John Marks' Journey from Provocateur to Peacemaker

Living a life in full is a conversation you always wanted to have with that person who gave an amazing TED Talk or the author of one of your favorite books, or that inspirational Olympian you always wanted to know more about. It's graduate level conversations with those making a difference in the world and in the lives of others. This show brings you new ideas and approaches so that you can live a life in full. I'm your host, Dr. Chris Stout and I hope you enjoy this episode. This episode is brought to you by the nonprofit I founded, the center for Global Initiatives. The center is an all volunteer organization so there are no salaries and thus all tax deductible donations can go to the work. While our key country partner is in Tanzania, our work is global and generally focused in the areas of education and healthcare. We also help others to get their nonprofits started or augment others project based initiatives. It's our goal to open source humanitarian intervention and to help make it easier for others to do more good in the world. We are proud to have been ranked a great nonprofit every year since 2011 and to have achieved a Platinum level rating by Guidestar Links. In this episode's show, Notes will take you to published articles on our outcomes, a number of helpful tools and downloadable resources which are all free always. Please Visit us at CenterForGlobalInitiatives.org and be sure to watch our video at Patreon.com DrChrisStout to learn more. Thanks. Welcome to another episode of Living a Life in Full. I hello, I'm your host Dr. Chris Stout. It seems that almost everywhere in the world there is conflict, distrust, unrest, Gaza, Ukraine, Syria, even here in the U.S. oftentimes, any kind of diplomacy, cooperation, agreement, detente or finding a common ground seems impossible. But what if there was a different way? What if there was an organization that holds as its mission to transform the way the world deals with conflict a away from adversarial approaches and toward cooperative solutions. What if those tactics included dialogue, training, joint development projects, public art projects, sports leagues and social impact entertainment via video, tv, film and print? Well, those are all the accomplishments that John Marks has achieved in his work as President of Search for Common Ground, a peace building NGO he founded in 1982 and built with his wife, Susan Collin Marks for predicated on social entrepreneurship, Search for Common Ground, or Search just for short, came into being at the height of the Cold War by John, a former diplomat and U.S. foreign Service officer at the U.S. state Department. His first major project was fostering cooperation between the United States and the Soviet Union to address the violence in Lebanon. With search's support, a task force proposed a multilateral regional peace process that led to the end of the Israeli Jordanian War. Since 1982, Search for Common Ground has expanded with offices in 36 countries, employing 1,000 staff, and is the world's largest peace building nonprofit. John served as president until 2014, and during his tenure he also founded Common Ground Productions, which has produced a number of TV series promoting nonviolent coexistence in 25 countries. And he continues to serve as Senior advisor to both organizations. He is now the founder and Managing Director of Confluence International and a Visiting scholar in peace building and Social Entrepreneurship at Leiden University in the Netherlands. He is the co author of the controversial New York Times bestseller, the CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, the award winning Search for the Manchurian Candidate, and we'll be doing a deep dive into his latest book, From Vision to Remaking the World Through Social Entrepreneurship, just recently published by Columbia University Press. John is also a Skoll Awardee in Social Entrepreneurship and an Ashoka senior fellow. The UN's University of Peace awarded him an honorary doctorate for his work. And in 2018, search for common Ground was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. John, welcome. It's great to have you on.

Thanks so much. It's a pleasure to be here.

It's been too long since we last collaborated, but you and Susan have a chapter in my book, the New Humanitarians on the search for Common Ground. Common Ground. And I think our initial connection was through Susan and Davos, where she and I were both doing a presentation or facilitating or something as faculty. I think, Good Lord, like 20 something years ago. So this is long overdue. Perhaps we could start with the Common Ground approach that you have talked about in a variety of ways and in the book as a core methodology that Search uses. Could you maybe unpack that for us? For starters?

Yeah. Our operating mantra is to understand the differences and act on the commonalities. In other words, to find things or areas or subjects which opposing parties can agree on rather than disagree on, and then to find ways for them to work together. And fostering that kind of cooperation is at our essence.

And maybe. Let's go back to what I was mentioning in the introduction. Could you maybe talk about how an approach that you did that with the Soviets and the Jordanian peace agreement with Israel?

Well, with the Soviets, the Cold War seemed to threaten the planet. We were all afraid that nuclear war would break out, and our strategy was to find areas where, where the two countries could agree and work Together, and we were able to do that. Actually, the first one we accomplished was bringing together the coup countries to prevent terrorism. And we wound up having the former head of the CIA and a couple of generals from the KGB come to a meeting which was unprecedented, and work out ways to exchange information to prevent terrorism. And that was a breakthrough in the Cold War days. And we went on from the US Soviet conflict into the Middle east, where we were bringing together Israelis, Palestinians, Iranians and Turks. And the whole idea was to find areas of agreement. And one thing we did was to set up a meeting, a series of meetings between retired generals from Jordan and Israel. And together they worked out what an eventual peace treaty could look like. And their results were going to the prime Minister of Israel and the King of Jordan within hours. So it was a very successful way of doing things before actually, they got to the official level. It was called track two work, unofficial work, which contributed to track one or official government work.

How did you go about getting those folks to talk to one another for the track two aspects of it? I mean, was there sort of a, well, I'm not going to do it unless he's going to do it, or, you know, what was the proverbial Kumbaya to get them? Like you mentioned before, there was the common ground of terrorism and threat and concern about that. But like to get these two former warring generals or groups of generals from either side together was that, you know, what was the alchemy behind that?

