#92 Purpose, People, and Progress: Leadership Lab’s B Corp-Inspired Journey

Hey, g' day K. Shai. And possibly even a howdy for one of our guests today. We'll get into that in a minute maybe. Thank you as ever for tuning back in to another episode of the Be Better podcast. Or if this, if this is your first time, welcome. Thank you you for stumbling across me on the Internet. As ever. I listen to some very big name podcasts and they are always begging for likes and subscribe. So why not give us a like or subscribe if you thought anything that you've heard today or another episode was of vague interest or use to you. So today we've got two guests bonus episode, we have got the amazing Chris and Jason from Leadership Lab. So g' day Kia ora shamai. Howdy to the Pervia. How's it going?

Howdy y'. All.

We're going well. We're going well. I'm going really well. I won't speak for you. Chris, how are you going?

Yeah, kill everybody. I'm Chris.

Yeah, it's great to be here today, Tim, and looking forward to have a good conversation about this B Corp thing, I reckon.

And we should say it is Chris's birthday. So.

Many thanks for giving up your. Your birthday to come and talk smack about B Corp and business. Be good. Like I say, you know, I'm connecting to my Welsh roots as we'd say Wales pedloith apus e key. So there we go. I don't think I've said happy birthday to anyone on the podcast in Welsh before. So I don't know that. Possibly the first time on any podcast. Who knows? Sure there's some Welsh language podcasts where that's been the case. So yeah, we'll start with Jason. Quick intro. You. You're going to do a quick. Or you're both going to do a quick.

So yeah.

Denver, Colorado. So I was raised in New Zealand of extraction from all across Europe. I'm raised in Hamilton, but my wife and I live in Denver, Colorado. I'm currently sitting in Kaiapoi in my nephew's bedroom.

Noriwi Norwawa and Jason Pemberton is my name if I didn't say that.

So my dad's from Holland, mum from England, previous generations. I live in Christchurch, New Zealand. Aotutahi and my name is Chris.

Welcome. So obviously great introductions, but for people who don't know who you guys are and what you do. Yeah, like, like who are you? I guess is the. Is where I like to start. So I thought maybe start with Jason because we trying to what I Remember the first time we met, it was C1 Cafe in Christchurch through the amazing Do Britain. People who don't know Dorinda Britain, go find her. If you're. If you're in New Zealand, go find Dorinda Britain and just go have conversation with her. One woman wrecking ball of awesomeness who. I just can't believe that her age, she's still trying to change the world every. Every minute of every day. I think if we could link her to the national grid, we'd have perpetual motion for absolutely renewable energy. Yeah, I remember that's where we first met. But yeah, just tell us. Yeah, a bit about what you've been up to and who you are.

Yeah, yeah, totally. So, yeah, I guess I moved to Christchurch for uni back in 2006. Seven, something like that. So I was finishing a couple of degrees right when the earthquakes hit. And really my whole professional career was shaped by the earthquakes and then started in the context of the quakes. So I was really involved with the founding of the student Volunteer army and the charitable trust that came out of that. I ran that for a while and that sort of popped me out into international consulting work, mostly in youth leadership and disaster response stuff with the UN system and Red Cross and really I just kind of got plugged into a whole bunch of people doing big, grunty, meaningful, hard stuff and I've been hooked ever since. Really nice.

Yeah. Chris, what about you?

Yeah, well, in brief. Was born here in Christchurch and kind of cruised along through school and ended up at uni doing a civil engineering degree, which apparently I was good at, but no one ever asked the question, do you actually like it? So it wasn't until I finished the degree, unfortunately, that I got out. Was a consulting civil engineer here in town and I thought, actually, I can't do this for the rest of my life. Which probably relates to the B Corp thing because I guess it's identified for me. I call it my early midlife crisis because it identified for me what I don't want to do and. And what I do want to do is purposely work. So blah, blah, blah, many things from there. A couple decades later was working at university. I was there for probably 12, 13 years.

In education and management. And then we had our earthquake. So that's the. I guess we were Jason I met. We had our earthquake here. It's kind of like BC and AD in Christchurch. You know, that's where time changes.

And soon after that I decided I didn't want to stay as an academic anymore and wanted to get involved in the rebuild of our place here because frankly people were coming from all around New Zealand to fix our place, which was kind of a wee bit insulting. And so we thought surely we can be involved. So hence the Leadership Lab story. And I've been shareholder and director of Leadership Lab for the last 12 years doing that sort of stuff.

Nice. Yeah, I think the, the earthquake, you know, that was a big part of my life. That was my moment of what am I doing career wise. And like. Yeah, I think just Jason, you, you and I were hanging out a little bit around Social Enterprise World forum which was 2017. It just felt like that sort of five year period post quite, was quite instrumental. And when you look at the B Corp movement, I think out of the original 10B Corps that first certified in New Zealand, that's about seven of them were based in Christchurch. And I think there was that real, that sort of crisis of conscience that okay, we've had a collective near death experience. What do we do? Maybe we can do things a bit better. So I think it's. I don't know that the rest of the country or the rest of the world, I mean obviously other people who've been through big disasters possibly have similar. It would actually be interesting to sort of plot the rise of purpose driven business against natural disasters. That's a study for something.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Somewhere to do.

Because.

I think it had such an effect here. Is it also interesting as well as I was having. I was out at dinner last night with a few reprobates and one gentleman highly involved in the education sector and he's very disparaging of the current education system and in terms of like quality of what we're teaching kids, but also how we're teaching teachers to be able to teach effectively, which is not very effective, which I would reflect on saying. Yes, that's true because I've got a daughter who's currently at school and some days I'll go like really he.

You.

You don't know that like at your age, surely they teach stuff. But where I think the really key thing is something that you talked about there, Chris, is, is that path to purpose. And you know, I was the same. You know, I've got a degree in Medieval history, you know, apart from quiz night, probably once every 10 years.

Not hasn't been that much use to me directly. But it just, it'd be interesting to reflect on your path to that civil engineer, because I think that's. There's a lot of people who get sent on that path and don't have that moment. And dare I say, there's possibly quite a few million people living that life of quiet desperation, living being a civil engineer or whatever it is, or, you know, having gone to university when actually they wanted to be a plumber or be the farmer or whatever. Yeah, what. What was. Any reflections on how you ended up there and how you got off that track? I think there's a lot of people who want to get off that track but don't feel they have the permission to do that.

