Reclaiming Business as a Force for Flourishing through Conscious Capitalism: A New Path to Purpose, Wellbeing, and Performance with Thomas Eckschmidt

What's your cause? What's your purpose? Recognize a leader that can inspire, educate, teach you, help you move forward. Recognize the interdependence. Everything around you is part of a large system. You can't just pick a piece out of it. So if you're starting a business, your purpose lies behind your intention to make something better.

Welcome to the Happiness Squad Podcast. Your weekly dose of practical tips, tips and inspirations to help you operate at your fullest potential by integrating the science of flourishing into how you live, work and lead. In each episode, we will share insights, tips and stories from leading experts, company executives and flourishing solution providers that you can implement right away to make happiness your competitive edge and find more success, joy, health, love and meaning in everything you do. Hello friends. Welcome to the Happiness Squad Podcast where we share practical tips to make flourishing your competitive edge and help you achieve stellar performance powered by well being, not at its expense. I'm Ashish Kothari and I'm on a mission to help a billion people not just experience happiness as an emotion, but use it as a tool to unlock their fullest potential. If you're interested in learning more, please make sure to follow me on LinkedIn and subscribe to our newsletter@happinesssquad.com today we have a truly special guest, Thomas X. Schmidt, a global leader in conscious capitalism, entrepreneur and educator. From an engineering career spanning 20 countries to co founding CBJ Conscious Business Journey, Thomas has dedicated his life to helping organizations do well by doing good. As a co author of the Conscious Capitalism Field Guide and a trusted advisor to global businesses, Thomas teaches leaders how to embed purpose, stakeholder interdependence, and conscious leadership. In today's conversation, we'll explore how businesses can create lasting impact by aligning profit with purpose, why flourishing workplaces are the future, and how leaders can drive change from within. Thomas shared his favorite real world example of a business and a leader that transformed from product and profit driven to purpose led and the incredible results that followed. We discussed the battle between ego and eco and the pull leaders feel often stretched across these polarities. We also discuss how you can integrate the two and transcend them. Get ready for an inspiring discussion on rethinking capitalism, evolving leadership, and building organizations that truly make a difference. Let's dive in. Thomas, it is so lovely to have you here with us today. Share your insights and your life's work in the space of conscious capitalism with our listeners. Thank you for joining us.

Thank you. My pleasure. It's always a special moment when we meet people that are Dedicated and believe and, you know, have the passion that we have, share the same vision. So thank you for having me.

Yeah, of course. Look, you know, I was so. I was so inspired and, you know, so have loved the book you wrote with Raj and John. And, you know, you've just had an amazing, amazing career. You know, engineering, entrepreneurship, leadership, and this whole conscious capitalism movement. I'm curious, tell us a little bit about the origin story, Thomas, and how you came to become not just a conscious capitalism, but the teacher of others who want to walk on this path.

Yes. So one thing that happened to me, I was, I. I grew up on a farm. We produced milk, dairy. And so what happened is that I was good in math, science and all that stuff. My father was an engineer. What. What do I want to be when I grow up? Engineer, of course. It's just like a natural path.

Yes.

I graduated as an engineer. And then the following 10 years I had eight different jobs and eight different companies. Companies, Procter and Gamble, Kodak, Accor, Accenture. So a lot of diversity. And what I learned is that at some point that was not fitting to my values. It was not part of me. And at some point, after 10 years, I decided to become an executive. That's my thought. So I'm going to do an executive mba. So I did that MBA and I got hired by the company. My HR teacher actually mentored all the classmates, saying that I looked like a job backpacker, say, oh my God, I'm dead. I will not get any option at it. I don't have anything to do. So his partner actually hired me to a consulting firm. So in London, I worked in 20 different countries consulting. And that's the first time unconsciously, I discovered what was important to me. Being challenged, learning constantly, and having the freedom to actually do the job, whatever I wanted. So we had four weeks work with the consultants. And nobody knew about that because we managed to cover each other. When my daughter was born, I said, you know, I gotta do something different. You know, it's not what I want to be. You know what I want to change in the world. And that when I discovered the question is wrong. And I think we need to reframe that question to the future leaders. It's not what you want to be when you grow up. What do you want to change in your world? Not the whole planet. What's the size of your world? It's your family, your neighborhood, whatever it is, that's what we should ask people. And that's come. Came back to me. And I started in my entrepreneurial journey with people I was mentoring say, I'm going to join these guys. I like what they do. And when we had some, you know, some we had a belief, we had extended value chain. We actually, you know, create a new culture for our customers. We led with inspiration and education. And I decided to reach out to Whole Foods. Who's the owner? Who's the president? CEO John Mackey. The first thing that shows up on my screen was Conscious Capitalism by John Mackey. I need to read this.

Yes.