Well, we needed to make what we called yesable propositions, propositions to which they said yes. And we learned how to appeal to their better angels. We didn't confront them directly, but we would ask them to come to meetings and win their confidence, if you will. And after a while, they. They would actually do things together and cooperate. And facilitation, good facilitation of meetings was very important in doing this. We had professional facilitators working with the parties to make sure that the playing field stayed level and that they could. That nobody was at a disadvantage in the conversations and discussions that went into the eventual outcomes.

Was it easier being the founding director of an NGO focused on peace building, to get these people in the same room versus when you were back with the State Department? I mean, was there, you know, sort of like being an unofficial or ex officio, you know, as opposed to an official envoy? Did that make a difference too? And getting people to maybe have better trust or.

It certainly didn't hurt. But people from the State Department, when they negotiate, negotiate from instructions in other Words they have a position they want to be to come out of what's going on. And that's a difficult way to find agreement. And we were negotiating, or we were facilitating negotiations to find agreements with no particular stake in what the particular outcome would be. And so, yes, it was good to know from my official days what people were thinking in government, how they operated, but we weren't following their motto. We were kind of blazing our own mouth.

Gotcha, gotcha. So from that specific to areas of conflict and warring situations, you know, I get it. You know, with bringing parties together, there's specific parties, specific actors, specific regions. But then there's more of a. In my head. So clarify for me if I'm misunderstanding it. But then there's more of a generalized audience. When you then started to develop and do the work of Common Ground Productions, how. Tell us the seed of that. How did that come about and the conceptualization to use media for peace building?

Well, the last book that I wrote, the Search for the Manchurian Candidate, abc, the network, the American network, made the book into a documentary. And about 8 million people saw that documentary, which I noticed was about 7,970,000 more than Reddit. And I wanted. I wanted to change the world. And I realized that workshops and trainings might deal with 40 or 50 people at most, and that we. I wanted to meet, reach millions. And that meant using the mass media. Now, the New Yorker had a media critic named A.J. liebling, and he said that freedom of the press belongs to those who own them. And I took that to heart and I founded Common Ground Productions about three years into the time after I started the whole overall organization. And in the beginning, it had absolutely no reality. The first thing I did was had cards made that said I was president of Common Ground Productions. Now, the people who make cards, they don't ask for credentials or diplomas. They just ask for, you know, $50. And so I had these cards, and within about three years of doing that, we had our series on American public television called, of all things, Search for Common Ground.

So, and then you also. There was. Was the Kenyan soap opera one of the first things, too, in the early days, or what were some of the other productions that you, as president and CEO of Common Ground Productions, were involved with?

Well, we started with talk shows, and we noticed they. It was, it was wonderful to be on the air. We cleared over 100 PBS stations and the like, but we noticed that the, the, the viewership of talk shows was not too high, and we really wanted to get into drama. Which had the same values, our values in it. And our signature format, our signature show was called the Team. And in every country where we produced it, and we did it in 18 different countries, it was about a soccer team, a football team, as the world calls it, on which the diversity of the country was represented. So in Kenya, everybody on the team was from a different tribe. And in Morocco was urban and rural folks who had conflict. And in the Congo, it was all girls. And the problem was preventing sexual violence. But we use this as a way to overcome prejudice, to teach to a mass audience the idea that if people didn't cooperate, they would lose. And that's the core metaphor of sports and that was the core metaphor of our television series. We called it Soap Opera for Social Change.

I love that. Did you ever get any pushback? You know, like I think about, you know, like the, whatever commissions in the United States that have censorship things about certain topics or certain language or anything like that. How. I guess two point question one. Did you ever have censorship around content? And then how did you deal with perhaps different linguistic aspects of people? You know that I know that there's a number of languages that can be spoken within a geographic area. How, how did you manage with those?

Well, first, we always produced in the local language. We never produced in English. Well, except in Kenya, where English is kind of the national language. So that wasn't a problem, nor was censorship for us. When you're doing a multi part dramatic series, people don't pay attention or government censors don't pay attention. And anyway, we were search for common ground. Who could be against that? And it helps, if you will. We were not so much. We weren't being controversial. What we were doing was showing a different path.

That's great. Yeah, it just, it almost reminds me of, you know, like how Rod Serling would sort of slip in, you know, social commentary and social justice almost kinds of issues way back when. And just this, yeah, it's just a, you know, Twilight Zone, it's a fantasy, you know, kind of show. But that kind of impact of, you know, I guess it's, you know, the, the strength of storytelling, you know, the, the color commentary, not just the score. And to do something through a platform that people don't see as threatening and that people can relate to vis a vis, you know, football I think is, you know, is just brilliant. So like how did you. From the mechanics of that.

How,

like do you, do you buy airtime, so to speak, or how did it get on the air? What was the machinations behind that.

I'm sorry, could you repeat the question, please?

I'm curious about the. How did you get it on the air? Like did you have to buy airtime like on pbs? You know, it's a public service kind of thing. So I'm sure there's different kinds of hoops you would have to jump through in the States versus in Kenya, for example.

