#90 Collective Intelligence - Ian Harvey: Curiosity killed the cat, but you needn't worry.

Here we go.

Three to one, we are live. This podcast is being recorded before a live studio audience, possibly for the first time in a while. So, Kia Ora, welcome to the latest episode of the Be Better podcast. People who may be listening for a while. You might remember that we used to live stream these into our Be Better community group on Facebook, which is where all our awesome B Corp clients hang out. And we haven't been doing that for a while, but today we are back and doing it, and so hopefully we might get some of our awesome client community. Popping in to ask my guest today some questions, which I'm sure he's really, really enthralled about and hoping there's going to be no curly ones. Thank you as always to our listeners, both of you, or whoever you are, one man, that one person on the Internet who's listening. Thank you so much. If you're new to the podcast, welcome. Hopefully you enjoy it and you can check out some more of us or even go and check out some of Har's podcast. I'm sure we'll talk about his podcast. But without further ado, I will welcome today's guest, Mr. Ian Harvey from Collective Intelligence. Harv, how's it going?

All right, mate. Thank you for inviting me, Tim. And live streaming, I'm trying not to think, you know, what that might look like and who's watching, because the great thing with podcasts, normally you go, that's crap, and just scrub it out. But we can't do that. With us.

We can't do that. We are all in. There's been a couple of. Couple of people liking and thumbs up and. And giving some comments, so. Or giving some. Some appreciation to it. So happy days. So for people who don't know who you are, who are you? What do you do?

People call me Half. I'm the founder of Collective Intelligence, which is an ecosystem of people from across a whole range of industries. And we're into people who are good at what they do. They're curious about.

Stuff they don't know about, they're ambitious to develop, and they're authentic. That's who we like working with. And I curate diverse teams of up to 11, 12 per team, so.

They can make decisions with wisdom and take action with wisdom. So our whole gig term is around diversity and complexity and our love of complexity and our love of people and the. That's what we do. So, and we apply that in lots of different ways now.

And we have worked with individuals now for 16 years, and we're starting to get good at it. Yeah.

Nice. So I guess, yeah, it's like small group curated support for.

And individuals in the business world or wider world. Yep.

So it's peer support.

From. With people you wouldn't normally mix with. So we go out of our way with the curation of the teams to put people together that wouldn't normally mix. So the world is becoming more and more complex and hanging out with people like yourself was great in the past, but not so much now. And it is really important to be able to mix with people outside your realm in a, in a deep and meaningful way and to be challenged. So we're not into giving advice and it used to be when I first set it up just for business people and now we work across, you know, we have doctors, we have people from non commercial backgrounds and we've found the more diversity that we can put together, the better the team's work. And that is absolutely our jam. We're not into status, we're not into any of that stuff. And we like, you know, the thing is that we've learned being good at what you do, being successful is really hard. And people forget that. It's really hard. Just checking. Tom, there's some background noise in the background. Can you. Are you picking that up?

No.

Okay. So being successful is really hard. We know that failure is hard, but success is hard too because it puts you in places where you can feel lonely, where you can feel isolated and you're having to deal with new stuff all the time. And as you go up the chain, the flow of information coming back to you can stop. So the feedback loop will stop as people.

Especially in a position of leadership that can get really, really lonely. So that's part of our jam, is to make sure that information.

Comes through. And the thing that drives me my why is for people to get clean information or clean data about their life. And that came from a childhood thing.

That really affected me and my family. And that was to do with one of New Zealand.

Biggest murders that's that the country's been through, called the Crew murders, which then became the Arthur Alan Thomas case. So my first cousin Harvey Crewe and his wife were murdered. Yes, that was really traumatic, but nowhere near as traumatic as the years that followed that where my family could not get good information because of the corruption in the police system, the frailty of the legal system and all of that mixed together. And so we had miscarriages of justice, we had retrial after retrial, we had films and books because there's great Void of misinformation that the misinformation caused. And that. That's the thing that really drives me. And it was great. Michael Philpott helped me discover that 18 months ago. And that's the thing that drives me. And I get great pleasure when people get really clean information. And that's what our diverse teams are there for, is to be able to take action with wisdom. And that wisdom is created using this filter of diversity. And when people get that wonderful, clean data and able to step forward in the world makes a huge difference in people's lives. And we're very proud of that.

That's. Yeah. So true. So cool. And I didn't know about that backstory with you because obviously that's. That's a fairly new discovery for yourself. Yeah. So how old were you when all that was happening, just out of curiosity?

I was. I was 10 years old. It was a Tuesday evening when the call came through to find that the. My second cousin, their daughter was found in the cot. She was 18 months old, Rochelle. And the house was covered in blood and the parents were missing. And that started, and still is to this day, New Zealand's biggest murder case and remains unsolved. And, yeah, that. Look, it was a really traumatic time.

But as I say, the thing that really affected my family the most was the misinformation was the so many biased.

Players in there.

And.

You know, New Zealand is not a corrupt country.

But back then, we were pretty much a police state. You know, police had huge amount of control. This is 1970. So, look, it's. It's. It's something that. Michael helped me figure out why I have this need. And it took a wee while, and as soon as it dropped, it gave me a huge amount of clarity for myself as well.

And that's the thing I strive for, is that.

And I didn't know what was burning. I knew something was burning there that kept me going. But that's the thing that burns in me, that I love the opportunity for people to get that and companies, not just individuals, but for people to get that clean information and go, okay, that's what's going on. And there's. We've got processes around that. Our teams come together two, three, four times a year. They all choose different. Different ways of doing that and getting that unbiased feedback from people who are not invested in your life.

I'm really interested in biases, and biases show up everywhere. And sometimes we're aware of it and sometimes we're not. But when the biases are neutralized through a diverse team. It's amazing what you get, what you hear sometimes for the first time. And so then people can take the action to the next stage with the fog clearing and, you know, that's my jam. That's the thing that fills my heart.

Super cool. It reminds me, obviously, being a passionate Welshman. One of my favorite artists is the Stereophonics. And they have. There's a lyric in one of their songs. It's the not knowing that kills you. And it's. It's so true. You know.

I guess there's an element, like we need, you know, we need. We want curiosity. We want sometimes, like, oh, you know, I'm trying to think of the right word, but, like a surprise. Well, I'm going to give you a nice surprise on the weekend. That kind, kind of. There's a word that describes that that I can't think of right now, but that. That kind of, like, positive, you know, curiosity, or this. This is, you know, there's some really cool experience that might be happening to me, but not knowing, you know, it's almost like, you know, in any world, whether it's the sales world or asking someone out on a date and they haven't got back to you, and it's been a week and you're imagining now all the scenarios in your head as to what you've done wrong. Like, it's the not knowing that kills you. And I think, yeah, it. Clearly, it's the same, you know, my business is not a huge mega corporation, but, you know, trying to make quick decisions in a company when you don't have all the knowledge and you're having to second guess and you, you know, it has a, A mental real estate tax that is massive. Particularly, you know, you know, the more personal the, the, the challenge. But it's. I think it's.

It'd be.

Do you have any data around, you know, what, what, what. What percentage of people's average brain space is taken up by not knowing that is therefore stalling them being able to move on in any part of their life? I don't know. That would be an interesting. I don't know whether anyone's done that research, but I would imagine the cost physically, emotionally alone is phenomenal without even getting into financial costs in a business world.

Yeah, that's a great question. I've never had that question before, Tom. And I'm going to. I've made a note. I'm going to go and have a look at that because it's exhausting.

And that's what happened to my family was that the subsequent years, it was in the news every week for seven years, and it was in the news for that period of time because it was just lighting petrol over and over and over again because the public weren't satisfied. Nobody was satisfied with the President. Interestingly, there was a book written last year and I'm meeting with the authors soon, and it's the first book that's been written that didn't have a bias, that didn't have an axe to grind. So they just two of them, a professor and a journalist, and it's just called the Cremators. And these two went on and just have done a stunning job at compiling the whole thing. And it gave me a huge amount of.

Satisfaction reading it. I learned. I learned a handful of things, but it was just a beautiful job of actually.

Collating everything without the bias because all the other books were from journalists and so forth that had a theory about the murder, and they wrote the book to prove their theory. Where this book didn't. It just got the data down and I bought half a dozen copies for it and gave them to my kids and different family members and go, you know, this is your Whaka papa. This is, this is, you know, in your DNA. And this is the best account of what happened to our family. You know, and look, I. I'll be forever grateful for Michael giving me that clarity 18 months ago. You know, the guy's a wizard.

And.

And then from there, I've noticed the wonderful joy that I get when people go, ah, ah, okay. And can trust the information coming through. And, you know, it's. It's curious. Curiosity is something that, when I started collective intelligence, I didn't know much about curiosity. I know a little bit more now. The thing with curiosity, to be truly curious, you've also got to be brave, because if you're truly curious, you're going to discover stuff you don't like.