When I finished that article, I said, oh my God, I'm an unconscious conscious capitalist because I don't have a purpose, I have a belief, I don't have a stakeholder map. I have an extended value chain. I forgot the culture of my business, but I won't taking care of the culture of others. I'm leading from for serving others, not to actually make more money. So that was interesting how we change. And I was just so amazed. That was 2009, 2010. I got to the first CEO summit and say, this is my tribe. 2014, I did a TED talk in Portuguese with 400,000 views. And 2000 after that, people started asking me, thomas, you know, how do you teach this, how you teach this? Because of my corporate consulting and entrepreneurial experience, what happened is that I put together a book that called Fundamentals of Conscious Capitalism in Brazil after launching that chapter in Brazil. So that was it. And Raj actually did the forward. And Raj did write and record the forward. So we have a video of him. So really cool. And that book. Raj invited me to Cuba and we translated that book into Spanish, Fundamentals of Conscious Business. And all of a sudden say, oh, I'm going English. Say, raj, no, no, come and join us and let's put the field guide together. That's where we join forces and say, let's make this powerful. And here's the thing I would like to offer everyone. When we released this one, we created a book called Conscious Business Activator, which is Creative Commons. So we will have a version in English. We have Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, German, France, Hebrew. This is a simple book that actually leads you to make better use of the field guide. So there's a question, what do you. What's your purpose? Oh, we are focused on money or we have a purpose. It's not written, but we have a. Or we have a purpose. And then it takes you to suggestions of action plan. And when we released this book and we had all the chapters together, say, you guys, this is Creative Commons. Three chapter leaders developed this, but I'm a capitalist, so I want my part back. So this book is actually signed by all the chapter leaders that were present.

Oh, my God. Wonderful.

So my special book is autographed by my community. So this was the best gift I ever had by doing all this work. So this is the story how I got to Conscious Capital.

And I'm so excited about this now. I love that story. Right? And I think it's interesting to me, like, I have a very parallel story to that. I actually just got back. Thomas. I spent the last three days from Ann Arbor where, you know, with Jane Dutton, Monica Verleen, Amy Young, and so many others at the center. I don't know if you've heard of it. It's called the center for Positive Organizations scholarship. Right. It's 20 years. Jane is the one who actually connected me to Raj about a year and a half, two years ago when I first discovered them. And, you know, it's amazing. Like, I almost have a parallel story to yours. So I started doing work around flourishing over the last seven years at McKinsey. And I was kind of really doing it. It was a lot of it was emerging right from deeper wisdom, from the spiritual work that I was doing. And like you, I was a consultant and I had built this framework and then just accidentally, completely accidentally, the dean that I was on the board of at Leeds Business School became the dean for Michigan, Ross, Sharon Matusek. And so Sharon goes to Michigan. Sharon says she knows what I've been doing, and she says, you need to talk to Jane. And she connected me to Jane. And through Jane, I found the center. And it's a little bit like that. The work they had been doing and researching for the last 20 plus years at that center. The mind, the heart, the spirit of generosity, right? It was like I'd found, like you, I had found my tribe. So I literally spent three days with them. And like, my mission is to get more companies and leaders to really discover the center and the amazing research and practice interventions that they've designed to really, you know, fundamentally help leaders help their people be at their best. Because if they are at their best, they can then create much better outcomes. Right? The change. And I love what you said, the change. Don't ask yourself what you want to change, you know, out there. Start with, what do you want to change in here? So there are so many parallels, and it's amazing. And that's also how I discovered the conscious capitalism tribe. Right? Because again, it's a step towards saying, how can we be More than just be here to make money. How can we be more. How can we create organizations that can help flourish? So I love that story, and that brought me.

I'm in constant evolution in terms of my purpose. And one of the ways we talk about purpose is like, it's aligned with Frederic Laloux, it's evolutionary purpose. So you express it today. You learn from how you apply it, and then you just keep upgrading and updating so it makes more sense, and it actually helps you with decision making and investment. And my purpose is to accelerate the upgrade of leaders and organizations so we can create better businesses for a better world. So the acceleration is so important on this purpose because I have already trained 1200 consultants in 25 countries to actually help with that work. I cannot do it on my own. So the more people I train, the interesting thing is I create competition, but I create the feel to be more creative at the same time.

I love that. And you're helping create leaders, you know, create consultants and coaches who can help leaders, you know, live into their best and kind of create better outcomes.

And.

And, you know, it's. I love your idea of an evolutionary purpose. Right. Ours. At least for now. When I left McKinsey after 17 years, we said, ours is to democratize happiness is to democratize flourishing. How can we help a billion truly integrate these into their. Into how they live, work, and lead the science of flourishing. Right? So I think there's so much synergy. I think we're gonna be. We're gonna be playing together for a long while. But before we go further, Thomas, for many of our listeners who might not know what conscious capitalism is, is. How would you define it in the simplest of terms?