No, we, we had to pay for the production but we wouldn't in most cases buy airtime. We never did. In the majority of countries where we would work, sometimes we would do training for the local TV people which cost us money. So in a sense we were, we were buying a little of it. But what we would do is offer in the countries where we were working to the. A national broadcaster free, high quality drama, which was usually at the top end of the scale of production for that country. It didn't look like what was coming out of Hollywood or London, but it was, it was usually better than the local productions and we were giving them something for nothing. And the deal was we, we would get on prime time, they would publicize the show and we would pay for it. And that was. Yes, able, both parties.

Good point. That really is. So would you get then local writers and obviously local actors. Was that hard to recruit that kind of talent?

No, it was very easy. In many of the countries, for example in Africa, there were local drama troops that would go from village to vil and they were a prime source of our actors and the writers were all local, but we would send in a producer. We had a wonderful young woman named Deborah Jones who had made movies of the week in Hollywood and then going to training in conflict resolution. So she brought both worlds together and she'd go in and do a two or three week workshop with the local writers because they had to get the context that we wanted and we, we didn't outline the plot. That was all done by the local writers. But what we insist on was that common ground would be found by the end. They weren't allowed to kill off all the characters at the end of the show for dramatic reasons. That wasn't part of our repertoire.

That's good.

But we were pretty non demanding in the actual plot lines. As long as they reflected that overall common ground approachables.

That's great.

And it worked very well. And Deborah would read scripts and she'd make suggestions and the writers all seem to like working with her and that's work. So we, we worked in as, as you said, 25 countries and we had a staff of two, we used lots of local partners. Wow. And we, I believe all together we had over 400 episodes of dramatic television on the air.

Wow, that's so wonderful. So was it back in the day? You know, I mean, obviously they're still even in the US Soap opera is going on today after decades. But now we're sort of used to with streaming channels, you know, like a, a five episode, a seven episode, a 10 episode, you know, sort of like limited series, I think they're called. How long. Like how long would be the average? Would these have a, like a lifespan, so to speak? Like a. What we would think of as a season or like how many episod episodes? And would they go on for years or how did you. What kind of Runway did they have?

Well, we did a series in Macedonia in partnership with Sesame Workshop, the people who made Sesame Street.

Wow.

And there were 50 episodes all together over five seasons.

Okay.

10 per season in some countries. We did a single season of 13 episodes. In Kenya, we did three seasons of 39 episodes. It varied. It varied because we had to raise the money to do this.

Sure.

So our, our money was coming mostly from international funders, European and American, who wanted to prevent conflict and religious or ethnic warfare. So the how many shows we wound up doing was to a large extent dependent on how much funding we were able to find.

Gotcha.

But I'll tell you, the costs were so much lower than what Hollywood charges. You know, we had no million dollar productions.

Right. Oh, but that's, but still such a an audience and such a clever way to be able to do that. I just, I really love that. Pardon me. My voice is kind of going. I want to shift into discussing your latest book, From Vision to Action, Remaking the World through Social Entrepreneurship. But first I'd like to share a little bit of a who's who of what some others have had to say about it. Bill Drayton, who's a hero of mine and founder and CEO of Ashoka, said, John Marks has shown communities all over the world, time after time, how to turn hate filled us versus them social conflicts into win win collaborations. What could be more urgently needed? Now this book tells you both how to do this and more broadly, how you too can be a great social entrepreneur addressing whatever social need you choose. William Urry, co author of Getting to Yes and author of How We Survive and Thrive in an Age of Conflict, said, hats off to John Marks, who epitomizes what it means to be a social entrepreneur for peace. In this lively and lucid book, Marx presents 11 savvy principles for success illustrated with gripping stories from his pioneering work. May it inspire and inform a new generation of peace entrepreneurs. And Michael Wheeler, chaired Professor of Management Practice at Harvard Business School, said at last a book that shows us how we can survive, maybe even thrive in these dangerous, polarizing times. It shares practical wisdom drawn from his decades of experience proactively resolving conflicts and building peace in countries around the world. The rest of us now should stand up and follow his example. So all high praise and well deserved. John Congratulations for those that haven't had a chance to look at it yet. In general, the book really describes a methodology of social entrepreneurship and how social entrepreneurs can launch ventures and promote positive change in their community and the world. And for their for in social entrepreneurship, there in those organizations, the bottom line isn't really financial profit like we might think of with regular businesses and startups, but really the common good. I run a 501c3 nonprofit charity and we pretty much operate from fundraising and my consulting practices. So can you talk about what distinguishes Search as being considered a social entrepreneurship versus a charity?

Well, in an American sense, we are a charity, but people contribute money to have our to support our work, and that's part of it. But our aim as an organization is to make the world a better place. That's our primary aim. It's not to profit it. And obviously we need enough money to do the work and to pay salaries. But it's. It's a different kettle of fish, if you will, than business entrepreneur, though a lot of the principles are the same.

Gotcha. So your book also is both a memoir and somewhat of a practitioner's guide to the underlying principles of becoming a social entrepreneur. At this point, what inspired you to write it?

Well, I was concerned about my legacy. I wanted to make sure that what I had learned during 40 years in the kind of work that I was doing survived. And the good way to do that is to write a book. And it's being very successful. I'm. I'm currently on a tour of about 10 cities right now. I'm in. I just did. I'm doing Cornell. I've been at Harvard. I'm going to the University of Utah. I'm doing red states and blue states. And I'm very concerned that what I've learned should survive. And that's, I think, was my primary motive. Also. It gave it just was exciting. I like going back and thinking through what I've done over the years, and so I've enjoyed the process tremendously.

