#11 Purposeful optimism with Samuel Mann from Otago

Hello Kia Ora and welcome to In Pursuit of Purpose with me, your host, Tim Jones, the Grow good guy.

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Welcome to Sustainable Lens Resilience on Radio, a weekly show on sustainability topics brought to you by Otago Polytechnic. The show is co hosted by Shane Gallagher, who's not here tonight, and me, Samuel Mann. Each week we talk with somebody who is making a positive difference and we try to see the world through their perspective, through their sustainable lens. Tonight's Sustainable Lens is that of Tim Jones who's joining me from. Actually, I have no idea where you.

Are from good old Christchurch, just up the road.

So one of the things that we're discovering about this Covid time is that we're all sitting in our, in our spare rooms and we're pretending that we're all in different places and we're getting on with our lives.

Pretty much. Although I've been working from home pretty much for the last 15 years. So for me it's kind of like, yeah.

So welcome. Where did you grow up?

So I grew up originally in a really small village in the middle of kind of Oxfordshire called Oakley, which I doubt many people listening will know where that place is. And then went to school in a little sort of a school around there in Dorton, another little village around the corner, and then ended up going to senior school in Abingdon, which people will maybe know because it's a bit closer to Oxford, which I guess is a bit of a bigger centre globally for people to know about. And then ended up going to the prestigious University of Cardiff to do my degree in Medieval History.

Wow. What did you want to be when you grew up?

Pretty much for the entire time? I wanted to be a soldier. That's a question, you know, I've asked my mum more recently, what was the thing I always wanted to be. And then When I was at school I was in the cadets and when I was at university I was in the, in the uk, they call it the otc, the Officer Training Corps. And so, yeah, that was my big dream.

So it's a long jump from there to Medieval history.

Well, yes and no. There's, you know, lots of weaponry and battles and.

So on and so forth. Tactics, strategy. I did my dissertation on. I basically compared the two armies of the generalmanship generalship of William the Conqueror and King Harold, the last Anglo Saxon king. Because I guess for those of you who are into Medieval history or know anything about English history, you know, Harold is kind of looked at, looked down upon maybe as the idiot who lost to William the Conqueror, but you have to sort of look at the fact that William the Conqueror was actually a pretty amazing general, whilst at the same time Harold was actually pretty good himself. And the battle lasted, they reckoned, for about eight hours, which in those days was pretty unheard of. So it was actually quite a close battle. So that was all how my. Yeah, putting the two together, the wanting to sort of join the army and do something great there and understand. Yeah, how do these medieval warriors fight and do what they did.

Yeah, and Harold would just run up the country to fight a different battle and then run back down again.

And this is the thing, not many people know that that literally, what was it, you know, maybe two weeks before he defeated Harald Hardrada, who was literally the world's best warrior ever in a battle, and then had to march, which is in the north of England in Yorkshire, and then had to march the full length of the country to go and fight the next hardest warrior in the world. So it's like you did pretty good, mate.

So what did you do with a degree in Medieval History?

Well, unlike perhaps a lot of my peers and housemates at university who thought I was going to become a librarian, unfortunately I didn't make it into the army. I actually got a letter. To this day, I don't know where it is. I know that I kept it at the time, I didn't get rid of it in a fit of rage, but I received a letter from the Officer Selection Board basically saying that I was untrainable as an officer. If Her Majesty's forces do not ever contact us ever again, which no one gets that letter, hardly anyone gets that letter. So that kind of put a bit of a large spanner into the works of my limited planning of a. A sort of 19 year old boy.

So I went to Australia for a year, ultimately thought I'd Just go, you know, sort of find myself. And then lived in Aussie almost for a year. And then I was getting. I just, I kind of felt like I was living at a bit of a poverty trap. I was, I was, you know, only ever able to work three months at a time, earning probably below minimum wage, which meant I couldn't actually go traveling and really go and see much of the country. So I ended up talking to a couple of friends back in the UK and saying, what do you think I should do? What jobs do you know about? And one of them essentially got me into medical device sales. So working for Johnson and Johnson, selling hips and knees to orthopaedic surgeons. So when people hear that I did that as a job and they said, sorry, did you say you did medical history? No, no, no, it was medieval history. Okay, just how does that work? And it's like, well, to do that job, you don't actually need to know anything about medicine. Which is quite frightening when you consider that my job was to go and stand in an operating theater and advise a surgeon on how to most effectively do the surgery when they were using my, the equipment that my, my company made. But I used to joke, well, actually, medieval warfare and orthopedics are probably the same amount of blood.

Lots of similarities.

So I don't need to go through every bit of your life story, but how did you get from there to the work you're doing now?

