Living Between Worlds #3.5 — The ESG Ruckus, and other things

So welcome everybody to Living between Worlds for June 15, 2022. This is the 19th session in this series that I've been hosting. Now, the third year started in the early days of the COVID pandemic, looking at the striking and resonant parallels between the COVID crisis and the climate crisis, and how we were dealing with each of them as a planetary challenge requiring both high level coordination and independent action, boldness and perspective. And the question came to me of how do we live between worlds, between the pre pandemic world and the post pandemic world, the world of climate crisis, the world of a disappearing global order, which sounded like a speculation in 2020. And now as we watch, ground war in Europe is a clear reality for us now. A global order that's gone or going quickly into something else emerging that we don't know what it is yet and may not know for a while. How do we live in between worlds, what Gramsci called the time of monsters, and do that with grace and with dignity and with power. So that's been the frame of these conversations. I just want to start with a thank you for all of you for participating. These are conversations, dialogues, interactions among us. And that's where the richness is. You've heard me say before that I'm of the perspective that we create worlds in our words. We call worlds into being in the utterances that we make, whether they're the interpretations of how we orient ourselves to what we're seeing, or the requests or promises that we make to each other. That's our fundamental generative action. And that's a place where we have power, no matter what the stories of power are around us. So here we are. I don't know if any of you saw the latest newsletter from Natural Logic that I sent out a few days ago. I talked about, been talking a bit about ESG lately. Those of you who are not familiar with the term, ESG stands for environmental, social and governance. It's the sort of current trending way of looking at corporate performance in relation to environment and justice. And it's fraught. It's complex. And you imagine at the simplest level, it's complex because the world is complex. But it's complex because we're trying to put a transparent and understandable rating scheme on top of the behaviors of corporations. The good news on the one hand, is that this phenomenon, which was called socially responsible investment a few decades ago, has now swelled to the point where, depending on who you talk to, about a third of global assets under management in public Markets are going through some kind of ESG screening process that's, you know, that's a holy mackerel compared to where we were when this was a fringe, esoteric phenomenon years ago. You know, we've, we've talked before about the impact of these concerns on economic value. And as you know, a lot of my work the past 30 years has been advising major companies that attending to these very human concerns actually adds value, doesn't SAP value. People assume that environmental responsibility would SAP profits. Don Quixing is nodding his head. He's one of the people who's been in the trenches on this for a long time, knows that's not true, or knows that that doesn't have to be true, that this can be a powerful generator of profit, brand value, employee loyalty, and on your risk mitigation, and on, on and on down the list. So now that overlay is there in a third of the public markets being provided by a variety of private providers with proprietary rating schemes. And it's not at all clear what they tell us. You may have seen that a couple of weeks ago, mcsi, the biggest one, tossed Tesla off the list because of labor practices, put Exxon on the list because of disclosures around climate impact. Not better climate impact, but better disclosures around climate impact. So, you know, what do the ratings tell you? Another challenge there is that the, you know, there, there are multiple agencies that rate credit risk of companies. They have different methodologies, they don't come out exactly the same, but they more or less converge. You know, you rarely find somebody who's AAA on multiple rating schemes and, you know, and B minus on something else. Rarely, in the ESG rating world, nothing's converging. Finding correlations between the rating schemes, the different rating schemes, and the performance of companies is nearly impossible. So while this business is growing, it's also under attack. And intriguingly, it's under attack from both sides of the spectrum. The longstanding sustainability people say this is a terrible surrogate for sustainability. It's being conflated with sustainability, but it doesn't reflect that. It's more about, you know, reporting practices than actual delivered performance on the ground. There's a long dialogue underway today on the current platform with practitioners from around the world debating the structure and the nature of ESG and what's the. Where are the strengths and where are the weak points and how do we do something better here? You may have seen that Tariq Fancy, who was the sustainability lead at BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, quit some months ago with A fairly public denunciation of the shallowness of BlackRock's work. On the other hand, Larry Fink, the CEO of BlackRock, has been annually making powerful declarations about the importance of sustainability as a value fundamental for them as fiduciaries of a good chunk of the world's money. But, you know, maybe not so. On the other hand, you have folks on the right, from Mike pence to Ron DeSantis to the state of Texas, the state of West Virginia also. Both of these states have recently divested. We talk, you know, you know, the environmentalists been talking about divestment from fossil fuels for a long time. They are divesting from funds that are divesting. So it's becoming a political game and not, you know, it's a strange game because these folks have fiduciary responsibility for their pensioners. They're moving into more risky portfolios because the political game of it in the to get down to nuts and bolts. The EU recently has been developing an omnibus climate bill. It's stuck. It's stuck because the lefts and the greens are saying it's woefully inadequate, which I think it probably is. The folks on the right are saying this is an extreme overreach and absolute irresponsibility for governments shouldn't do it as a result. And there's not enough votes in the center to move the bill. So as a result, Europe may produce nothing rather than something inadequate from the point of view of one side or another. So, you know, here we have an example of the kind of challenges we face. We see it around the gun legislation issue in the United States, although maybe there's a brief bright spot in that landscape. We have the looming expectation of Supreme Court decisions this month that may shake a lot of things loose in culture that we have taken for granted in the United States. The question in the background for me is how do we get to enough agreement in a group of people, whether it's a family, a neighborhood, a company, a state, or a nation? How do we get to enough agreement on what to do and enough agreement to get it done? Covid Very mixed results. Climate, you know, depends who you ask. I would say very mixed results. Enormous progress in certain ways. And we now we're starting to get a sense of the cascade of physical hurt that is going to be coming at us, given the pace that we're moving at. A lot of Companies are setting 20, 50 goals for net zero carbon emissions, but that's, you know, that's almost 30 years away. And you can't wait till 2050 to make that happen. You have to, in the words of Saul Griffith, McArthur Fowler, we have to start doing everything we know how to do impeccably now to be able to drive the ramp over the next 30 years. We're not doing that and we're stuck in arguments. So let's talk a little bit about this larger question about. And without getting into the specifics of the points of view or arguing for one position or another, what's your perspective? What's your experience about how people who disagree profoundly, perhaps serious, sincerely, perhaps not, how do people come to agreement? Where have you seen it work in very challenging situations. And again, it could be at the level of public policy or at the level of work in your company. What have you learned, David Schoenbrunn? And let me ask everybody, just stay focused, stay concise, and let's see where we go. David, go ahead.

Thank you, Gil. I wanted to speak to something you were mentioning at your opening, talking about starting at the time of the pandemic.

Yeah.

And the crisis of climate having parallels. I want to introduce information that is far more striking than you might know. As somebody that has been a climate activist for 20 plus years, I also became a serious doubter of the pandemic narrative and very involved with that community. It turns out that there are many in that community who are from the right who see the climate narrative as being exactly as fraudulent as the COVID narrative has been. That was a revelation to me. I haven't delved into their claims of the science. I don't feel I need to do that now. But I should say that my experience in California has been that the relevant public agencies, the state agencies, are not doing what it would take to reduce emissions.

Which is really striking, David, because this is. California is probably one of the climate leaders in the world by many measures, and yet not doing what needs to be done.

And my point is, yes, they're rhetorically the champions, but in practicality they're full of shit and they're actually seeing emissions rising. So I'm offering a far more complex view of the question that you posed.

I appreciate it and I welcome it. And it is complex. What I'm interpreting, what you're saying is that you still have your skepticism about the pandemic story, but you're finding that your cohorts there have skepticism about the climate story that you don't share. Well, it's not all in lockstep together.