I can imagine I mean, I know book publishing is not book writing and book publishing is not an easy kind of thing. You've got some good experience and, you know, great bonafides in that regard. So it is kind of a gift to another and maybe new and future generations to be able to have it, sort of to be able to understand you and hear things in your voice from the memoir aspect. But also then to have so many practical, actionable, you know, points as well as, you know, the kind of the case studies of, you know, what you've talked about. And it just also reminds me kind of like of a Harvard Business Review, you know, case study kind of approach, but from a social entrepreneurship versus someone, you know, having a startup for a gizmo and wanting to go public. So I talked a little bit about, and we both just did around fundraising and whatnot. And in the book you mentioned something called the Tupperware approach to fundraising. Could you share what you mean by that?

Well, in the beginning, when I started out, let me say that fundraising was not easy. We didn't have much of a track record. People didn't think we were credible and the like. And what I did mostly in the first few years was stood up, just to stand up in living rooms and share my vision. And which is the same way they sell, they sell Tupperware in living rooms. And so that's what I called it. I mean, it's, it was a bit of a light way about it, but. But I wasn't selling pots and pans. I was selling a safer world, a secure world.

That's great. You, you also mentioned in the intro your roles with Skoll and Ashoka. Could you unpack some of those, like how they came about for folks that may not know what Skoll and Ashoka are up to or what Bill's up to and like what they're about and how they were beneficial to your work or perhaps founding Search.

Well, I'll start with the Skoll Foundation. What happened is I've personally produced a four part documentary series in Israel and Palestine on how to resolve the conflict. And when we had our premiere, it premiered on Israeli television, Palestinian television and Abu Dhabi television. And when the premier day came, NPR did a piece from Jerusalem about what we were doing. And a program officer from the Skull foundation was driving down the freeway in California, heard about it and called me up and said, you know, we're very interested in what you're doing. We'd like to support it. I don't think that happened before or since, but it was quite Good. And we got a very large grant. And we were named. My wife and I were named to be awardees of the Skull foundation, which meant we joined an elite fraternity and sorority of social entrepreneurs, which now, in 2006, 19 years ago, Robert Redford presented me with my award. He was the presenter, and that was a heady step.

I can imagine.

Yeah. I still go to the meetings and the gatherings of the school foundation, and I think they're great.

I get it. It sort of seems like that Venn diagram in my head of these overlapping kinds of aspects of social entrepreneurship working to make the world a better place, you know, supportive foundations in that type of work. And then, you know, media and, you know, and being able to, you know, stand on the dais with, you know, with Robert Redford. And I think I saw a picture of you somewhere with Ben Kingsley as well, too. And to see that, you know, all of those kinds of what might be seen as various or different and diverse can really conspire and work together, you know, to do funding for search and similar kinds of organizations. So I just. I love that kind of synergy and integration and collaboration that that can be. And so for Ashoka, in my research. So, first of all, you got to clarify for me. Did you and Bill go to high school together? Do I have my facts straight on that?

Bill and I were. Bill Drayton and I were high school classmates, so I've known him for over 60 years.

Good Lord. So that just seems beyond coincidental that the two of you. I mean, through. I mean, the overlap of social entrepreneurship, but two different approaches. You with Serge and him with Ashoka. Was there a class you guys took or something? It just seems like such an unlikely possibility, statistically, that two superstars like you guys would be high school classmates. But do you have any?

I like to say there was something in the water.

Okay, so now tell us, did you and Bill keep in touch? Did you circle back to Ashoka once he had founded it? How did that collaboration happen?

Oh, sure, when I'm in Washington, I have lunch with him, though, this year he was hiking in the. In the mountains out west, and I missed him. But we're friends, we're colleagues, so we have all those kinds of things. But there's a kind of a special bond having been in your high school.

Yeah, exactly. Go tigers. Or whatever your animal was. So I mentioned also in your bio in the intro that you were involved in the State Department, et cetera, and you've talked about publicly and in the book as well, your transformation from Being an activist that took an activistic approach from opposing abuses and wrongdoings to then maybe, I don't know, quite the right word, but transitioning in or morphing into someone that's working for creating a piece of peaceful world. So rather than being against something, but then being for something, what was deconstruct that for us. What was that process like and what caused it to happen?

Well, I started in the State department at age 22, and my first assignment was Vietnam. I'm one of the few members of my generation to have gone to Vietnam, to have avoided the draft. I went as a civilian. Wow. And I wound up resigning in protest against American policy in Vietnam. And that got me into what I would call an adversarial activist phase. First I opposed the war, and then I got very big into opposing the abuses that the intelligence agencies were committing. And I got to the point in my own life that I saw that the work I was doing was defined by what I was against. And I wanted to be before things. I wanted to build a new system rather than tear down the old system. And I had no apologies for the work I had done in opposition, but I wanted to be in a positive way, a builder of something new. And that little transition took me about three or four years to figure out. I'm talking to you rather glibly about it, but it was a hard thing. And I had a, let's say a painful divorce mixed in the middle, which got things sort of leavened, if you will.

Wow.

