 Kia ora tātou, nā mai, hari mai. Greetings to all and welcome to the first EHF Live session for the year. We're going to be looking at leadership misconceptions and self-managed teams and decentralized governance. Now Edmund Hillary Fellowship is a collective of entrepreneurs, scientists, storytellers, creatives and investor change makers who want to make an impact globally from Aotearoa, New Zealand. Now this session you're going to hear from Francesca Paik, an EHF Fellow from Kohua 1, Kaua Kaua who is an experienced entrepreneur in decentralized working methods with a goal to shift self-managed participatory and transparent organising practices from being marginalised thinking to becoming a clear choice of organisations that put humans and purpose at the centre. So with greater then the impact Francesca and the team want to create over the next five years is to help thousands of people and organisations in New Zealand and around the world to take meaningful and practical steps towards this. So we're going to be hearing about a 20-30 minute talk and then we're going to move into some Q&A in a discussion with Francesca over the next 60 minute session. So just to remind that it has been recorded, so stay muted until Q&A or put your questions in the chat. Over to you Francesca. Thank you Michelle, great introduction. It's really good to be here and to be able to talk about this subject which I'm very passionate about. So I guess just very briefly about myself before I dive into the subject to give you a bit of context, why I'm here and why I'm talking about this. So I'm calling today from near Barcelona. This is the place I've been living for a few years but I'm actually German American and have sort of lived in different parts of Europe over most of my life. And I guess I'm one of those people who didn't really ever choose a very traditional career when it comes to work choices. I actually I studied communication and cultural management it was called so it was very interdisciplinary kind of program that was trying to work at the intersections of different fields. So I've always been very interested at like the edge between different subject areas and bringing together different kind of stakeholders people that think differently and sort of yeah bringing together those differences. So basically, I've actually never had a traditional job in the sense or like been employed, because right when I graduated and wrote my bachelor thesis in 2012, I ended up joining the sort of growing community called we share that you actually I share started in Paris, and it's a, it was a community that really was basically coming together around the sort of values and worldview of the sharing economy, and wanting to promote that and connect people around it. So that's really been I would say my main, like learning ground and the context where I really dived into new ways of organizing, because we share was always an experiment of how to organize completely differently, not have traditional employment have managers hierarchy, any of that really we were just completely thinking like very very far out of the box let's say. And so that was a really rich experience where I learned so much for about seven years of basically developing that international community and doing lots of things. And that's actually what ended up bringing me to New Zealand, as well, because that's how I discovered the Inspiral Network, which some of you are probably familiar with. The Inspiral Network being what I often sort of described a bit as like a cousin of we shares organizationally speaking, because it was also sort of yeah networked community with shared values and purpose, and doing a lot of experimentation around ways of organizing. And so what was really interesting for me when I when I came to New Zealand and connected more with people from Inspiral was how much they had found good language and put words to these new ways of organizing and really made them comfortable in a way that, yeah made me feel really energized and it allowed me to meet a lot of other, let's say, peers and geeks on distributed governance self organizing collaborative decision making, all of these kind of topics. And so, after being quite involved there as well for a few years, I started greater than would, which is the collective now that I'm doing most of my work through that I would say really grew out of the the culture and the foundation of we share and Inspiral as communities. And so in that collective, we are supporting a lot of different types of organizations, leaders, companies, but also a lot of networks and communities on how to organize differently, and as Michelle was saying, how to really help people work and make it something that is more accessible and just easier to do. And the reason why I'm really excited about discussing leadership today is that I think that specifically an area where there's so many myths and misconceptions, and that those really lead to people falling quite on their face when they try out self organizing in many cases, because, yeah, there's certain things that we've learned over the years that really can help make that actually be successful. And we really are passionate about passing that on and, yeah, supporting people that really are committed to new ways of organizing that help us distribute power and ownership. I think maybe with a bit of that like prelude. I think I'm going to move us into the topic. And as Michelle said, if you have questions feel free to drop them in the chat as they come up. So you don't forget them and also if there's something that I can already connect with I'll do that. And then after me sharing a few key ideas, then we can jump into some discussion. I'm going to share my screen. So you can also follow along that working. Great. So what I wanted to share today is a few myths and misconceptions about leadership in self managed and decentralized teams. And as I was saying a lot of the yeah what I'm going to share comes from experience of both being in these self organized systems myself and developing them such as we share and then spiral. Also, all the things that we're experimenting with in greater than because we're collective of about 20 core members, and then we have like another 60 