Yes. And as a result, I am neither on the right or on the left. I feel that people on the left have totally abandoned principles of being anti war, for example. I feel I'm left all alone. But it's really striking when you go into the analysis of the lies that were told to generate the pandemic narrative, that people that are respectable to me make exactly the same claims about everything, starting from the Club of rome back in 73 and claiming that the entire narrative since then has been a fraud.

So there's, you know, there's one of the background challenges for all of us and that. And one of the things we. We go to again and again in this conversation is what are the narratives that we live in? How do we shift those narratives? Because, you know, they both color what we're able to see in the world we all live filtered by our narratives. And what we see in the assumptions that we bring forward in turn affect the narrative. So there's this dance of filters back and forth that really constrain what we can see.

I think you're leaving out a very key issue, which is that these narratives are very artificially constructed by extremely skilled people sitting within government.

I'm not leaving that out at all, but I want it. But it's more complex than that. Yes, there are people whose profession is to construct narratives. Yes, no question about that. And all of us do this all the time as amateurs, you know, living the lives we live out of the. Out of the histories and cultures and families and locations and cohorts of people that we come out of. We approach the world through narratives, through what I would say the, you know, the interpretations that we have built individually in the context of a society that color what we can see and, you know, frankly color our moods as well. We've, We've talked about mood a number of times here, and let me just go to that now. And then I got. I know I got Shell and Jan and a number of other people queued up.

But just look at.

David. Let me just, Let me just go on. Let me just go on.

The left has been swung pro war. That's a fascinating test case.

Well, I'm, I'll call myself on the left, and I'm not pro war, so we can have that discussion at another time. I don't want to go there right now on this call. I know, I know why you're saying that, but let you know, I want to kind of keep the focus here. You know, we've. We. We've talked about mood. It's kind of the, you know, the. Not the emotions of the moment, but the emotional orientation that we engage the world in. Bob Dunn and one of my teachers on this matter, along with Fernando Flores, says that, you know, your character, your characteristic mood shows up when you wake up in the morning before your feet even hit the floor. Right. It's sort of this emotional orientation to the world. Are you optimistic, pessimistic, you know, eager, resigned, resentful, anxious, what it might be? We. And, and so we inhabit these moods and they inhabit us. And they're correlated, Fernando would teach. They're correlated with the assessments that we're making and the judgments that we're making about the world. Behind the mood is an assessment, he would say, always. I think that's probably right from what I can tell. And it and the assessments shape the mood, and the assessments are shaped by the mood, as are the observations that we make. It's kind of like a loop de loop. So, you know, is it a trap? Yeah, it is in a way, but it's also an invitation to actually inquire, to say, to notice what's the mood that I'm in right now or this day or this week, or characteristically in my life, what's the moods that the people I'm interacting with with are in and what are the assessments behind that? Because then we have the opportunity to actually do something and to say the assessment's not grounded in reality or in fact. So maybe I don't want to pay attention to it, or maybe it is grounded and there's something I need to do about it. So that dance and learning to observe those moods and notice how they work is a really powerful way into this story. I'll come back to that a little bit later in the call, but let me go on to Shel and then Jan. David, thank you very much.

Hi Gil. I wanted to read just a couple of lines out of my book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World, which speaks specifically to the intersection of left and right. Finding Common Ground A Green Red Coalition on Government Waste Interestingly enough, we can make common cause with people with very different beliefs. A wonderful example in the US is the Green Scissors movement. Left wing environmentalists join with right wing opponents of government waste to demand an end to wasteful government programs with an anti environmental agenda. The unlikely coalition includes Friends of the Earth and Public Citizen, but also Taxpayers for Common Sense and the Heartland Institute, among others. Together they've outlined nearly a trillion dollars in potential savings. Now, I found this footnote source when I was researching this book in 2015, so it may be a little more Polarized now, but it proves that within a very short span of years, these common ground coalitions have been possible. To David's point about the war, I am another one who is against the war and also very concerned about Putin's power grab. But also the holistic analysis that needs to be there about why he's doing that is almost entirely absent from even people who should know better, like Maureen Dowd.

They.

The reality is that Putin was scared NATO would have crossed a huge line if Ukraine had joined it and have what he would see as an enemy on his border. Well, his solution was obviously totally wrong, but that doesn't invalidate his concerns, which were not addressed and therefore he's digging in deeper. But there are also a lot of people, George Lakey and other people who've been writing extensively for, from the non violent activist point of view about the Ukraine. Easy to find on Google.

Yeah, we're not going to unpack the Ukraine controversy here. But you know, for me, one of the important things that you're saying, Shell, is that you have to listen to everybody. You have to listen to your adversaries, you have to listen to your enemies. Yeah. And this is not Kumbaya doctrine. This is good military doctrine. Any good general knows you have to understand not just your enemy's moves, but his mot.

Yeah.

So there is that. The, you know, I've looked into this closely and I think it's. Well, this is an easy thing to say. It's far more complex than you're saying.

Well, I gave the simplification, of course, but I do think that you can.

But you said, you said the reality is, and this is something that we. I don't mean to single you out on this because it's something we do all the time. It's not that. The reality is, it's that my interpretation of what I've learned is. And my interpretation changes as I learn more. I just watched a beautiful debate last week between John Mersheimer, another diplomat on one side, and Michael McFaul and Blanking, polish foreign minister on the other side, debating Ukraine. And it was one of those things where one side spoke. And I think, yeah, that's really good. I agree with you. And then the opposite side would speak, and I think that's really good. I agree with you. And went back and forth. I love that kind of engagement because I love how it challenges me and puts me into perspectives that I haven't lived in before and, you know, sort of, you know, sort of shatters the easy recourse to habitual thinking. And I think that's deeply important right now because habitual thinking is not going to get us through this mess.

I agree.

That's pretty clear. Shel. Thank you for that, John Ballard. And then it looks like Stuart is up next and then John Friedman. Thank you.

Yeah, thanks so much for convening this incredibly stimulating conversation. My body's just like, feels like it's bubbling just listening and good. My heart feels open and connected with everyone. I wanted to suggest for those of you that aren't doing it, if you can get your screen more toward the top of your head, we can experience more of you than that. You with your eyes seeing people with their, just their chin. And that would be helpful to me. I posted in the chat I, I really love your question which I heard Gil was ex. What, what experience do you have with people coming to agreement? And I just wanted to.

And, and not just in general, but people who are really far, who seem to be very far apart.

Right. Well, when I went to Santa Barbara In 1979, the water wars had been going for 20 years. Santa Barbara was one of the most polarized communities in certainly in the state at that time, if ever. And over the course of three and a half years my partner and I hosted 110 focus groups with 2000 leaders, which is some small percentage of the total population of Santa Barbara County. I posted in the chat a link to a over 30 year old organization where people who were on all sides of the growth, no growth environmental business conflict that went on since the oil spill have been collaborating in a school of collaborative leadership skills that I designed and founded and developed with my partner Delia in the late, in the early 90s.

So John, let me, let me, I.

Want to just give one example that goes beyond that because I was doing that, I got hunted down by this guy, Drexel Sprecher, who came and found me and introduced me to Don Anderson. And I just want to take a poll on this call. How many of you ever heard the name Don Anderson? Professor Donald, you. David Donald, could you say like a couple words about, about, about, about Don. Do you, did you know him or what do you know about him? Donald Anderson? I've never, I've never met him personally. I've read some of the materials that he's put out. Can you share with people just an overview of what you got from him?

I felt that he had a way.

Of thinking that was helping to balance different dimensions.