It's a natural expression for humankind. If you think when humans lived in caves and there was so much work just to stay alive, imagine that time we gathered with a simple purpose, to survive. Yes, this is natural for human being. We gathering food for a reason. We followed a leader at that time, somebody who could offer protection. Now leaders have to offer different things. We recognize the interdependence with the whole ecosystem that was around us, all the stakeholders, you know, the cave, the forest, the birch, the. The tree, the animals, the small, the medium, the river, the water, the rain. Everything was part of what we understood. And we start limiting ourselves to value change. Right? And ultimately we had a very strong culture of collaboration and sharing. Whoever didn't want to collaborate or share was kicked out of that group. Because that was. Yes, that's. That's the nature of human being. As we flourished and survival became easier, arts and crafts started to being developed. Yeah, and that's the. Those are the first entrepreneurs. The first entrepreneurs actually had their craft on their last name. Smith, Baker, shoemaker, Waver. Those are the first entrepreneurs, solopreneurs maybe. And that grew with a family. And so that complexity, I think when we got to the industrial revolution, we lost track of humankind and we made everything become resource, even human resource. We measure. Oh, how do we measure the price of a commodity, corn? If you have more availability, prices drop. How do I measure availability of human resources? Unemployment rate. Oh my God. I, we, we move people into the bucket of resources. And we need to understand we are not resources. We are human with resources. And now you have the power to flourish again. You're not just stuck somewhere. So when you think about all those four principles, what's your cause? What's your purpose? Recognize a leader that can inspire, educate, teach you, help you move forward. Recognize the interdependence. Everything around you is part of a large system. You can't just pick a piece out of it. And the culture you create based on, on all those three, four elements, that's would actually help you flourish. So that's the invitation I always make to people. So if you're starting a business, your purpose lies behind your intention to make something better.

I love that. And how simply articulated, right. It's going back to some extent to rediscovering the pure essence. Right. Uncorrupted, like at the heart of it.

Yes.

Most wisdom traditions. I love the word ubuntu. You are so I am inter being. Right. Thich Nhat Han talks about it. It's really, really beautiful. So I love that. Right. This notion of reminder back to inter being and really tuning into what's our why, what's our purpose, what's the bigger, you know, what, how do we want to change and how do we want to leave our mark? Right. If you will. It's interesting, right, that as you said, that's how we started. And then somehow we lost our humanity along the way. But I think what we also lost was this fundamental separation of us from other, but separation of us from nature. Right. We talk about ecology and nature as if we are different from nature. We are nature. Right. So it's beautiful. So there are four key tenets, right. As we talk about, as you talk about and Raj talks about in conscious capitalism. Walk us through those four and how they come to life in a conscious business.

So I was sharing before now, purpose lies behind the intention of the entrepreneur to offer something better. Nobody starts a business saying, I'm going to do more. I believe I can do something better. So the challenge is actually express that in words so the people around you understand why you're gathering, why we work together, why we go to the market, why we offer something better. So for me, that's the most important thing today. Understanding what is the purpose, what's the real reason why we have. And we can bring it up to esg, because ESG is an evolution of people, profit and planet People is too vague. Let's do it. Social planet is too big. Let's do it. Environment and profit, it's not at any cost anymore. That why it requires governance. And governance implies that you have a clear purpose. Because governance is not the decision you make only at the board level, but the decision you make at every single instance in your business. If you select A, B or C or customer supplier, that's all governance. Is that aligned with purpose? Is that taking us away of purpose or is that leveraging our purpose? So that's the first tenant for me. It has so much effort. And Healy Russian has amazing conversation about key purpose indicators in addition, not in replacement to key performance indicators. So the two have to go along.

Amazing. So purpose is the reason why something exists. Right? And I always love this quote by Alex who said, you know, for companies, if you want to find, if you want to reach the land of profit, follow the road of purpose.

Yes.

So tell me a story, Thomas, about a company that you might have served or one of the people you trained have served, and how was that journey from profit to purpose and what did that look like and what became possible as a result of that journey for them?