people sort of floating around the edge. We're actually doing a lot of learning and experimentation inside greater than around all of the things we work on. And then also, there's a lot of different companies and networks that I and my, my team have supported, and where we see a lot of these topics come up. And so that's really what this is drawing from. So what I actually want to share with you is a few myths know is it five or is it for now while we will see as I get through it. Basically, a few key myths to help you sort of unpack yeah maybe which of these do you also adhere to or which of them yeah are a new insight for you. So I think the first one is that leading generally means taking control, and that if we're in a self managed system, we don't want anyone to be coming in and taking control. And so that's why if something happens. I won't, I won't step in like no one does anything people are like, Oh God I can't go in and control. So I'm just going to sort of leave it there. So what's really interesting or what really I think lays at the, at the core of this which is really the most foundational piece I think around all of this work is this key shift from what we call power over to power with. And this is actually something that was really coined by a really incredible thinker and researcher, Mary Parker full it. And that I think was just sort of discovered a bit late, but she actually wrote some incredible stuff in the 1920s about this. And basically, I think in most of our minds, we're always operating from this idea of power over and this idea of dominance, I'm dominating somebody else. And that's really something that we are trying to systematically move away and in the work that we're doing, and move to this idea of power with. So what it means is, we're not eliminating power, but we're just trying to shift our relationship and dynamic around it. So that basically, we are stepping into the power together, alongside others, not dominating or coercing somebody else. And this, this idea that there is power over and that leadership generally means I'm coming in and I'm exerting this power over is something that really scares people off, who are trying to step into other ways of organizing and make some think oh no no no I can't because otherwise I'll be I'll be dominating and that's not what I want. So that's the first myth. And that one is that bossless means leaderless. So there's actually another fellow called a lot of Irving who I'm going to cite a few times here, who talks a lot about the term bossless organizing which I think is really catchy and great. And it does sometimes lead to a misunderstanding them, because when we talk about bossless. The idea is that we're getting rid of this idea of what we usually think about is a boss. Right, which is maybe that person that is taking control that is measuring that is directing in a command and control way. But that people then sort of throw with a baby out with the bathwater and think oh my God, that means there's no leadership at all. And I've been in so many different groups where people really they they're deeply convinced that a self organized system means there's no leadership. And that couldn't be more wrong. I would say it's basically the opposite, which is that what we're aiming for is having as much leadership as possible. And basically, opening up leadership in a way making it more accessible so that everyone can be participating in that and doing some of the leading. So it's almost like leading becomes more of a verb or even an adjective. We often talk about a leaderful or yeah just leading as an activity rather than being a leader. So I'll get to that actually in the in the next point. But I think one really important story that also pops up a lot. And many of the groups we work with is that they think everyone needs to be equal right there's this really strong idea of equality. And that somehow this idea that some people are leaders in different instances goes against that idea that we're all equal. What's interesting about that is that I think there's sort of, there's different levels at which we can talk about what equality actually is. And that somehow, I think we often get a bit stuck on this idea that the equality is about how we show up and what we do. When actually what we're aiming for and Frederick la Lou also talks about this who's done a lot of work around the topic of teal organizing. Is that basically what we actually mean is we are all equal as humans in our value as humans, right there is no doubt about that and that is really really fundamental and important that there's that sort of a, yeah eternal human value that needs to be respected that people need to be honored have the space to express themselves be supported etc. But that does not mean that in action in a project in something you're developing that they're going to take on different roles, and that that will also change over time. So I think it's really important to think about what type of equality is it that we need. And to not like basically just to kill leadership as a whole, because what a lot of groups end up with is this really strong leadership vacuum, which actually then yeah creates a lot of challenges, and can lead to sort of informal power dynamics, popping up and taking over and then you can sort of be worse off than if you had a more traditional leadership structure, let's say. So that takes me pretty directly to the third myth that I was already sort of indicating a little bit, which is this idea that leadership is an identity that there are people who are leaders, and others who are not. And as I was mentioning, part of this whole idea around self organizing and more distributed leadership is that everybody can tap into leadership and be part of this. And so that basically, I think it's important to decouple this idea that in specific humans are leaders because they have some kind of attributes, let's say, and that other people are not. But more so that it's a way of showing up in a certain moment. And maybe it's even like more a way of being than what you're actually doing. So it's more of a posture. And that it's something that that really is accessible to everyone in the room, and that we also can take turns at different