I mean, that could be a whole podcast. Some, you know, and, you know, maybe it could be.

But we have the breakout episode.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, you know, like you, I have two. Well, I've got two daughters. 1 17, 120. So they're at the stage that I was at when I kind of was starting to face these kind of identity issues, because that's really what it is. And I know the advice I give here is the complete opposite of the advice I was given back in the day. It used to be kind of, what are you good at? Therefore, go and do it and do it forever. See, I was good at science and maths at school, and so I remember clearly being said, told, you know, you've got two choices in life. You can do a BSc in chemistry or a B in Engineering. And engineering sounds better. So I went there, you know, now I know that. Well, A, there's a thousand options, but also B, the bigger question is, what do you actually love? You know, and, you know, Jim Collins, hedgehog thing, you probably will know that. But, you know, you've got strengths and skills, but then you've got passions, you know, and those things may overlap, and if you can get them to overlap and get the money to line up, you've got the perfect career, you know, so combos of my kids is like, what are you passionate about, darling? And then you'll be amazing at that because you love it. And then you can add some skills. So I'm benefiting now, or they're benefiting now from that. But there was a. I'd say there's a fair bit of crisis in there for me, and not just once, you know, like, probably 22, realizing I had a good degree, quite, quite good job, good status, you know, nice car, nice suit, thinking, I hate this shit.

I don't want to, but I don't want it.

Yeah, well, back then, it was actually a bit of a GFC as well. So it was kind of. The work was a bit flat, but I remember Saying I don't want to build big concrete buildings for rich men for the rest of my life because I've already done a couple of those in a dam, you know, so. But the problem was I didn't really know what the other thing was. It was kind of more of a process of elimination.

Yep.

Like a push factor more than the pull.

Yeah. And I think that's something people don't think about so much. And in some ways I, I, I reflect back on my, you know, I had a corporate career and when I, when I speak to younger people, they sort of say, how do I get into, you know, my perfect job? In some ways I think actually having the really shit job and knowing what that looks like and feels like is just as important as not having it. Because like you say half of it, half of after the battle is knowing what you don't want. Because knowing what you actually want, you might not ever get to that, but it's some, it's often really clear what you don't want and so be able to cut that. Because I think the root, the root meaning of deicide is it means to kill the idea. So it's like by deciding you are actually killing off the ideas that don't support or get you. Was there like a specific moment though when you, I call it the FTS moment, the, this moment when you just kind of like flip the table and go, I'm out, I'm done. Here's the keys, suits off. Like, I'm walking out the office setting fire today.

Yeah, there was definitely two. There was two. So I remember at end school the kind of running joke was, if we ever get to design a manhole, we're leaving. And I actually, I actually got asked to design a manhole, but it was a really big manhole, like it was probably 2 meters square and it had like four parts to it with a beam in between, you know, so it was valid of an engineer. But I just thought, I'm not going to do this. Yeah. But I did do it and it was, it's probably still somewhere on Colombo street, but. And then a little bit later I had my one year appraisal with my then boss and, and everything went well. And he said, you're going real great. And, and you know, what are your goals, Chris? And I said, well, Don, I'd really like to get into the people side of engineering. And I'll never forget the, the look. It was kind of like a pause, lean back, hands behind his head, going, the people side of engineering. And I Just realized right then that he was not my tribe, you know, and, and, and I mean there is a people side to engineering and I've got mates who are engineers and they're doing awesome big projects and all that jazz, you know, and maybe I could have done that, but at that stage, you know, I was into eq, not iq, you know, but I didn't even know that, you know. So I went and did a psychology degree and a management degree and went teaching and you know, got massively into group dynamics and you know, human behavior and motivation and you know, that stuff really jazzes me up. Not notes, not sort of safety factors on steel beams, you know.

Yeah, that's reasonable, Chris.

I don't think we've ever talked about that because I, I also did a psychology degree in a management degree. I didn't realize that you'd done that as well.

Bringing people together.

Well, I remember at university and you, I don't know, while you were at Canterbury. Jace. But I remember because I was engineering. It was the that side of union. We used to seriously think that folks on your side with psych and HR were complete fruit loops, you know. You know, whereas actually if I was going to do my career again, I would have just gone down the psych path, you know, and probably HR and probably marketing, you know. Yeah. Or social work maybe. I don't know.

Yeah. Well, it's interesting that you kind of got directed down that engineering route and then 20 years later I did as well because I actually started off doing an engineering degree and made a, made it through the first semester. I was like, I can do this, but I really don't enjoy it. And I'd picked up, I'd done a couple of interest papers sort of on the side. I, I have always hedged my bets so kept my options option open. I've done a psychology paper and a philosophy introduction to philosophy paper and those became my two majors in my science degree. So pivotal engineering across.

So I remember I did a cut. So in the UK degree system back in the day, you had your, you know, your major and in, in your first year you did, you had to do your major and then you did. I think it was three elective subjects and I, I thought, yeah, philosophy sounds good. And I, I just wasn't mentally, you know, ready for it. I remember we walked into the first lecture and, and, and the lecturer just said, is this a question? I'm like, yeah, cool.

Thanks for your time. Have a good day.

I don't think it's going to work for Me, I'm really like, I'm just too young for this. My brain's not how I'd like. I'd love to go back and do that, but I was just like, yeah.

Yeah, isn't this a question? That's so good.

Yeah, I still don't know.