There's so many stories and I don't know not even where to start because this is such a huge field of work. I'm going to start with a story from a entrepreneur in Guinea Bissau in Africa, please. Because we started that workshop, which is Purpose Canvas for Business, that's in a book making clear why we are in business. So the first thing she said say, hey, I don't believe here. I'm here because I'm part of the Impact hub. And they told me to be here. Okay, let's go through the workshop, finish the workshop. And she said, I'm still don't get it. Okay, tell me, let's use you. Would you be open to share your business and be the case for us? Say, yes, let's do it. So, and we are very clear. We use Simon Sinek, We Are use Aristotle. We use a couple of other theory you. So let's deconstruct your business. What is it? What do you do? Oh, I produce tampons in a sustainable, reusable, ecological, organic way. Perfect. That's just so bureaucratic. So such a product. So let's change it. What? What? On the golden circle, what is your product? My product is tampons. How you manufacture it, that's the second level. So I'm deconstructing it so that anybody faster with more resources can do it better. Now you produce it with sustainable materials, organic materials and reusable materials. Perfect. So what's the problem? Well, are you doing this? Well, because women lose a week of school every month because of their period. And most women don't get a job because their lack of personal care products. And so they don't get jobs. Okay, so that's the need of the market. What's your talent? Well, I live that. I know how to do that. I. I overcame that talent. Say, okay, so you're in a business. You're not in a business to manufacture tampons or sell tampons. You're in a business of offering women freedom. Wow. Completely different. Now, before going to the mission, let's go to the vision with that purpose. What is the world you're creating? What's the vision? Oh, be number one. No, no, no, no. That's ambition. That's another circle, a new circle. Ambition, where you put the numbers. Vision cannot have numbers. Okay, my. The world I want to see is that men and women have equal opportunity for employment. That's perfect. Everybody understands. Everybody understands your purpose because it's universal, it's inclusive. Your vision the same way. Now let's go to the mission. The mission has to be a message that creates belonging. All of a sudden, this girl. A year later, I called the guy from Impact Hub, say, hey, how's our girl doing? Oh, she doesn't produce tampons anymore. She starts any conversation. I'm here to offer freedom for women and people tell me more. So that generates a whole different conversation the way you present yourself. Oh, that's my product. Okay, thank you. Doesn't interest me. Now this way, it just completely changed. So this is one. I got a call from a officer from a police department in north of northeast and the U.S. he said, you know, Thomas, I read the whole book. This is not for business. This is for any organization. And the police needs to update its purpose. I say, okay, I will send you the other book. So that's a tool do that, and then let's come back and talk again. How are we going to, you know, permeate how your leadership will permeate the organization? So we are in a moment of so much purpose, update, purpose, clarification, purpose, recovery. Because businesses don't start just to make money. If we live our purpose, we have an ability to make more money. So that's the invitation. I can bring more larger cases, but I think when we go down to.

The small one, what's your why? Yeah, what's your why and what you know, and really being able to discover that. Right. So as a listener. Right. If you're listening. And it's so true. Thomas. Right. When people launch businesses, they launch it because they're trying to solve an unmet need or scratch an itch that can't be scratched in traditional ways, right?

Yes.

Starting a business is hard. Starting a business has. Involves a lot of risk. Starting a business involves lots of hard work. So people don't do it just to make money. There's lots easier ways to make money and to have a comfortable life. But along the way, as they raise capital, as they start chasing growth, all of a sudden it becomes about numbers and we lose track of what was the why that we started this with. And so when a quarter is not that good, we go into doldrums, we go into despair versus connecting back to the why that started where we started with where we had nothing. So, you know, even if you have a million in revenue, you have 300,000. You have hundred million, you have 300 million. Whatever the point you've reached with your business, and you've had a down year, remember when you started, you had nothing, just the why.

Yes.

And so you had more than that. And even if you're still at zero, you have all of the experiences, right?

Yes.

Edison's favorite saying, what kept him going to the bulb? He said, I didn't fail thousand times, I just found thousand ways. It didn't work. So even if the numbers are not showing in, you have grown, you have those experiences. You've changed along the way.

And, you know, this is one of the things I do a lot of talk every time I got a paid talk I have to do. This is my donation. I donate my time for a college, a school, to talk to students, because education is the best hack in the world. That's the only thing you don't lose over time. You can't delete, undo something you heard, you learned, you understood. It's impossible to take it away. So if you Want to be against whatever system you see up there, learn.

I love that. So, Thomas, let me ask you a question. I want to explore the two or three other dimensions of this and I want to get to this topic. I have a bigger question for you. I'll give you a heads up now. We won't answer it. We'll get into some of the other. Other tenets.

Yes.

But the question I have for you is, you know, conscious capitalism just makes intuitive sense. It's been around for 25 years. But if I think about the adoption, I don't see it where companies really, even today, people have purpose statements, but they don't live into it. That's not conscious capitalism. And in fact, if I think about the last four weeks, if I think about the last four years, so many companies, companies that were the darlings, right. The ones that we held up. Southwest Airline, it was all about love. Herb Kelleher. Right. And it's made a bunch of changes away to drive more profits. I'm not sure that's gonna work out. But anyway. Right. I think people are losing and kind of straying from the path. So that's a question. I'll come back to it. I just wanna give you a little bit of time to kind of think about that. It's a big question because it's something I sit with. Right about. But before we go there, I want to actually go down and talk a little bit about the second tenet that you have, which is stakeholder orientation. Yeah, right. Rather than just shareholder stakeholders. So talk a little bit about that.