moments, right so it's much more like an activity like oh I'm playing basketball right now. I am a basketball player. Right. I mean maybe that's not the right to parallel but you get what I mean. And I think that also I mean this is why in most self managed systems we don't have job titles in the traditional sense either, but work with more granular roles that people have. So the idea is really to to bring in this understanding of the dynamism, right that something is moving all the time, and it's fluid, and it's not I am a leader this is a static thing. This is my fixed role. So, the fourth myth that I want to share, which is the last one so it's for miss is that leadership is about visionary leadership. And this is where I'm also going to bring in Alana. Again, because she developed a really interesting concept called full circle leadership that I think does a very good job at helping articulate how diverse leadership actually can be. And it really sort of shifts our perspective on, actually, what, what do we consider to be leadership. And the reality is that in most contexts, we still think about leadership as being oh the person who has the big vision who's creative and has their ideas like the Steve Jobs kind of persona. And really, from our perspective and what we see also play out in groups is this, we need to shift that view and realize that the visionary leadership is one piece. It's important, but it's really just one part of what it means to to lead or to be leading. There's so many other ways to actually show leadership, and that when you broaden out your definition suddenly so many more people are like, oh, that means that actually maybe I could also be a leader, or that I can be leading in this instance because that's the kind of thing that I do when before systematically they would have excluded themselves from that. And so, just to briefly show you the full circle leadership model because I think it's really helpful. Is that basically, there's this the circle with all these different leadership types, these different modes, and allows actually develop sort of a little method where you can also categorize yourself and basically get an understanding of what is my leadership profile and how strong am I in these different areas, because no one is going to be, you know, a full, a full 10 on all of them that's just not possible. But it's more so important to actually think about the balance of different leadership types and different strengths within a team to make sure that you have everything covered. And so just to quickly take you through this she sort of has the visionary half, and then the more operational half. And so, in the visionary though I would say it's really just the stage here called envision that that is really what we see as a typical like yeah visionary guru leader kind of persona. Before that we really have the leadership of sensing and inquiring. So that's those are very, one could say feminine qualities of really listening to the system just taking time to observe. And you'll notice that there's a lot of people that are extremely good at that. But then they, they're not necessarily good at all moving it into action, right, but by them bringing in certain questions and observations and feeding those to the group, like that can be a huge of huge value and be a real form of leadership. Then we have the traditional envisioning that we know, as well as prototyping right it's like getting out that first shitty draft or that first idea or scaffold of how something could happen. I mean, this is a persona we see pop up a lot to help something move along. And then I would say that the second half of the circle is the one where really when I first saw this I was like, Oh, wow, this is so interesting because so many of the things that I've been doing I have not in any way conceived that I categorize them as as leading. And then talks about evaluating. So, like the kind of person that will bring in, you know, how do we know that what we're doing is actually the right thing and that it's working and thinking about, yeah, measurement and actually maybe getting data feedback on what's happening. And then operationalizing things right making things tangible. I think often we have someone who's really good with this working with someone who's more in the traditional vision space. That's actually like doing so much of the heavy lifting of making something real. And that is like such an essential form of leadership, like we wouldn't be able to survive without it. Which is specifically interesting in a lot of the groups that I am in this really not a popular activity. And so having people that are really leading in that area of how do we actually maintain our system and not just keep creating new ideas and generating new projects and then sort of like not maintaining the things that actually we already started is super important, and then the And so you can basically see that this thing really closes the circle, and that ideally in a team or in an organization you have an interesting balance of all of these. So that actually you can really take projects also through that whole life cycle. And so I think that yeah it's a real it's a real challenge that until now somehow we just put so much emphasis on the visionary leadership and give them so much recognition, and that I think to actually really thrive. We need to give a lot more weight to all of these others. And that will, yeah that will help more people recognize themselves as leaders and then then step into that power. And I think that's actually one other thing that I wanted to share from a really, you probably can't see the details but this is another graphic that a lot of made about growing distributed leadership. And this is actually in the book better work together that I and a few other people co wrote building on a lot of the knowledge from Inspiral. And I guess the one thing that I just really wanted to highlight here is the step here around itself leadership. So I think what other really important piece and this isn't a myth this is just a, yeah I guess an insight or a piece of advice is that to really be able to step into leadership together collectively. We need to each recognize ourselves as leaders, and