Yeah, I think, you know, the other thing to remember back then is, you know, the idea of a gap year wasn't around probably when we were. Well, certainly for me. Whereas, you know, both my. One's going into a gap year, one's done one massively useful and mainly for the reason you said, Tom, is that they eliminate things. You know, my old, my oldest, who's now uni, which is great because we told her years ago, like when people ask you what you're going to do with your life, we're going to tell you right now what our expectations is. And it's not university, you know, if you want to go, that's fine, but we're not thinking that. Anyway, she's there, but the penny drop for her was working at a, a large store in Rickett and Mall and doing really well there. And then having a chat with their manager and the south island manager and finding out that they get paid $1 more than the minimum wage. That's the height of it, you know, I think $2 more if you're the south island manager. And so I remember her coming home going, dad, this is going nowhere. I'm like, yeah, it's good for now. It's great job for now. Nothing wrong with that. But yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, I think we're the same. My daughter's only 12, but I certainly wouldn't push it. You know, I say again to this to the guys last night, you know, the type of school I went to was a, a good school. And you know, the framing for six, it was an all boys school. The framing at 16 wasn't what you want to do with your life. It was, which universities are you applying to? Oh, okay, so I'm just going to university. Then I'm like, okay, that's, you know, because it's 16. I mean, I had no idea what I was doing at 18 to 20. But at 16 it's like, sure, okay, I'll apply to those ones. And then next minute you're at uni, next minute you're at a job. And then it was the earthquakes where it's. I always think it's, I think it's the talking head song, isn't it? You wake up one day in a beautiful House with a Beautiful Life. And you ask yourself, it's like, is that. That is just the most well worked out seller lyrics? Because it's like you literally get there and go out, why am I civil engineer wearing this?

Like, what happened? What happened?

Yeah.

Thinking you miss it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And for me, I, in retrospect, I'm glad I had that crisis early. Yeah. You know, you know, like really early. Yeah, yeah.

And I mean, how about you, Jason? Because it feels like you've been on, on this purpose path relatively early on. And I mean, like, you know, the Student Volunteer army was a, I guess, you know, seminal moment in the, in the post earthquake recovery for people who don't know what it's about. What it's about. I'm sure you can give us the detail, but it's essentially instead of students sort of grunting at each other and drinking beer, it was kind of like, hey, we could actually get together and we could sweep some liquefaction up and we could help fix some, you know, fix some things and get in our communities and do. So were you kind of like really purpose oriented before that or was that a moment that, you know, Jason kind of came alive like, all right, I can do some good here as a human rather than just not?

Yeah, it's a great question. I think a lot of us who were involved in the kind of early, early setup and the eventual leadership of the Student Volunteer army, we were all really involved with one or other of the student clubs. So it was kind of musoc, the Musical Theatre Society, which I was involved with. Sam Johnson was involved with kind of the Figurehead, and then the Law Society and Engineering Society. It was kind of a crew of us who had, were used to organizing things for people. But I think the whole purpose led work thing or just purpose led stuff, we kind of fell into it through the experiences that we had with the Student Volunteer army. You know, in four sentences. I'd say SVA was essentially after the quake or after any crisis, people step up and want to help. And often it's really hard to find ways for people to meaningfully help. And it doesn't really happen as well as it could for reason. Post earthquakes, we managed to figure out a way to make it easy for people to help. And lots of people showed up and helped for quite a long time. So had about 11,000 volunteers.

It's, you know, when I, I ran the Volunteer army foundation for. Would have been about three years after the earthquakes, three and a half years maybe, and just kind of Couldn't do it anymore. I'd just given too much of my soul. Stretched the pizza, pizza dough too thin. Just needed to fold it over a few times and find the center again. And that was the moment for me. I would have been 20, maybe 26, 27. And it was like, right, I could go and get a graduate position and you know, HR and some professional services company or I could try and do something else. And it was a pretty. I had a really good conversation with one of my close friends who I was living with at the time and it was like, I'm 27, I'd just broken up with my girlfriend, didn't have any kids or mortgage or anything. If there's ever a time to take a risk and take the plunge, it's now when I've got nothing really to lose. Yeah. And that was 10 years ago, you know, and it's, it's worked broadly. Still don't, still don't have a job. So.

I had breakfast in town this morning with. Well, he was sort of a client but he's a consultant to the same client so it's a bit murky. But yeah, we just like thought of having to go and get a job.

I'm just fundamentally unemployable. So sorry I have to be here at 8:00 every day.

Yeah.

What about when I don't want to. Yeah.

What if I want to walk the dog or go to the gym? Yeah, just I don't feel like working so much that day.

Yeah, it's, it's been really interesting, you know, coming to the point you were making earlier Tim, about like purpose led work and the just micro percentage of, of companies who were in the B Corp movement as one indicator of that. I've been living in Colorado for about two and a half years now and when I got to America it was a pretty intentional choice on my part to get out of Christchurch and figure out am I actually any good at anything or do I just know lots of people? And so being a fish out of water, not having any social capital, any of that sort of stuff and just trying to make it work in a new context was a real challenge and I've managed to make it work and I'm doing some cool stuff and I'm really happy there. And also I was just talking to my brother yesterday about the reality is the first 10 years of my career was very, very purpose led, very meaningful. I've been involved with some big, grunty, important stuff and that's set my benchmark of what Work can be in an atypical place. And now living in America, not having a similar context, not having the social capital, not being able to plug into the racial justice conversation in the same way that I've been able to down here in New Zealand, it's like, oh, I just need to accept that it's okay if my work doesn't feel super meaningful and purposeful all the time, because it's still meaningful and purposeful. The stuff that I'm doing, growing humans, doing, leadership development, it's very, very good stuff. It's just not quite at the same level. And then actually I've started to look at as a strength being, like, oh, in some ways I can kind of see the future of where America's going. Certainly on the racial justice conversation, it's like there's a lot of value that can be added by making yourself the fish out of water and just settling into a groove that isn't the right groove, but actually it can end up being the right groove. And I'm sort of rambling, but I think you get my point.