Well, that's quite the transition really. So I did had about 10 years or so in the world of medical devices and it was a great life. And I had international travel, you know, get to go to the best restaurants, you get a free car, free health insurance, free phone, all that kind of jazz that salespeople get given. But it was the sequence of earthquakes in Canterbury in 2010, 2011 and then 2012. Our daughter, my wife and I've got a wee daughter, she was born in 2012. And essentially through a mixture of the sort of, I guess it's like the collective near death experience that we all had in Canterbury with the earthquakes, followed by a significant event like a birth of a child, I essentially experienced what's called a subconscious awakening. So I literally, my whole head was shaken up and it was like, what am I doing? Because there was. There were some things that were happening in the industry that I had seen, but I hadn't actually seen for what they were. So there were, you know, these were all documented cases in the media. One of the companies I work for, some of their senior executives did jail time where they knowingly launched a product into the market before it was actually ready to be put into humans. Four patients died on the operating table. And it was like, yeah, but it's okay, because if we don't launch this, you know, the other company will launch their version, we'll lose the money, so we're going to have to give it a risk. And then a couple of years after that, almost every major orthopedic manufacturer was subpoenaed by the U.S. department of justice because they'd all been bribing their customers to use their products. And all this kind of stuff going on, which, whilst I was in that bubble of the industry and you paid well, you kind of can compartmentalize it, but I had this subconscious awakening and I was kind of like, how did I end up doing that for so long when I. When it was so obvious I was part of an industry that was not as ethical and moral and doesn't actually have that full patient focus as it perhaps should do. And so that was the beginning of me going down this purpose wormhole, I guess, or rabbit hole of just trying to understand, well, what, why. Why do people end up like they are? What is the conditioning that people have and why is it that so many people are focused on chasing the success that I'd been told to chase by my upbringing, that when you actually look at them and you look at the mental health metrics and you look at the.

Environmental damage we're causing, it seems to be that chasing material success on an individual level is killing us, each other and the planet. And why is that so normalized? And the idea of not chasing that, you're considered to be a bit different.

Did you know that the behavior of the business, not necessarily your own behavior or perhaps was something which you would now consider. I'm not sure how far you'd push it to be unethical.

Yeah, I mean, like I said at the time, it was, when I look back on it, you know, the first one, when these patients were basically, you know, killed on the operating table at the time, the way the company spin it is kind of like, well, you know, this is. Think of this as, you know, it's medical misadventure. You know, we can't push the boundaries of medicine and treatment if we don't take risks. And, you know, people kind of know that these risks exist. But, you know, at the time you sort of go, yeah, well, you know, I'm in my early 20s. Sure, yeah, that makes sense. And in your early 20s, as a guy, you don't have the full, I guess, mental faculty to actually challenge that level of authority and what you're doing.

At the time it was always kind of like, well, you know, if all the other companies are doing this, so you know, actually it must be okay. But because you're so well looked after, I guess that subconsciously you kind of like, I don't want to, I don't want to kill the goose here that's laying the golden egg.

So I do look back on it now and just go, it was massively the whole, the whole medical. There's a really good movie actually on this or documentary called the Bleeding eg, which is a really good summary and expose of.

I guess most people are fairly aware of the pharmaceutical industry and some of the activity that pharmaceutical companies have been held to account for. But the medical device industry is actually bigger and more pervasive and has more money and more influence at higher levels, particularly in the U.S. but no one knows it exists because it's not so obvious.

I suppose it's more nuanced than tobacco.

It's hard for you to rational. For anybody to rationalize tobacco, although in thank you for smoking they do. So in your case, health is a good thing.

Yeah. And that's the thing, you know, you're kind of part of this industry that's we're all about fixing people. You know, one of the companies I used to work for, they have a basically engraved in stone at all their corporate head offices. They have these four, it's called the credo, and they have these four kind of levels. So our number one priority is for the patients who are having our product put in them. Basically that's what we're here to do. Then number two is to support the surgeons and nurses and hospitals that are providing that care. Then number three is for the communities in which they are based. Then we'll make sure they do well. Then we will aim to make a profit. And you just go, that's a complete lie. You just care about. So this company has had some of the most like some of the biggest medical device recalls in the history of medicine in that they've launched products that fail so badly that there has been litigation, you know, globally. And the product has essentially, I think, had pretty sure it was basically pulled because it was causing so much damage to the patients. Yet the reason they launched it was because they knew that if they didn't launch it, the other companies would have their versions. We lose market share. So it's like that old story that you hear about, I think it was Ford with what was it? Their brakes had a car that they launched and they kind of, I think the brakes were faulty on x percent of the cars. And they basically did the maths and went, well, if we recall all of it, we lose all this money. But if we injure X number of people, we'll pay less in the insurance payout. So based on that, we'll keep the cars out there. That's kind of how the medical device world works. Instead of going, no, does this, you know, the Hippocratic oath, does this cause any harm? If it does, okay, well then we should stop it because that should be our primary aid, not, oh yeah, but we might lose some money.

So this subconscious awakening of yours, was it a pivotal moment, a single moment in time, or did it happen over a while? What was the deal?

I don't think it was like one specific moment, but it was certainly pretty quickly over.

Probably like a six to eight month period. I mean, I think the earthquake sequence here, the first one that we had, that one in September 2010, like that was a real, you know, because Christchurch is an interesting place. We have a large number of social enterprises, we have a large number of B corporations. It kind of just feels like the whole city had a bit of a wake up and had that kind of existential shock. So I wouldn't say it was kind of like literally one, one moment, but it did get to a moment and this was the moment I, I was literally in the operating theater in Auckland working with a surgeon and all this stuff was kind of running around my head and he was just being a bit of an ass. Which is the orthopedic surgeons, right? That's kind of how they generally operate and they'll, if things go wrong, they just end up shouting at everyone else in the room, even though we're all trying to help you fix this and we're offering solutions. And that surgery finished at lunchtime and I walked up the road to where we were living at the time and I just said to my wife, I'm done, I can't. What, you know, why am I putting up working with these people who treat you like rubbish when I know, you know, how much money they're earning? Sometimes not in the most ethical manner. And I'm working for a company that's kind of knowingly killing people just so that they can make more money? Like that was, I guess that was the specific way. And I guess, you know, I draw on my history degree. You know, where you always talk about the long term causes and the short term causes. So, you know, French Revolution. The long term causes were the, you know, the lack of food and the hunger and the high taxation. But the short term cause was the one dude who's like, hey, I reckon we could take the Bastille. Who's in.