And in the end, I found a search for common ground, which was to try to come up with better and new ways of dealing with conflict.

So you come from this experience of being a very public voice through your best selling books around the CIA and its abuses. And then X number of years later, you're shaking hands with people from the CIA and Russia's version of it, kgb, and getting everybody to sit down at the table. Was there an issue for you? So there's just indigenous distrust between those two parties, if you will. But how did you have to, you know, have an olive branch with the CIA to get them to come to you? They say, oh, hey, this John Marks, you know, he's, he's on our bad guy list or something. How did, did you broker a piece between you and the CIA to have that happen? Or what was that like? I, I'd be scared to death. So how did you do it?

Well, I would call it bringing together strange bedfellows. I had confronted William Colby, the director of the CIA, in front of a thousand people in a Washington hotel ballroom.

Oh, boy.

And I'd been shouted down. And I had written in my book about how he had overseen a program of assassination and torture in Vietnam. And he had every reason in the world to think I was a bad guy, you know, that I wasn't on his side.

Sure, sure.

But 10 years later, when I went to him and talked to him, and I knew his wife because we had worked together on the Hill, and that didn't hurt at all. I believe she made the introduction. And when I went to see him, I explained what I wanted to do. And it was the Gorbachev period of perestroika and glasnost, so things were changing. And I said, do you want to participate? And it. For some reason, he said, yes. And it. It just worked out very well.

Wow.

And if. If I fast forward to after we got the agreement to share information on an unofficial level between the KGB and the CIA, I invited the participants to come to a dinner at the Holiday Inn in Santa Monica, California, overlooking the ocean, where we're having the meeting. And I was always a bit of a provocateur. And so we had our agreement. And so I took a chance, and I started the dinner off by saying, well, we've done good work together, let's say about a little bit about who we are and our background. Now, people in the intelligence business do not want to do that. I knew that because they don't want to give away information about who they might be which could be used against them. Right. So I went first, and what I said was I had resigned in protest from the State Department, and then I had written a couple of books that made the CIA very angry. And Colby said, yes, I can testify we were very angry at him. And one of the KGB guys says, well, so you were a troublemaker. And Colby said, yes, he was a troublemaker. But now we're working together for the common good, and that's. That's a good thing. And for me, that was kind of a moment of completion of my old life as I moved into this new life as a peacemaker.

You know, it makes me think, too, sometimes the. The doubting Thomases or the devil's advocates often become, you know, like with. With Colby, the. You know, like the true believers, so to speak, to see, you know, that there. There. There is a sea change. And, you know, during that time, too, with what was going on with Reagan and Gorbachev, I mean, there was kind of nice, fertile ground to do that, but that was you know, that was very gentlemanly and appropriate for him to say what he said. That's, that's good. So you, in the book, back to the book, you talk about 11 working principles that you also very clearly say, you know, aren't necessarily, you know, step one, step two, they're not linear. You do this one and then that goes on to the next one. Could you maybe give us kind of a highlight reel or step us through them and give some examples to that vis a vis the book?

Yeah, I mean, the first principle of being a social entrepreneur seems to me to be to start from vision and to know what your vision is. And in a way, my vision was to transform the world from an adversarial to a non adversarial place. The second principle is be an applied visionary. To be a pure visionary is useful only if you're going to say, start a new religion or write a philosophy textbook. But it doesn't make things happen in the world usually. And you know, when I got into the specifics of how you bring together the CIA and the KGB or the Georginians and the Israelis, the secret there was to go one step at a time and be able to apply my vision in realistic kinds of ways. And then, I mean, do you want me to go on and. Yeah, yeah, please, let's talk about them. So I guess the next one I would talk about. And I'm, I'm now looking into my.

Yeah, I can't pronounce, I can't pronounce the third chapter.

Yeah, the third chapter is a quote from Napoleon when he said, which means in French, you become engaged and then you see what the possibilities are. And for a social entrepreneur to, you want to be able to react to opportunities, you want to be agile. And so you read of something or you talk to somebody and you get an idea and then you move quickly on that. And that's the way that most social entrepreneurs function as opposed to long range planning and the like. And I felt that, that, that was a net. That's a necessary part of social entrepreneurship.

Hear, hear.

And you know, which, you can't tell funders that what you're going to do is engage and then change your program around. But what you can do is make small change or small, smallish changes in your work as you proceed. The next one would be to keep showing up. In other words, you need to be persistent in this. You can't parachute in and then come out. If you're going to be a social entrepreneur, you need to keep moving forward and One of my favorite metaphors is of the child's toy truck, which you wind up and it moves forward until it hits a piece of furniture. And it doesn't try to knock over the chair or the piece of furniture. What it does, it backs up and finds another way around. And that seems to me is a very important part of being a social entrepreneur.