So I think one important idea when we talk about stakeholder. We started with stakeholder orientation, we evolved to stakeholder integration, and now we going to stakeholder interdependence. Because that's biomimicry. It's not a value chain is an ecosystem.

Yes.

So even competition is part of what you deliver as a value. So community, everything. It's not only those that you have economical interaction are part of something that's relevant to you. Maybe that's the first layer of stakeholder. But if you think about employees, the biggest leverage is actually employees. Family, if they're good, employee will be okay. If they're taken care of, employees will be fully dangerous. So. And nobody puts family as a stakeholder anywhere or in the value chain anywhere.

Absolutely.

So. And as we evolve the idea of stakeholders through multiple projects we've done more and more often we see family popping up as a very important stakeholder and a huge leverage to actually move the whole system to a more Profitable space. So, and this is one thing that I wanted to bring up is stakeholder is we have to mimic nature. Nature has been the most successful organization in the world. And as we try to simplify that on a value chain, we're missing the whole potential of everything else around us. Now one thing you mentioned earlier, as you get investor, you change. And we have to remember when a business is starting, investor is the first one to put the money in. And when the business is running, you pay taxes. Whenever you sell something, you pay taxes, you pay suppliers, you pay salaries, you pay bonuses to executives, and only after that you pay shareholders. We are not understanding what each stakeholder wants in the short and long term. So if we pay too much one month, you create an expectation that something is going to be repeated. So you have to learn, you have to educate your shareholders too. And one person that I've seen that done a very good education is Paul Polman when he, he got to the role of CEO of Unilever. Say, I'm not going to do this every quarter. Doesn't make sense. So how do you educate your shareholders to have the shareholders you deserve? And that's something John Mackie has always said. You know, every company has the shareholders they deserve.

So absolutely. Enjoying this podcast. If so, you will be excited to know that Happiness Squad is launching a free online community on International Day of Happiness March 22. This is an opportunity for listeners like you to integrate the nine hardwired for happiness practices that exist in every wisdom tradition and are backed by scientific evidence from the fields of psychology and neuroscience into your daily life and rediscover your well being, balance, purpose and connection. Check out the details on our website or drop us an email. Excited to see you in the community. And that takes courage. Yes, that takes courage. Yeah. So talk about that and how that links to your third conscious leadership.

Leadership. Yeah. So when we think about leaders, the courage of inspiring people, educating your people and letting them go. Because there's only one president, there's only one owner, maybe two VPs, four directors or six. So it's a permit. And are we developing people for them to achieve their success or to limit them within our success? This is the fight leaders have. Not between evil and good, between ego and eco system. Is it all for me, Is it all for others? So it's not one or the other. Again, interdependence is both. Is changing the trade off proposition to a addition. So it's not choosing one or the other. Is how you manage both. This polarity, some people Talk about, you know, ambidextrous, you know, writing with the two hands. So you have to manage both sides. Raj is an amazing book. Shakti Leadership, which talks about the values. So there's so many different polarities. All that is part of the same idea, the same concept. And I think that's the challenge we're going to go forward and on the question at the end, because that's the real truth. You know, if you as a leader, look only to ego, it's not going to work. If you only. Only look to ecosystem, it's not everything for you doesn't work. So what's the balance? First we put the mask on ourselves and then we help somebody else around us. Yeah.

And it is so hard. Right. So for those who are listening, I love this ego versus eco and this challenge. Right. These are polarities. If we completely. We have such a strong sense of self.

Yeah.

Then it is a polarity. Right. Going back to the kind of interdependence point. But if we work on really recognizing that we exist, this self is a myth, it is all of a sudden that ego versus eco doesn't come to play. You know, I was reading this beautiful book. It's called We Contain Multitudes. And here's the start, dear friends, for you to tune into. If I asked you where you start and where you begin, most people would say, what, Thomas? Where do you start and begin?

Well, so many of our life when.

We start, but here, right now, I'm here, you're there. Where is the you? Right. What is the dimension of you? We say it's our body. Right. This is where I stop. This is me.

This is the limit. Yeah.

This is the limit. This is me. And that is you. Right. That's how we live and experience the world. This is the limit. But here's three facts, right? If you look at the research, and that's what the book I Contain multitudes contains, what percentage of our DNA is human DNA? What do you guess?

Well, it should be very low because of the question you just asked.