I think there's, I think there's, I mean, kudos to what you've done. I mean, I felt like I kind of did a bit the same when I moved to New Zealand. You know, I came over here with a backpack and I had, you know, I sent an email to a couple of. I, you know, I used to sell medical devices. I said, I think two emails to two different recruitment companies just saying, hey, I've just got 12 months experience with Johnson and Johnson. You know, am I employable if I get a visa? And they were like, yes, you will get a job here. And I was like, okay, I feel confident. But I didn't have a job for about the first three or four months. And I even was like, worst case scenario, I've got a working holiday visa. I'll just go and work on the ski fields or whatever. Just to get in and even just maybe do a year and then go, go back home. And then having to sort of immerse yourself in a, in a different culture and work out who's who and how does. It's interesting. But I think also, yeah, you bring that lens of, of another place. And I think just in general putting, I think that, you know, companies in general, people in general have just having that secondary input, whether it's a business coach or just having someone come into your company, just go, why do you do that? Or just, just having that different thing is something that I really noticed it being done Badly in the medical world, where you'd have, you know, I used to sell spinal instruments and equipment. And in New Zealand, spinal surgery is done by either a neurosurgeon or an orthopedic surgeon. In the us, they have people who are trained as spinal surgeons and they do some training as a neurosurgeon and some training as an orthopedic surgeon because the spine has got lots of complex nerves, but it's got bones. And so really, having someone who knows both is a really good idea. But in New Zealand, they would actively not be in the same room together and would not talk to each other. And it's like, well, wow, there's nothing that you could learn from each other in terms of your approaches and how you do stuff. Like maybe if you worked on some surgeries together, would you not get a better. Better outcome? Yeah, it's just so no good on you.

So, Leadership Lab, I guess we'll maybe go to Chris, what is Leadership Lab? And then we'll get to. How did Jason get involved with Leadership Lab? That probably would make. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Chris, Leadership Lab for people. Yeah. Living under a rock who don't know who you are. What do you do?

Yeah, yeah. Well, if you look us up, you'll see that we call ourselves a datility led impact consultancy. And so we basically train leaders for equity. That's what we do. Where it came from, I kind of referred to that before. So I'm sitting here at the university, we're kind of in a bit of a crisis because we've had an earthquake and there's no students, so we're kind of bankrupt, this kind of thing. Meanwhile, you know, 150 schools have got destroyed and two of the three hospitals and all the roads don't work sort of thing. So, you know, you can see where that was heading. And it took me about 12 months to have the courage, I suppose, to actually go, I can't stay here, I need to get out involved in it. And there's a bit of pride involved too. As I said before, you know, there's a lot of international support coming in, which is great and we appreciate that. But I was looking around at my colleagues and going, surely we've got something to offer. But then I realized that actually the New Zealand way generally is to be a little sole trader and do your own thing and run it from home, which is great, and all those freedoms that we talked about before, but the government won't look at you because you're too small, you know, and they Want to see a reputable company with a big platform and with redundancies just in case, you know, you get sick and, you know, all those kind of things. So what we, I guess I use the engineering side of problem solving to figure out is there a way we can have a business structure that on the one hand looks like a big consultancy to the government so it can do the tendering and the RFPs and you know, that kind of thing, but on the inside or the other side looked like a collective with minimal hierarchy, minimal, you know, red tape, no physical site, you know, working in the cloud, collegial, more of a collective. And, and if we could pull that off, then we could collectivize all these amazing people who are working from their bedrooms under one brand and sell that to the government. Pretty much that's what we've done. Yeah, yeah. And it's been really effective. And you know, those two sides are not a secret. We both sides know about the other side, but it's just the needs of the different things, you know, so we can probably. Two thirds of our work is with the government, you know, and we have pitched our work through the RFPs because you need to, if it's, you know, anything over 50 grand in New Zealand, you got to do through that system. So we can win contracts that way and we can look impressive and we've got case studies and all that kind of thing. But the way we actually work is kind of, it's kind of like, used to be like a student flat, you know, sit around the table and you'll chip in for food, you know, and you take turns cooking. Pretty much that idea scaled up now. So it's, it's really like most things are decided by consensus. There are two shareholders and four directors, but we hardly ever pull that card out. So it's generally, you know, you know, discussion base. Yeah. And not surprisingly what's happened is that people have shown up. Well, firstly, great people have shown up because they don't feel patronized, they don't want to work for a corporate where they get, you know, lose half the money to the overheads, you know, because we don't do that. So we've got all these amazing people want to sort of be part of this. You know, there is a reality when you're self employed that you do get isolated, you do get a wee bit sick of just your own voice, you know, that idea of colleagues and also the option of being able to be involved in a big project which you can't access when you, when you're by yourself, you know, because we can offer 20 people to the government for a project for five years, you know, and yeah, so there's a bunch of benefits there. And the result of all of that is, I would say almost totally all the time. Our people are just kind of the best versions of themselves. You know, they're feeling engaged because they're being treated with respect and because of that it's kind of obvious really, but we're very innovative, you know, and I love looking at our social media feed because I don't run it and I love looking at it going, oh, we're doing that now, you know, and. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you know, that comes from just empowering people to make good decisions and being aligned enough with our vision and values so they know what the boundaries are, but then just ripping into it. Yeah, so.

And I guess it gives you that sort of modularity as an organization to go, right? What's going to make up the best team to deliver this work? Yeah, that is. Yeah, like that, like that. Opportunities for people to come in. Yeah, no, it's super cool. It's not, I mean.

It'S not hugely common in the consultant, you know, I mean, I've got like a loose confederation of people that if, you know, if a client's like, hey, could you do this? And it's like, no, it's not me, but I know, I know a person. Yeah, I guess that, that's fairly common, but there's not much, there's not many. I mean you, I guess you're kind of like a, A bit more like a, you know, amoeba type organization. You've got people coming and going. It's. Yeah, it's a, just a cool concept, cool way of doing it, which is sort of non typical but clearly is working really well.

Yeah, I mean there's, I joke that people sort of. Because when they meet us, you know, generally people think we're happy people that go around hugging each other a lot, you know, but. And we are, but actually underneath it we've got really well thought through ways of working, you know, and we're actually real pedantic about the way we document things and the way we talk to each other, you know, and the way we meet and the way we make decisions, you know, so there's quite a lot of thought, you know, the hybrid you're talking about, you know, because we're not really just a network of people referring to each other. Yes, we are. We do have a shop front, you know, and the shop front is the thing that sells the work to the, the big huge work. You know, we've got 10 year projects with the government, so you can't do that as an individual. But also we haven't gone the way. Which is kind of the B corp conversation. We haven't gone with, well, let's just create a pyramid scheme and the two of us that own the company, you know, make lots of money from it.

Yeah, yeah. You know, and then subcontract out to the lowest. Which is a classic consulting model.

Yeah, yeah.

The partner or the principal turns up, gets the business on the, on the idea.

Oh yeah.

Actually it's the lowest paid minimum wage junior consultant who's crunching all the, all the numbers.