I think too John, with the context like in the work that I do, it's more so healthcare related and global health and whatnot. We try to be as involved in prevention things because it's more economical and bigger scalability. But you know, also there's been sort of a black eye in my neck of the world with people kind of going in with very good hearts, very good intentions, etc. They like to use your words, they parachute into someplace and they do do some good, but it's not sustainable. And then sometimes it almost creates this atrogenic backfire of like, well, when you guys coming back, it's like, oh well, we're not coming back. You know, we just, we came in to do this and it winds up making, you know, whoever did the, the, the, the, the expat, so to speak, coming in, doing whatever they did feel good about themselves and feel good about their work and did probably do some kind of, you know, healthcare benefit to the population they were with. But if they don't stay there or if they don't build something or if they don't create some type of whatever it is to needed to make it sustainable, you know, it's almost worse. You know, it's, it's, it's the proverbial west knows best or you know, just this, this kind of horrible, you know, hubris that we have. And so I think that's a, a critical thing for listeners or people interested in, in you know, doing this kind of work, whatever it is, peace building to global health, that the aspect needs to be a respect for who it is that you're working for, that you're the consultant coming in. They're the people that are, you know, you, you may have boots on the, the ground but you know, your boots on the ground may sometime leave. And there's, you know, this is their, you know, where they've lived, generations are going to continue, their, their offspring will live and they're thereafter. So I think, you know, that kind of aspect of having that kind of respect for sustainability and scaling versus just, you know, a feel good I think is, you know, just really becomes a huge ethical issue as well.

Well, I couldn't agree with you more. Everything you just said I would. I would support the idea that you can parachute into a conflict, spend a week with the principals and then leave and have something positive happen is fallacious, it seems to me.

Yeah.

And it's the same. It's very similar in the public health area.

Yeah. It's. There's too many examples of that. The bad outcomes of those kinds of things. Things happening. So. All right, so credible supporters, how do you. How do you go about. How does a social entrepreneur going about being successful with that?

Well, particularly when you're in the startup phase, you can borrow credibility from other people. In other words, if you get people who are well known in their field to support you to be on your advisory board, perhaps that helps with fundraising, it helps with entree. It helps in a lot of different ways. But I have a warning in the book, too. You don't want to deal with people. You don't want to bring people into the organization who don't have enough to do, you know, who might be, let us say, grasping or power hungry. And you don't want to give away the store in order to get credible supporters. But that. It's something that you might. That can be very helpful in the beginning, particularly.

That's good. And also, I would add, too, you know, there's the issue of somewhat. It's always nice to have help, but there's also kind of a due diligence that I think is, you know, a responsibility that people working in, you know, in all areas for profit, not for profit, ngo, etcetera, you know, of. Is there some. What do they call it? Not green washing, but sort of like virtue washing that people say, well, you know, I'm kind of an unscrupulous business person, but if I, you know, am a, you know, get a big donor to this charity or a big donor to this thing or whatever, then, you know, that somewhat virtue washes, you know, all the, you know, all the bad stuff that I've been doing, you know, I'm a. I'm a volunteer fireman on the weekend, but I'm an arsonist during the week, you know, kind of thing. So. So I think. And, you know, I've been fortunate, and I think you've been fortunate, you know, that the people that we have had as advisors and that have been supportive are genuine, are not doing it for that secondary gain or doing it kind of just showboat that, hey, I'm a good person. My company, like, my company buy my stuff because I gave some shekels to this Nonprofit. So here, here.

No, again, I hate what you're saying.

So the, the Dunbar factor, that's, that's a great story. Share share how what the the Dunbar factor is and how it came up with. With Search.

Well, Dunbar was a seeing eye dog and he belonged to. He had a master named Peter who applied for a job with us at Search. And I interviewed him because we had never had a blind person before. And you know, I do my due deal that diligence. I asked if he could use the computers if he was blind, if Dunbar could hold back in case Peter had lots of was late for meetings. I didn't want to have the office fouled up and the like. But there was one question I didn't ask because it didn't occur to me, and that question was, was anybody in the office allergic to dogs? And the answer turned out to be yes. And it was my assistant who I didn't want to lose. It seemed to me we, so we worked out at a workaround. We put Dunbar and Peter as far as possible across the office from me. And then, you know, as the president of the organization, people would come to my office for meetings, but I would go to the office which Dunbar and Peter was in because that kept my assistant as far as possible away from the dog. And but so I just, it never occurred to me, right, that somebody would be allergic to dogs because I'm a dog lover. I grew up with dogs. I had one at the time and stuff like that. Now I would ask, but I didn't at the time. And the Dunbar factor is no matter what you do, you're going to find that there were questions you didn't ask. Even the best research and the best planning, you didn't know that a lot of things were going to happen that happened. And by not knowing that you didn't know, you can't, you, you don't get answers and you don't think through what the alternatives might be. And it's just something, it's going to happen no matter what it and it's inevitable and just be prepared for it.

That's right.

Yeah.

Untoward consequences. So, yeah. And then you had mentioned before, yes, able. So in chapter seven, you talk about making yesable proposition. So that that's been really kind of one of your, you know, secret superpowers or your, you know, secret formula, so to speak. Right.

Yeah. You want to make, be able to make propositions to people to which they say yes. And, but most people, or many people, when they make propositions, they only ask for things that they want. They don't think through what the other party wants. And it needs to be both to be really yesable, unless there's such a huge power disparity that the person's going to say yes because he's scared or somehow in the way. And be. And funding proposals need to be yes, able to the funder. And you need to think through what could be yes, able, which is also consistent with your own principles and needs. You don't want to do it just because it's yesable, but you want to make sure that it's also something you want. You want to win, win. Not a win lose here.

That's great. One of my favorites too is your the way you titled Chapter 8, Practice Aikido. Can you give us some examples?