The. I'm born on the 14th of July, so I have a deep affinity to storming the Bastille. So that was my Bastille moment. I can't do this anymore.

And fortunately your wife didn't at that point say, let's eat some cake.

And she must have backed you in the decisions that you were making to.

A degree.

As I say to people. So I went out on my own.

So I left the medical world. I ended up working for a firm of surveyors and engineers for about 18 months. I kind of thought, look, maybe it's just the medical world. So I interviewed for about or applied for about 60 or 80 different roles in all sorts of industries. Because the medical device world is using bubbles as the sort of the phrase of de jour. It is a real bubble of an industry. And so I thought that maybe it's just the industry, maybe it's different in other industries. So I kind of thought, you know, surgeons and medical company CEOs were entitled and money grabbing. And then I met commercial property developers.

Excellent. It's not just that industry. This seems to be like, this is business. People just want to make as much money as they can and they don't care about the social and environmental costs of that. So working for this surveying firm, so I was general manager of their south island office. So my remit was to build a team and get business in to feed that team. So I was having to network and meet people in all sorts of different industries. And you know, the city council here, when they went to the community post quake, it was very clear that the community wanted an integrated city that was full of connection and green spaces and it was really, really livable. And then you get involved in the world of construction and property and it's like if we can put up a Stalinistic looking concrete block for half the price that you expect to pay for it, that's a result as far as we're concerned. And it was just this, it was, it was depressing. Just we had this such great opportunity. I remember going to a New Zealand Green Building Council event and they had, I guess it's like the country's chief architect who I think works for MB or it could be one of those. I can't remember who it is now, but they basically set the building code. And the first question from the room after he'd given his we talk was, so when are you going to increase the building code for the South Island? And he said, well, we're not planning that, why would we? And it's like you have a once in a lifetime opportunity to ensure that houses are built to a much better standard in the south island, where actually it does go down to minus something or other quite often in the winter. And we have the same building code as the North Island. Like, why would you not fix that? So yeah, it was kind of just like it felt like a real out of the frying pan into the fire. And I think that's when I had my deeper existential crisis is like, I can't just do this for the next 30 or 40 years. I can't. Now that I know how this thing works, I can't just blindly follow this. So that was probably the worst part of it for me.

So how do you get from a crisis to a successful business working with companies with purpose?

The true story really is the inner journey that I had to go on. And this is really where I start the purpose journey. If people are really serious about the purpose journey, you have to go and do, I guess what Carl Jung would call the shadow work. You've got to go in and work out, well, who are you and what are the bits of you that you don't like and where are they and why, why are they there and how do you integrate them or at least bring them under some kind of control? So that was. That probably took me three or four years to. I kind of just went back through my life journey and I was like, okay, well I ended up at this point doing stuff that when I look back on, it wasn't that cool. So how did I get there? And I kind of just followed my life's journey and then it was through that research, it's kind of like, okay, this is how people are created as an adult. There's all these external influences, you know, delving into how the subconscious mind is built and how your subconscious mind controls almost all of your decision making as an adult and da da, da, da. So I kind of went through on that journey. And initially, I mean, having done the medical device stuff, sales was I guess the thing that I knew. So when I first went out on my own in late 2015, I started out doing trading, coaching and consulting aimed at businesses who were doing good. So trying to find not for profits or social enterprises of which there weren't that many back in 2015. And B corporations and again there was only about four or five B corporations in New Zealand at that point. And just sort of go, look, I've got all this knowledge and skill on how to influence people and how to sell and at the minute I've been using that to help these, you know, big corporations earn as much money as they can or I can use that skill to help try and build up businesses that are trying to make a difference in the world. So that was kind of where I started off. But yeah, it was, it was a big process of unpacking who am I, why am I who I am, who. I think the phrase I like using the most is who. At that time it's like who could I be? And that's really where, you know, I guess I've created this, this identity of the grow good guy. It's like, well what, what would this integrated person who wants to make a better, you know, make the world a better place, what would he look like and what would he think like and how would he behave? Because it's not how you have been behaving.

So now you're not just a B corp yourself, but you facilitate other people into becoming B Corp. Yep. So before you talk about what B corp is, I'd just like to.

Like when you found that, was it A. There's the answer for me. What was that moment like?

Yeah, very much so. It's.