And when you discover the stuff you don't like, what do you do then? And a lot of people will pull back at that point.

Or they'll discredit the stuff. So you've actually. Curiosity is a word that's banded around a lot, and there's lots of different types of curiosity. But being openly curious and then being brave enough when you discover a piece of information that might be really uncomfortable, of having the bravery to keep on asking questions and stepping forward, that is, that is true curiosity. And, you know, our teams, when they come together, they do, they're not there to give Each other advice.

You know, we're going to have farmers in a team and we'll have forensic pathologists in a team and we'll have, you know.

Crown prosecutors and a whole range of different, you know, it people. So we put people together who don't. But giving advice is a complete waste of time. But challenging people and asking questions just like the question you asked me before that it's never been asked before to me. And I'm going, huh? Okay, I'm going to go and investigate that. So asking questions that are concise and accurate as a real art, and then remembering to shut up when you've asked the question, because I get frustrated when people ask a wonderful question. There's a pause as somebody thinks, and then they just go and fill it with chunk. The person's asked the question and are too eager to get there, and they miss the point of the pause. The pause is reflection. And sometimes that reflection can take 10, 20 seconds. And that's a good sign. And through that point, this to action, be very, very quiet.

And I've often seen people ask a really good question.

And then the person's reflecting and then they go and fill it with junk and the great question disappears. It's a big frustration. Yeah.

Blokes in particular, really bad for that. But, you know, from my decades of sales and sales training, typically women make for better salespeople because they have more natural curiosity, they're more empathetic, and they're better listeners. And it's really, really common that guys will go, so, Harv, how are you going? Brilliant. Open question. Did you have a great weekend? Close question, really. And then you don't get an immediate answer and they're straight into, oh, yeah, because I had a great weekend. Did you see the rugby? And all of a sudden it's closed. And most guys are okay with that because they're not used to that.

They're just making a noise to them. Right. And the other thing is, you know, how you doing, Tim? If you're not actually interested in the answer, don't ask it because, you know, mental health and all that sort of stuff. The answer might be, you know what? I'm not great.

And you need to be ready for that response and have time available to respond to that. Otherwise your intention of going, you know, how you doing? You're actually on the shit. Okay, so let's talk about the rugby.

Yeah, yeah. Pour some more fuel onto the person's fire.

Yeah, yeah. So, you know, all. All those. All those social scores. But anyway, long Winded bloody answer, Tim. That's what I do. Yeah, good man.

That's all good. I think the curiosity thing I'm really curious about, haha. Because we know that it killed the cat, which is maybe, you know, when you look at the modern parlance of when you hear the word curiosity, that's the first thing I think of. Curiosity killed the cat. So is, is the.

You know, cultural norm, don't be curious. And when you put it on a more broader evolutionary scale, you know, curiosity can actually, can be or could be potentially a very dangerous thing. Because if we were the first humanoids and we go to the edge of a thing that is a cliff, but we don't know it's a cliff and we don't know what happens when you step off the edge of a cliff. The one of us who's more curious is going to go, well, it'll probably just be the same as this other stuff we're walking on. You walk off the edge of the cliff and you fall to your doom. Um, so you can see how in some respects, both physically and mentally, you know, in terms of what you were saying, like being willing to go on that journey of curiosity, it is perhaps a dangerous, well, it is possibly a very dangerous thing. But on the picture behind me on my wall here, which I know half can't see because he can't see my video, but I've got a picture here of it's called the Rebus, which is an ancient alchemical model. And the idea that there is a symbol for Mercury, which is a gold orb with wings. So things that are mercurial are fleeting and hard to capture, and that is guarded by the Dragon of Chaos. And for you to defeat the Dragon of Chaos, you have to become at one with yourself. So, which means going back through all the painful, you know, things from your, from your life, things that have happened in your life, to try and understand who I am and whether I can combine all those parts of me that, the shadow parts, the darker parts of you with the, the lighter parts of you to create this unified version of yourself that is then indivisible against the dragon, which can slay the dragon, which can then help you. It's kind of the journey that you've been on. And I think the reason why most people don't do that is exactly what you said, because you scratch it or you pull the thread on the jumper and all of a sudden you're standing there naked and you're like, I don't like being naked and I want to go back to having my sweater on because that was comfortable. So yeah, just how do we. How do we help get more people more curious I guess is what long winded way of getting to that.

I think, you know, the people are fascinating and I.

That's one word.

And I encourage people to be fascinated about themselves in that the greatest mystery lies within ourselves.

And.

But it's a journey you need to take. Go slowly and delicately and continuously and trying to work yourself out because we are all, you know, we're all cocked up Tom. And in one way or another and you know, we've worked with over a thousand very successful people and not one of them's had their shit together. It just does not exist.

And.

It'S something that, you know, I think it's a really important thing to teach younger people coming through in the professional world. Don't look at anybody and think they've got their shit together because it's a facade. And you know, kids know that. I remember listening to Obama, you know, when he was at the.

Height of his political career, but his daughters knew that he didn't have a shit together and they just treated him like that. And so I think, you know, trying to understand yourself.

Is really important. And.

You know, if I touch back on the. On the crew matters is that I changed when I was about 19 years old, 1920 years old, and this was nine, 10 years after the homicide and the government let Arthur Allan Thomas out of jail and paid him $970,000 from 1979 or 1980, a lot of money then huge amount of money, paid him compensation. Now that changed me because.

I then became very.

Suspicious, disrespectful of.

The system.

Because I thought this has just been a big game to the officials. That's how I responded at that age. And I went off to Lincoln the next year and caused havoc because I would just attack the system whenever I thought the system was playing a game or the system wasn't.

Genuine.

I would just create habit. And I was asked to leave after about four or five months and luckily we came to an agreement that I could stay to the end of the year, but I had to go at the end of the year.

And you know, that fighting the system was alive and well of me for a long time and it's still there. But I've.

Learned to modify that. But it took a long time to work out what had happened and through counseling and so forth because. And I can pinpoint the actual where I was when the news came on the radio that Arthur Arnold Thomas had been let out of jail. And all I thought at the time was just huge disturbance, I don't know. But, you know, and then how it manifested and, you know, I'm very lucky, Tim, that I'm not a violent person. Otherwise I'd be in jail now or would have been, you know, had some prosecutions. Instead, I just use humor and that was my way of coping with it. And sometimes that humor is very black and it's taken a long time for me to work that up. And, you know, we've all got those things. We've all got those things to work out. And, you know, that. That depiction that you talk about, the Dragon of Chaos, you know, that's. As I said, we've never worked with anybody that's got their shit together. It's just not a thing.

Yeah, totally agree. I mean, because I think we've had some good chats about purpose over the years. And that's the thing that I'm like, I like, I love the B corp stuff, but I think I'm more passionate and interested in the purpose stuff and the human transformation stuff, to be completely honest. And, yeah. Why we are who we are. All the stuff you just talked about, you know.

The old maxim, you know, written on the wall of the temple at Delphi, know thyself. You know, we've known this stuff for thousands of years, but we've never had. And I think this is, you know, really ties in with what you're all about. We've never had access to so much information yet. We are, you know, we're drowning in information, but we're starved of knowledge and wisdom and insight. And what do I do with that? Is it. And particularly in this AI world of, okay, well, is that actually true? You know, is that actually that person saying that thing, you know, who wrote that article? I haven't got time to go and fact check that and work out whether that is true or not. So I think, I think there's increasingly more opacity.

And confusion and grayness around us. And if you don't have that baseline of actually knowing even who you are, you are just completely, you know, you're on a sinking raft in a swamp with in the mist. You're just going to be going around in a circle and with no idea. And I think spending the time to get to know yourself. There's a couple of tools that we've got, if anyone's interested on exploring any of this stuff. One of the cool things I did on the beginning of my journey was actually to undertake a thing called Proust's questionnaire. I don't know if you've heard of that. So it's quite often used by writers of fiction to create a character. So back in the day, in the late 1800s, when we didn't have twatter book and Tic Tac, whatever they're called, we would go to a coffee shop and we would write a questionnaire through the week. We give it to our mates, say, hey, go and fill the questionnaire in and then bring it back next week when we meet up for coffee. And yeah, Prowse questionnaire is. I think it's 35 questions. And it's things like, you know, what traits do you most admire in a man? What traits do you most. Admiring a woman. What would be your motto? Which historical character would you like to have dinner with? How would you like to die? What, you know, what would be your biggest achievement? It's all that kind of stuff that if you just sit down for a minute and go, and for me, that was a really instrumental moment to go, actually, who am I? Like, I've done all these psychometric tests working for all these big corporate companies. I know, you know, what my personality type is, but actually, what are my values? What do I, what do I, how do I see the world? What do I actually, yeah, how do I. It's almost like that next layer. And I think for me, I think we're quite similar in that, in that I have a real deep sense of curiosity. And that always used to get me in trouble in large companies because I'd say, well, you've got your values on the wall here, but I've just seen you just launch this thing and that's, that's completely out of line with our value. So either I'm really dumb or there's a massive elephant in this room here. And, you know. Chortle snigger snigger yeah, we'll just get rid of him. You know, he's not going to last long in this company. He's a troublemaker. And I think that's possibly why I didn't get into the army, which was my biggest. That was my kind of traumatic moment, which we talked about on your podcast. Like, not getting into the organization that I most revered and thought, you know, all my mates were getting into. And it's like, yeah, you're. But I look back and go, I'm just. I would have been a troublemaker. I would have been a rabble rouser. I would have gone, yeah, but Actually, sir, you've said that last week and this week you're now saying this. And I can't understand. My daughter's like that. Unfortunately, or fortunately, she sees, you know, a real sense of fairness and justice. If she sees something going on at school, she'll say, but hang on a minute, that's not what you said. And I just want to know where the boundaries are.