Yeah, it's 7%. Yeah, 93%. And people are like, wait, what does that mean? What is the rest? It's all the microbes. It's all the microorganisms that live on us, that live in us, that are in our gut and from us. So even when we say me and this, the reality is there is a lot more. And we know why is it that we struggle, for example, that we get sick or if we take antibiotics, what happens? There is so many of Those in our gut that get killed. You know, the linkage of food and what we eat and to our health is way deeper than the fats and the carbs and the, you know, it's the entire flora and fauna, the mind and body are connected. A lot of the latest research on neuroscience is going into the quality of our biome and how it's fundamentally affecting our mental health, our physical health, our whole experience of the world. And so ego versus eco, that polarity that we feel stretched in fundamentally is because we've bought in and we've lost track from the original place 20,000 years ago that we inhabited where we lived in nature. We were nature. And we were reminded of that day in, day out. But today, sitting in a office, sitting in a room, separated from the world, separated from each other, constantly thinking about what do I want? Am I okay? Are mine okay? I think we've forgotten that. And I think that's what I love about, you know, conscious leadership. And really it's an evolution of our own way of making sense of the world. There is a beautiful saying, right? We can't solve problems from the same level of consciousness that created it. We have to evolve. That was Einstein. If you look at the work at Harvard, dear friends, if you're listening and if this whole thing feels a little bit too woo woo or esoteric, here's the stat I want you to think about. They researched and they extensively researched the stage of our adult development and what they find is only 20% of leaders today. This was, by the way, about 10 years ago. Only 20% of leaders today were at a stage of development to thrive in complexity from a place of self authorship, knowing who we are and how we interact versus just trying to fit in, trying to survive. Only 20%. If you've experienced anything like what I have in the last four to eight weeks with how dramatically the world is changing, the volatility, the uncertainty, the complexity, I would say that number is probably down to 5%. And so we really have to evolve. And I think the whole field of conscious leadership, right, conscious capitalism, has it. There's a lot of work at Harvard, Keegan and Leahy's, the work by Bob Anderson and Leadership Circle Profile, I think they're all doorways. I invite you to look into those fields because we are, all we are going to do is survive unless we fundamentally take charge and really focus on our own development, which is the only thing we a hundred percent control. We don't control the outside world. Yeah, that's a little bit of what Just came up for me as I heard you talk about that ego versus eco polarity. Love it. So many people feel stretched, you know.

And if we think about going back to the source, to the caves, to the time when we start gathering, you know, as groups, we can create, even though there's a lot of uncertainty outside, a group can create enough certainty with clarity of purpose, recognizing how we play together, that we can be productive, engaged, and generate a lot more value. So we can say, oh, business is tough, no, it's raining outside, we are covered. So leadership has that role of caring for people in a way that you reduce uncertainty in a group. Because I feel safe, I feel protected. That's the original leader that was strong and protected that group. Today the leader offers a different kind of protection and caring so that I feel that I belong here because we have a reason to join together, to work together and that will bring more efficiency. Oh my God. Now efficiency, we're talking about reducing cost and making more profit. Oh, my God. We just went back to making the key performance indicators even much better if we have a clear purpose indicators.

Absolutely. And frankly, you know, if you look at the level of change that is we are experiencing. Friends, I want you, if you're leading an organization to think about this. We've all grown up and we've trained with leaders where we fundamentally it was about top dime information filtered up to the higher places where you made decisions. The biggest decisions were made at the top with the least amount of information, often wrong information, because nobody likes to be the bad news bearer. So we always kind of soft pedal. We kind of keep diluting the message, right? The thing is on fire and somebody's saying, yeah, you know, it's a little hot here, right? The urgency. And by the way, by the time it reaches up, it's already, you know, the barn is gone. So, oh, call the fire brigade. The barn is no longer there. So it almost. We have to enable the system. And I think I loved also your analogy of nature is the biggest example. Nobody out there says, hey, it's time to start doing spring trees, start shedding your, you know, leaves and et cetera, et cetera, right? It's time for spring, start growing leaves. Similarly, you know, it just evolves, it just is. Things change. You know, I think we have to lean into that.

And there's amazing examples. Trees talk to each other through the root system.

Yes.

They don't fight, they don't compete, they cooperate. And there is a study done at the Yellowstone park that they brought the wolves back into the park and it regained its balance that it had before. Erosion was reduced. Small plants started to grow again. Trees went back to life, everything.

Absolutely.

We create the unbalance in our ecosystem and we get sick with our system.

Yeah. Thomas, have you read this book? Another book for nature. I know you love nature too. We're talking a lot about nature. There's a beautiful book called the Secret Lives of Trees. No, it literally is all about how trees communicate, how trees protect each other, how there is a fundamental, you know, we think about. I'm remind, I'm taken back to the Lord of the Rings. Right. And I thought the whole walking trees and the slow trees was interesting, but that's the reality of it. These trees have been around forever. They live. They are fundamentally interwoven. And that book really gets into the details of how there is magic and miracle around us that we are blind to. You know, we think about nature as kind of just that we are sentient. They're not. No, they are sentient too. It's just their pace is different. But maybe that slower pace allows them to outlast humans.

I'm sure.