It kind of felt like odd. I'm actually, I'm kind of home now like and this is, you know, on the individual purpose work that I do. So I do, I do coaching work with individuals who want to work out like who could I be? And this is where it gets really interesting because we don't really know like who, how this kind of works. But the theory is, you know, when you are born, the potential that is in you as a human is undefined. However, there are certain things that you have that are close to who you could be. So there are the certain traits that you are born with that will come to, you know, your kind of your true skills or genius or things that you have that you have that are, you know, I guess, you know, natural born things that you have. But equally there's the things that you inherit from your parents, so the skills and what have you. But there's also that societal pressure that's put on you. But this is where it gets a little bit woo woo in that, like that, that nascent version of you is who you are meant to be. But as you go through the years, through up to the ages of schooling and up to 18, you are told who you should be. And so a big part of the purpose work is to try and strip back as many of those layers and work out actually, who could you be? Partly who were you meant to be, but also what is the potential in you that has been untapped or has been held at bay because you've been told who you should be. And when you get to that point of, oh.

This kind of feels like who I was meant to be, like, for me, I just felt creatively really stifled for many years. I went to a, you know, a good school in inverted commas in the uk. You didn't get to be creative. It was all very command and control. And then, you know, I spent some time in the reserve forces. Command and control. There was this creativeness inside of me that was kind of like the real me that had never really been let out. And when you get to express your true self in that way, it's very liberating.

You're talking there about purpose as an individual, but you're also working with businesses.

Yep.

How does that.

What you're describing there is a very personal thing, personal identity. How does that scale to business?

Well, this is my take on it. So an organization is nothing but a collection of individuals who are coalescing around a shared vision, goal, you know, or activity. So, and there's quite a lot of talk around, I guess, in general, you know, organizational purpose. What is the purpose of your organization? Well, which, essentially the definition of purpose that I work with, and I'm part of a group called the Global Purpose Leaders. So we're a group of just under 100 people who are kind of choosing to be the guardians for purpose because there's a lot of purpose washing out there. And the essential message that we sort of carry with purpose is essentially it's about your contribution. So what good are you creating through either you or your business? So for you to, I guess, raise a level of consciousness of a business and do the most contribution or provide the most good that that business could ever do, you have to start with the people in it. And so if you can work with the individuals to get them to a point of actually being their true selves, then you create much stronger and, you know, with a much more deeper purpose than people who, you know, who are claiming that they're authentic and I'm the real me, but actually they have, you know, essentially, you know, if you haven't done that shadow work. If you haven't gone and had a really good hard look at who you are and why you are who you are, you're not going to become the best version of you, full stop. And so that's a big part of what we're saying is to do, to have proper organizational purpose, you have to have done the work as an individual, otherwise you're just creating a very light, you know, purpose, light version. What you could have.

Does that shadow work you're describing, does it need a crisis to get you there?

In general, I think it does. And this is why I'm really optimistic about the world right now is because we're having a. This is the most connected we've ever been as a species and we're collectively having an existential crisis. It's like.

And not wanting to pour, you know, make light of that, I mean, I wasn't hugely connected to my uncle, but my uncle has just passed away in the uk. He had underlying other comorbidities, but essentially it will have COVID 19 on his death certificate. So I don't want to make light of any people that have had, you know, horrible personal situations like that. And the financial, I mean, I myself am under significant financial stress right now. Like I've maybe got enough income for the next month because most of my work was delivering face to face live training or speaking events. So all of those that I had lined up for March and April were quickly thrown out the window. But my sense of optimism is that we have had this collective time of crisis and crisis is the only time that you will truly connect to. It's like crisis reveals who you really are. You know, it's like it's your most fundamental. This is who you are and how you're reacting and responding to this situation. And if you don't like what you see, it's kind of like, okay, maybe just ponder on that. Where has that come from? How could you be different and build from there? So, yeah, that's where I'm optimistic is when we come, I guess essentially for the last month or five weeks, particularly here in New Zealand, you know, everyone has been living a life of purpose because you've all been making a contribution. We've all willingly, to a degree, stayed at home to protect the more vulnerable in our society. That's purpose. But we may not recognize that we've been living a life of purpose for the last five weeks. So for me, coming out the gates in the next couple of weeks, I want to try and help people that like, connect to that and realize that. And how good did that feel to know that you've made a contribution? Because that's actually the humans are hardwired for contribution. It's just that we don't have that many opportunities in the modern world to actually make the contribution that we could make or that we want to make because we're so busy trying to earn money to buy the crap that we don't need to impress the people that we don't like. Which again, this last five weeks, you've not had that opportunity.

One of the things that the not rushing around and the putting more constraints on what we're doing.

Has in terms of our professional practice, we've had to strip that back because it's not about, I go to this meeting, I do this, I do this. Like you say, well, actually what I do is these presentations. That's what pays or pays for it. But then how do I still do what I do without actually doing that thing?

Exactly.

I think it's just been, it's been an interesting time for people just to have a bit, I think in general, you know, people not having the commutes, I mean, you know, I'm here with my wife, my daughter, you know, I'm a full time primary school teacher now during the, during the day, that's mildly stressful. I'm sure my daughter is learning some vocabulary that she shouldn't be learning at the age of 8 whilst I'm trying to teach her how to do times tables or whatever it was. But in general, yeah, again, like we're living, we're living a bit slowly, we're connecting. I would argue that in many ways, because of the existential nature of the crisis, we're probably, even though we're not connecting face to face, we're probably having deeper conversations over Zoom or Skype or whatever than we typically would because we're having conversations around the big topics that we would typically avoid because they're hard. So whether it's about money or finances or, you know, I'm having a tough time and it's okay to be having a tough time. So, yeah, I'm positive that there's enough, positive, enough good things that we can salvage from this.