And so that, you know, that's. That's. That's something she's got to learn to live with. Yeah, you know, it's not. It's not. It's just something she's got to learn to live with and to channel that in a way that, you know, doesn't destroy life.

100. And I think I'm more aware of all of this stuff than, you know, my parents just had no idea about any of this stuff. And I think I'm just grateful that I went through a pretty heavy purpose journey myself to understand to at least some level how all of this stuff and how all the things we say to her will. Will influence, you know, her life. So, yeah.

There'S a point, there's a.

Piece there about knowing yourself. And I think this is where we have got so much to learn from, not just Mori, but other, other indigenous.

Cultures. And it's not just about learning about yourself, but it's also, you know, who came before. And that's something that.

Something that's in my DNA and that I didn't realize how significant it was until maybe 10 years ago. And that was. So I grew up behind the Tui Brewery in Mangatonoka that some people know with the Tower.

My family started that brewery in 1903, and my great grandfather bought that brewery out of receivership. And back then it was. There were a dozen breweries in the area because they had lovely spring water and the Wairapa that was just south of there was dry. And so these breweries sprung up to supply beer, too, down there. And this was just one of those little breweries, and it was literally just a shed. And anyway, that was in 1903, and I went gangbusters. And the other 12 breweries went by the wayside. And this one stayed. He had two sons, my great grandfather, and they went off to World War I and both died within six months in the Gallipoli. And then the Battle of the Somme. And.

That broke his heart.

And then the depression came. And at that time, so his daughter, my grandmother, and her husband.

They were planning to build this tower to store.

The grain, and the recession hit and Fletchers had designed the tower and the depression came and everything was stopped. And my grandfather and great grandfather had the money because the business had been very successful for some time, say sometime maybe 10 years, they decided to carry on and build the tower using local labor. And it took them about four years to build using local label through the depression. And there was over 100 people employed to build that. Now all the stories are told of the Turi brewery and we did make great beer back then and we actually got the license to be Guinness and did some very cool stuff. But the thing I'm most proud of is that those, those two men decided to go ahead and build that tower. Now they didn't use it for eight years because there was no need because the economy.

Was still rebuilding after the Depression.

What's interesting is that that story doesn't get told.

And that is the thing I'm most proud of around that whole story of Tuy Bear. Instead we tell all these bullshit junk stories the year. Right. And all the slogans. But the real story, the depth of that story is far more interesting. But nobody's brave enough to tell it.

And that's something that is.

Yeah, sits in my DNA that I'm immensely proud of that they went ahead and did that.

That's super cool. Yeah, it feels, I mean the modern world, you know, we, we battle. I'll bring, bring my daughter into conversation again. Like we're, we're battling with her on a weekly basis. I want to be on Snapchat and tick tock. It's like, no, it's, it's not, it's not good for you. You know, you're 11 years old, almost 12. No, you know, and we're one of the few parents who are saying no. All the others seem to have just capitulated. But the modern world of Insta TikTok, blah blah blah, it's all superficial, it's quick, there's no depth to it. And I feel like part of what's going, going on in the world is this, is this lack of depth. You know, we'd, collectively, we, you know, the Kardashians are one of the most well known groups of humans and one of the most high net worth groups of humans. And really like what have they added to humanity versus, you know, there's probably a million other people just like your family who are doing something really inspiring and impactful, you know, that's changing the path of the life. I mean, we all know that there's billions of people with hundreds of people just in New Zealand who are doing some really cool stuff. Many of them clients of ours who are doing some really, really cool stuff who just won't get the air time because you can't put it into a two second reel or tick tock that kids are gonna give it a like or whatever they do on tick off. Never been on tick tock, not interested in it. And I guess, yeah, how do, how do we get more people? Because instinctively, like you say, the deeper story will actually resonate, but it's, it's getting people to the position where they can have the time to connect to that deeper story. I blame the marketing people. All the bloody crayon eaters.

Yeah, look, term, I, I, a slight deviation. Kate, and I'm, my wife and I were on the river sign as I never. The river goes through Paris, is it? Sign sign. I think. Yeah, can never get that right. We were on a little barge having dinner one night on there and doing the tourist thing and going along and there was a young couple sitting table away and very attractive young couple, lovely olive skin. And. And what? And they were sitting there and they were beautifully dressed and presented and so forth. And I'm saying that because we weren't. And they were sitting there not conversing, they didn't know how to talk to each other. There was no conversation going on. And I'm thinking, it's interesting, but every half an hour when we went past some thing in the background, you know, the Statue of Liberties in Paris and you know, they would shuffle around and do this amazing post, you know, and obviously put it on some platform, Instagram, TikTok, whatever it was. And I thought. But the reality is you say basis, you don't even know how to talk to each other. You know, the miracle of sitting across the table, of being able to converse with somebody, you can't do that, but you can pretend to be having this wonderful time on this cruise. And I felt like going. And I was talking to Kate and she said, no, leave him alone. And I don't, don't piss them because I felt like going over and goes, guys, why don't you just, you know, this is all bullshit, you know, just talk to each other.

And. But that's not cool, you know, and so many of the impactful things, Tim, are very, very modest.

And are not newsworthy. Good news doesn't sell. And you know, the Kardashians, for some reason they sell. And that's what we are, that's what we, you know, we were stuck with. And I feel, you know, I feel sorry for the younger generation. I've got three makapuna coming through and I think, wow, what are the challenges they're going to cope or have to deal with when the oldest is maybe three or four now they're going to deal with in 10 years time or less and to deal with this facade that everybody else has got this amazing perfect life.

And I haven't and.

It'S tough. I didn't have to deal with that as a kid.

It is a different world for sure. Yeah, yeah, we've got a comment in the chat from Beck Smith. You know, Bex story, I thought you two would have to have to have known each other. And so her comment was she she loved perhaps questionnaire. It changed her life, changed mine too. So we'll make sure we get a copy of that or a link to that somewhere in the show notes and in the community. But she's also got a question for us. So coming back to the Collective Intelligence piece.

The D word, diversity, that can get a few reactions from people. We have certainly had a couple of people who we've done some B Corp work with one one company who we got to the questions on diversity and he literally said, this shit's too woke. I'm done. I'm not interested in pursuing B Corp. We have a couple of other clients who maybe go, this doesn't go far enough. So that I feel, and for me personally, I do feel that the diversity question is a loaded question.

And so Beck's question is how do you assess for diversity when you are mapping your teams? So, I. E. Is it skills, career, ethnicity, gender, background and diversity of thought? And you know, is there like a hierarchy of diversity that you would use in team formation? And I'm also curious because I just think the diversity currently is mainly around race and gender and that's it. And then you kind of go, well, actually theoretically, if you are tall and good looking, you're more likely to be a CEO than if you're short and not good looking. So should we also be factoring in, you know, rate this person out of 10 on how attractive 100 people think they are and you know, if you're under 6 foot, we need more people who are under 6 foot to be CEOs. I just kind of think the diversity thing can end up becoming. Yeah. A real.

Thing. So yes. How do you. What does diversity mean to you at Collective Intelligence or for you as Harv? And how do you wrangle that in your teams?

Yeah, part of it's an Art form. So part of it's metrics. Diversity is very forgiving, so you don't have to get it right.

And there was a great way of evening it out. So for us, this is a rough metric. Making sure there's no conflict of interest in the room.

Making sure you've got a gender mix that's simple. Making sure you've got an age range. So our youngest member has been 19. Our oldest has been 73. So you don't want everybody the same age.

Ideally having Mori, Pacifica or other ethnic backgrounds in there. And, you know, I'm very proud that we have. We are nowhere near as diverse in that respect culturally than I would like. There's stuff you can't see. And so.

You know, transgender gay community, all of that is really important.

But I think the most important thing with diversity is in the culture that you've got to allow it to turn up. So you can do all the curation you want, but if you don't have a culture which allows.