Sort of like a jugular.

We may be talking about a different Don Anderson, this Don Anderson founded the assemblies in Virginia and North Carolina. Maybe so. He was the chief of staff of Adam Clayton Powell in Congress. And then when Powell was exiled, Don was brought on by Sergeant Shriver to evaluate the efficiency of the War on Poverty and report that to Lyndon Johnson. And in the process of doing that, he realized the government would never solve the problems of the poor. And he became an itinerant preacher in southern Virginia, going to funeral homes and churches and asking people to assemble in parliamentary bodies, which they did across the whole center south of Virginia, starting with Surry County, Virginia. And an absolute democratic revolution was created where half the state of Virginia, every county, had a working assembly. Most of the people couldn't read or write. Every single household in the county was organized. Don Anderson then started doing North Carolina. And he was my client and my friend and my hero. And the Assembly's movement transformed the state of Virginia. It caused the governor to be elected black for the first time since Reconstruction. And his story has been obliterated when he died. If you go and look up the name Donald Anderson, national association of the Southern Poor, you will see an entire center page of the Washington Post. This man generated 435 bills as Adam Clayton Powell's chief of staff. The most productive office in the history of the Congress.

John, how long ago was that work in Virginia?

That was in the late 60s and through into the 70s and 80s until it got to be working too well and it had to be shut down.

Any, any similar efforts more recently that you're aware of?

Well, yeah, I mean, I spent my whole career in this. I've done dozens and dozens of things at the civic level. I've. I've had an influence on California's collaboration. Cities and many other places have been doing community collaborative processes in fragments, but it's never been done as a commons as a whole. And I came very close to doing it with Rick Cole, who's now the city manager at Santa Monica in Pasadena.

Yeah, let me interrupt, if I may. I'm asking besides Don and you.

Yeah.

Who's doing this now? Or. The question that's been in my mind as I've been listening to you is what would it take to bring this process into. What would it take to bring this kind of process into something like the US Congress, or is that the wrong question?

No, no, that's the right question. I would definitely invite David Gerson, who did the retreat of the.

Of.

Of Congress. Historic partisan retreat.

Markers on.

Markers on. I'm sorry, I'm confused. There Too.

Yeah.

Markers on. But I. I actually have been thinking to suggest to you and I. How many of you know Scott Spanner? I think of everyone I know in the world who's applying and getting all of these different pieces together and causing people who are highly polarized around. My experience of doing this for 45 years across the state of California is that 90% of the disagreements are false. 90% of the disagreements are bullshit anyway. But I would recommend Scott Spann come and talk to us about his approach to Wicked Problems. And if you guys don't know about him and some of the things he's done, he's probably the foremost high level collaborative practitioner I'm aware of personally. But there is a lot happening at the grassroots that's invisible and fragmented.

Yeah.

But it's in place.

And, you know, the challenge. The challenge that I always think about here is that, you know that old joke, which I probably tried out too often, about how many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb? You know, it only takes one, but the light bulbs got to really want to change. So the work you do requires people, people who want to do this work. And if we take the US Congress as an example, back in the 1990s, Newt Gingrich changed the schedule of the House so that members would in theory have more time to go home over the weekend and be with their constituents. But in fact, it broke the sociality of members of Congress with each other and the friendships of their wives and hanging out together as families, which enabled a different kind of disability among those.

Right.

Than we have now. That's right.

So the only other thing I think of context. I want to just offer one.

I need to offer one.

Name.

No, I've got other people. If you put it in the chat. I want to thank you for.

Thank you for doing this. Great discussion.

Thank you. Stuart Levine, welcome.

Thank you, Gil. A pleasure.

So.

By way of background. All right, so I know something about this, or at least I think I do. And some other people have said I have. One of the critical skills I used in doing divorce mediation or critical perspectives was I wouldn't let people argue about what they were arguing about until I did some consciousness work and created the context in which empathy would show up. Empathy and compassion, which is part of an. Integral to who we are as human beings.

Stuart, how do you. How do you. How do you.

Gil, please let me finish.

Okay, good. Okay.

Let me finish. And then you can ask all the questions you want.

All right. Okay.

I think what's critical is. And I've already seen it in this call. There's a little bit of back and forth and a little bit of demonization. And until we step into some level of higher consciousness, we're not going anyplace. One of the mantras in the world of mediation used to be until people feel enough pain, they're not going to do anything, they're not going to move. And unfortunately, we haven't felt enough pain yet. If we had massive flooding, if we had Internets that are down, if the supermarkets closed because the supply chains were went down, people would say, fuck, we got to do something about this. And they would tend to drop their personal concerns. But we haven't seen yet, and still people are carving. So, Gil, question.

Thank you and thank you for asking me to wait. So I appreciate that. But I'm curious at the end about the same question I was at the beginning, Stuart, which is, how do you introduce empathy into. In a situation where people are at each other's throats and wanting to rip each other's faces off, waiting for the circumstances to become bad enough is one strategy. I'm not comfortable with that as a reliable one because by the time things get bad enough, things will be. Some things will be irretrievable. How do you, you know, whether it's a divorce or a community lawyering up against itself or people in legislature who will not talk to each other as human beings, how do you bring empathy in?

Well, the first thing to do is, number one, I've chosen.

All right.

I don't go into places where I don't hear some willingness to actually come together and be human beings. As long as people still want to battle and fight with each other, hey, you know, have at it. I'm not going to bring or attempt to bring some level of higher consciousness into that context. But the way you do it is you ask people questions that force them to kind of get down into their own humanity and create that context in which they start to see that the other maybe is not the enemy, maybe just has a different perspective and you start getting people into the notion of, let's see where we can go with this.

Let me, let me go from, Let me go from here to John Friedman, who had a note in the chat a while back that I think flows directly from this or is there. Is that okay and I can come back to you afterwards?

Absolutely.

Okay. Thank you, John. Go ahead.

Yeah, thanks, Gil.

Not in the chat was because I.

Wasn'T sure if the.

Where the conversation was going to go, and I thought it was a point. Because when you're in a state of emotional agitation, whether it's anger, passion, lust, whatever, you're not doing your best thinking and you're not doing your best listening.

You have a goal in mind.

And we can talk a lot about the professional people coming up with their narratives to use that to manipulate behavior. But I think the conversation there about the divorce is fascinating.

Right?

Because I had a friend who went.

Through a divorce divorcing.

They couldn't get past their anger with each other until they realized that they were building a new, better reality than they were in. And the idea of waiting till it all falls to hell, frankly, folks, we're on the precipice of that now. I wonder if instead of waiting for a period of pain is you start to have conversations where pleasure, where the positive reinforcement can come in. And what I do with people is how many of you have ever tried to address or talk to someone who you completely disagree with? And I'm talking about fundamentally, not from a state of trying to persuade them or convince them or change their mind, but just simply to understand. And what I put in the chat is the concept of ask them, but don't give them your point of view until they ask for it, because that means they're receptive and ready to hear it. And to the person who said that, 90% of what we have is in common, absolutely true. 90% of us have the fundamental core values from the Judeo, Christian, Eastern religions, and even agnostics and atheists of do unto others in the Golden Rule. But we lose that in the prevalent tyranny of the urgency of today.

Sorry.

No, it's good, John. I would just go a little bit further than what you said.

Usually do.

Push me further, Gil. That's why I love you, man.

Well, we'll see. You know, what you talked about the importance of not just talking. You know, we. We mostly live in our bubbles, and sometimes we get out of them, and then you. And sometimes people encourage us. Go talk to people outside your bubble. And what you're saying is, no, don't go talk to people outside your bubble. Go listen to people outside your bubble. Which is huge. But I want to go a little further because you said, you know, don't ask them anything until you've heard them fully out.