Right. I think this notion. So look, I mean, you talked about it. One of the most important stakeholders in any conscious business is the employees and the families. If I asked you, friends, if you're listening to this, what's most important to you? Very rarely, even before me, you'll say my family and you beautifully talked about. And hence family is an important stakeholder. So as leaders struggle with balancing profits and purpose, and employees are in the middle of all of that, talk to me about, as you've seen conscious businesses evolve, as you've seen businesses go from profit to purpose, how have you seen actions that they have taken? Right. Three or four actions they might have taken that you've seen common around. How they ensure that in that journey, they focus on making sure that employees are flourishing. Because I don't think you can go from profit to purpose without going through the employees. So how have you seen. What are some interesting three, four things that you have seen? Businesses do that. If our listeners listen to say, you know, let me go try that.

So my first idea is, if you're ready, go back and bring your purpose back to life. Clarify. But sometimes once you have it, you might not be able to publish it until you have enough decision. Decisions made based on purpose. So that when you publish your purpose, people will like, aha, that's why we did this. That's why we did that. If you publish your purpose before you ev. You have evidence enough of that's the way you're going forward. It's going to be another communication, corporate communication campaign. So be careful with that. Recover your purpose, start managing based on purpose. And after 6 to 12 months now you publish it and people will recognize your new decision aligned with that. So this is the way, the fundamental way to gain trust. So that will build trust because let's say you have two restaurants, two cafeterias, one for executives and for say that shouldn't exist. How you build trust, you invite employees to say what's our new service provider? And they will say oh you're going to have two again, you know, it doesn't care. And once that is implemented, people say well that was different. Now we have only one cafeteria. And I've seen that many times because that's a very simple what are things that separates us in your business, in your company parking, what are things that simple things that will start building trust and people will associate that to a new way of managing your business. Purpose driven organization.

Beautiful. So that's number one. Activate your purpose and use your purpose in collaboration with others to make some visible different directions that earn back trust or deepen trust.

Exactly. So this is for me, the second thing is as we talk about purpose conscious capitalism, we need to understand that capitalism is an idea that generates automatic polarity. So adjust your vocabulary to your audience. It took me five years to get attention from college students because I was talking about capitalism. When I decided to talk about my personal entrepreneurial experience and talk about the heroic spirit of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship students start listening to me because there's no capitalism and socialism is a trade off and because capitalism is kind of not working and socialism is unknown because we lost track of what, what it was and it didn't work either. There's no middle ground between those two. So we have to elevate to a higher ground the conversation. And the higher ground is everybody believes that entrepreneurial activity is the best tool to elevate humanity out of poverty.

Absolutely.

If you go left or right, up or down, it doesn't matter. But that's the higher ground. It's not common ground because it from there doesn't go straight to one side or the other. But that's identify your higher ground when you communicate to the world and that will be inclusive. Otherwise we'll be separating people. We will dividing people. And our role as leaders is where do we have talks, words that divide ideas, people, things, places. So how do we create more convergence to gain more strength? So that's my second Invitation, I love it.

And it's talking about something that we do a lot of work around, flourishing, which is don't avoid conflicts, don't ignore conflicts, but lean into conflicts to see what divides us, go deep. You know, you mentioned the youth theory. Let's go deep into our deeper. Don't let's not be conflict of ideas on what needs to be done. Let's understand the thought, the belief, the need, the fear, and our perspective on why that is the right answer to go forward, right? That's what you're inviting leaders to do is don't avoid it. Upskill the people to really navigate their own icebergs and find the common ground. Because if we find the common ground, I think it allows us from there to build. So don't focus on the differences. Find the common ground and from there really explore. And by the way, dear friends, if you feel that sometimes there's just no common ground, I just want you to think about this at the heart of almost everything every human does, regardless, you know, you can think about somebody who's just trying to take something away versus somebody else, right? Think about mother. I'm going to give two extremes, right? Think about a robber and think about a nun. A robber and a nun. If you ask the five whys underneath, why they do what they do, you'll get to the same because somehow they feel that's going to lead to them being happy. So even if we are so far apart, we are united in all humans want to avoid suffering and they crave happiness. So you can at least find that.

So this is how we deconstruct from our differences and then we prototype that future, that space which is happiness. This is actually a, an approach used when British Petroleum actually sold a lot of little small projects because of the Gulf problem. Let's keep it the Gulf. And we helped an organization in Colombia to recover because they were 25 years, they were BP and now on Monday morning they just had to give up their uniforms, their logos, everything, and they lost. They were orphans. And after a month on this operation, the invitation was here. We want to be happy. If you don't agree with that, we let you go. You don't have to be here, but we going to start from that space. We want to be happy here. And from that future vision, you know, we were able to create a great purpose, stakeholder map and really integrate all the stakeholders into that goal, even the community, surrounding community. We want to be happy here. We don't want to just do more work. And that's Oil and gas business, it's tough business.