Yeah, yeah. And I think that although, you know, you're probably going to ask us later like why the B corp thing, but there is kind of like an altruistic values piece to why run a purpose their business. But the other thing too is it just makes sense from a way of attracting good people, you know, like there's no way Jace would have come and been part of Leadership Lab if he thought he's going to be condescended to and patronized, you know, so I, you know, I pride. Well, I have a lot of pride in their team, you know, and I show the team off because we've got an amazing team and people say, how do you get them to work with you? I'm like, treat them with respect. That's all you do, you know.

Crazy idea.

Yeah.

So just give us like a, maybe a quick example of the type of work that you've been doing. It's like, is it, is it in one particular area or is it pretty broad? Because you got this broad section, obviously you got, you know, decade long projects versus. Yeah, it's. But is there like a general theme around the work that you're. You're delivering?

Yeah, if you think, like, if you think sectors first, second and third. You know, we haven't really done much in the business sector. We just, we could but we haven't gone there. We've gone mainly into government. So we train government leaders in education, health and social services mainly. So the, and you know, and others, justice, the fire service, all that kind of thing. And then we also work in the community. So we've done a lot of work supporting like grassroots community leaders all around Christchurch. Because that's part of the way you rebuild a city is you, you help rebuild the human infrastructure, you know. And the, and we also, we got invited to help Queenstown during COVID when they also had major problems because no income, you know. And so we kind of were able to work with IWI down there and the local council to design a way to keep the human capital in the, in town so that when the tap came on again, you know the tourists came back, they weren't, they hadn't lost to their IP. Yeah, yeah. So there's some examples. I mean the 10 year one is a thing called Grow Waitaha which is.

A word for a project which has helped 150 schools get rebuilt in Christchurch. So the six, six companies in the alliance. Well there's four companies plus Ni Tahoe and Ministry of Education. So they are the clients and we're the providers. The four companies work together and yeah we're in year 10.

Rebuilding 150 schools. You know like we're talking billions of dollars of construction thing and you know the actual buildings themselves are the easy part and it's quite funny because of my ex engineer side.

Yeah, yeah well I know that side but the engineers actually come to us and go yeah we've got that covered. But how do you actually get the humans inside it to behave differently like the students but also the teachers and how do you engage the community and how do you figure out where the IWI fits in this and how do you acknowledge the land that the building's built on? You know they're all complex issues the that now we've got that sorted we can put some walls up. That's the easy part. Yeah, that's been an amazing privilege to sort of think of city wide vision. And thankfully the government at that stage was up for because they originally were going to go for the kind of let's employ four providers and make them compete with each other.

Right.

Which would have fragmented the system and we managed to convince them to yes, pick four people and we'd love to be one of them but make us work together.

Nice.

And let's have one city strategy so that we're actually all kind of cross pollinating ideas around 150 schools, you know.

Nice. Yeah. What a crazy idea.

Well and I would just building on that and extending it I'd say really the common thread that runs through all of leadership labs work now that Chris has talked about some sort of specific examples the kind of tagline is fostering collective responses to complex issues. So essentially if it's, if it's a big messy blurry thing that no one person group sector is responsible responsible for but we're all affected by it. I think leadership Lab's real capability is creating the conditions for a really diverse group of different people with competing interests to work together for collective benefit. And that's. Yeah, that's the magic source, I think.

Could you just write that down, Jase? I think that you just nailed it. We need to put that on the website.

Well, it was recorded for the podcast. You're sweet.

Yeah, yeah. I'll send you my fee for the marketing.

Marketing consultancy that I provided by just letting you talk.

Yeah, happy to help.

So I guess, yeah, let's get getting into the B corp stuff. So, I mean, obviously very, very impact led, you know, because I look at the B corp community, you know, broadly, there's a bunch of companies who, I think it's fair to say that they're just slightly less businesses than they could be because, you know, and they're a B corp and they don't have an impact business model. They don't, you know, they're not going out of their way to create true positive and social or environmental impact. They're just like a slightly better mousetrap version of what they could have been. And they may be starting that journey. And I'm cool with that because, like, for me, I think, you know, we need to get that, you know, businesses just be thinking differently. It's not just about profit maximization. It's not just about. I mean, I was talking to one of the guys at dinner last night. One of the, one of the jobs I had as I was finding my way out of Medical was in the property consultancy world post Quake here in Christchurch. And the managing director of the company just said to me, you know, the key thing you need to do as a general manager is sweat the asset. And I was like, sorry, what do you mean? So you've got to make sure that the guys are, you know, they're working, they get their utilization rates up, get their billable hours up and you're going to be fine. And I was like, am I managing like a Victorian mill? Because that's kind of what it feels like. And I'm not sure that that's going to ignite the best in human potential.

When it comes to people, if I'm.

Just thinking about utilization and billable hours. So I didn't, I didn't last very long.

There's.

But yeah, so, yeah, you guys clearly at the other end of the spectrum, it's like, you know, you're knocking out a whole bunch of impact and everything that you do is impact bound. So, yeah, B Corp. When, when and how did that Sort of pop up on the radar for you, Chris?

I mean I think I seen, seen I guess the stories around for a few years and I thought that's really interesting and followed some of the case studies and seen some of the things on socials and probably at a few conferences.

And yeah, I. So I guess it was on the wish list of that could be something really worthwhile. I guess the two main reasons to go for it eventually and, and it did take a. To be honest, it took a bit to convince the other senior leaders to actually go for it because we were a bit cynical but we didn't, we felt like we didn't need it for sales, like it wasn't going to be like going to increase our reputation and then we had to sell Beacle Peor and all that. We haven't actually had that benefit. We might get that in the future. But what. Because we'd started with three of us and now we're up to close to 60. You know, we're a typical startup where we'd kind of like made stuff up around the dinner table, you know, then wrote, then written the Google Doc to make it work. And then so, you know, we built all the systems from the ground. So we're very aware that we probably had lots and lots of gaps in our processes. And so the appeal of B Corp, it, one of the appeals was wouldn't it be great to have this rigorous process where we get asked these hard questions that we haven't even thought of asking ourselves and we'll use it as a bit of a self audit to better go, where's the gaps? You know, we're pretty confident we could, you know, by writing a few things down, we'd probably better pass the minimum standard at the time, you know, but it was more like, yeah, this could be almost like a. Yeah, a really robust business coaching experience. Yeah, that's the one side. The other side is it's odd when you're in New Zealand and you're a limited liability company, which we are, and yet you're not choosing to take a profit. So you know, there's no drawings for shareholders in our company. We just reinvest the money. But that, that kind of way of working purposely way of reinvesting money doesn't legally fit in New Zealand. You're either a company generally to make profit or you're a charitable trust, you know, or an incorporated society. And we kind of like that social enterprise thing in the middle. And I know, you know, people have tried to create a thing for that in New Zealand, but it doesn't exist still, you know, and so when we heard that, you know, B Corp is obviously that in the States and internationally, that's making sense, it was kind of like, yeah, I think we're a B.