That it would have made the whole thing worthwhile.

What have you seen in terms of societal change? What have you seen that do you think will stick and what do you hope will stick?

I think for me, what I'm hoping will stick is this idea of contribution. I think in week one, it was really interesting, you know, when or even, I guess, well, week one of. Was it level four, when all these businesses were, oh, no, we're essential. And the government were pretty quick to go, no, Coco, you are not essential.

It's kind of like. That's interesting. So what, so if your business is not essential to humanity, why does it exist?

Because right now, you know, there's a quite a cool meme I've seen out there on the Internet where it's kind of got a little human swimming on top of the ocean and it's got the shark underneath, it's got Covid. And then it's got. I think it's like climate change and then there's another bigger shot. So, like these three sharks coming up underneath it. It's like, you know, before we went into lockdown, there was, you know, I guess the majority of the negative news was around carbon emissions and environmental destruction. Da, da, da d. Never really had that conversation for five weeks.

But it's like coming on the back of this, like I say, you know, I think more organizations are going to have to have a really good think about why do we exist.

And some of them will have successfully. I hate the word pivot. I'm using pirouette because I think it just sounds more graceful. I think there will be lots of businesses that have pirouetted into areas where they've realized that, hey, for us to survive, we have to meet a real human need right now. So I think my big hope is that organizations will reflect on the fact that, you know, how good did it feel for us to meet a real human need instead of us just trying to meet some quarterly sales target that someone in our office has invented that was actually quite meaningless and wasn't giving us any happiness or joy or allowing us to make a real contribution. I think that's the key for me and the same then for the individuals.

And I think that one of the outcomes will be that it brings this kind of thinking to the fore.

Not just something that's as a luxury when everything's going right.

Exactly that. Exactly that. Because there's so many, you know, there are so many benefits to organizations and individuals if you can nail this purpose thing. It is such a. It is a secret source. It's, you know, looking at your Delia, Jamie, Nigella, it's like, you know, it is the absolute secret source for organizational performance and human performance. It's, I mean, on the individual level. So Abraham Maslov had his hierarchy of needs, but a lot of people don't. Realize is that just before he died he had an unpublished version. So at the top of his pyramid traditionally is self actualization. So be the best version of you doing what, you know, peak states like, be the. Be the best you doing what you're great at. But he actually had another level above that which he recognized, which was transcendental purpose. So it's like, be the best you doing the thing that you're best at, but do it in service of other people and other things. That is peak humanity. And I feel there's a real opportunity now to help people almost like reverse engineer the fact that they might have been doing that for the last month or two months, depending on what country they're in, you know, so how did that actually feel to know that you were making a contribution? And I guess, you know, with the frontline workers, it's, it's been very obvious that the direct contribution that they've been making to our ongoing survival, you know, whether it's providing us food or if it's, you know, the healthcare, frontline health care workers providing medical treatment, it's, you know, the pointy end of purpose is how am I making the life of another human or the planet better? And it's really, really obvious how they're doing that. And I think this is the challenge to individuals and organizations is like, you know, what is the load that you can lift to make the world a better place? Because if you can find that.

That'S what life's all about.

So if your previous.

Businesses, not your businesses, but the businesses you are in, the medical devices and the surveyors, if they were to, I don't know, get a new boss that was taken by what you were doing and sent all the staff.

To a TIM workshop.

How would you start?

That's a great question. And typically where I start all my individual and organizational stuff is, is like, what does purpose mean to you right now? Because the word purpose has been co opted. It has been.

I guess, you know, it's kind of used in vain in many ways. So that's where I start, really. Everything is like, start with, okay, what do you understand this word to me? And let's get you clear on what purpose is. What is your contribution? The dictionary defines purposes something's contribution or, sorry, it's something's useful, usefulness or the reason for which something was made. Which I think is such a beautiful description because it's like, you know, Samuel, why were you made? Like, what is. What is the thing that you have been made to do that will light you up that will make the world a better place. And it's the same for an organization, but then again, pretty quickly it's, it's getting into that retrospective. Okay, so, so why are you who you are? So why are you as an organization selling widgets? Where did that come from? And again for an individual, so why are you who you are? For the individuals, it would be like a personality test. So if you haven't done a basic, you know, like the big five archetypes or enneagrams or disc profiling, you know, just like who are you? Like why, you know, what do you currently hold to be true? And kind of where does that come from? And which bits of that is what I call like the dis ease. You know, which bits of these don't feel good right now. And it's the same in the organization. What are the things that you are doing as an organization that some of you will be sitting there at night kind of going, I don't feel so proud that we do that because that's the shadow. It's like we know that we do that, but we'll just.

Walk past it.

So how do you get them past the credo that you were talking about before? That's a lie.

And this is the big challenge. And dare I say, you know, I know of many organizations, I won't name names but you know, purpose, I think globally has been trending for a couple of years. It's probably only really just getting to New Zealand now. The risk and the challenge is people go to a marketing consultancy or a marketing agency and they work with a small group of senior executives and they get a little whiz bang statement about what their purpose is. But like I say, if you haven't done the purpose work as an individual, which involves the shadow work, and you don't collectively do get contribution from the wider company and your wider stakeholders as to what is your actual contribution. All you're doing, it's a marketing exercise.