Yeah, I love that. So, Thomas, just keeping an eye on the clock. I want to come back to the question that I left, you know, people hanging with, which is, look, I mean, this makes intuitive sense. Start with your why don't just focus on shareholders, but all stakeholders evolve yourself. Make business a ground to evolve yourself and those around you. And through that, create a culture of care and kindness. A conscious culture. A conscious, you know, that like really is about grounded in, that makes common sense. 25 years is a long time to be on this path with so many companies that are examples. And yet I think conscious capitalism and just this purpose, ESG has never faced a bigger onslaught. More companies are backing away from it, explicitly or implicitly. What do you think is why do we think we are here? And one, what's behind this? And second, for a leader who's feeling the push, like others, to move because there is a herd mentality, what would be your advice for them?

I think the language is such an important part of this whole conversation. Confucius has a saying that if the words don't say what you want them to say, you know, I don't know exactly the I. You know, we can share that later, but people will not understand what you want to tell them. Right? And this is clarifying purpose. This is using the right words with the right audience. So talking about capitalism, it's easy when you talk about C level, when you go inside an organization, they might not see capitalism as a good thing, but they might understand conscious business. When you go down to the surrounding communities, to families, they are away from the business, they might see, you know, warrior entrepreneur as something that will, you know, that's the energy. Let's go up and let's change the world around us. So there's the proper wording for each audience. If we don't have the ability to adjust that, we will keep fighting ego and eco all the time. Even though that whole wording, ESG is moving away from mainstream, there's still a lot of companies recruiting for sustainability. Vp, sustainability director, ESG director, even. So we just took it off the window of the, you know, the outdoors, but we're still working that way because that's our nature. We just want to create. We don't want to create conflict. So I'm not going to use those words, but I'm going to continue behave my way because I know that has generated extraordinary results and I will keep doing this. So a lot of people, they say, I don't want to Create conflict, because I don't have time for that discussion. So what you do is you go down to the level of consciousness of the other that might impact you in a way, but you continue behave and create that certainty inside your tribe, inside your world, because you cannot control the uncertainty outside created by all those differences. But here we're together, here we're strong.

I love that. Control the controllables, and you control your own reality as a leader and the environment that you create of the certainty, the trust that you can provide. Right. And also I would say, you know, look and be open about the decisions that you make. Right. I think sometimes I often find leaders feel that they can't be transparent. Trust me, those who have not understand that more than you think they will. And if we do it in the right way, if we do it with the right intention, I think you might see different results. I think what people hate the most, as you rightly said, is the uncertainty. I think we all make sense, you know, and we see it at an individual level. The anxiety before the diagnosis of cancer is much worse than how people feel after they know that they have cancer. Or even much worse than if somebody Sundays, you have six months to live. I've talked to many who are kind of in their six months, and they are at a much different level of peace in many ways. I think, Thomas, they're enjoying their six months more than many people enjoy their six decades, seven decades, 10 decades. Because they're always rushing, and all of a sudden they know this is precious and life reminds them this is it. And they take every moment, every hour, every minute, and they do it based on what they want rather than what others want or expect from them. My friend. Thank you.

That brings me to a question I usually ask when I start a talk is why are you here for. For whom are you here for? Because if you're not here for somebody else, for something else, you're not here because ultimately that's the connection. That's the human connection. We are here for somebody else, for something bigger than just this space we occupy in the world.

Right. Beautiful. What a beautiful question to leave people with. What are you here for? What's your why? Right, what's your why? And if you say, nobody told me or I'm going to ask others, don't ask others. Viktor Frankl said this beautifully. In man's search for meaning, we don't ask life what our purpose is. It's life that asks us. We have to find that answer. Thomas, thank you for joining us for sharing your wisdom for really not just being a conscious capitalist, but really inspiring and teaching so many other change makers to help others right in this moment to come alive, be a force for good in the world and truly to heal, heal, heal the world. Thank you.

Thank you so much for having me here and I leave an invitation. Those who have questions, doubts, curiosity, just add it to the comment section on will be published here and maybe we come back.

That would be amazing. I would love to continue. And maybe that's a great invitation, friends. We'll publish it on LinkedIn and Facebook and Instagram. Put in comments and Thomas and I will come back together and do a special episode to answer those questions for you. That wraps up another episode of the Happiness Squad podcast. We hope you found the insights action actionable to enhance your journey towards happiness and fill your life with more joy, health, love and meaning. Please consider leaving us Review and share the podcast with anyone in your professional or personal life who you feel will benefit from some of these very insights. It's a really simple way to extend support and spread positivity. Take care and remember, happiness is a choice that's available to you moment to moment in the here and now. Take care and see you next week.