For people to be able to speak up and that you take away the status in the room.

And to try and leave the ego at the door. So the things that get in the way of diversity working, it's magic. Status bias, ego.

Comments like woke. I mean, Tim, what the fuck does that mean? Right? And I just, I hear that and I just go.

What is it? It's so misused. It's nonsense. And I use the F word on purpose there because I have been accused of being woke. And I just, I come back with that and I really. I think it's an absolute labeling bullshit cop out of going, I'm not up for the conversation. It's too comfortable. So I'm going to call you woke.

And.

You know, and its origin of the word is totally unrelated to how it's being used now. It's just being a.

Stupid use of the term. So I think a big, big. For me, it's about creating the culture. Creating the culture where.

People can have a say because you can build diverse teams but keep the status there and keep the hierarchy there. It doesn't work. So culture, I think, is a great question, Bex.

I think the culture is actually more important than the diversity. Minimize.

Nice. Yeah, it just, it does just feel.

Yeah. I don't know, it's. It's an area that.

Is almost like ripe for abuse almost.

And yeah, when there's.

It's.

Yeah, it's. It's almost like the purpose conversation, it's hard to define. There's no clear answers. We've you know, we've probably got some lessons from history that we haven't really connected to, and it's a hard thing, so we'll just look for an easy answer to solve it. Whereas.

And Tim, if we don't, you know, it's essential. And it's not, you know, it's essential to build, to build differently to what we've had. It's not perfect. It doesn't, you know, but it's making sure. No, I need to add this as well, is that it needs to make sure that it's not tokenistic and that people are not allowed a seat at the board or whatever just to fill a quota. And so we don't do that. We are looking for people that have got those four attributes. And because we know that's really important. Right. So being competent, being curious, being authentic, being ambitious to develop. Those are the four things we're looking for. And it doesn't matter. Your age, gender, whatever. You need to express those. So that is our. Those are the people that we are looking for.

And then you create the culture and the adversity and.

The number of times we've seen something out of left field come from somebody that's totally unrelated. And here's one of my favorite examples of that, which expresses the beauty of diversity. We had what we call a host day. When somebody hosts the team, they come to them, they examine their business or their position or whatever. And this chap on the team was saying, this entrepreneur that he worked 80 hours a week, and, you know, it was a pride as hard worker. And there were some other entrepreneurs in the team, and they were just like, wow, he's the man. And then there was a Thai woman.

In the group, and she came from a different profession altogether, came from professional services. And she looked at him with this frown on his face and said, but I thought you were good at this.

And the bubble was best.

Because to her, if you were good at this, you wouldn't be working eight hours a week.

Yeah. You'd have it nailed in 20 and be on the beach, whatever. Hang out with your family. Yeah.

Where the other entrepreneurs were, you know, it was a bad drama.

Hustle, culture, let's go.

And so, you know, that's a very simple example of just somebody just going, that doesn't make sense to me. And so we need, once again, to have that culture. And I was facilitating that team. It was just the most beautiful moment.

Mic drop.

And this guy was just, you know, the room was quiet for about 30 seconds, which is a Long time, you know, and it was going. That's a good point.

Anyway, some changes happened after that. But he had a paradigm shift in that moment. In that moment, there was a paradigm shift.

Nice. Yeah. I think, and I think that's the heart of what you're talking about, is getting that clarity through being challenged. Because if you're surrounded by a bunch of other entrepreneurs in some kind of startup accelerator and it's all, yeah, yeah, you know, go and watch Gary Vee and yeah, crush some cans of V or Red Bull. Just, let's just keep crushing. Keep crushing then. Yeah. You know, we are tribal people and we, we, you know, we all dress the same, we start thinking the same. Yeah. So, yeah, that value of that external.

Yeah. And Tim, you know, one of the things that people don't realize that as we go through our professions, we start mixing with people like ourselves without even knowing it. We start surrounding ourselves with people who think like us without even knowing it. And we get really comfortable with that. And I've got old school friends who find it very uncomfortable to be with me at times.

Because I'll talk about the single use plastic bottles and different environmental things, things I care very deeply about. And it's just like, you just shut up, you know, but it's just, again, no, this is, this is not good enough, guys. You know, we can do better than this.

So, you know, it is inadvertently, as we progress throughout, you know, we often end up. Not always often end up with people who think like us. And so, you know, one of the things with building a team is you need an element of comfort and you need an element of discomfort. You've got to have those imbalance. You don't want discomfort all the time. That doesn't work. And you don't want comfort all the time. That doesn't work. So there's got to be a balance between the two. And if it's comfortable all the time.

There'S some stuff to sort out.

And whether it's diversity or whatever, but it's. You need to have those moments where you have that annoying person who asks a really difficult question. You know, that's a good sign. And we need to, we need, We've gotta. We know more about sport, we know more about sport and sports teams than we do about commerce and business, I think. And we care more about sport than commerce and business, you know, and you'd never put together. That's why I love rugby. You'd never put a team of rugby people, rugby players together, who all 6 foot 8 and 120 kilos.

Yeah.

Yeah. You'd lose.

Yeah. You need specialization in the different.

Yeah. And you need the mix.

Yeah.

And so. And there's no position that you go, let's just have all them. There's no position that you'd have. And I'd imagine it's the same, but with. With football or soccer. I don't know much about that, but I'd imagine it's the same. And so, you know, you've got to have that. You've got to have that range. So. But we don't. My concern is in commerce. We don't fully understand that yet. It's not baked into our DNA because it's been so dominated by older white men.

Again, it loops back to me for the purpose work. And one of the things we get people to do when we go through purpose coaching with them is to go on an empathy walk. And basically, you need to go and find someone who, in your broader sort of group of connections, is the person who you have the least in common with on the face of it, and go for a walk with that person and just ask questions about their life. And what's interesting is you typically find actually there's so much we have in common. We're all just struggling. We're not perfect. None of us know how to parent, none of us know how to run our businesses, all that kind of stuff. But you will also find that, oh, I had never thought about it in that way before because everyone just sees everything in a different. In a different lens. So maybe that's a challenge we could set to people who are listening in is maybe go and find someone and just go and have a coffee with them or a cup of tea with them and just make a connection and then maybe see if you can bring them in as some sort of mentor or connector, you know, at a basic level that you can just go, hey, look, this is. This is how I see stuff. How do you sit and just get. Get that, you know, for the. For the cost of a cup of tea or a lunch once a month with someone just to bring you a different perspective on your life, or obviously come and join a collective intelligence group. But if you're just looking to test it and test it and give it a go, I think it's the, you know, it's the whole ying yang, you know, it's that again, you know, the dragon of chaos is like, you need to be meandering on this. On this line of the tension between the dark and the light, the left and the right, the up and the down, however you want to describe it. And it's like the tension of all like two magnets, you know, that are kind of like pushing you in the middle. You need that tension, that force from both sides that lets you walk that path in the middle, but with a slight meander in it rather than. I'm just going on that one line. But again, we're, I think, again, like going back to the. Onto the purpose journey. We. We don't want to be told that everything we've. We've held to be true for all our life actually is not true. I think that that is the existential shock that most people don't want to handle or unpick. And in, in many ways, typically, I mean, for me, I. I had a traumatic introduction into my journey of purpose from the earthquakes and the birth of my child or our child. And I think you also have had that more traumatic induced journey to purpose significant event in your life that led you to, to be and, and behave in a certain way. But I think the vast majority of people, it's that whole Pink Floyd, comfortably numb. I'm just kind of happy with what I think is good. And, you know, I don't want to upset this apple cart because I kind of know that if I do go and, you know, tip the apple cart, I'm going to find some maggots and some rotten apples and I'm gonna have to sift through that and see which ones are salvageable and I'm gonna go and buy some new apples. And that all sounds painful when I'll just stay where I am. But I think that is the opportunity for business owners and humanity is to go on that journey of discovery and curiosity to work out actually who the fuck are you? And are you who you should be? And that is life's great journey. But so few people want to go do it because it's hard. Let's just go watch the TikTok instead. Yeah.

Tom, the thing here's something that I think is we underestimate. So when, if I said to you somebody's a great communicator, what comes to mind?

I said, somebody's a great communicator, what comes to your mind?

For me, personally, I would think the words come to mind are empathetic, listener.

Sort of interpreter, distiller.

And.

Sort of ability to connect and tell a story or to get information out. But it has to be the full loop.

Yep, nice.

And pass the test.

And so lots of, lots of people, when I've Asked that question too. They talk about somebody who's a very good communicator. Somebody can.

Who can tell. Yeah.

And you know, somebody that I learned a lot from, Anaki Goodall, who is the most wickedly good listener. And he's an active listener. And when you're talking to him, you'll see him move and he's engaging in his listening. And it is so nice to have a conversation with him.

Because you can see the act of listening and.

It is wonderful to be heard.