And that would be, I think this is the true challenge. And you can, you can see the organizations that are truly purpose driven because you can just, you know, you can smell it, you can feel it, you can sense it. It's like you can just tell the difference. And I think increasingly, you know, consumers, employees, investors are looking for that authenticity. And I guess that sort of leads nicely into the whole B core frame because the B core framework is a way of actually giving some legitimacy to prove the positive impact that you are making. So it's like if you, if you, if you can prove that you've done some really transformational work as an organization and as individuals and you can prove the positive contribution making. I believe you. If you just have a whiz bang marketing statement or some bad, I mean a great one. A good mate of mine, Zappaturio, who does similar work to me based in the States, he called out a large American company on LinkedIn at the beginning of the crisis because you know, on their website they have all their values and you know, we're about, you know, empowering our staff and making their lives better every opportunity. And yet they were one of the first companies to go, hey, yeah, you're having to take holiday pay. Half of you going to be sacked and the rest of you, you know, you're going to have to bid between yourselves as to who can pay each other. He's like, he literally was posting pictures of their values and their corporate vision statement from their website and then putting the press release and it's like, and I think Zach sums it up so well, intent is fantastic, but you get measured on your actions and, and that is where you see whether there's a connection or a disconnect. It's like if you're saying one thing, but when, and crisis is the time when it comes to the force, like we value this and we care about this and da da da da. But if that gets thrown away as soon as there's a tough time or a crisis, it's kind of like that was probably purpose light.

So the goal is creating a positive impact on the world. I'm reading it here. And generate a shared and durable prosperity for all. Yep, that's a good goal.

Doesn't sound bad, does it? I mean we tried the give me everything I want to be master of all.

Doesn'T seem to work that so well. So yeah, let's give it a crack. And I guess that that really is, yeah, the vision, you know, one of the other taglines B Corp has is be the best for the world, not the best in the world. So you know, change the metric of what you're chasing because again, you know, having worked in large listed organizations once a quarter, hey, your sales budget is this, this is a number we've just made up and we've told the stock market you have to now go and find some money to meet that target. Whereas, you know, there are some really, really cool impact driven businesses where their metric is the impact metric, not the, not the financial metric. And again, you know, that, that really is the true marker of a purpose driven or an impact driven organization is what is the positive impact you're making on the planet and how are you measuring that and reporting that so that it's not purpose washing.

How do you get people to longer term, you know, core of sustainability is intergenerational equity. How do we get people beyond the quarterly, yearly.

I think ultimately.

That will more than likely have to come to legislation. I mean globally B Corporation or B Lab, which is the organization that.

Is the not for profit organization that runs the certification program that you would become a B corp through, they are engaging with governments and legislators around the world to try and get essentially B core legislation in different countries so that you are held legally accountable to the positive impact that you've stated you're going to make. And I think that's going to be the key. If you look at in the US at the minute, a limited corporation in the US is called a C corporation. And the only fiduciary goal that a CEO has is to make more money in the next quarter than they did in the previous quarter. Well, if you're a CEO with the best of intentions, your hands are tied. I mean the B Corp legislation is working around that where basically in the US you get to now say yes, we will aim to make more money next quarter than the previous quarter, but not at the expense of the impact and the purpose that we hold here. But I think that's where I feel governments would have the most and I think there's opportunity here. We've got the wellness budget and what have you, you know, what if, and I guess publicly listed companies are already having to report on their social and environmental impacts to a degree through the stock market. But you know, I feel particularly in a country like New Zealand, it would be relatively easy for, you know, the end of year tax return to basically have, you know, well, this is how much money we made. Did you have two or five other questions on the ledger? Did you make a positive environmental impact this year? Did you make a positive social impact this year? If so, what were they? Well, we planted 500 trees. We, you know, I don't know, provided some money to the homeless shelter or whatever. It's like just getting people to account for the good that they have done because you know, I think in general Kiwis do do it and we've got the most number of charities per capita. So we obviously feel like we're doing some good. But do we actually account for that and do we measure that and do we know who's making it? How do we make that more effectively because we. We have all these charities, we do a lot of good with nice people, but at the same time, we've got, you know, when the highest suicide rates, you've got one of the highest global greenhouse gas emissions rates, we've got, you know, horrific suicide rates for males our age and youth society. Well, it's not all the land, milk and honey. So how do we make that better? And the first way to do that is to measure and see where the impact's being made, both good and bad.

I think the impacts. Well, the lessons from the COVID experience for me are the.

The integration of systems. It's been a really clear demonstration that the economy is not separate to society. The link's not so obvious to the environment, but at least it's shown that these two parts of it are the same. And the other thing is that it has.

Operationalized be kind. It's shown that that can actually be a thing that's not just a platitude. This is how we can make policy. This is how we can run things.

Yeah. Which is a whole different way of doing it, isn't it? And I think that's where we've got. We've been, you know, the economy. I mean, I was talking to people, you know, when the whole Covid thing was kicking off. It's kind of like, you know, and I kind of. I don't listen to mainstream media that often, but when I do and you listen to maybe Radio New Zealand or wherever, and they go and over now to the market desk, you know, what's happening at the market? Well, the market's very unhappy today. And I just imagine this sort of big fat mess. Your creosote character smoking as well. Yeah, I'm not very happy today. Yeah, I've lost a few shares here and there. It's like this thing, you know, this thing doesn't exist. It's like it's a. It's a figment of our imagination that we collectively agree as a thing. But it's like.