No, no, don't present your point of view.

Don't present your point of view until you really heard theirs.

Yes.

But I think it's also valuable to notice how we listen. And y' all may be different than me, but I noticed that one of the ways that I've learned to listen is to listen for what I agree with or disagree with and what somebody else is saying. Now it's obvious. It's obvious you don't want, you know, listening to disagree and have a fight. That's one thing. But even listening for agreement is the same kind of problem. Because am I really listening to them if I'm constantly trying to fit what they're saying into my already awareness?

If you're evaluating what you're hearing rather.

Than judging what you're hearing rather than just hearing, rather than being open to something possibly completely new and transformative from them that I hadn't thought, encountered or felt before. And so for me, that's, that's how. Yeah, that's how I'm listening to you here.

Really hard. It's really hard because we're hardwired. Well, we're hardwired to. Oh, I got that in common with that person. And then I want to respond to it.

Are we hardwired?

I don't know. That's a good question.

Okay.

I'm not a biologist or sociologist.

Maybe we are, maybe we're not. I mean, for me, my, my, my, my current recent example is I'm, you know, I'm living in the Berkeley bubble. Bubble. In the COVID bubble. And so my exposures are limited. But a couple of years ago, I was introduced to a somebody through a mutual friend who is a supply side economist. Check. Trump voter, check. You know, I mean, had a whole bunch of checks on my list for him. We become dear, dear friends. We love each other, we disagree on stuff, but we found a way to really listen to each other, understand where we're coming from, love the vitality of the thinking and commitments and passion that was in there and have become fast friends. Who would have thunk?

Well, remember, in our culture we're taught three things you don't talk about. Right. Sex, religion and politics, because they're third rails. As a result, we've forgotten how to.

Yeah, John, thanks very much. Let me go.

Yeah, go to someone else. I'm tired of seeing my face so.

Big on your screen.

That's a good place, John.

Thanks, Ken.

So you asked how. When have you actually seen people who have strong disagreements come together and change?

So let me say fierce, not strong.

Fierce.

Okay. Yeah.

How about War and Peace? Is that fierce enough?

That's good enough.

Okay, I'll take War and peace for 50, please. So back in 2004, I was asked to run a world cafe at the foundation for global community among peace activists and business people. And at first I refused. And the person asked me, I said, why? I said, because peace activists are the most violent people I know. They're out there going, no blood for oil.

No blood for oil.

You know, I mean, they're really entrenched in their position. And I finally agreed. And when I got there, I said, this is Jennifer. She's our graphic recorder. She'll capture today's output. And I was immediately challenged by someone who said, capture is war language. You can't use that in here. Proving my point that these people are actually very difficult to talk with, right? So in that instance, I just said, well, what would you recommend? What would you say in place of capture? And the man did not have anything. So we stayed with capture. But I was. I pondered this for a long time. How am I going to get these people to talk? And I realized if I asked them anything about their position, it was only going to entrench their position. So instead, I came up with this question. Have 50 people all seated at tables of four. And I said, I would like you to please share the story of the first time you can remember in your life that peace was going to be something that was important. That, you know, when did that. What was the impact? What happened? And we did two rounds of that. At the end of two rounds, there were no peace activists and business people. There were people in the room who all shared a concern for peace. And I put in the chat a link to Fran Peavey's strategic questioning. I actually knew Fran back in the 90s. She was with the Buddhist Peace Fellowship when I was there. And she went to India, and the Ganges is highly polluted. And instead of getting people riled up that I said, how does it feel to you to know that your sacred river is so polluted? And that evoked a very different response than what do you want to do about the pollution? Right? This, as far as I'm concerned, we are all in this together. And as soon as I point a finger at you, I got four more, three more pointing back at me. So we have to stop pointing fingers and say, every voice in the system represents some intelligence in the system. How do we put them together in ways where we can get a bigger picture? I'll end with a really short story. This is a very old, old story that at the beginning of the world, there's a woman who had this great globe that gave light to the world, and she had twin sons, and the twin sons were always arguing with each other. And when it came time for her to leave the world, she was trying to figure out how to pass the globe on to them. And she went to hand it off, and the sons argued over it, and they both grabbed for it, and it fell and broke into a million pieces. And every one of us is the inheritor of one of those pieces. And we all think we have the whole globe, but it's only when we put our pieces together that we see something larger. Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Ken, very much. Let's just take a moment. Someone's got a musical offering. Let's just take a moment to breathe. Dale, whenever you're ready.

Okay, I think. Am I unmuted now?

I hear you fine. Okay, great.

So people coming to agreement from wild and fiercely different views. That's another good ad. So I'm gonna say two things or a couple things. One is, I think that I've seen certain things which happen downstream and upstream. So that's a distinction that I want to make. So there's some delicious things I've already heard and made notes about downstream and people who've given resources. One thing that I believe is that whoever defines the four corners of the conversation is really important. And I was looking for my metaphor, and I don't see it. I usually keep it in my office, But I used to anytime I facilitated meetings, I'd bring a pickle jar. And the idea was, how are we being pickled? Which is just a down home way of saying what stories and narratives and.

All that kind of stuff that we're talking about.

And I would sometimes ask people, and several of you have talked about this, I'd sometimes ask people, is there any difference between the act of understanding someone and the act of agreeing with him? And maybe some of you use this technique. And I would actually get people to say, well, of course, those are totally two different things. You understand is this, you agree, is this. And so I would facilitate about a four or five minute conversation. And what we would realize, and I think most people agreed with this.

Is.

That we withhold our understanding often because we conflate agreement with understanding. So we believe that if we show someone that we understand them to the point that we can repeat their comments and repeat their perspective so that they will say, yes, you have it.

Then.

We believe that doing that means that we have just conceded that we agree with it. So I found that if I created some pickle juice for a group so that we knew that those were two radically different things, that it tended to Give people more room to understand and to know that that didn't mean they agreed. So then, so that's, that's downstream, that's that, but way upstream. I wanted to talk about one, just one quick thing. If we think about these, Gil, you've talked about, you know, these 20, 30, 40 year periods, I've often thought that. Or this lens upstream is that we had the FDR from 1930s to 1970s, magnet or pickle juice, and it pickled everybody. It even pickled Eisenhower and Nixon because they were in that force field. Then from the 1980s until now, we basically had Reagan. And that pickled, have you noticed that pickled Clinton and it pickled Obama. And so I think that the four corners of the room are trying to be redefined now in an ecological overshoot awareness and the response of that. And if we can redefine those four corners and it's happening, it's happening now that the kind of conflict that happens between people and I'm not saying that we need tons of techniques downstream. And many of you've talked so skillfully about things that you've done in a room downstream with people. If we don't, I think if we don't solve, though, for that larger pickle juice, what is the magnet? I'm mixing metaphors here now, but what is the, what is the grand magnet? Because the thing is that once I saw this, I thought, I have profound disappointments with both Clinton and Obama. Profound in some ways, Clinton in terms of blowing up legislation and things that he did. But if I think about the fact that he was living in Reagan's world, then I get more empathy for Clinton, I get more empathy for Obama. And my idea is who's going to define these four corners that we're stepping into. And that will be as important as those techniques downstream, maybe in some ways more important.

Thank you.

Beautifully said, Dale. Thank you. And to me, really fundamental. I, I didn't know the pickle jar metaphor. I like it a lot and I'm going to steal it with your permission and steal it with giving you credit.