And that takes time and space. Once again, going right back. How you doing, Tom? Oh, I'm not so good. Oh, that's a bugger. But let's talk about the rugby, right? So if you're not actually interested in the answer or interested in the response or have the time for the response, don't ask the question. But I think, you know, being in the space of. And I was just saying this morning that, you know, I'm an extrovert, I like talking, but as I've got older, I've actually enjoyed listening more and more and developing that ability to listen. And.

So, you know, that's.

Giving somebody some time to listen to them. And sorry, the words empathetic and so that's all nice words, but the people that actually do it don't use those words. They just. They just do it. They just listen. And I think being listened to is just a wonderful feeling and then being understood is even better.

And so.

I went to a conference in Christchurch a couple of years ago and it was run by Training Enterprise, I think Anna Gunther was one of the organizers and it was for female entrepreneurs, I think. And so I went along there because I much prefer to hang out with women than I would me. And I find men generally boring as went along to this thing. And we had one of those things, the room was full and. And I would blow the whistle and you go and find somebody to talk to. And I spied across the room a young Mori woman and she had. She had way out clothing and she had hair all different colors. And I thought, I want to go and talk to you. And I made it beeline for her to go and connect with her. And you could see her, you know, one of the few men in the room, and she could see me and she was like, God, I don't want to talk to him, you know, and. And it was just like I was the last person she wanted to talk to. And. And I said, look, can. Can I talk to you for the next, you know, can I be with you? For the next three minutes, whatever time she went, gulp. And you could see her going, okay, so it's not going to kill me for three minutes. Yeah, okay. I said, what do you do? You know, I was just intrigued. What do you do? And she told me what she did. It was just magnificent. It was all about streams and water and taking some ancient stuff and it was about cleaning the water in the streams and we just, I just asked questions of her and I was fascinating for three minutes and at the end of it, she's the whistle wind. She, I don't know anything about you. And I said, sorry, but time's up. But I said, you are doing a stunning job. And it was just like, you know, it was a pity it was just three minutes. But it was, what am I saying? I think it's really important to actually give a shit about other people and actually find out what they, what's their jam, you know, people are fascinating creatures.

Everyone's got a story.

Everybody's got a story. And some stories you can see. You know, to me she had a flag up because of the way she was dressed and I was just like, wow, you're not really interesting.

And the story she told me was nothing like I thought it was going to be some cool tech thing, but it was a nature based remedy which was even cooler but just wasn't what I was expecting. So I think the curiosity, it goes.

Back to the curiosity, but I think also ties back into the whole concept of diversity because it's like, you know, don't judge a book by its cover. I think, you know, oh, you're just an old white dude. It's like, well, yeah, but you don't know my story. You not, you know, get to know me. You know, I think it's, it's an interesting one where if people go, oh, you know, you're a white guy, you've got privilege. It's like, well, yeah, my grandfather died as a coal miner in South Wales. What, what fucking privilege did he have? You know, he died early from lung disease because he was digging in the ground all day long. You know, my dad was lucky, he was smart. He got to go to university. Probably one of the first kids from his small town in South Wales to get to university. I came to New Zealand with a backpack. I've started my, you know, yeah, I've had, I've had a good start in life. I went to a good school. But like, you don't know. And I think again, it fits back into that ancestry story that you're talking about, like, get. There's lots of loops here. Back to the purpose world. Like, what is your backstory? Like where, where are you from? Like, do you even know? Like, most people might have an idea if their grandparents were alive. I've got some idea. I think granddad used to do this but, but because when I did that journey for myself, it was really interesting. So I sold medical devices for about 10 years. Well, I had a great uncle, I think, on my mum's side who sold medical, medical devices in Bermuda in like the early night. It's like, well I, I didn't know anyone. It didn't even know that was a job before I fell into that industry. And then you find out you had a relative who used to do it. Like, fucking hell. Well that makes some sense. And then on my dad's side, one of his relatives was a, was an ambulance driver and she go, oh, well, is it any coincidence that I've fallen into the world of hospitals and medical devices when it turns back, like not just like maybe two or three generations ago they were doing that. So. Yes. So many moments you can get from just digging, digging into stuff. Yeah. Bex has got a follow up question on the, on the diversity thing. She says. So she's interested in how are decisions made in these teams and where does accountability sit in terms like if there's no diversity hierarchy or there's no, you know, you sit above this and well, you know, your opinion is worth more. Yes. How, how does that work?

Yep. So the only pushback I'd have on that, Bex, is I don't like the word decision. Decision means to kill off side to kill decide. Right. Anyway, not wanting to be too wanky about that, I much prefer the term choice.

You know what, generally it's just arrived at. Yes, there was accountability to the team to do something. We're not there to give advice. It's there for people to sort their own stuff out. And insight is far more sticky. You know Tim, you should do that. That goes in skin deep and then pings off and all sorts of stuff. There's no commitment to it. But if you have the insight through a series of questions and so forth and work it out yourself, that's sticky. Inside is a buggy. You can't get rid of it. It's always there. So the thing with the team's backs, it's about coming to, coming to a place where the next thing can happen. God, I hope I'm answering this the right way, but it's, it's Sort of magic. And it's sort of, you know, the facilitators will write down where people have got to and look at what are the next steps. And people can change their minds too. You know, it's, it's. It's not set in stone. So.

Change their minds. Sorry. People can change their minds. How does that work?

Well, it's a thing. It's a thing.

Oh, who'd have thunk it? Yeah. So how are decisions made in these teams and where does accountability lie? I think you. I think you've got to. That bucket. It sits with the person, I guess, ultimately, doesn't it?

Yeah. So the accountability, you know, we, the, the teams operate. Group pressure is the thing, you know, it's a thing. And whether you like it or not. And the best I've ever known for this was Muhammad Ali when he had put something out there, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that. He'd tell everybody. And so, hey, presto, it was. That would sit there with him and it was a great motivator for him. So I think the decisions are the choices people can make.

It needs to be, at the end of the day.

The individuals have still got to have the autonomy to do what's right for them. We're not into group think, we're not into group pressure.

But it's amazing.

One of our members said a few years ago, she said, when I'm in a meeting and something's getting really difficult, she said, I can feel my team on my shoulder going, say the thing, say the thing. That's really uncomfortable. And the teams. One of the magic with the teams is that you've got this group of cheerleaders behind you who are not in your world, who are from outside the world.

They are there just for you, and they go with you. When you're not with them for three or four months, I'm on a team and I can feel that with me.

Even when they're not there. And so they give me the bravery at times when I'm sitting there and I'm feeling scared. And I can hear.

Individuals in the team.

You know, with that wisdom, sitting back there going, you know, come on, you can do this.

So I don't feel as alone.

And.

Yeah, so it's a very big. It's a very, very convoluted answer. And I think. I'm thinking, can I make it more concise now? I'm not sure I can.

Well, I think she says, thanks for the reframe. That's her reply. So, yeah, you. You can't. You can lead the horse to water, you can give people ideas, thoughts, perspective, perspectives, but ultimately it's down to the individual to tell us to kill the idea. Yeah, I love that. I love that. I love the. Was it etymology? Isn't it the study of the meaning of words? There's a whole lot in that. I think it's super cool, the fact that we spell words and a spell is magic. I just think that's like such a cool idea.

It's little things. I'm easily amused, as my wife would tell me.

All right, so how did you get into collective intelligence?

Because obviously you started the business, but what were you doing before that? To. To.

So, look, I was. I was a. I was a sheep and beef farmer for 30 years before that.

And obviously, really obvious link from sheep and beef farm.

Yeah.

And diverse groups of leaders.

And it's there and it's there. And like, it goes back to my childhood. So growing up at Manganoka, we had a little country settlement. I went to school of 50 and we had kids from the railway, we had kids from the pub, from the brewery, from the dairy factory, from sheep and beef farms and dairy farms. And none of those families mixed. They were orphan. They all had their own social groups.

A school of 50. So the kids, we all mixed, but we had parents of vastly different backgrounds.

So the diversity thing was there. And luckily for me, with the brewery, we had. We had brewers from Scotland and England and so forth, and that was pretty cool too. So the diversity thing was there. We had a strong Mori community.

There as well.

So I went farming. Not because I went farming, because I wanted to go farming. And there was lots of reasons for that. There was fight. I actually wanted to be a professional tennis coach. And then my second option was be become a landscape art architect. And I went farming. We don't have time for that.

It sounds like we should have time for that.

Like it was. And it was my father, we had a very small farm behind the brewery, and my father had very poor health. He couldn't go to World War II because he was epileptic and didn't enjoy farming because it was health. And so he encouraged me to do anything but go farming. And in the end, I was influenced by.

A friend's father who was a very interesting, innovative farmer. And I became intrigued with the innovation of farming. And so I went farming.

Because of him, not because of my family. And.