It'S so dehumanized. And I think for me, that kind of going with the be kind, it's like we just need to rehumanize work, rehumanize how we treat each other. Re just rehumanize humans because we've been so focused on this material, you know, chasing material success. But it doesn't actually lead you anywhere apart from despair and destruction. Environmentally.

It'S going to be really hard.

For the neoliberal people to stand up and demand things like tax cuts, when they've been the people that have quite happily accepted government bailouts.

Yeah.

There's a great expression a man of mine has, but, and I'm going to paraphrase it really badly, but it's, it was from a Republican in the US and he says, you know, I'm a Republican in the Senate, I'm a Democrat in the House, I'm a libertarian at work. But it comes back down to, but I'm a socialist at home.

You know, because that's something I've always kind of thought about is like, you know, the most neoliberal right wing, that's all about the market. Yeah. But you go home and does your wife work? Do your kids work? No. So you live a socialist life at home.

You know, and when times get tough. Yeah. Even the most market driven neoliberal people are pretty happy to get a government handout from a left wing government. So it's kind of like, and this is, I think this is my, my end goal, you know, it's kind of like, well, you got, you've got green, red, blue, yellow, black parties in New Zealand, you know, what have you.

Why can't we just actually go, well, what is the most humane way forward? And sometimes someone with it with a more right wing leaning viewpoint might actually have the right idea. So it's not just because we're in the other party going, oh, well, we have to say that's a bad idea. I just always think, you know, there's got to be a better way of running politics globally. It's like if you have New Zealanders like the country as a business and you said, okay, right, we're gonna have one CEO for a few years, but everyone else in the company has to go with the opposite of what the CEO wants to do. How effective would an organization like that be? It wouldn't be very effective.

You have a podcast, what's it called?

I do. It is called In Pursuit of Purpose with Tim Jones, the Grow Good Guy.

And where do we find it available?

If you can go to my website, which is growgood Co podcast and on there it's got links to most of the major sites it's on. But yes, on the Apple podcast, I think it's on Spotify, Anchor fm. Yes. On about nine different ones.

So I have some questions to end with and enough time to get through them all if I hurry. Do you have a go to definition of sustainability?

Oh.

I think it'd be what we touched on before. You know, it's that intergenerational like, you know, is this going to do the most good for the most number of people for the most amount of time?

Have you got that through to your 8 year old?

Trying to. There was quite a lot of glitter for her birthday last week and that just killed me. It's like, oh.

What's the biggest success you've had in the last couple of years?

That's a big one.

It's really hard. I think this is part of the problem. Humans are really bad at recognizing their own successes. And I think I'd say kiwis, you know, we're both imported kiwis. Kiwis are pretty humble. I think for me it's having my business just about keeping going for the last five years.

And just try to make some impact. I'm proud of who I've become. That would be the success for me. And I think that's partly what the purpose journey is about. Just be comfortable with who you are.

Keeping the business going is that.

You go back to your sales experience.

Yep.

I'm imagining that it's about getting in the door.

That's a part of it. I mean, selling purpose is the hardest thing I've ever sold. Yeah, because it's not easy. Because if purpose was easy, if doing good was easy, we'd all be doing it. So it's clearly not easy. And so it must mean it's pretty hard because people don't want to go and do the shadow work. There's a really great study, I think it's from 2014 or 2017, University of Virginia where they got a group of students and they said, right, we're going to put you into this room. You have two options. You can stay in this room for 30 minutes with nothing but your own thoughts, but if you can't hack it, you can self administer an electric shock and leave the room as soon as you've done. Was about 70% of people self administered an electric shock rather than just like they didn't ask them to question their thoughts or challenge them. Just be in a room with your own thoughts. The majority of people self administered an electric shock and I kind of have that in the back of my mind. It's like that's why people don't want to do the shadow work because they'd rather self electrocute themselves.

So we're writing a book of these conversations. It's called Tomorrow's Heroes.

The collection of the people doing positive work. So you're in the mansion. What's your superpower?

Oh, that's a great One. I've been asked this question a couple of times by facilitators, and I kind of feel like I'm kind of like a hybrid bear eagle, because I'm like this. I'm 6 foot 4 and 120 kilos, so I'm a big unit. So I kind of feel like there has to be a bear in there somewhere. But I kind of feel like. Like the eagle was kind of like, trying to give that foresight. It's kind of like I can see. I can see where this is going, and I can see where we could go, and I'm trying to use that as my superpower.

Do you consider yourself to be an activist?

It's an interesting word. I think the word activist is very loaded. I think when you hear it on the Mead in the media or, you know, a group of activists were seen outside the assembly today.

To me, the word activist also conjures up someone who's trying to create action, someone who's trying to inspire. And so, yeah, I'm happy to be called an activist.

Were you an activist when you were.

Is there a role for being an activist in a business?

Yes, totally. And I think this is one of the big misnomers is, you know, it's not necessarily, you know.

Burn everything down that we've got. Like, we can't just throw the baby out with the bathwater. And I did some work a few years ago for an organization that's now called cogo, used to be called Conscious Consumers. And it was all about trying to create behavior change within organizations by showing the.

