanding the critiquing of what regeneration means and you know I say that sustainability really is a limited language and it's a cul-de-sac. That's because it's all about stopping rather than looking at possibility and potential. And so now they have a very clear idea about ways in which, you know, organizations, industries, whatever have practiced regeneration, maybe being able to input ideas and practices that come from outside their industry sector, which actually are, you know, helping them think fundamentally differently. And so on and so forth. So we work then with a team and then there's a kind of a modeling that we can we can do where they start to use that then as a form of prototyping of how that could really work as a business or a way of doing stuff getting, you know, getting stuff done in this world. We also find that this this the critiquing is very, very important. So we we ask people to go and find a business they believe to be beautiful and then present we work in small groups because I believe in in the Socratic approach where actually it's a deeper dive dialogue, learning through doing through discussing understanding diverse views, people understanding that there are different ways of doing stuff and additive all the time in terms of the knowledge that kind of couldn't be created with that. And of course we have access to some wonderful people, which is part of our network, which if we felt that we really wanted a specialist to come in who's, you know, achieve something significant. Then they can be part of a process or the program, which is about that kind of that learning. But it's really about the empowering of people. So I'm not saying you need to be like me, the people with no one would be like me, but it's about being a better version of what you could be in the world and supporting people on that on that on that journey. And I think holding that design system. I mean, you obviously know who Dieter Rams is. And I'm sure everyone on this call will know who Dieter is. You know, Dieter's famous quote, which is the time of thoughtless design for thoughtless consumption is over. And I think the really putting those challenges down to what we call, you know, regenerative designers is really helping them focus intensely on how their work can contribute to a better world, you know, and one that we can hang around in for a bit longer. Listening to your story. It feels like it makes sense logically, rationally. If that's the case, why do you think we aren't not everybody has already embraced this? What's what's stopping us or what could accelerate us towards more beauty in our businesses? Well, I mean, I think there's a number of things on the one hand. I'd say that there's a lot of people out there already doing this. It's just that it won't make the front pages of other other other magazine or a newspaper to some degree. I was actually reflecting on it this morning, which was, you know, everything in our world is premised on a consumer society. And without really being sat down and being, you know, told, but, you know, all every single advert on TV and all the rest of it, which is your world goes better when you have more material stuff. No one is really telling you that, you know, spending more time in nature walking in the woods that actually people heal much better when they've had operations by actually spending time in nature. And in fact, actually, there's an organization in Norway. I can't pronounce it unfortunately, but it connects nature healing and hospital in the same word. And so they've designed a hospital and looking at actually how people heal much quicker. It's actually you design the healing process and it means you need less drugs and all the rest of it. And of course, we fall into that trap, you know, I want a bigger car, faster car, bigger house, better holidays, you know, the Rolex watch that tells everyone I've really made it, you know, whatever it is that we fall into debt. And of course, then it's a form of, I've got into a lot of trouble with this, but you know, it's a form of colonialism. And we're all enslaved until some people go and of course, and the view is that the people that wanted to live an alternative lifestyle, they're the whack jobs, right. They're the tree huggers. This is not about being grown up. This is, you know, it's the language is very masculine and patriarchal. And you walk into organizations where there's huge power control. And of course, you wake up one day realizing you have no power, but actually you hate your job. You hate your boss, but you're indebted. And so, you know, you're in a really you're in a tight squeeze. And you don't turn up as your whole self. You know, we don't run businesses on the principle of vulnerability, compassion, reciprocity. And in a sense, actually, this is one of the other things that I do, we do in the way that we work with people is all of those things are connected together all the time. So we talk about the Holy Trinity of the hand, the heart and the mind. People just find huge release by the fact that actually they can be vulnerable. They can talk about how they work, which is why, you know, we look very carefully at how we teach people. And so it's not a mechanical way of doing things. And of course, there is great vested interests in actually keeping people in that place. If you look at, say, the media, for example, you know, Fox News lies, but it knows that the more hate it puts out there, the more money it makes until it goes a bit over the top. But you walk the fine line. And what we've seen really is over, let's say, since we met in 2007, the erosion of the trust in politics and society. We use immigration as a form of division. That is done on purpose. And that is a narrative that people want to use. And so breaking out of all of that is really, really hard. You know, VC money is all premised on five to 10 year returns. A friend of mine here in Cambridge, number two of the VC firm, he said, your problem, Alan, is your horizon line is too long for VC. And I think that's a real shame. And it's very interesting when you look at, say, the guys that founded Veja, the sneaker brand. Again, actually a brilliant story from end to end of how you run an ethical company, but you will not compromise on any aspect of that business for it to be as ethical as it can, while still being the coolest thing that people will want to put on the ends of their feet. Both have incredible control over where they found their money from and how they grew and how they developed. You know, I'm