really, yeah, acknowledge our own leadership capacity. And I think that's, that's just such an important first starting point for this to be able to happen. And I think for many people that maybe have different bad experiences or wounds around leadership from past careers or that they worked in. This can really be a challenging point to work through. And I can definitely say from my own experience, even though I didn't have like a traditional corporate work experience that was negative that as a person that really likes to sort of support the group support others, not really be in the center. It's been quite a journey to try to really acknowledge myself is like, oh, I can, I can lead I can do this this is okay. And to, yeah, to really give oneself that acknowledgement. And that when you do that it becomes easier for everyone else in the group to do that as well. And then that is what really sort of unleashes more of that collective capacity, and people, yeah trusting themselves, and being able to play in this very dynamic way with leadership that I really see is a bit of a sort of like a dance where we're playing back and forth and in different moments different people are taking on different roles. And so it's sort of like leadership is moving in a in a in a flowing way like water through the group, rather being something that sort of stuck in one place and being held. And I think just to just to conclude, I just wanted to name a few like enabling conditions what are some really important things that will actually help this kind of leadership flourish. And I think, you know, it's easy to make a list of a few points that they're actually pretty hard to do in practice. And one of the biggest ones is really around communication. And basically, allowing people to really reflect on themselves have a certain reflective capacity, and to be able to articulate what are their actual needs what are their desires. What are they good at, what are they not what are their boundaries, what is okay and what is not. And allowing people not to just talk about that individually but as a group to be able to understand better. Yeah, who can, who can take on what and hold which areas. And really also when tensions arise to be able to talk about them, because a lot of a lot of this work in self managing systems is really about making implicit things explicit, giving them words. So, being a good communicator is really, really essential. And I think it's something that we all need a lot of practice with, especially when it comes to saying uncomfortable things. And so the other thing that's really, really useful is what we call it like establishing a container. It's like creating a clear frame for what is the work we're doing that people can understand. Including sometimes we call them mandates or roles. And so, as I was saying the ideas that leadership becomes more dynamic. And so for instance, if we're saying okay, an example of a container is like a session, right. Okay, today we're running this workshop and this person, they are going to be facilitating. There's a certain power in the group today, because they're the facilitator, and that's the container and it's time bound for a certain. Yeah, time and space. And so, because of that, if we all establish the boundaries of like, what are our needs today, what is okay for us, we can actually really abdicate the power to the facilitator and say cool, you are running things today, and we give you that power. It works beautifully. And you know, sometimes they might actually make some autocratic decisions, or be a bit dominant, and that might be fine, because we as a group decide together. This is what we would like for the specific period of time. And the really important piece there is though that at any point, we can opt out of those conditions in that container, or we could choose to change it. And it's when we can't that we're in the systems that we're trying to move away from from of dominance and coercion that were that we can't get out of right but in this case, the idea is we can change it. The other piece is really just around. I mean related to communication around creating feedback loops. Right. So, this is exactly the thing if we decide okay this one person is the facilitator for today, but actually, something is really not going right. And even though we agreed that they were going to run with what they thought we should do today. If we're looking out, then we want to have that feedback loop, right, to be able to see, ooh, okay, this is not okay we need to shift gears and maybe change the plan. And so, the closer that feedback loop can be the better you can keep navigating and adapting. And then lastly, what I would say is like care and really psychological safety, which this is not not an easy one either, because a lot of workplaces don't have a very high psychological safety. But this is really something that we need to aim for by which I really mean that people feel like they can they can speak up that they can take risks that they can be vulnerable and put out there and be supported and not be undermined or suffer some kind of consequences because of what they're experimenting with. And so when we can create that kind of environment where people can trust and can really open up, then it really completely changes what's possible right it like lifts the ceiling massively. So, yeah, that's another one of those things that can take a lot of effort to develop as a culture. But I would say that if you don't have that foundation, it can become quite difficult to really thrive in, in, yeah, a space where you're trying to be more self organizing and allow everyone to step into their leadership. I think those are those are a few of the conditions is obviously like a lot more that can be said about that. But I'm very curious now also to see what questions you might have what things we could dive into further. This is sort of the food for thoughts to kick off the discussion and yeah share some of the key things that I've heard. I think I'm loving it. So, did you want to share your screen then so that yeah it's great and then people, if you've got questions please pipe up or you can put them in the chat if you don't want to raise your hand. Amazing loving it I've