Customer base that was there of ethical consumers that wanted to support organizations doing the right thing. And internally, we always had this conversation, like, if McDonald's run us tomorrow and said they want to come on the platform and to do that they're willing to make these changes, would we accept them? And half the company were like, no, never. Like, I would burn every last one of them down. I think that it's just like, evil incarnate. There is no good to be done there. But the other half were, yeah, like, if we could change McDonald's by 2 degrees and make them a better company by 2 degrees, then we should embrace that. And I think initially I was very much like, burn them all down. They've had their chance.

But I think the more I've grown up and delved into this, like, most people in these organizations aren't bad people. They're just. They're on the path that they've been set on. And, you know, I would say don't, don't give up everything necessarily. Like, try to be that internal activist. Like, because you have influence, you have power, you have connections, you know how an organization will work. If you can use your skills internally to create change and that's fulfilling enough for you, I would definitely advise doing that.

So if a younger you turned up at one of your sessions, younger you.

That'S still, I probably throw them out.

But if someone is working for the medical devices and is feeling uncomfortable and wants to be, to be moving into a more purposeful, sustainable direction.

What'S your advice to them? Get out? Or is it, you can change this company? What's, what's the, where do we go with that?

My, my general advice is always look, have, try and have the conversation. See if you can highlight the stuff that you're seeing and see if you can make a difference. Because if, you know, if you can make that difference, you could make some phenomenal difference and that would be amazing. That would be real legacy for you potentially. But if you get to the point where you've tried that and you're getting blocks, at some point you're going to have to make the decision and you can either ignore it and keep going, but typically that will end up in you blowing up even worse. Or you can try and make the change which you've tried, or you have to change yourself, like get out and go and find something else.

So what motivates you? What gets you out of bed in the morning?

Purpose, man, it's like the ultimate drug. You know, it's like I feel so such a calling.

To do the work that I'm trying to do that and I see that there's so much that needs to be done. It's like.

You just got to. And this is again, I think one of the.

Undiscovered potentials of purpose. Like when you, when you talk about resilience and motivation, like purpose just, it pulls you forward. Whereas motivation is kind of trying to kick you in the butt and get you to do the thing that you don't necessarily want to go and do. But I mean, ultimately it's my daughter. I look at my, you know, she's now 8 year old daughter, in 10 years time, when she kind of inherits this place, theoretically she gets the keys. It's like, what's this place going to look like? You know, I also kind of think maybe in 30 years time we have an equivalent of a Nuremberg trial where it's like, so Samuel, cool, you had your podcast and your radio thing, but was that enough, like, were you doing enough in 2018-2020? And I would want to look, look at her in the eye and go, I did everything I could like I had nothing left. It was all out on the pitch. And either we make some good changes and we get to a place that it's going to mean that she has a great planet to inherit, or at least it's like we gave it a bloody good nudge.

What's the biggest challenge you're looking forward to in the next couple of years?

Scaling this purpose thing? You know, it's.

I kind of felt last year.

We.

Were going to get some really big, some a bit more momentum, but it probably didn't happen as early as I thought. Obviously we've got Kathmandu is now Australia, New Zealand's largest certified B corporation. So like that gives a purpose driven business movement some legitimacy when you're getting some big businesses like that. So that I kind of thought they certified a bit earlier in the year, which gives a good run in sort of 2019 into 2020. Clearly Covid's put a bit of a halt on some things, but I'm having some conversations with some pretty big organizations where they're kind of going, no, actually like this whole purpose thing has really, it's here now. So I kind of just hope that there's a, that I have a tiger by the tail here for the next couple of years.

And lastly, do you have any advice for our listeners?

Just, I don't know. That's a really great question. Just be, I guess it's like, do the work. Like if every human did the work to become the best version of them, we would solve all the world's problems. Because this is my theory. Like, if everyone is living at that transcendental purpose, if everyone is living a life that's bigger than them in service of others, we get rid of. Like, you would not tolerate a world with climate change, with homelessness, with suicide, because you do everything in your power to make sure that that wasn't a thing because you care so deeply about your fellow humans. So I think for me, ultimately it's like just, you know, lift the load, do the bloody work and become a better human and do the, you know, look back at the end of your days and just go, man, I could not have given that anymore. And I'm really happy that I've made a great contribution to the world. That's it.

Thank you very much for joining me.

Thank you. It's been great.

You've been listening to Sustainable Lens Resilience on radio. I'm Samuel Mann. I've been joined by Tim Jones who you can find on growgood.co.

That'S it.

That was Sustainable Lens. I'm Samuel Mann. I hope you enjoyed the show.

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And that's a wrap. Hey, thank you so much for listening in to my podcast. As I say, I'd love to know where you are on your journey and pursuit of purpose. And if you've got any questions that.

You'D like me to try and answer.

For you or people you'd like me to interview on this podcast, please do let me know through a message or a comment. Also, do connect with me on other social media platforms. You'll find me on Facebook, LinkedIn and on YouTube. For more information about me and what I offer through my business, Grow Good. You can also go find me at www.growgood.co. that's GrowGood.co. if you want to get in contact with me, my email is really easy. Timrowgood Co.

I'd love to hear from you.

Until next time, go well and keep on pursuing your purpose.