starting to see a rise of Regen VCs, people that talk about sustainability to some degree. You know, I'd like to know more about that. But until we start to really think about the money supply in a way, again, we are captured and we're colonised because people want us to work in a certain type of way to count things in a certain type of way. I think eventually we will get there because, well, we either will, and that will be great, or we won't. And then we're not in such a good position people. But I think people have worked out pretty much for a lot of them that things aren't as they should be. And it's not making them very happy as a consequence of that. The question here maybe is, will we need to wait till the even bigger crisis hits us before we push the reset button? Or will we be able to stare away early enough? I have no idea. I mean, you know, all I can say is, which is why it goes back to, you know, my wish, which is for us to collectively create a more beautiful regenerative world by restoring the equilibrium between our ecology, economies and empowering our local communities. And I think that's the biggest design brief ever. Of course, it's going to be hard, very, very hard. But all we can try and do is to inspire people that that is something worth getting out of bed for in the morning. And the, you know, this idea of beauty is something which actually really does have huge potential and to really use that as a means of what we do and how we do it. You've mentioned some other examples of companies who you feel are sort of fit the bill. I'm also curious to learn, are you, I'm sure you are, and then I would love to hear how applying this way of thinking onto the work you're doing today, how are you making your business beautiful? Well, I think that you think about everything that you do or how you operate, how you interact with each other's with each other. You think about how you can reach people. Can you do things better? Can you improve the teaching? I also do a thing called walk with me. And that's where I just take one person and we go for a walk. And they can talk about whatever it is they like, two hours in the countryside. And if we've not had a good conversation, they've at least had, you know, two hours of fresh air. And then we go to the pub next door to where I live and then we have a meal. And that's really that person's time. And so, you know, working on oneself, working with others is sort of part of how that business operates and thinking about, you know, how we can evolve and how we can develop in a way that would be beautiful. Always a daily question. Do you do a check-in? Do you have like you mentioned metrics? I'm going to guess that beauty isn't binary. But either you have it or you don't. It's something that you strive towards too, always. Yeah, I mean, I mean, that's the point. And I think that, you know, we've put together a chart around a more evolved set of metrics, which again is, you know, asking sort of, you know, questions around contribution, time, the five capitals. Culture versus leadership, stakeholders versus shareholders, all of those sorts of things to help people think about a different kind of KPI or KPIs that they would say, how is this defining success for us? And that's important for people and we use that as part of our process with companies and organizations. And is that also like the metric you at the end of the year look for in your own business, a score yourself? Have we created a more beautiful organization? Yeah, you also ask questions. You also ask questions. And how well do you score? I don't know how you can, how do you express? I'm going, it's not going to be a rating. No, no, no. How do you know if you're on the right way? The question, how do you know if you're making progress? I think, you know, for me personally, it's about have you helped an individual transform their life? Have you helped an organization, you know, transform what they do? Have you helped maybe, you know, a startup business really think about what its model and operating system is going to be? Have you helped them go further down the road? In that sense, you know, I feel that being in service to others is the best job one could possibly do and help them do that. You know, it's not about have we grown by 500% this year and if we haven't, then we were a failure. That's not the way I look at it at all. You know, have we contributed to a better world overall? And, you know, that metric I think is very interesting because I think it's as much then about, you know, culture, people, ecology, community. In fact, actually, I don't think there's anything about money that's on there at all. Yeah, without sounding too, I don't know what the right label is, but do you believe that if you do these things right and work towards beauty, money will take care of itself? Or is that too idealistic and too hippie? I think that's slightly too idealistic. I mean, I think that no organization runs without the oxygen and money. And so I think it always has got to be in the mix, but it can't be the primary reason that you're doing things. And I think that, you know, as I say, when you look at, say, Climeworks or Veya or even Patagonia for a, I know it's a very popular example. You know, they found ways in which is, are they in control of their own destiny? And, you know, that may take a little bit longer. And I suppose for me, you know, we've not set up a business which is about we're going to scale it and sell it. You know, beauty for me was this is a lifetime's work. You know, how am I doing beauty when I'm 80? You know, if I'm still, you know, breathing on this planet at that point. And so in a sense, it's about a measurement of more intergenerational concepts about contribution, which is completely anathema to the world that you and I grew up in. And we're sheep dipped in, in many ways. You know, but I think that having that, that control over what it is that you do is actually so important because it gives you the freedom to make choices and decisions that otherwise you wouldn't, you wouldn't have. And then when you have the freedom, of course, you also have the responsibility to make certain type of decisions because we do make decisions today. Mostly which are fed by less consume more things. Yeah. So the question is, is where is the beauty in what I'm doing? And I was once challenged actually by somebody about give me a practical example about beauty and leadership. You know, how could it possibly work? And I said, well, you know, here's an example. There's