got so many things in my mind here. I'm going to just kick us off while everyone else is still thinking. See a certain type of organization been able to make the shift and take this shift. Easy and adopt, you know, new systems before it becomes very very mainstream and how long do you think it would take, you know, for this kind of self management to be adopted into mainstream. Well, that's of course a difficult question to say it's very complex. Yeah, yeah. I mean I think that like the speed at which this gets adopted can be extremely different. And I think it definitely depends on like there's a big difference between trying to transition an organization from one system to another, versus a new organization growing from the start. That tends to be a lot easier because basically you have your starter culture and then it can just mushroom from there. And it's true that we are seeing a lot of bubbling in the in the sort of yet distributed organizing the blockchain space there's a lot of projects that are sort of trying to grow differently from the start. So I would say many of them are repeating a lot of these myths and misconceptions, and also many of them have people coming from very traditional work environments that are bringing the whole baggage of other work cultures so it's not always. An easy starting point. But I definitely think that like if, if the founder or the people that are really leading the organization as a whole that have initiated it and initiated like seated the culture. If they really embody it and want it. The likelihood of it shifting is like 100 times faster. It just it goes a lot quicker. That really really helps. The thing that really will make a difference and this something that we often discussing greater than how to do is I think that so much of this is about actually the lived experience of what it feels like to be in a system that is operating that way. And that once you get that experience that helps it spread so much quicker. So we're really thinking about like how can we allow, you know, 100,000 millions of people to get the experience of what it's like to be in a system where leadership is happening differently. And then from that, when you once you felt it in your body, you know so much better how to recreate it in your own projects. It's just, you just know. And if not, yeah, it's very easy to sort of miss some details and it maybe looks like on paper you're doing it, but then actually, like, you're not when you go in and you feel that. And I just know this because also this is really how I learned it. Right. And when I came into Inspiron I saw how people were interacting and what they were doing. It was just so easy to understand. Okay, this is how it works. And I think that like, I guess, what I find especially interesting and to your question Michelle about like, what types of organizations are maybe more prone to this working is like, trying to think about where areas in our life where we are naturally doing this, and how can we build on that. And sometimes those aren't even the workplace. Right it might be parents organizing around a school, or like yeah, organizing different types of activities or things like there's so many kinds of, you know, what's up telegram signal groups of people that are self organizing around different purposes that are non work related where they're doing a really awesome job at self organizing in a very natural way. And so I think a lot of us might actually have those experiences, but just not in the workplace that we could draw from to help us then influence the workplace. Definitely. Yeah, yeah. Any questions from the floor. Or any thoughts, reflections, or your own experiences where you find that you're doing this. I think Pascal has raised her hand. Thank you. First of all, I think an observation from me and and and from experience as a participant organizer in the New Zealand ecosystem around entrepreneurship in particular with particular interest in supporting people do new things in different ways. And the challenge is that I, I have seen and I have lived in some way so I go back to this experience where Francesca, we had an opportunity to meet which was a retreat organized by in spiral so I come from me. I come from a teaching background so I spend most of my life in the school. So I come and I've experienced I experienced various activities, let's say, like a retreat with and sparrowed and I'm feeling I am drawn. I am interested. I understand I feel the benefits. I want to see what it does to me but also to the environment to the dynamics, and I'm fully immersed. And then I go back to work with organizations looking for sponsorship non for profit trying to look for things. And, and then I, I lean and I want to know more and experience small, but the system and the organization in which the way I work which is intersecting across various is actually diminishing my, you know, myself ability and actually trying to actually trying to activate some of those new ways of being some new ways to be a leader and therefore I come back to the in between, and it's aspiring to. So, I think that was a question that I have Francesca is short of having a whole organization embracing being are there been any successful ways or or are some inroads into, you know, moving I would love for more of the non for profit that I work with to actually look at this model as they are all crumbling under the weight of the system which they are working, but they, it's not. So yeah so so that that's kind of like, is there any examples or any ways that have been successful or even not successful tried. Yeah, that's a great question. I think that, like, there's never, there's never a lack of places to start right and I think all of this always starts very small and with oneself. Anyway, so I think the one thing that everyone can do is basically do do work on themselves. Basically like dive into these themes. And I think personal development in general is such an important part of this for it to actually work. Because as I was mentioning there's this important enabling condition around being able to communicate your needs and your boundaries. Those are not easy things like I'm still working on it a lot of getting better at that. I think this