Yeah. Aikido is a martial art, a Japanese martial art, and sort of in a traditional way where if you have a boxing match, what one person tries to do is reverse the energy flow of the other person and knock them back on their rear end. And in aikido, you accept the energy of the other person. You divert that energy by 10 degrees or 15 degrees, not 180 degrees like in boxes boxing. And you find a way to make both of you safe. And by not confronting others in a problem, but by taking an aikido approach, you're more likely to find ways to resolve whatever the conflict is between you. And it just doesn't work. None of us really has the power in most disputes to confront the other person and overwhelm them.

That's good. And chapter nine, develop effective metaphors. How have you done that?

Well, storytelling, giving a picture of what a new reality might look like is a very important part of resolving conflict or being a social entrepreneur. People won't go into a new reality if they don't have a pretty good picture of what it is. So what we were talking about before with Common Ground productions and soap opera for Social change, that was to develop ways of people seeing other possibilities besides having violence between ethnic groups or religious groups and the like and having good metaphors. I mean, it's not in everybody's reach to be able to produce television series, but you can do these. You can do metaphors by sight, by writing, by listening, with music and stuff like that. You want to have new pictures for new reality.

That's great. And I think, you know, you. I love your display, chutzpah. I think that's. That's kind of been your, your mantra, you know, kind of your, your lifestyle with some of the Kinds of things, things that you're doing what Give us some examples for you of how you've done this. And then what if someone's maybe, you know, how do they get the gumption up to, you know, have a little bit more chutzpah around? What it is, is it just the spooling up, the passion for what their work is or, or what was. What are some tips for people where that may not be as, as in, as natural for them properly.

To be a successful entrepreneur, social entrepreneur, you need to be able to take risks. And that is audacity or nerve or whatever. But you don't want to be reckless. You want to be a risk taker, but not one who goes off in a direction that is like that, that hasn't been thought through also. And not being reckless and moving forward with audacity is the essence to my mind of what I would call good chutzpah. Bad huzpah is when you do things there. There's a famous statement by or quote from an author named Leo Rostin when he said the definition of chutzpah is a young man kills his parents and then claims the mercy of the court because he's an orphan. And that is bad as far as I'm concerned and is not the kind of thing should be done.

Gotcha. So to wrap up with the principles, and again, they're not necessarily, as you noted, in a linear kind of way. Chapter 11 talks about the innate ability to know without thinking. And I'm not even going to pronounce the German word for that, but how does one go about that in the context of being a social entrepreneur or even just in general?

Yeah. The word is fingerspritz and gefuel and it means to have it sort of a magic intuitive touch at the end of your fingers. And it's something that's very important to my mind in social entrepreneurship. In other words, this path, not that path, this project, not that project. And having a sense of it. But I also caution it shouldn't be the only way you make decisions. You also need solid cognitive intellectual processes. And the, the trick is to mix the two together. In other words, to be able to make decisions on your intuition, but irrational kinds of decisions at the same time. And finding the right mix is not always the easiest thing. And I don't know how to teach or finger spritz and fuel intuitive thing. You can't get a PhD in it as far as I know.

Yeah, gut feelings in combination with real world data. Yeah, that's that's not a 101 class, so. Well, one of the things too, I want to thank, thank you for that summary. That's, that's excellent. I think it teases up very nicely. One of the things I remember from the book, you talk about kind of the post glasnost era and it looked like search was actually going to start to get into global health again, my sweet spot with childhood immunization programs and things. But according to the book, that was surprisingly problematic. Why was that? What was the hiccup with that of trying to maintain the momentum that had been started?

Well, one of my early good ideas which never really got to fruition was to get the United States and the Soviet Union to work together to immunize the world's children. Now, immunization in those days before Bobby Kennedy Jr. Was not a particularly controversial issue. Everybody was. Seemed to be sporting.

Yeah.

Yep. Today I wouldn't say I would be a different.

Yeah, I know, I know here, I hear you.

And we went to the. I went to the government of Canada at a high level, figuring if they convened the Soviets and the Americans, it could be more yesable than if my organization, which was a very small organization that did the convening and it was the idea of bringing the immunizing the world's children went to the top level of the Canadian government and they made a decision that they would put a lot of money into childhood immunization, but they wouldn't do the US Soviet part. They were afraid, and this is before the Cold War was starting to end. They were afraid of offending the Americans, which just, you know, it probably would have done because the Soviets were involved. Wow. And so a Canadian diplomat congratulated me for having gotten the, the Canadian government to put this money into immunization. But it wasn't what I wanted to do. What I wanted to do was to bring together the Americans and the Soviets.

Wow.

And this is kind of one of a lesson is that very often when you do this kind of work as a social entrepreneur, the unintended, the anticipated results can be more interesting than the ones you thought you were doing.

Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. Well, in the context like what we've talked about so far has been kind of using traditional media, so to speak. I mean that, like the, the, that crazy story about some fellow listen, you know, just happened to be had of it as radio tuned into npr. So traditional radio that there is like the soap opera aspect and people tuning in on their televisions to, you know, have to, to watch tv not to have, you know, in re. Just in time, stuff like Netflix or whatever we have today. So the technology has changed from the early days with, with search. Do you have opinions about how like media today or, you know, social media has influenced the landscape of social entrepreneurship or, you know, social ventures in, in peace building for the, for the better, the worse? You know, what's, what's the, you know, is, is the, the poison by virtue of the dose or, you know, there's a lot of controversy about the negative aspects of, you know, social connectivity and things that, with false, you know, with untrue stories and sham media, things like that. How does, how do you look at it in the context today versus, you know, when you first started out?