Corp. Yeah, I mean, on the outside, look at it, it's like you guys are 100A B Corp. It's like you cut you in half and it's like, yeah, you are. You're kind of everything that, you know, B Corp's about in terms of. Yeah. You know, looking after your people, impact, focus. Yeah, it's like 100. And it's. Yeah, it's. It's quite common that sort of startupy companies will. Will look at B Corp as just a framework. And I think also, like you sort of mentioned just benchmarking ourselves, like we think we're doing a bunch of good, but yeah, yeah, you know, says who? Says us. Okay, well, let's, let's test that hypothesis and see. Um, I guess, that being said, and I think, you know, we were talking before we kicked into the main part of the podcast. I mean, it's fair to say that you guys are in some ways beyond B Corp. And I talk about. I don't talk about very often because most of the companies that, you know, I work with or I talk to, rooms I'm talking to, it's people who are kind of like, okay, what. What is this B Corp thing? And, you know, to your point, Chris, it's like, oh, I. I don't actually just have to maximize my profit. Like, say, like, again, like all the business schools and, you know, most advice you're probably getting from accountants, business support services, is like, yeah, just more profit, more profit, more profit. But you don't actually have to. And even if you do make a ton of profit, you don't have to take it for you as the owner, you, like, you say you could reinvest it in the team, or you could donate to charity, or you could reduce your cost, you know, reduce your prices. There's a ton of things that you could do that will be impactful. And I know for you guys that there was a few moments going, you know, there was like, the good, bad, and the ugly. But I think for you guys, you, you, and in terms of like, I guess what you do in the very nature of your business, looking at complex systems thinking and organizations and try to, you know, work through it, you, you, you definitely had some robust thoughts around the B Corp process. I'm gonna definitely say way more so than anyone else that I've come across. But that's because of, like I said, the nature of who you are, what you do. So, yeah, talk us through about like the good, bad and ugly of, of how you look see the B Corp process. I think, Jason, you're going to add some thoughts to this as well.

Jason?

Yeah, totally. I mean, so, you know, Tim, you know this. I'd been sort of aware of and slightly involved with the B Corp movement for quite a few years before Leadership Lab was looking at it. And quite bluntly, I, you know, I sat around the top table with Chris and the crew and said, I don't think we should do it. I don't think it's necessarily going to be helpful.

I have been critical in the past of B Corp how it the current standards and framework essentially celebrates companies for doing good, but they don't necessarily have to be good. And Leadership Lab is good and does good as well. And it was like, this is, it's not a comfortable fit and I couldn't see the value add. And I ended up coming around to the idea essentially because of what Chris was saying. It's like, yeah, we can fill in some gaps and at least benchmark and to be able to have a marker to say, yeah, look, we care about things and we can prove that we care about things and here's how.

But yeah, I mean, at a first pass through the B Corp framework, it was Chris and a couple of our other colleagues, Erica and Libby, did the sort of first run through and I picked up part of it and then ran with it from there. At a first pass through, just answering from the gut and not overreaching or anything, just going, yeah, fundamentally this is who we are. We got something like 176 points, which is a lot.

Yeah. And, and then you start to look at the, the burden we had, I think six impact business models at that point and the burden of compliance and reporting and all that sort of stuff was like, okay, yeah, we can, we can do this and we can write all the policies. Let's use this as an excuse to actually formalize all of the things that we've been informally doing a lot of it for, for a decade at this point. And then you start to look at some of the actual questions. So I went back and looked at this again because we did this all over a year ago. There's some of the questions, if we just take the workers impact area, for example, there's this question, is your company structured to benefit its employees in either of these ways? There's an ownership structure that provides significant equity. So like a co op type model or you provide high quality jobs or professional development with individuals to chronic barriers to employment.

And so, you know, you look at the nature of our team and we've always, I think Chris and Pete have always done a really good job of fostering a community that reflects the diversity of an equitable society that we're trying to move into in our country. So there are 60 of us and we're hyper, hyper diverse. And when you scratch into the detail of what B Corp means by individuals with chronic barriers to employment, you pretty quickly start talking about identifiable demographic features of people, which a lot of our people sort of could fit into those categories. So it's like, well, yeah, we do that. And when you say yes to that question, it's a gateway. It opens up a whole bunch of other questions and you start to get into the impact business model. So just following down through the thing, the further we got into this, it's like, okay, tell us about your workers from chronically underemployed populations. Do you provide above market wages and benefits? Tell us about all the things that you do for these people and who they are. And it gets down to the point where essentially they were asking us to provide a spreadsheet of information that shows the demographic breakdown of your people and why they are chronically underemployed. And it just starts to feel pretty grimy. And then we start to go, well, these are things that we know about our people because we're personally friends with them. But at no point has Leadership Lab ever said, hey, tell us about your gender identity, tell us about your racial background and ethnicity. And actually, it's not really legal to ask a lot of that stuff in New Zealand. How are we to provide a spreadsheet on this stuff? And so we got onto a really big sort of tailspin and ended up kicking it back to the directors and the strategy team. It's like, what do we do here? Because this just sort of really clashes the whole way that the questions in the framework were even being asked. Kind of fundamentally clashed with our values and our ethos and everything. And then we were going to get something like 45 points for having a hyper diverse team. It's like, oh, so, yeah, yeah, I.

Remember I put, There you go, Jaden.