is something that, like, spending energy to develop that capacity, and then just showing up in that way in all the different systems that you're in. I think can help inspire others to start doing that as well. Because I think if you start communicating in a certain way, then they, they need to somehow meet that right and mirror it. And also that what can be really valuable is to then try to start like finding a few other peers that you can practice with. There's also often this idea of like the pod model that you find like two or three other people that want to maybe dive into something into a new way of being or operating within a certain little bubble. And so, yeah, like a pod could get formed around a specific theme, and you could decide to meet once a week once a month for, yeah, basically a sort of collective exploration. That's the kind of thing that, let's say you're working with an organization, and you just are able to identify two other people that are really curious to just like create a little seed group, right and see what comes from that. And that maybe that starts drawing more interest from other people to come into that. And I think I thought that was one other point that I wanted to mention. Yeah, so I guess, I think there's one really big challenge that we're always facing, which is about fear. Right, which is that the fear is really what's holding us back from sort of making this jump and stepping into this other way of being and doing and organizing. And then I think what you're describing Pascal in the NGO space, and the sort of being crushed by the system and the way to get funding and all of the different, you know, cars in that system that are so challenging. Like I think that there's so much fear present in that space of basically how to survive of, you know, scarcity, needing the resources. I think anything one can do to try to combat that fear, right to basically, I mean it sounds a bit cliche right it's like, get rid of the fear with love and safety, which is obviously easier said than done. And I do think that there's something about that shift of mindset of like truly believing, like, we are abundant. If we have an amazing group of people that they have the capacity to find solutions and somehow move forward on the purpose that they work on, and that they're not at the dependence of these other organizations or their money to be able to keep operating. If you can sort of decouple yourself from that that creates so much space to suddenly feel like oh maybe we can relax into this and maybe try this thing out it feels less scary like less is at stake. You know, it's no surprise that in greater than we've done a lot of work around the topic of money and money psychology, because this is something that I was always very interested in that felt like in a lot of the collectives I was working in was really holding us back. And this again really starts with the individual but there's a lot of interesting work also to be done at the collective level. There's a someone called Peter Koenig, who's developed a lot of really interesting work. I can put his name in the chat here. And basically, what he calls money work, which is basically around reclaiming projections that you have onto money, and going through sort of a process to help you actually realize yeah one of the things that you feel like you can only have if you if you don't and that if you don't, then, then you have no access to that, but actually being able to sort of loosen that connection a bit and liberate yourself from those. Yeah dependencies on money, but really from a mental perspective. We've been doing a lot of work and experimentation around that and I think. Yeah, we definitely so we have these this money game, which is actually a, I can also put a link to that in the chat because we're actually hosting. We host them quite regularly. And it's a really interesting experience to actually start unpacking your own habits around money, your relationship and also the stories you have about it. It's a very powerful entry point. And through that really usually yeah helps you start to see okay what are maybe some of these stories that I'm hanging on to that are not helpful. And we see so many people that are coming from the NGO space, especially that are joining this that are trying to yeah move through these stories of we don't have enough, there's not enough money for the kind of work we're trying to do and this just this deep kind of idea of scarcity. And I really think, yeah, that there's a lot of interesting work to be done in that angle. No, I think it also had her hand up for a while. I don't know if that resolves itself or he still have that question. No, I don't have different questions that over you send them in if we have time and I'll ask the couple. Oh, thank you Jade. I'll do my best to be quick. This this this. Thank you Francesca for all of this has got me like very, very excited. It strikes me that a lot of what we've discussed is focusing on systems. And I would love to hear your take on. If there are any tools out there that you're aware of, or that you or the network should part of a built that can support those systems and make them a bit more tangible, if that makes sense. Yeah, it does. And I would say it's definitely a common question or wish to say like okay what is the concrete tool that I can use that's just going to sort of do this. I think that like the bad news I would say is that we often like to focus on trying to find a tool and that usually never is the solution. So, yeah, like basically any tool can be used in a in a useful way or also can just then replicate the same patterns that we're trying to get away from. I've definitely seen that quite a lot. But yeah I can see that show posted in the chat already co budget, which I do think is a really interesting one so basically co budget actually grew out of the Inspiral Network, it was developed based on the collaborative practices that were happening there. And so actually, the, the starting point of greater than was that we were working on co budget we wanted to sort of take it to the next stage, because it is a quite easy playful way of getting into a participatory dynamic with people around me and around stuff that's very