I was always interested in other things. I was always interested in things outside of farming. And I had a brother in law who was in the corporate world and I was always interested in things beyond the farm gate and I was interested in creating more value and got involved in different ventures. None of them were successful, but I learned a hell of a lot along the way. And I learned a wonderful lesson of. We had some cashmere goats for a while and the price of cashmere crashed and a small group of us got together and we bought all New Zealand's cashmere for very little. And we created a company which sold garments to the inbound Japanese tourists and it went gangbusters and went from being private to an unlisted public company and was, we thought we were world famous. And then the Asian financial crisis came and hey, press or the Japanese kept on coming to New Zealand but they didn't want to buy ridiculously expensive garments. And then we found there was all sorts of seconds and wastage and all that sort of stuff and ultimately that failed. And.

That was just a stunning, stunning, stunning learning curve for me. So I was always interested in other things. Now at that time I was a director. In my early 30s I became a director of three different companies. So I was very privileged to go onto those boards. I wasn't a very good director.

Because I was more interested in the key people than the bottom line and looking after the stakeholders. And I became fascinated with the isolation factor of these CEOs. And I, because I think I was 32.

I was fascinated to see that, you know, they'd come around to the board meetings and they'd present the present the figures. And if the figures were good, everybody was happy. But I was intrigued that they were not spending enough time with their kids. Their wives didn't like them anymore and sometimes they were drinking too much and actually nobody gave a fuck about that.

And so I thought as a farmer we had farm discussion groups and farm discussion groups were and still are about technical.

Change and helping each other. And we had that mechanism and they work because farmers don't compete with each other. And I thought, oh, I wonder if I could set up a, like a farmer's discussion group without any farmers in it and put a bunch of CEOs and stuff in there and see if that would work. And so I did. And I.

Coerced a bunch of about six or seven, eight people.

To join this team. And the team was called the Hornets. And.

Most nervous morning of my life, Tim was the first meeting they came together and they come from around the country and I'm in the toilet dry reaching because I hadn't been able to find a facilitator. And the person that I wanted to facilitate it said, half the lobby, wankers, you're a wanker, you do it. That was his motivational speech.

And so here I was in the bloody toilet, dry reach and going, I have no idea what I'm doing here.

And they'd come from Christchurch in Auckland and so forth and they're meeting the central area in Palmerston North. And so I just went into the room and thought that I can. All I'm going to do is just, you know, tell them that I don't know what I'm doing, I'm just going to try and do my best. And they seemed okay with that.

And it was interesting because what my hunch was isolation was real, loneliness was real. Their pressure that they couldn't show anywhere else was real, that they had to look good in front of their board and staff and go home and still look good.

And that when they came into this environment they could let. They could, over time they could talk about what was really going on. And I facilitated that team for about seven or eight years and it came apart because I was too busy farming. Then I got into some other stuff, but I had this itch what would happen if I did this properly. And so I parked that team and after 30 years of farming I had enough. This was before regenerative farming had come up and I was very good at the old methodology of the control and so forth, but just didn't fill my cup anymore.

So I had this thing I thought, wonder if would happen if I could do this other thing. And I was trying to put together two or three things. Collective intelligence was one on the side. And then there was this other thing to do with farming, the farming thing. I couldn't get up and running because of red tape and stuff.

And that was around leadership development of farmers. So my frustration. I'd got involved in some corporate farming in the early 2000s and I was very frustrated that farming models were getting more complicated. The environmental thing was starting to show up, farms were getting bigger, nobody was developing farmers. So, you know, accountants and lawyers have got a standard. If you want to be a lawyer, you need to have some qualification. And same with an accountant. And you need to keep up to date. Farmers don't. Anybody can be a farmer. And I thought this is an industry that looks after the land and water and food and you don't need to be up to date with anything. If you've got a pot of money, anybody can be a farmer. And so I tried to create a professional standard for farming, And I spent 18 months on that, and in the end just went nuts with that because the powers that be were threatened by it, and it didn't really fit anywhere. So I gave that up and I put all my attention into collective intelligence, which was then, was just a bit of a sideline. And so then I put all my attention to collective intelligence. And I'm very grateful that the first thing didn't work, that it failed, because ultimately I wouldn't have had nearly as rich a journey as I've had. So starting collective intelligence probably 16 years ago.

Back then, diversity was different industries, but it was still mostly white men and a few white women and all in commerce. And I had a few surprises along the way. Somebody had put forward a school principal to join a team, and I thought, school principal doesn't fit here. And somebody else brought the same guy forward. So I went and had a chat to him, and he had a book in the bookcase called Good to Great Jim Collins. I said, you ever read that thing? And he goes, pulled it out and said, this is my bible. I run the school office. Okay, let's give you a go. Anyway, he. He turned the light on for me because he came in to a business environment with a whole lot of skills that the entrepreneurs didn't have. He had way bigger staff. He had a staff of 140.

And he just bought a whole fresh outlook. And that was the turning point. It was about three years in. That was the turning point. I just went, I'm missing something here. And so then we opened the gates to more and more and more. And now I don't care what industry people are in. I don't care what level they're at, because we've learned. We've had people come in that have been professors, CEOs, and they've been shipped in a team because they're closed. They know stuff. They're there to give advice, or, you know, they're very close. Where now we know when people are at any level, as long as they've got those four attributes.

And being open to change and curious, then it allowed us at that point to just increase and spread and spread and spread. It's also made our model slightly more difficult to understand, because if I had said collective intelligence is a white man's place to come and make more money.

Be a lot easier to market.

And so our diversity and our success has made our value proposition more difficult to define. And we're still working on that. We haven't nailed it.

And it's been a continual frustration for me.

But as far as I know, we are the only ecosystem of its type.

In the world and there's stuff similar to this, but they don't actively go out looking for difference. And you know, the only, the only industry, one of the only industries we haven't been able to work with are the gangs. And I had a go because I was really interested in the gangs, but that ultimately didn't work.

Maybe you need to get some collective intelligence patches so we can get some patches they might be in, although that's not. Not allowed currently under the current regime. So I'm sure you're a smart guy, you'll come with a workaround.

Yeah, you're having a patience. But biodegradable, that wouldn't be good.

Yeah, but.

That'S the roundabout way of know where we've got to two minutes.

And the B Corp thing, you know, one of our members, Alex Hanant, was on the board of B Lab in Melbourne. I think he went on to be chair. And Alex said to me one day, he said, harv, you need to have a look at this B Corp thing. He said, I think you're what attracted me. He said, I think you really like the people involved in it. It's really cool.

And when I met you, it was down at the Social Enterprise World Forum and that was the first time I'd met you. And B Corp was very, very new at that point. New Zealand and I thought, we are special. We'll be able to become a B Corp easily.

And we didn't. Was really hard. But yeah, so that was my introduction to B Corp. Nice.

Just a couple of reflections on your journey, I think.

It'S quite commonly called in the purpose world, like the golden thread, you know, like what are the key things that you used that you have done at a meta level that. Where there is a. A commonality. And it's kind of, it's interesting that you went from farming, which you know is about growing, it's about monitoring how ecosystems are working and working with each other to create a result. And then you've kind of. You're essentially almost farming human beings in that you're creating a little ecosystem, you're watering it, you're, you know, testing all the, all the ingredients that need to go into. To make the group. So I think it's always interesting to reflect on that. I think a couple of other things. There's been quite a few people we spoke to recently. Perry Drysdale from Untouched World in particular, you know, she just gave it a go. She was making some knitted woolen clothing for her for one of her kids, and someone said, that's really good. You should sell it. And then she sort of just gave it a go. And turns out now people are buying it all over the world, I think. So you're, you know, just turning up and, and your motivational speaker. But I think the other thing to that is, you know, the people in the room have no idea what you're about, what you're about to deliver. And I think that that's the two things that stops most people from giving something a go is, oh, I don't know. And there's some inertia to doing it, but if you just do it, the person who's buying your first iteration has no idea that you had 100 other iterations in your head that they could have seen. If they like the one that they've seen, they're going to buy it. You're in business. So. Yeah. And the other reflection, which I think leads back into the B Corp conversations, you know, you're talking about all these highfalutin CEOs in your first group who were, you know, just looking at the bottom line, what are the numbers? But, you know, sort of to hell with the rest of it. A question I like to poke CEOs with is, so, so currently your. Your big metric is chasing the financial number and all costs. You want to beat the one you had last year. And if you're a listed company, you know, you want to go up, up in the rankings. Well, if that's so important, can you tell me who Was listed number three on the NZX in February 2014?

No. And possibly there's possibly one really geeky economist who will be able to go, yes. There's always those people who go, yeah. In the 1953 test, the opening batsman was Smith and he was from the chapel end. It's like, yeah, whatever. Like, taking those people out of the equation, no one knows, no one cares. So think about the bigger picture, think about your life, think about your legacy. Yeah, all that kind of stuff.