a car company and it's not doing so well. And over the boardroom, there's a conversation which is an emerging idea that they're going to lie an industrial scale to say that their diesel engines emit less carbon and actually a much more efficient. And they go for this. And but they know that, you know, if they get caught, it could cause a huge problem for them. But they're thinking so short term that they can't resist this idea is so attractive. So I said to this guy, I said, well, what if somebody put their hand up in the room and said, is this the most beautiful decision we can make? And he looked at me and I said, so what's unpacking for you is ethics. Could I sell this product to my friends and my family? Will this create legacy? Will this come to bite us, you know, hard in the ass a few years down the line? Will it damage our brand value? Et cetera, et cetera. And I said, I don't need to explain that all to you because you intuitively understand what that absolutely means. And so legacy is also a very important question. You know, how will we create legacy with what it is we do? And I think that these kind of these types of questions or questioning as you were saying, you know, you can come to this at the end of the year. You can ask you can ask them on a daily basis, a weekly basis. It's a form of checking in of actually really thinking about, are you bringing something and contributing to something continually? That's valuable to this to this world, you know. And you mentioned you're in the space where you starting to ask these questions and helping people to ask these questions. These should be questions our kids need to grow up with, right? Not at the age of what we are today. Absolutely. Well, I mean, if you look at that our education system, you know, it's for here in England anyway. They're certainly not putting kids in nature and getting them to understand that they are part of this world. And, you know, if nature isn't healthy, they aren't healthy because the one and the two are the same. You know, the idea that design is something that it's we're actually very keen to try and evolve this into something for schools. That's going to take a while to happen. But the idea of saying to a child, you are you can be a designer for a better world right now. And in a sense, that's what I suppose I push back a little bit on where designers ended up sometimes about who has the right to do design and who doesn't have the right to do design. And I say, well, once upon a time, there wasn't a school for fire. And there wasn't a school for ax heads, you know, and there wasn't a school for, you know, learning, you know, agriculture. And when the white Europeans turned up in Australia, those folks have been around for 80,000 years. They've really learned how to sort of hang around and sort of, you know, use design in its broadest possible terms. And so for me, giving that back to to young people to feel that they do have the ability to do that, that they have created potential to me is extremely important. And I think we should really fight for for that. Because what we've got at the moment is, again, in our country, a reductive approach to education, which is not about creativity. It's not about doing. It's actually not really saying that, you know, design can contribute to anything and everything that makes our world a better place to to be in. We'll save that for a follow up episode to talk about education to sort of start wrapping up. We would love to hear like a practical tip. So we've listened to the story. We are excited about this. And now we want to put this into practice. What's the one thing you could give us that we could start doing today, tomorrow within our own context? You could start thinking about the potential of beauty as a as a reframing lens. And a philosophy. There's a little book you can read about it if you're, you know, if you're interested. There's the 13 design questions that we that we've got. And maybe start to think about those as a way of challenging what it is that you do and how you and how you do it. How do you contribute to making the world a better place? To making the world a better place? Can you step back from where you are and see, you know, you know, beauty as as an enabler? And what would that mean? Very great questions to reflect upon. That's definitely something I'm going to do during a walk somewhere this week. You mentioned the books. Where can we learn more if we want to dig deeper into this topic? Well, there's my website, which is just beautiful.business. And so there's quite a bit of stuff on there. And there's also now the beautiful design project.com. We're actually in the process of putting some more material together. So there's just a landing page at the moment. But if people wanted to drop me an email and ask us, you know, some more questions or whatever, you know, we're open to have conversations with people that would be interested in that journey of transformation, whether it is for themselves or an organization that they worked for. I encourage everybody to look up the resources. They will be in the show notes as always. Alan, I'm really happy that you came on and shared what you're working on. It's great to reconnect after 15 years in a different context. Beauty is not a design principle that was high on my list, but it's definitely going to go up there. And it's definitely at the end of the year going to be something that I'm going to reflect upon. Thank you for bringing this up. And I really hope that this will inspire a lot of listeners to also embrace this topic and bring it back into design. Because I think it was always integral to it. Absolutely. I found it very inspiring to have Alan with us today. Stories like this stretch our thinking and imagination. What a beautiful service our company that you know. Leave a comment down below and we'd love to hear from you. If you enjoyed today's conversation, please do me a quick favor. If you haven't done so yet, click that like button. That lets me know whether or not we're on the right track by addressing topics like this. Finally, before we part ways, please take a moment to reflect and celebrate. By joining us today, you've directed your attention towards learning and growing as a professional. So from everyone who you're going to impact through your work. Thank you for taking the time and making the commitment. My name is Marc Fontaine and I look forward to having you with us again for a new conversation on the service design show. Take care and see you soon.