tangible, because it's really about people proposing different projects ideas initiatives and funding them. And so it gets very hands on, like you're jumping into actual real concrete projects, and not just discussing right because a lot of the time we stay in that sort of mental discussion space and and not in the action space. I think what's quite interesting about co budget is that it really has built in this idea that everyone who's in the group can always propose ideas like that's like functionality wise, anyone can can do that anyone can comment and give feedback. And then basically, you have a mechanism to vote with money. So, based on how much money is available, you distribute that to the different people, and that then each person makes their decision independently, what they would like to see happen. And you don't do not have to do like a huge consensus with everybody on what we do. And I think this is definitely one of the big, like a general pitfall in in self managing systems is that they often think we all have to participate in all decisions, even the small ones and it has to be consensus. Right, which is just like, you know we call it death by consensus that that's an absolute like that's how to just end your project immediately, because everyone's going to get very very burnt out and tired from going through that process. So co budget is sort of an extreme opposite in the sense that actually, you know, you can have meetings conversations you can organize all kinds of stuff around a co budgeting process. But in the end, the result is just each person that has money attributes it to the different projects, and then you have your result it's just there. And there's not actually the need to basically. Yeah, fully make a final decision as a group in that way. And so that's, that's I guess one tool that I would say it's more like a practice, actually, and the tool has tried to encode the practice. And I think it is really quite fun and we've been using it also in greater than recently. So, if you have like a specific budget available, and you have sort of different ways that you might want to spend it. It would be an interesting thing to basically run a process and allow people to together decide through that what they would like to do with it in a very sort of entrepreneurial way. I mean, another tool that maybe you've heard of is Lumio. That's also another one of the Inspiral like yet originated tools. And there's also a new one called murmur that is more focused. I mean it's also a decision making tool. It's murmur.io. And that one is actually, I mean, it's quite in development still, but it's very good at teaching the process and the concept around consent decision making. And so I guess in a way, if I think about tools not in the like technical sense of a tool. I think one really important concept is the idea of a proposal that is really really useful. And basically like this idea that in any group that I'm in. Anyone at any time can make a proposal, right and a proposal can be like hey I'm noticing we have all these different challenges or we're discussing this thing. What about we do X. Here's a proposal, right, and then based on that proposal, you get feedback, you discuss, there's different decision making processes that you can apply to that. But there's sort of a whole thing that I would call like proposal thinking or like a proposal mindset that takes some time to develop, but it really is quite liberating. If you realize like that anyone in the room could just decide to make a proposal. If there's something that they would like to change about the situation or improve. And so I think yeah yeah helping helping people think in that way and using that as a tool basically can be quite helpful. I don't know if that answers some of your questions, but absolutely does thank you. Great. And jade you popped in a, another one in the, in the chat. Do you have any comments then jade or any questions you wanted to. I popped in a link from Lani Evans who wrote a report on what was a part of the Winston Churchill Fellowship a few years ago where she was exploring this notion of participatory budgeting grant making and philanthropy as well so Yeah, but thank you so much Francesca it was really incredibly interesting and I know a few people in the greater than network like Lucia and Alex and a few others. Big fans of work of Alana and the wider and spiral crew as well and my question and love how wonderful and idealistic this all sounds I guess there's elements where I have worked in this capacity before. But once you have less capacity I find that people have to make harder decisions and how they invest their time and energy. So, if a few dear friends of mine have been part of the spiral network but because of the stage of life that they're in with having kids et cetera et cetera they've had to move out of that for some reason or another you know whether it be just a shift in focus shift energy shift in time and how they spend that, but completely agree with you around, you know, when you're like parents and schools what's at groups, like I'm part of our community garden. I'm also trying to bring this way of working at a national level at a national board kind of ministerial level as well. It's really hard to shift power dynamics once people get to governance boards at that level. But my, I've got a couple of questions. One is, how might you or how might we or in spiral in this particular case build that deep trust and working in this way and to, I think that you learn more from things that don't work so well, then things that do work well. What has been the biggest challenges and learnings for you at greater than and working in this way, especially from my understanding it's a bit of a consultancy type business model. I don't know if you can answer that in six minutes, but you know, give it a go. Well I got to say the first question is a really tough one. I'm not exactly sure how to best answer that because it feels like I mean it's, it's different in each case. And like it's such a deep mindset question of how do we. Yeah, how do we create a feeling of safety and abundance to allow us to really step into that. I think that like in many cases, you know there's individual answers