I kind of put it back to the, to the, to the top team and was like, hey, you know, it feels like we could either chuck this whole thing in and just be like, look, actually now we, we don't want to do it. Or we could say, all right, we're going to go through it, we'll finish the process, but not even talk about being a B Corp. It's like we, you know, we could do this. And then Chris, I think it was Chris. Or maybe Pete came back and was like. Or the other option is we could just say no to that gateway question and not get points for things that we deserve to get points for, which is what we ended up doing. Crestwood, where were you?

Yeah, I mean, because, I mean, it was kind of exhilarating when we first did that and we opened up all these things and we scored this ridiculous high number of points and you know, I think it was reasonably record breaking, you know, in terms of the numbers. And, and then once we calmed down from thinking about that, we realized that there's no way you could actually go down this track because if you did, you know, you. Firstly, people would go, wow, that's a record breaking score. And then they say, why? And then you'd see and it'd be because of. We've got this incredibly beautifully diverse team and straight away it would look like value signaling, you know, that we basically, we've stacked our team to have diverse people so that we can get a.

Good score, which is tokenistically hired. And it's like, well, that's not even what we're about.

Yeah, yeah. And that's. Yeah, it's exactly the opposite of what we're about. So it actually felt, well, yeah. Unethical, you know, and you just weren't going to go there. So it was quite a strange thing to go back and say, do you employ people from, you know, diverse backgrounds, blah, blah, blah. No. Then we, we lied in the B Corp thing to close that down so that we. Yeah, yeah, but we still got 120 points or something, didn't we, Jace?

Or.

Yeah, 128 or something like that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm glad we did that because we. The other option was just drop the process at that point, you know, and I guess it made us start ask fundamental questions about B Corp and the roots of B Corp and you know, what. What lies there. And I think another thing that really helped us at that point was because we became very suspicious and the whole thing, if it's kind of set up like this, and I guess this kind of leads into where we're going this afternoon with the webinar, but with the new standards that were being written at the time, we had a. We started having A look at that. And we thought, yeah, a lot of people are asking the same questions that we are here and this is very hopeful.

Well, even, even taking a step back from there. So once, once we started getting a bit suspicious and looking at this thing a bit more critically and paying a lot more attention to the language and the questions, you know, we're a tetiriti based consultancy and there is one reference to indigenous peoples through the whole, through the whole impact assessment. It was like, well, that's, you know, for, for a framework that claims itself to be all of these sorts of things, that seems pretty unusual. And so the, where the conversation started going is, look, maybe we should directly with B Lab about this and say, hey, look, we care about this stuff. Look, we're getting some pretty high points and we've got some feedback on your thing. So that was what we decided is, okay, let's see if it was going to be me because I'm living in America. I was like, I'll see if I can open up a dialogue with some of the B Lab people. And starting to look into that process is when I saw, oh, actually the whole standards framework is up for review. It's already open for consultation. They'd done the first round that had closed, they'd done a second round which I think was open, but I didn't quite get my A into G in time to respond. But looking then at the new standards, it was like, oh, we're not the only ones who have been pretty critical of this thing. And actually the new version is taking a completely different shape. And the new conversation, that's a conversation that we want to be part of.

It's a reflection on having helped quite a few companies through the B Corp process. So the questions. So the question you were referring to was on the worker section. So for those of you new connecting to the podcast, learn, like, what even is B Corp? So the B Corp assessment looks at your business across currently five areas. So governance, workers, community, environment, and then customers. So the question you're referring to is under the workers section, where. Yeah, so, and again, just for clarity, there's two levels on the B Corp assessment. There's the operational questions. So as we operate this business, you know, do we give our employees access to holiday entitlement, sick leave, you know, pensions or superannuation or all those kinds of stuff. And the question you're referring to was an impact business model which is like, you know, are you going out of your way to create more social or environmental positive impact than you're required to do as a business, it's very uncommon that anyone actually even unlocks that question full stop because most companies are just like, we're just a company walking down the street. We employ people, you know, and we've not gone out of our way. One of the, I think one of the best examples that unfortunately they no longer are a B corp was Kilmatic Enterprises here in Christchurch. And where I'm getting to this. So Kilmatic Enterprises, they basically only employ people with intellectual disability because people with disability, I think it's like 85% unemployment rate. People with intellectual disability, it's practically impossible to get mainstream employment because people just don't even want to entertain the concepts, you know, too hard basket. So for them it's kind of like, you know, they unlock, they obviously unlock that impact business model because that's their whole shtick on the, on the community section. So the community section is the section that talks about, you know, make up a diversity of your team. And that is without doubt the most controversial section of the whole assessment. With companies I work with all across the world, I, I've had one, one guy who literally, we got to the second question on the community about diversity and he literally said, this shit's too woke for me. I'm out. I'm, I'm not completing the B corp. Just bill me for what we've done so far. I'm done. And then, you know, we have guys, you know, like leadership lab going, hey, no, this is like, this is wrong. It's like, it is the most tricky for me. I, I kind of just plead the fifth. I sit in the middle and go, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna meet you where you're at on your journey. I'm going to explain to you what the, you know, what the, what the bar is to meet the requirement. It's kind of up to you. If you're not comfortable, you know, like for, for surveying the team. You know, in New Zealand, the way you would do that would be you do an anonymous survey and just say, hey, can you just complete the survey and say, you know, how do you, you know, like, like if you were filling a form on a government website, it's like, you know, what age group are you in? Chris is possibly just about to push through one who knows, you know what I mean? But it's definitely.

It'S a really tricky area that I don't think people don't feel comfortable and they don't know what is best practice. And I guess this is why you guys exist. And I. I think in some, certainly in some companies, there's a feeling that, well, what, I just put a quota. Do I have to put a quota in now to just hire some people to get that tick? And, And I think, yeah, this is. And like, we're doing a webinar this afternoon on. On this kind of delve. Unfortunately, if you're listening to this podcast, you will have missed the webinar because the webinar is going out for the podcast. But we'll put links so you can go and find the webinar if you want to come look. But yeah, I'm. I'm just really curious as to where you see, because.

This one, it's just a really polarizing conversation that I don't. And it just seems to split people into. This shit's too woke or like, you know, the other extreme. And I see one. One thing in the. In some media the other day. So the Welsh. The Welsh government have now said that the, you know, Wales is too white. And you sort of go, well, hang on a minute. Like, the Welsh are the indigenous Britons of the island of Great Britain who were pushed to the west by the Romans and then the Saxons, like.