Well, social media does have lots of negative aspects in terms of spreading disinformation. It also can be used, though it's not being used in this way. It could be used to promote social, positive social change. I'm out of the loop because I've retired from search, so I haven't gone on with how to do it, but I do believe it's feasible and doable. You see, you find on the web, short clip, there's soap opera, it just comes in four minute episodes. It's not the kind of thing that we were doing. And at the same time, in much of the world, regular television is still a much greater source of viewership and the like, though young people don't watch it, they watch streaming, which includes some of the same things. But I think that all forms of media can be used to promote positive social change. It's just that the creators, the writers, the people behind it often usually are not interested in that.

Yeah, gotcha. That's too bad. Well, speaking of that, then the shift that you've made, you're now involved in a new venture, Confluence International. Tell us about that and how it came into being and what it's focused on.

Well, since I stepped down from Search, I still continue to work. So Confluence International is really a charitable container for my own work. It's not a real functioning large scale ngo. I did that once. But this is a way for me having a place to stand as I continue to do my own work.

Gotcha. So. So with this, you've been all over the world. I don't know how many times you have met with just an amazing, heterogeneous group of entrepreneurs of people in different cultures of crisis situations and peace building, et cetera, et cetera, who's influenced you or your work the most. Has there been someone that's Been a mentor to you directly or indirectly by virtue of their, their, their work as being a role model or as a author?

Well, I, I worked in my very first years in this field for Roger Fisher at Harvard, and he, as a co author with Bill Urie of getting of the book Getting to Yes, probably had as much impact on me as also Michael Murphy at Esalen was a pioneer in Track two diplomacy. And I learned a lot from him. And then I just assimilated it as I proceeded. Every time I did a project, I would learn more, I would get new ideas and the like. So, you know, I'm not a theoretician, I'm not an academic. I'm personal. I'm a practitioner. And from practice I learned a lot.

Yeah, I mean, there's certainly sort of a artisanal aspect to the kinds of things that you do that you, you know, isn't necessarily. Like we joked earlier, like there's not particularly a course on something. So. John, we've covered a lot of ground and territory. Is there anything we've missed that you'd like to add before we wrap up?

No. You really have covered the waterfront and I'm impressed you even read the book, which not every interviewer did.

You know, I mean, this is kind of my sweet spot. Like I said, you know, it's kind of an interesting thing in the context of seeing a lot of overlaps and similarities. And you know, again, back from what I mentioned in the intro, you know, I've kind of known Susan a little bit, you know, more so than you, but got to work with you guys in one of my books. So I like the aspect too. It's also inspirational in the context of thinking about legacy and being able to, you know, oftentimes I will be in a quasi mentor relationship with someone or someone, not, not a long term kind of thing, but someone will say, you know, hey, I'm interested in doing this, I'm interested in doing that. And now your book has become one of my recommendations for them to, you know, hey, if you're serious about this, here are some, you know, great inspirational things from a real world practitioner who, you know, has, you know, had put the rubber to the road and, and knows what they're talking about. So what are some of the best ways that listeners can learn more about you? Confluence International, to connect, get your books, et cetera.

Well, I hate to say this, but they could buy the book because I put in pretty much everything I knew into it.

Okay, good. Well, one stop Shopping is good. So I'm presuming it's. I know it's available on Amazon and wherever else people choose to buy their books. Right.

Great. Yeah. And I'm speaking at colleges and around the country and, you know, I like to do that. I, I, as I mentioned before, I'm at Cornell. I've done about six classes when I'm here. I had a big webinar and, you know, it's fun for me. It's, it's. I enjoy sharing what I know.

That's great. And I also, in doing my background in due diligence, stumble upon some things, too, that I'll put in our show notes. So if listeners want to, you know, do a little deeper dive beside the book and get to see you on camera and whatnot, I'll. Those will be in the show notes too. So I just. John, hey man, thanks so much. I know you have like a crazy schedule. I know that, you know, being in the States now is being international for you, so I really appreciate you, you know, hollowing out the time to be on. I've really enjoyed it. And give my best regards to Susan as well.

Okay, it's my pleasure. Thank you so much for the opportunity.

And as a reminder, listeners can read a summary of this episode and access links to the show notes via my LinkedIn Top Voice Companion article, along with past gists as well. I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I have, and I will hope it will help you in your journey and living your life in full. Until next time. Living a Life in Full is a production of Stout Media, a subsidiary of Gordian Knot, LLC. Assistant Producer, Gracie Wong Music Dan O' Brien Executive Producer and Host, Dr. Chris Stout. To learn more, stop by our website at Life in Full for show Notes and please recommend this to your friends and subscribe on your favorite platform. And as for the obligatory disclaimer, this podcast is for general information uses only and does not constitute the practice of psychology, medicine, nutrition or other professional health care services, including the giving of medical or psychological advice. No doctor patient relationship is formed. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, I take conflicts of interest seriously. For all of my disclosures as well as show notes, please see livingalifeinfull. Org podcast and my LinkedIn profile. Thanks. And until next time,