And, and who created the. Or motivated the student army after the earthquakes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I can remember that.

Yeah. 100%. You know, you remember what people did and how they did it. You won't remember what they were chasing. Yep.

You know, and I remember he danced with Camilla, you know, and all that stuff going, that's cool.

And the.

Yeah. So it's, it's, it's an interesting Thing, Tim, we often aspire to things that actually nobody gives a about. At the end of the day, we're.

Back to the Galaxians.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and you know, I have got huge.

Confidence or inspiration around the, you know, younger generations who are not as motivated as my generation was. My generation, you know, the more money he had, the more status he had and, you know, I think younger generations are starting to see through that now, which is, which is really good. Really good.

Although based on my daughter's attraction to Stanley Cups and the hierarchy and pecking order that that has now in an all girls school, there's still some work to be done.

Yeah, okay.

All right, I got this free. This isn't a Stanley. This is like a. It's just like a cup. And so I'm in the world of tweens, particularly girls. People might know that there's this whole thing called dupes, which is where basically you get a knockoff version of some cosmetics which are cheaper but they do just as good a job. So I call this my duply because it's a knockoff of a Stanley. So my daughter thinks that's quite funny. So, yeah, I'm down with the kids, man.

It's a good place to be.

So just lingering on the B Corp journey for a little bit, Are you still good for time? I'm still good for time. I feel like we could keep going for ages. It's always good to chat with you, mate. So what challenges of the B Corp? You sort of alluded to the fact that you thought you were going to just streak through it, but first time around it was maybe a bit harder than you thought. What was, what was the challenge?

Look, we were so arrogant. We put an intern on it and said we go and get accredited. And I remember going to the Social Enterprise World Forum thinking that we were sitting on 127 points, when in fact we were sitting on, I think 71 points or something at the time, you know, in reality. And then, you know, obviously we failed. And then the second time we lined up and we, we went full noise and we failed again, this time because we were in the wrong category. And that was a B lab thing. I went, oops. So we got through, scraped through I think, with 84 and a half points. Look, why was it so difficult? It was so difficult because it just forces you into all the dark crevices and it shows you, you know, the irony is you're sitting down to do an exam and you've got all the answers they give you the answers and it's still hot and you've only got, you've only got to get a 40 pass mark and it's still out and it just, it where it's so good is it just the questions and the thing just force you into all the areas.

And it shows you all the things you're not doing and you just go oh yeah, no, that'd be good. And so where we've recertified and we're 90 something now and you know, our holy grail, where we're not going is we're still not measuring our purpose and we still haven't mastered that. And we have a measurement but it doesn't hold any water yet. And we, that's, that's a holy grail we would love to, to work on. But the thing, you know, the thing I love about B Corp is it's hard and it should be hard.

And.

And so I feel a huge amount of.

Pride being a biccop and.

And it's aspirational because it shows you.

Guides you, you know, what's, what's possible. And.

A number of our members now have become B cults, which I'm really proud of. I remember Wendy Alexander from Kin has gone through and you know, first Mark was, you know, stunning Mark, not surprising, but I can see and encouraging people to look at it and.

Had a conversation this morning with a new, with a new venture and going so go and look at the B Corp framework to help you design where you want to go. They were about certification. Just go and use it as a template for design.

And the thing, the other thing that I think is really important, one, it's practical. I like that.

But the thing that it's not is B Corps are not perfect. And I cannot stress that enough. The B Corp means that you are on continual process to improve. It is not a destination. And I get frustrated at times. People say oh, they're a B caught. But that's, you know, they're still doing this or doing that. You know, that's not 100%. Yeah, like all of us, all of us, you know, we don't have a together. Nobody's getting 200 points.

Yeah, I say that all the time. There is no one has one B corp. There is no 200 pointer done. Yeah. And doing good is black. It's not black and white. It is absolutely gray at the best of times. And even where you think you're doing good, you might not, might not actually be doing good. And so yeah, the people who throw rocks, it's like, you know, it's that classic he who is in the arena. Who was that? Roosevelt? It's like, well, what's your big. Are you even. Are you even a B corp, you know, or are you just throwing rocks? Because blah, blah, blah. It's like, yeah, just whatever. But it's.

It's.

It's like, don't read the comments on stuff or don't read the comments on. On the newspaper, on the digital, you know, online newsletter. It's just full of angry people throwing rocks on the Internet. Like, you crack on, I'll just be over here trying to make the world a better place. So. Yeah, yeah.

Yep. And it's. It's. It's. It's been very good for us. You know, one of my favorite memories, we had a woman working for us called Karen, and we were renting an office at that point, and she rang out our landlord and said, look, I've just had a look in the ceiling, and we're not insulated. There's no insulation in the ceiling. And he said, no, it's been for a while. She goes, yeah, but we're a B corp now, and we can't stay here if it's not insulated. And he was like, what? And he goes, well, we aspire to be as green as possible and use as little energy as possible. And we don't have insulation roof, so it needs to be insulated if you want us to stay here, it's got to be insulated. And she said, we're happy to pay half now. She did that off her own.

And told us about it later. And I thought, boom, this is working. And we ended up with an insulated roof. And that was just great that it empowered her because she had. She knew that.

We would back her because of the right thing to do if we were to be caught. What if we stuck our head up in the ceiling? I'm not sure. I'm not sure.

And that's the thing that just raises your consciousness of a whole raft of things. And, you know, there was. I can't remember what it's called, Tim, but there was. We had a conflict last year with somebody in the team, and they came to me and wanted it, you know, had a major issue with something, and I said, that's cool. We have got a. You'll know the term of it. I can't remember off the top of the hat, but I said, okay, we've got somebody you can call outside of the business and you can go and take their complaint. There's It's a whistleblower thing.

Whistleblower. Yeah. I was going to say. And.

And you can go and take that to the whistleblower and you can talk to them in confidence and you take it there and then that person will do.

And.

The whole thing got resolved really quickly.

But we had the mechanism in place. There's no way I would have ever put a whistleblower.

Thing in the business. Never.

Never. Yeah. I think. Yeah. 100. That's what most people see. Is it like you said, shines a light on parts of the business that you didn't know was a thing. But now I know it's a thing. Yeah, that. That makes sense. Let's, you know, let's do it. Does it make us. And that's why we call our. Our sort of coaching program to help people on the big journey be better. You know, don't. Don't be the best because no one's going to be the best. Be better and use the B Corp framework to work out how you can be better and go on that journey and bring the team on the journey with you.

And that thing doesn't cost us anything.

But it was great to have it there and.

Hopefully we don't have to use it again. But if we do then, you know, that's cool. But having the mechanism there meant that it got dealt with really quickly and it was dealt with. It wasn't glossed over and we had a proper process in place for that to happen. And.

Yeah, and that stuff when it turns up is really important.

So in terms of the impact you're making, we talked about the beginning, the sort of the clarity, the trust, the decision making. But is there anything beyond that or anything deeper than that that you feel in terms of impact? Because I think that's a conversation we're having a lot more with people because like I say, there's a bunch of people out there that have snuck in with an 80 point whatever and they're a business that's maybe supplying a product or a service that's not fundamentally making the world a better place, but they are providing that product and service in a manner that is less than perhaps their competitors. But the difference between a B corp without an impact business model and one with the impact business model, meaning that you have got a dedicated social or environmental problem that you are trying to solve. So. Yeah. Do you feel that there's a particular impact focus that collective intelligence has in that regard?

I'm not going to answer that question.

Whichever question you want.

So the thing the Thing that I think that, you know, there was some went down when the coffee company came through and I think they've changed that. But now, you know, in each section you've got to have a minimum.

That's what it's moving to. Yeah, from maybe 20, 25, it's looking like.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's a great response to that situation.

And because of time, Tim, just, just, you know, some people have grown older literally during this call. I want to answer this question.

And that where we're applying our diverse teams to now is important number of different ways. One, we're taking it out into the consultancy space with impact teams and we've trialled those and so it is using diverse teams to go and help a company and it's a commercial model. It is moving into the space of consultancy without consulting and is using inquisitors rather than people who know stuff. And we've tried that and that's going to be rolled out soon. And then we've got another model that we've developed called Hatcher Teams and we've run that three times. One failed to have worked really well and that's going to be working within, inside a foundation that we are getting going. And I like trialing stuff, Tim, and I'm okay with failure and trialing. And this is where we're wrapping around an individual with a really big.

Concept idea. And the first one that we were successful with was to do with pediatric palliative care. So In New Zealand, 280 families a year are affected by children with cancer and different ailments. New Zealand doesn't have a gold standard. And this doctor who come back from Melbourne.

This was her specialty, was pediatric palliative care. She was introduced to me 18 months ago, two years ago and we wrapped a diverse team around her to bring this gold standard to fruition. And we've done that and it's been trialed now in Wellington, Wairapa, Otaki and.