By the way, I used to tell.

People I would keep jars of pickles so long that if I left a pickle at a client, I'd have to call them and say, for God's sakes, don't let anybody eat any of those pickles.

Don't open that jar, don't kill them, don't open that jar. You know, the way that I've found myself thinking about what you're talking about is that you Know, you ask, who's going to define the four corners of the frame? There are lots of people trying to do that, you know, very consciously, explicitly, intentionally, and just by the way we as human beings live in the world in generating, you know, generating narratives. I think of it as a story, as a battle for the story of the world. You know, what will be the story that we live into and live through that shapes where we go. And part of it is a battle, and part of it is, you know, is slam poetry festival. And there it is, you know, for.

Me.

As I've kind of discovered my way into this pickle, if you will, is to look at my own juice and to just kind of inquire into what is the juice that I am simmering in. And, you know, what are the, you know, the words that are coming out of my mouth? Where are they coming from? Fernando once really shocked people in a seminar a couple of years ago. Somebody was saying, I think that then. And he cut him off, said, you're not thinking. And it sounded like another arrogant, you know, like an arrogant seminar leader thing. He said, no, no, he said, you're not thinking. Thinking is something that's happening to you. You know, it's arising. Thoughts are arising in you in the sum total of you. Your, you know, what you had for lunch, your life experience, the culture you're coming out of, the political mood in your, you know, thoughts are arising not to duck the responsibility, but to realize the complexity of it. And so for me, that. That first layer inquiry of this thing that I said, what did. What did I mean? What did the words mean? Where did they come from? Some of, you know, the story about Buckminster Fuller, one of. One of my generative mentors, who, after the death of his young daughter, this is 1928, took himself to the shores of Lake Michigan to throw himself in. He thought he was finished. He was a business failure. He'd lost somebody he loved. He was just done, as the story goes, decided that he didn't have the right to take himself out because he could be such a contribution to other people. But he did vow that he wouldn't open his mouth again and speak until he was sure that everything he spoke was true. And, you know, and that that included such mundane examples as stopping saying things like sunset and sunset and sunrise because, you know, the sun's not rising, the earth is turning. And so just at a simple level like that, to take that on into all your life. So I had a period of a. Gosh, must have been a year, year and a half a few years ago where I found myself just in this ongoing reflection, observation and reflection of my language and my words. And remarkably, I found that I was able to, you know, look at conversations and roll them back and unpack them, you know, in some. Some duration. And it was really powerful, challenging, embarrassing, enlightening, and has given me some more both grounding and fluidity in this. So I think, you know, so for me, it said, let me listen to me more carefully first, okay? And then open that out and listen to you more carefully and listen to the supply side guy more carefully and listen to the climate denier more carefully. Without that, you know, back to what John was saying. Without the intention to disagree or agree, but to really hear and then see what might. See what thoughts might get thunk then not what I think, not what you think, but what thoughts might happen in our conversation together. Because here's the other joke about it all is right now when I'm speaking, is it me thinking or you thinking? You know, we have the apparent boundary of the skin bag and the zoom screen, but in fact, our neurobiologies are dancing with each other right now in real time. True of everybody else on the call. And what does that open up for us? Dale? Thank you.

Well, yes, and I was going to say that's why in a good conversation, we always feel smarter. And what's interesting is, is I just got to add this one last thing. The poet Gerda said, tell a wise person or else keep silent for those who do not understand will mock it right away. And so the conversation I would have with people is, what's the unwise person inside of us that we're speaking to? And do we need to speak to the wiser part of us? Because we usually externalize that.

So.

So anyway, well, the wiser part of us and the assumption that there is a wise person inside the asshole that I'm arguing with, and if I could just drop that story and speak to the wise person in that person, maybe something happens. Thank you, Dale. Stuart.

Yeah, and that, I think, is the.

Shift.

That at some level, we're all part of this same organism called Planet Earth and the living system that that is. And we all of us have spent a whole bunch of time over the last years focused on us as an individual.

You know, a lot of.

A lot of what you were just saying, Gil, was about individual consciousness, but the realization that we are part of something much bigger, if people step up to that. Because one of the techniques in any conflict resolution process is to try and chunk up as big as you can to get people to agree. If people would just stop long enough to recognize, wait a minute, while we carp our, our individual, personal perspective, Rome is burning. And that's the shift that need, that need that needs to happen.

So let's shift here, let's shift a little bit to how does, how does that need to happen? This is an unusual group of people on this call, on these calls. This is, I'm going to say about you all, I know most of you, I don't know all of you. I'm going to say about you all that you are people who are, who are concerned about the well being of life, humans and other living things. You're concerned about justice and quality of relationships among people. You're smart enough to know what a mess we're in. You pay enough attention to realize how serious people have used different words for it in the course of the last hour. You know, we're this bad moon rising, right? There's trouble ahead and whatever dimension you want to talk about, and yet you're all a group of people who have not checked out. You're not in, you're not in despair. You may be in grief, but you're not in despair. You may be scared, but you're not resigned.

Yeah, just indulge me one moment, if you would. I agree with you completely. And it's interesting because I was thinking about the prescientness of the title of this program, which is Living in Two Worlds. At some level, everybody on this call, we're all living in two worlds. One is the world of our own ego and consciousness and the world we know and, and our professional identities and what we do in the world. But we also have a foot, a leg in that next world, that higher consciousness that I'm talking about. And no doubt everybody here has a little bit of ego struggle between, quote, individual self and the bigger world and the vision of what we might create as a human species.

Thank you. Thank you.

Yeah, so the, you know, the question that I was groping toward there is how do we do this? How is it that we can live awake to the mess but not surrender to resignation? Because in that, and I'm asking that not just as an abstract psychological curiosity, but in us doing that is one of these, is one of the strange attractors that offers something to other people. Like, oh, look at, you know, look at, look at Ken. Look at what he's up to. Not just what he's doing, but how he moves in the world. This is really interesting. Or Dale or any, any of you. Just. I'm just commenting on who I see on the screen at the moment. What's the mood that you characteristically live in or the mood that you cultivate that enables you to live the way that you do in the face of what, you know, historically momentous times that could have huge impacts on human future. And yet day by day, each of you is doing something generative in relation to that unfolding story. Ron, do you want to speak to that or. Because I want to call on you. But I wanted to stay with that question first for a moment.

I think it applies because it's what you said before about ideas arising and then how you implement this. The thing that we've been working on for a long time, the specific is around this MBA mindset that we keep working on. And presideo graduate school was founded on the idea of students finding their calling. What the heck's a calling? And back to language. We're finding that a number of people are becoming much more open to that kind of idea that they have to listen to what is emerging. And Gil and the others that you all have talked about that any number of ways, what we're attempting to do within a business setting or an educational setting is to say, listen. And we often hear about what do you care about? What do you care about? And we turn that to say what cares about you? And that's this whole idea of re enchanting the world, you know, Max Weber and all. That whole idea is this idea of just having people stop and listen. And what we've been working on is this more meditative idea of leading to action. And our basic model that we've been working on is this idea of calling Luther Barouf. This whole idea of having to say, listen to what is arising within you for action and then go out. So I don't know if it's a help or not, but we're just trying to take these more abstract ideas and actually making them useful for people who are trying to figure out what to do with their lives and businesses and all the rest as a way specifically of bringing this kind of. Which is an old habit. It starts out with Benedict and Benedict's rule, open the ears of your heart, listen. And so that's what we're talking about.

So thanks.

But it's trying to link together, Gil, that your two ideas were rising as well as how we do it.