to that question and collective ones also you know when it comes to maybe collective traumas or challenges or like yeah systemic issues basically that are holding back groups to actually be able to, yeah take certain risks. So I mean, sometimes I like to think a bit about what are sort of hacks, like ways to yeah create maybe if they can just be short in time, those feelings of what it can be like, right. I really do think that that is the best way to somehow shortcut this, if you want to use that term. And I think you know sometimes people talk about this with with psychedelics right that it's like, if you go on a meditation meditation retreat for one week you can get to the same stage as if you take, you know, LSD. And it's just that maybe that one thing is giving you the shortcut of the feeling of where you're trying to get to and that might help you then get there on your own right. I do think it's like, yeah, how can we create more of those felt experiences to create a bit of that trust that oh this isn't just a fever dream this isn't just some utopia, but it could actually exist. And it is true that collective gatherings, I think often really help unleash that if people meet in larger groups and are unable to really create a space like that and, you know, having at least three days because that really helps usually. Yeah, deepen things and people open up with the right to support and facilitation. But yeah, I think in terms of your other question. Obviously there's a lot of challenges and I mean for me in a way greater than really is the result of all the things that for me weren't quite working for myself in both we share and inspired role, and trying to then apply those lessons and say okay what is a slightly different set of like parameters that could maybe help us unlock this. And I think one of these huge tensions was always between making a livelihood, being passionate about certain topics, trying to combine basically that like yeah. The sense of purpose with actually enough stability to say hey, this is actually an alternative workplace that I can go through. If I have a family, if I'm going through a difficult time if I need to take care of relatives like that basically will allow me to have the stability also that I need. And so I think that like in many ways, being too unboundaryed can create a quite risky place for people. A lot of these networks communities, their boundaries are too loose, so that it's, it's only safe for people that have a lot of privilege and then have everything else covered. And that's, yeah, that's very exclusive. And that's why I think it's interesting to figure out okay what are, yeah smaller more contained ways to basically, yeah, set up groups that have stronger boundaries, stronger mechanisms of support. And one of the things that we've been putting a lot of effort into in greater than is basically in a way how we can lean further into our interdependence. And basically say guess what we are going to give up more things to be able to support the whole group. And I would say, yeah, there's a lot of challenges around that, because especially the type of people that many of us are, they're very autonomy loving, they're very focused on you know I do my own thing and I have it figured out and this sort of a bit of an aversion to the interdependence, like a lot of fear around that. It's like the sort of very slowly getting closer and closer to that. And yeah it's great Finn that you mentioned the tyranny of structurelessness, because that's definitely like a key foundational piece for us. And I think that that's something that we've done quite well on in terms of basically creating, it's about creating alternative structures, right. It's not about getting rid of structures because then you end up with this void. And then the implicit power dynamics that happen, but instead creating the right structures for you. And so that's why to me it's really felt like also in greater than that we're trying to figure out okay, what is the equivalent of a lot of the functions that traditional workplaces have, what is our equivalent to that that aligns with our values and our purpose and trying to develop it. Maybe just to leave because we have one more minute but one of the, one of the biggest challenges that I think we face that we've been discussing a lot is actually around overwork, and what I would call like self exploitation. And that goes again to this thing around boundaries, right so we don't have managers that are forcing us to work hard we have like this inner manager in everyone's head that is like forcing people to push themselves to their limits. And that is the real problem, especially when people are passionate about what they're doing. And so, yeah, we've been having a lot of conversations and been trying to just almost understand better like what is this challenge, because it does keep that people get exhausted burnt out, and that there's no one else doing that to them other than themselves. But we can't just say that because it's the systems that we've been raised in it's the collective culture, right it's everything around us that has created all these mindsets that we need to work really hard and that that's something important. So yeah, some very deep personal inner things that that come up that that we've been working on that are challenges. Thank you for the. Thank you. Thank you so much. And Francesca thank you for being open and sharing. And thanks for the great questions as well and all the other inputs of resources and that so I'll make sure that those can be sent out to everybody if you don't have them. And if you're happy to share your presentation as well Francesca we can email it out to everybody. If anyone wants to keep in touch with each other feel free to put your email addresses in the chat if you want. And we will, the recording will be up on the website once we've sort of cut out all the bits and pieces. Thank you so much, and I hope you enjoyed the start of your day and your next chapter in life I haven't told anybody but I hope you enjoy what's coming up. I'm so excited for you. Yeah, thanks team and everyone else in New Zealand enjoy the rest of your evening. Thank you so much. Thanks for your great questions and listening.