This will just make a huge difference and it's cost effective. We now just get the Ministry of Health to, or whatever it's going to be called to WHTA ora Ministry of Health to see the benefits of that. But we've got funding to try that for three years. I'm really proud of the fact that we've got that defuition. And the other Hatcher team worked on a thing called Truss House T R U S S which is a breakthrough piece of technology where people will be able to build houses for sometimes less money, no more expensive built houses. That you don't need to eat, you don't need to call.

They're going to last longer. Communities can build them using existing materials. They'll be fire resistant as well. And.

That first house is being built by one of our members in Hawke's Bay very, very soon. And what's been interesting with both of those is how a wickedly good idea is so hard to get going and how much support it needs to support an individual with a big idea. And we need to get way better at that in New Zealand because we need to be more productive, more innovative and all that sort of stuff. But the system there that exists generally doesn't want that stuff to happen because it disrupts supply chains and a whole lot of things, status and all that sort of stuff. So that's a model that we're really proud of in creating more impact. And.

All the time all of it is based around diverse teams working together. And so up until now we've been just working with individuals, but now we're working now with concepts and working now with organizations. So I'm really, I'm really.

Looking forward to seeing how that rolls out in the near future. Yeah, with more scale.

Watch. Watch this space.

Well, I feel like if anyone can do it, it's going to be you guys. And I think that's reflective of your challenge in nailing your marketing is when you're doing fringe stuff, which has never been done before, it's hard to bring in, you know, standardized marketing parlance to encapsulate it. It's very much like when I was trying to connect to the idea of purpose. I'm not a smart fellow. It took me about five years to just go to the dictionary and go, well, what is the definition of purpose? Because someone has actually collated all the words in the world and given them a meaning. But when you're trying to connect to these sort of slightly more ethereal ideas and things, they haven't been given a name before. So, you know, don't be too hard on yourself. I feel like it has been a journey and it will be a journey and sometime at some point it will just, it will land or it will keep landing better. But I think it's part of the, you know, that anti authoritarian streak in you that is still there, which we need and I think is got you to where, where you are today. It's that whole again, that purpose journey. You know, the Phoenix, burn off the flames. Okay, well maybe I just need to tone down the anti authoritarianism. There's no point Burning down Parliament House. How do I work within the system to make the change to. I think we've sort of been on a bit of a similar journey on that because when I first had my, as I call it, hard Brexit from the corporate world, I was like, yeah, let's just burn the, burn the place down, start from scratch. So, well, that's not going to work. And it turns out people don't want to hang out with that energy either, oddly enough. Don't know why. Whereas, yeah, build the better party, have the better party on the street. Hey, what's, what's half doing that? Like the music sounds pretty cool and the beers tastes really nice. Oh, it's. What's he doing? It's way, way more fun than our party. So, yeah, keep on, keep on doing.

Yeah, thanks. And, and you know the thing that gives me great hope is that we can, we can play in so many different spaces because of the, you know, the thousand odd people we've worked so far and the network got the community and that, that community. And it's interesting that when we've put those teams together because up until now we've done all of that for free and we funded that ourselves and all the people been involved in it have not been paid. And it's interesting, of the dozens of people I've asked to be involved, only one said no. And that was for a personal reason. And you know, people want to do good when they're given a chance and.

You know, humanity.

You know, can be wickedly positive sometimes.

A cool phrase, I can't remember who said it, but basically no one ever regretted doing good.

No, I think that's true. So I think that's true.

Just give it a go, you know. Yeah, let's finish up with, with two, two shortfall questions to finish off with.

What?

What do you think if you had a magic wand, what is the one big thing that you would change that would advance the sort of purpose driven world or take us to a better future world? Like yeah, if you gave half the magic wand, you're in control of the world for the day. What's the thing that you would change or get rid of?

Second question. I'll think about it.

Who, who do you think that should be? A B corp that isn't currently a.

B corp. Oh, that's a good question.

Farmers. There we go. Farmers. And we've got one now with Harweer Station. Yep.

Who we gave a bit of a hand to. And it's interesting on the back of that We've had two farms reach out and go, okay, so watch this space.

Excellent. Because I've been poking that beer for a long time and I still mix back in the farming world and bring up B Corp and, you know, many of them have never heard of it before and going, look.

You know, it's, It's. I think it's going to be really important going forward, Tim, that, you know, as a farming nation, that, you know, regenerative agriculture and all that sort of stuff as a big deal. What's the first question again?

So if you had a magic wand, like, what would be the thing that you would fix or give more. Okay, make the world a better place.

There you go. So I would. I resisted regenerative farming for eight years and I documented that my resistance to it. And then I've been. We've still got a small block of land and we farm that regeneratively. And.

I've documented that journey as well and how at times I've just wanted to go back and use the agrarian cocaine of nitrogen and phosphate. Give me a boost.

So that would be. That would be my magic one, is that regenerative farming, when it's understood and it's utilized, it is. So.

The impact it can have on the environment is phenomenal and the impact it has on human beings is phenomenal because it's so good for your mental health. Farming regeneratively. And so that would be my magic wand, Tim, is to. For New Zealand to.

Give up the agrarian cocaine.

To embrace and understand.

Nature and understand that we are nature and that.

The benefits are just phenomenal. There you go. That's my magic wand.

Love it. And the benefits to the consumer as well, having probably better quality.

You know, it's interesting.

Pesticides, etc.

Yeah, it's like, it's. It's all of that, but it's. The thing is, you know, we just ordered some bumblebee boxes yesterday. Now, I was gonna buy. I was gonna build my own bumblebee boxes, but I thought, actually, let's just buy from these people who are building bumblebee boxes and. Because they've got a little business and so let's support that rather than, you know, so dishing out a few hundred dollars to buy these boxes.

I've never thought about doing that before, Tim. You know.

And.

It just. The layers of this thing go on and on and on. And my. I'm not sure if it's a question. I don't care. I learned last year how to make Johnson Sioux compost. Now if nobody listen remembers anything about this, look up Johnson Compost, which is a husband and wife team, have developed a compost making system that produces high fungal.

Compost. Most compost is bacterial dominant. This is a fungal dominant. We have used this at one kilo per hectare.

On our little farm. And what it does, it boosts the amount of fungi in the soil, which increases the ability of the plants to share nutrients and pick up nutrients and shear water. And.

This is groundbreaking stuff. And so if you think as a kid, farms, when I was a kid, we used to have mushrooms everywhere. We don't have mushrooms anymore on farms, or very few of them. And it's because the bacterial load has got so high it dominated the fungi. And so that's a sign that the soils are not happy. So if nothing else, Johnson so is spelled soo, that's husband, wife, team. And we've started making industrial quantities of this stuff, introducing to Massey University very soon. It is a groundbreaking bloody.

Thing that will just make our soils.

In a forest floor. You have fungi in there because you've got all the layers there. What we're trying to do, we're not going to be able to get the same population as under a forest or native forest, but we will be able to build huge fungal communities in the soil, which makes them more porous, less flooding.

Able to share a whole raft of things and produces more nutritious food.

What a crazy idea. Food that's nutritious.

Yeah, it might catch on. Yeah, might catch on. That's not the calciums.

Yeah.

Well, love, as always, it's been. I just. I love hanging out with you. I feel like we haven't been hanging out enough the last week. While it hasn't helped you, you have been on a. We didn't even get into your sabbatical. Maybe we can get you back on to talk about the benefits of a sabbatical as well. But, yeah, I just love what you're doing. You know, the world needs more halves who just go and poke bears and point out elephants and just sit back and let people ponder that. I feel like we're pretty kindred spirits in, in that regard. I think that's possibly why we get on.

We like to.

To rouse the rabble because someone's got to do it. So, yeah, thank you so much for giving it me time to chat to us. This has been one of my. I don't tell the others, but this has been my favorite episode of the podcast so far today.

Oh, you say that to all the girls.

I don't I've only said that to a couple of people so far, so. But.

Been a pleasure. I've been looking forward to this and.

Good luck with the podcast. Thanks, Bex, for the questions. And you can find us?

Yes. How do people get hold of you?

Yeah, Collective intelligence. CO NZ can find us. Drop us a note in there if you're interested. We are building teams all the time and.

Just remember, it's not about the stages and so forth. We are interested in working with people from any sector at any level, any age. If you're up for developing, if you're up for helping other people, helping yourself, that's our home. Yeah.

And get amongst it. Awesome. All right, mate, well, you have a great weekend and hopefully we'll see you soon.

Thanks, Tom.

How do we end the live cast? Been a while.

Hey, it's Tim here, that B Corp bloke from Grow Good. If you want more content on purpose, B Corp. How to do more good in the world as an individual or a business, then you know the drill. Hit the like and subscribe. Check out some of our other videos. They're probably floating around here somewhere. You know how it works. Thank you so much. See you next time.