Thank you. Thanks, Ron. Brad Warren.

Yeah, thank you, Ron. Because it let me lower the hand. I've been a Student of Esther Hicks, Esther and Jerry Hicks or Abraham. And one of the things that she channels is joy. If it's not joyful, you shouldn't be doing it. Because if you're.

If.

If what's arising, to use the words Ron whispering. If you're. If what's arising within you is joy and inspiration, take that action. That action will be way more powerful than making a million phone calls that you're doing out of obligation or need or. Or some other emotion, feeling, whatever. And I just find that it helps me daily, minute by minute, figuring out what it is I want to do. If this call stopped being joyful, I would push the leave meeting button and go do something else. The fact that I'm still here is my indicator to myself that this is joyful. I am loving this conversation. I get a lot out of it. And it does actually result occasionally in different behaviors. I will do something later today, tomorrow, next week, I'll volunteer for a new organization. I'll go read one of the, you know, thousands of things that you guys have posted. I'll go to a website, I'll check something else out. Sometimes people will hopefully do that with things that I post. I put something in there about search for common ground. I don't know how many of you familiar with the work John Marks did way back in the. Stuart's got his thumb up way back in the early 80s. His work was incredible. I was fortunate to support a fundraiser that he did out here in like 84, 86. And we raised about 25,000. And it kind of got that group going. They would bring gun people. You know, I don't know what else to call, you know, advocates and opponents and have them find what do we have in common? What do we agree on around guns? He did it with birth control. Abortion, excuse me, abortion. He would have the right to life and the abortion. And they would find things that they actually agreed on when they did everything that all the other people here have said today, they listened to.

He would do that with. With warring Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. Yeah, where the stakes are, you know.

Pretty high and bloody and other places overseas. A lot of their work became international after he did a lot in the US So that's it.

I'm done.

I was joyful saying it. Anything else I say now will just be repetitious.

I'm glad that you brought up joy, Brad. You know, when you talked about them making a million phone calls, that can be joyful too. I've run. I've run phone banks that Were joyful, where it's just a blast. The usual game in a phone bank was to get in and get out, make the call as fast as possible, raise your money, measured on dollars per minute, et cetera. And we said to our phone callers, to the people making the calls, your goal here is to grow the relationship with the donor, period. Spend as much time on the phone with each person as feels appropriate to you at a certain point, invite them to renew their support. Actually, even, even more as part of the relationship piece, the call would start not with, you know, hi, Felix, how are you today? Which is how, you know, people call, you get these calls. Now, somebody doesn't identify themselves, talks to you by the first name. We wouldn't do that. We'd say, hi, I'm so and so from this organization you donated to us a year ago. I'm calling to update you on what we're doing, and I will ask you for a new donation. Do you have two minutes for a call? So it's like upfront, there's no hidden agenda there. There's no manipulation. And if somebody says, I don't have time, often they would say, I don't have time now, Please call me back tomorrow. When have you ever had somebody ask a telemarketer, Call them back. So it was a beautiful experience. It was filled with joy for our callers and for the people being called. And the donations were twice as high as they had ever been from the same level of effort. More joy, more flow, more results. Ken Homer, back to you.

So.

This question of how, when it comes to wicked messes, I think the question of how. This is not the first question to ask. I think the question is to say, if things were working well for everybody, what would it look like? And invite all the voices of the system to contribute their perspective. Because when we ask how, we go into an engineering, problem solving mindset, that is the same level that created the problem.

I am guilty of this, Ken. This is a characteristic move for me and friends of mine, in addition to you bust me for it. And I like very much how you've just.

I'm guilty of it, too. I found myself doing it all the time. Like, I keep saying, don't do this, and yet I do it. So it is a hard habit to break.

It's cultural.

It is cultural. It is cultural. Second point I want to make is that, and I don't know a lot about this, but I've heard this from people who do know more than I do, is that when Vaclav Havel and his cohort were fomenting the velvet revolution. They decided to act as if depression, like, let's just act as if. And I thought that was really quite amazing. And the third thing I want to talk about is mood management and action. So I'm going to use an example from my past where I was brought into UC Santa Cruz a few years ago, needed, quite a long time ago, they needed to consolidate 24 separate IT departments into one. And the first day that we gathered, I got all the Trevor heads together and the first question was, and this is all about moods. My first question was, why are you here at UC Santa Cruz? You're all highly qualified IT professionals. You could drive over the hill and make three times the money in the valley than you're working here. And we got answers like, well, I'm not a teacher, but I think education is really important. And so I get great satisfaction knowing I'm providing a valuable service to education. Someone else said, oh well, I support a new Nobel prize winning scientists. I want to give them the best support possible. Somebody else said, oh, I'm an alum, I want to give back to my school. And then of course, I'm a surfer, I got to live near the water, right? So we grounded people in a mood of we know why we're here, we're connected to our purpose. Then I asked them, what are all your concerns about the consolidation effort? Because they had no information, they just knew they had to consolidate. People were worried about headcount, blah, blah. And that was a very long and very fraught conversation that generated a huge list. And now the whole room was in panic, like holy shit, how are we going to handle all this? So then I asked them, what do you do? That's world class, that if it's not part of the new organization, there's no point in even trying. And you could feel the mood in the room shift within about 20 minutes to where people were grounded back in. We're very competent at this. We do this really well. This is really, we're, we're freaking awesome at this, right? And so now they came into a mood of, of confidence. And then the last question was, what question or questions do you answer before you can take your next steps? Because you're going to leave here and your people are going to come to you and tell you your sleep, say so what? What's going to happen? Right? And that generated like 230 questions. We gave people dots and said, take the red dot, put on the most important one. And by doing that we got about 16 questions that had this huge mass of red dots, and those were the questions to be answered in the next 30 days. So we developed a whole roadmap where the next level was 30 to 60 days, and then, you know, 60 to 90 days and further out. So it was an incredible experience of bringing together, creating a collective mind and managing it, not so much for the knowledge, but for the mood of, let's connect to purpose, let's look at our concerns, let's figure out what we do that we're really confident at, and what are the questions you need to answer. And it was a really, really successful operation. It lasted about 18 months. In the end, only 12 people out of 250 got laid off. And it was just. It was amazing. So I think we overlook. We spend too much of our focus on knowledge and not enough about how do we get people in an imaginative space, and how do we put them in moods of wonder, ambition, and curiosity of what they can do together?

Yeah, it's a wonderful example, Ken, thank you for laying it out so beautifully. If you could, if you're willing, if you could put the stages that you described in the chat so people can see them, that would be great.

And also, did you have those questions formulated prior to the meeting started, or did you create them in the moment based on what you were feeling was going on?

I'm a facilitator. 85% of my work is done before I walk into the room. Yes, I had those questions, and it took myself and two other people three days of design process to come up with those questions, figure out they were the right ones. So I say me, because I was the lead on this, but I had two. The ombuds person from UC Santa Cruz and my graphic facilitator, who's a very brilliant person. The three of us actually came up with that. I should.

And I'm going to speculate that although you guys had three days of design going in, that when you spoke the questions in the room, they felt suddenly appropriate to the people who were there. Like, oh, that's the great. That's the right question to be asking now. What a good question. God, he's amazing. You just thought of that, you know, can't see the strings of the marionette. So beautiful. I mean, you know, I would. Another way that I would. Language. What I heard you doing, and this is out of my work with Flores, is that you did three things around mood. You observed mood. You notice what moods were there. You paid enough attention and listened in the various ways we listen to, to know what the moods of people, the moods of people individually and the mood of the room is. You cultivated mood, starting with your own, your facilitation team. What's the mood that you're going to bring into the room? How are you going to stand, how are you going to maintain your, you know, your core flow despite, regardless of what happens in the room. And you orchestrated mood, then command it. You didn't direct it, but you enabled something to emerge based on the moves you made that could arise out of this group. And those are sort of three layers of capability that I'm in the midst of learning and working on, kind of, kind of in that order. I love the, the metaphor of cultivating mood because I think of cultivating a garden where I don't make the plants grow. I provide the conditions in which they can grow, in which they can express their nature and grow well because of how I've prepared soil for them. I think about musicians and athletes who develop the capacity of their body to act in a certain way in the future based on, based on the, you know, the cultivation and orchestration that's been, that's been set out there. So this is a beautiful example of what's possible for us. Coincidentally, I was on a call this morning with a gentleman that does that very kind of work of transforming complex information technology systems, ERP systems, in particular, the giant enterprise resource planning systems that large companies run on. And his sort of similar version of the story I'd like to introduce you guys actually, is that the traditional approach is to go in and spend an enormous amount of time documenting every work process that exists in the organization, hundreds of processes, what have you, and then designing flowcharts that represent all those processes and then hand those over to coding teams to recreate those processes in the new technology. And my question for him was, you know, is. Is the service that the clients want you to provide to document and replicate their past or to help them invent their future? And what you're speaking about, Ken, I think speaks directly into that is how does a group of people find their clarity and their resolve and their capacity to invent a new future together? And you've answered one of the questions I asked early on is that, you know, this was not a hostile situation, but it was a divergent situation at the start where people were at risk. You said only a fewer lost their jobs, could have been many, but it wasn't. And they found a way to invent something together. And I think it holds a Model. At least one, you know, set of models for the question that I was asking earlier.

And there were. There was a lot of. There were a lot of fiefdoms. Every single one of those department heads was like, I got to protect my apartment. And as soon as they saw that. And I also give credit to the provost who was. Came out of retirement. He was a Canadian, had very little ego, was just a wonderfully generous man. And he said, I promise to make this as humane as possible. And he made himself completely available. So, you know, there was a. I don't take credit for the entirety of this. I had a big hand in it, my fingerprints over it. But it was successful because. And someone actually asked him in the big cafe, we had 250 people. He said, why is this going to work? He said, because I promise to listen to every single person. I don't promise to act on every single person's input, but I will listen to it, and I will take it into account, and if I can act on it, I will. And if I can't, I'll let you know why. And that's an incredible boss. That's a. That's. That's. You don't find that everywhere. Right. So it was a confluence of many wonderful things that came together there.

Beautiful. Thank you. Jan, I see your hand up, but I want to ask you to hold on for a moment and see if there's anybody else who hasn't spoken yet, who'd like a chance to speak. We've got a little over 10 minutes left, so I want to open the floor first. I'll come back to you. Okay? Just. Just. I know. Trip it. Just hang on a moment. Dwight Collins. Hi, there.

Hey, Gil. It's a real pleasure to be with this group. And when you first asked a question.

Incredible boss. That's a. That's. That's. You don't find that everywhere. Right. So it was a confluence of many wonderful things that came together there.

Beautiful. Thank you. Jan, I see your hand up, but I want to ask you to hold on for a moment and see if there's anybody else who hasn't spoken yet, who'd like a chance to speak. We've got a little over 10 minutes left, so I want to open the floor first. I'll come back to you in a minute. Okay. Just question.

At the outset, I thought of the Texas shootings and listened to the New York Times daily and about how the 10 Republicans and 10 Democrats came together and agreed. And just.

I know. Short. But just hang on a moment. Dwight Collins. Hi there.

Hey, Gil. It's a real pleasure to be with this group.

And.

When you first asked the question, they were interviewing Chris Murphy, who was the senator from Connecticut, who was at the center of it. And, you know, somehow this happened. People oddly divergent views agreed on something. And what he said right after it happened, he was. They were in. In session, and he was sitting there, and right after it happened, he stood up and he started to talk. And basically he said, you know, he went into each person's soul, sort of like you went all through all this trouble to spend all this money getting here and so on. What are we doing if we're doing nothing? You know, what are we doing? And in a way, he was. Well, he appealed to that part of people that cares, you know, regardless of people's views, that cares about humanity. And then it was just three or four who initially that he, you know, after the session ended, he got with and there was a group, and then over the next day or two, the others called him up and said, I.

Want to be part of it.

And they ended up with 10 of each. Okay. And so there's. There's some example of it happening. Okay. And I'm thinking, well, how did it happen?

Right. Yeah. Yep. And, you know, it's a great example. I haven't, I haven't gone into the backstory of it yet. I don't have any observation on that, but I think, you know, it feels to me at one level an example of Stewart's catastrophe theory. Something horrible enough happened to. To snap people out of their usual habit.

True.

And. But you also had Chris Murphy, who stepped up in a particular kind of way, in a particular kind of humanity in the political process and was able to reach something in his colleagues that's often hard to reach, it seems. Right. Could. So, yeah, thank you for that. One.

Question at the outset, I thought of the. The Texas shootings and listen to the New York Times daily and about how.

The 10 Republicans, anybody else.

Wickens and 10 Democrats came together and agreed. And.

Jan, let me go back to you.

Then they were interviewing Chris Murphy, who was the senator from Connecticut, who was at the center of it.

You still there?

Yeah. Thank you. I just wanted to acknowledge that. I'm just very moved by the conversation, and I put an offer in the chat. I. I developed this book on how to get the top six people in any enterprise into wholehearted unanimity in 2017, and I'm happy to send a PDF to anyone. And I just want to acknowledge that many of you may know or have heard of the Institute of Cultural affairs, but you may not know this book, Winning through Participation. But this is a global private Peace Corps. We've been operating on a need to know basis only since the 50s, training 50,000 people in the south and helping the churches to stop recording segregation. This is the single most useful book I've ever read. The book is actually 25 pages. Then this has probably collectively some 5,000 hours of professional alignment. This is one of the most collaboratively written books that I've ever seen. This method is the basis of many of the facilitation methodologies on the planet. The ICA has been doing this, as I said, since the 50s and 60s. And I just want to acknowledge.

And you know, somehow this happened.

People acknowledged them as a source and as a private initiative.

If you know Gene Houston Views agreed on something. And what he said right after it happened, he was. They were in session and he and.

She said, the Institute of Cultural affairs is the fulfillment of the Hopi prophecy, which is.

He was sitting there and right after it happened, he stood up and he started to talk.

A little hyperbole maybe, but we brought the idea of civil society. We brought the idea. Many, many ideas in current life came from our think tank and the work that we did all across the planet for decades. So I just want to let people know that exists and ICA Institute of Cultural affairs is all over the world and their work in with local communities is exemplary.

John, thank you. If you haven't done it already, could you put those three books in the chat so people can access them?

Yeah, I did. I did put them. I'll put Art of Focus Conversation as well.

Great. If you would. Terrific resources.

And I credit them, Gil, with the answer to your question about how do I keep myself going as I use these methods every day with unstoppable leaders who are verified voracious learners. And I have that satisfaction of creating something in the new every day.

Thank you.

Great for your hosting.

You're welcome. Thank you for being here. This, this list of books reminds me of another that I hadn't planned to get into on this call, but let me do that. We've talked about, you know, the challenges of climate and the challenges of pandemic and the shifting political landscape in the United States. We haven't talked about voter suppression and the Stop the Steal movement.

And basically he said, you know, he went, he went into each person's soul, sort of like you went all through all this trouble to spend all this money getting here. And so on. What are we doing if we're doing nothing? You know, what are we doing? And in a way, he was.

And the, you know, the increasing possibility of seeing a significant mood to fascism in the United States, at the very least, authoritarianism at state level, and maybe worse. And for me, that's where my despair challenge rises. In addition to all the rest of these. But a friend reminded me recently of a book called From Dictatorship to Democracy by Jean Sharp. And I want to bring that to your awareness because that has been the Handbook for Peaceful Revolutions, the Velvet Revolution, the Colored Color Revolutions in Europe, and many others. In some cases to prevent the slide to fascism, in some cases to turn authoritarian governments and bring something back into humanity. So it's another one of the resources. David, thank you for your comment about that. It's remarkable work. It's not widely known, but it's a resource that we may well be turning to in coming years. And I would. I would add that as a compliment to Jan's introduction to the work of ica. The descriptions that Ken shared, the work that all of you are doing in the various ways you're doing it.

I missed the name of that book. Could you just put it in the chat so everyone can catch it?

I will do it. Yep. So, but let me. I'll do this.

Well, he appealed to that part of people that cares, you know, regardless of people's views, that cares about humanity.

And as we continue the conversation. So, You know, so it's, It's a remarkable thing that we do here. And I feel really honored to be able to host this conversation with all of you. You know, we, we, we.

And then it was just three or four who initially that he, you know, after the session ended, he got with and there was a group. And then over the next, we're.

We're in a mood of the time, which is very disordered and shaky and full of fear and anger in the larger culture, you know, we have the choice of do we face a frankly unsettled future, you know, one that you can't make predictions about. You can construct scenarios, but can't make predictions about where we're headed, you know, and do we face this in a mood of resignation and despair? Seems to not be the case here. Resentment and rage, anger and indignation. This is where a lot of people are, I think, right now. Or do we enter the unknown in moods of resolution and ambition? Not ambition in the sense of greed, but ambition in the sense of possibility that we want to go after or even wonder somebody Talked about before and a. And a dignity about the possibility of how human beings live together. I'm quoting Fernando a lot. Today, he challenged somebody. It might have been me talking about anger in a. About a political situation that I was discussing. He said, you're not angry. Again, this is a move he makes, like, you're not what you think.

Next day or two, the others called him up and said, I want to.

Be part of it.

And they ended up with 10 of each. Okay. And so there's. There's.

You say you are. I said, what? So you're indignant. You're indignant.

Some example of it happening.

Okay.

And I'm thinking, well, how did it happen?

Right, yeah. Yep. And, you know, it's a great example. I haven't. I haven't. You have a commitment to dignity which is being violated, but the dignity of human beings. And I went and looked up the etymology and thought, this is. It's not a matter of right or wrong, but it was a more powerful place to stand than to stand in anger. And that's why I have dignity in the title of this series, you know, and the possibility opens up, maybe possibly sometimes, of something like serenity or an emotional fortitude in the face of a future that we can't possibly predict. You know, the joke here, of course, is we say, now we're in a time. We couldn't possibly predict the future, but maybe that's always been true. Maybe we've never been able to predict the future. And we get to dance in the emergence of what's emerging. We have a hand in the dance. We can tap out a rhythm, we can sing songs. We affect each other in that we have some degree of choice in the mood that we stand in, that we bring to this and that we react in. So thanks for being on this journey together. Going into the backstory of it yet, I don't have any observation on that, but I think, you know, it feels to me at one level an example of Stuart's catastrophe theory. Something horrible enough happened to snap people out of their usual habit.

True.

And. But you also had Chris Murphy, who stepped up in a particular kind of way in a particular kind of humanity in the political process, and was able to reach something in his colleagues that's often hard to reach, it seems. Right. Could. So, yeah, thank you for that one. Anybody else? Okay, Jan, let me go back to you then. You still there?

Yeah, thank you. I just wanted to acknowledge that. I'm just very moved by the conversation, and I put an offer in the chat I, I developed this book on how to get the top six people in any enterprise into wholehearted unanimity in 2017. And I'm happy to send a PDF to anyone. And I just want to acknowledge that many of you may know or have heard of the Institute of Cultural affairs, but you may not know this book, Winning through Participation. But this is a global private Peace Corps. We've been operating on a need to know basis only since the 50s, training 50,000 people in the south in, in helping the churches to stop sort of courting segregation. This is the single most useful book I've ever read. The book is actually 25 pages and then this has probably collectively some 5,000 hours of professional alignment. This is one of the most collaboratively written books that I've ever seen. And this, this method is the basis of many of the facilitation methodologies on the planet. The ICA has been doing this, as I said, since the 50s and 60s. And I just want to acknowledge them as a source and as a private initiative. If you know Jean Houston, she said the Institute of Cultural affairs is the fulfillment of the Hopi prophecy, which is a little hyperbole maybe, but we brought the idea of civil society. We brought the idea. Many, many ideas in current life came from our think tank and the work that we did all across the planet for decades. So I just want to let people know that exists. And ICA Institute of Cultural affairs is all over the world and their work with local communities is exemplary.

John, thank you. If you haven't done it already, could you put those three books in the chat so people can access them?

Yeah, I did put them. I'll put Art of Focus Conversation as well.

Great. If you would. Terrific resources, and I credit them.

Gil, the answer to your question about how do I keep myself going as I use these methods every day with unstoppable leaders who are voracious learners, and I have that satisfaction of creating something in the new every day. Thank you. Great for your hosting.

You're welcome. Thank you for being here. This, this list of books reminds me of another that I hadn't planned to get into on this call, but let me do that. We've talked about, you know, the challenges of climate and the challenges of pandemic and the shifting political landscape in the United States. We haven't talked about voter suppression and the Stop the Steel movement and the, you know, the increasing possibility of seeing a significant mood to fascism in the United States. At the very least, authoritarianism at state level and maybe worse. And for me, that's where my despair challenge rises. In addition to all the rest of these. But a friend reminded me recently of a book called From Dictatorship to Democracy by Gene Sharp. And I want to bring that to your awareness because that has been the Handbook for peaceful revolutions, the Velvet Revolution, the Color revolutions in Europe, and many others. In some cases to prevent the slide to fascism, in some cases to turn authoritarian governments and bring something back into humanity. So it's another one of the resources. David, thank you for your comment about that. It's remarkable work. It's not widely known, but it's a resource that we may well be turning to in coming years. And I would, I would add that as a compliment to Jan's introduction to the work of ica, the descriptions that Ken shared, the work that all of you are doing in the various ways you're doing it.

I missed the name of that book. Could you just put it in the chat so everyone can catch it?

I will do it. Yep. So, but let me, I'll do that as we continue the conversation. So, You know, so it's, it's a remarkable thing that we do here, and I feel really honored to be able to host this conversation with all of you. You know, we, we, we. We're in a mood of the time which is very, very disordered and shaky and full of fear and anger in the larger culture, you know, we have the choice of do we face a. A frankly unsettled future, you know, one that you can't make predictions about. You know, you can construct scenarios, but can't make predictions about where we're headed, you know, and do we face this in a mood of resignation and despair? Seems to not be the case here. Resentment and rage, anger and indignation. This is where a lot of people are, I think, right now. Or do we enter the unknown in moods of resolution and ambition? Not ambition in the sense of greed, but ambition in the sense of possibility that we want to go after or even wonder. Somebody talked about before and a. And a dignity about the possibility of how human.