You hear that and you go, hang on a minute. Is that, you know, is. Is that racist or is that not? And I think that's where some people are kind of caught in this middle of, like, what do I do? You know, do I. Do I do quotas or do I just go, I'm going to ignore it and this is too hard and I don't want to. So, yeah, over to you.

I mean, I think we are going to unpack that in detail this afternoon so that. Just in case you're wondering, the title of the webinar is Honoring Tetirity, Integrating Aotearoa's values and the new B Corp standards. And. But, you know, definitely polarizing. You know, we had a Hikoi here two days ago, big protests, you know, that kind of thing.

Our.

Our experience is that by authentically going down the process of learning together, we've actually benefited hugely, both individually and collectively. I think our company is much stronger and, you know, and business more successful, too, by having taken the questions around identity and place and history and context really seriously, rather than just go, we make stuff and we sell stuff.

Yeah.

You know, and I think so. I mean, I don't believe in the woke label. I probably am work. If woke means be a good human, I'm definitely woke. And I think.

But, yeah, as a Business owner perspective, we've been more successful because we've taken it seriously.

It kind of makes me think back to what one of you was saying earlier about the limited liability company model in New Zealand compared to the charitable model. Tim, we've had this conversation lots of times over the years about social enterprise or purpose led business, or B Corp, whatever you want to call it. People think that there's this kind of spectrum where at one end you've got charitable and for good, and at the other end you've got company and for profit, which sometimes means bad. The reality is that charitable is a tax status.

And what you actually do is sort of irrelevant to your tax status. And there are a lot of the most successful, profitable companies in the world. I'm thinking you could point at Patagonia or Ben and Jerry's who actively stick their hand up and say we care about a whole bunch of things, about making the world better. And in the process of that, we also make money and we're a for profit business. But it's not about profit at the expense of everything. And it's just these really micro subtle nuances that I think you see in companies where the founders essentially saw a business opportunity or an opportunity to extract some value, generate some money and they've run with it and now they're at the point where they're kind of like, oh, well, I have to do this because I'm making this money and haven't really thought about the fact that there can be more than that as well. And I think that's that aha moment that you keep referring to. Tim. It's like it's not an either or. It doesn't have to be an either or.

Actually.

Everything is better and easier when it's not an either or.

But I think that that's. It feels like that's the modern world where particularly media dominated. It's like you're with us or you're against us. There's no. And the more I'm, you know, I've been doing this stuff for almost a decade. It's like it is not black and white. It is just a massive bit of gray in the middle with. I mean, the example I kind of use is, you know, the T shirt I'm wearing from Nick at ETIKO in Melbourne. It is Fair Trade B Corp. Certified organic. Like this is a better T shirt than me buying one from temu. Like that's, that's kind of like black and white. This is objectively better. I could get into the nuance of well, should I bought it from a New Zealand supplier rather than Australian. But you know, realistically it's all being made offshore anyway, so whether I'm, you know. But there's no fair trade B Corp T shirt supplier in New Zealand. So. Well, you know, you get into the weeds of that. But fundamentally this is a better T shirt than buying one from I don't know, H M or whatever it's called.

You know, totally as color.

Any of those color.

Yeah.

So there are some, some areas where it's like really clear. Yeah, just go do that. But the vast majority of it in the middle is.

But to your point as well, I remember there was a guy, it's, I think. Is it Chris Luxon's brother? Was it Matthew Luxon from the Impact Initiative?

I don't think they are brothers. They might be wider father, but I don't think they're brothers.

Yeah, but it was Matthew Luxon, wasn't it? From the Impact Initiative. So for people outside of New. And to be honest, for people, probably just us three would know what I'm talking about here, but there was this a government tender to, to look at the social enterprise sector in New Zealand and there were sort of two competing entities that ultimately got to the final two. Arkina who kind of got the gig and then this Impact initiative who didn't get it. But they, Matty, who was running it said hey, would you, would you give me some of the funding that you've got to run a little project that I, that I kind of wanted to run. And he, I remember this for me was my big aha moment which I'm getting to what you were just talking about, Jason. He surveyed all the charities and self identified social enterprises in New Zealand and said right, what, what do we need to create a flourishing, you know, impact economy? And there were four points. He came back, they said one was access to capital, one was access to markets, capability development. And.

I think, I can't remember the fourth one was, was a legal definition.

Yes.

And I was like, cool, that will make sense. And I think it was Steve Dukes from Pathway. He nailed it for me. He just sort of, he'd been sitting there listening to the whole thing and he said, he said to be honest, this is just all, this is all bollocks. He said, you know, we're sitting here with our holier than thou sacred cow. Look at us all trying to change the world. Aren't we amazing? You know, we should have all these special, special conditions and access to markets. He said, you know, what we're forgetting and to your point, you know, that spectrum, he said, you know, 95 of businesses in New Zealand are mum and dad businesses where they're, you know, looking after their kids. They're probably donating some money to charity, even if it's just like local sports team, you know.

Instead of building this new economy, we just need to transition the existing one. And that for me was like, yeah, I'm all in on B Corp. Because I was kind of like, yeah, social enterprise, this is where it's going to be. It's like. And for me that that's the key. It's like we've got all these people, you know, who are, who are maybe like Chris on his sliding doors moment, now the boss of the civil engineers going, I hate my job. I didn't never even want to be a civil engineer. I'm looking for more meaning and purpose in my life.

Wow.

Well, here's a way you can go and do it. Think about, you know, get involved. And I think that that's why I keep coming back to B Corp is kind of my theory of change. It's like, you know, yes, charity purpose led but it's always struggling, it's typically struggling for cash. And you know, it's got great people but under resourced, but you've got the business world with all this resource and all this connectivity and it's like bring the two together in the middle and have.

Yeah, yeah. And you're totally right. Firstly, you're right, Matthew is Chris's brother. Sorry Matt, if you're listening, I didn't realize that. Hello.

But, but seeing like, you know, I worked closely with ARC years around the social enterprise World Forum and other stuff and that was a big part of the conversation in sort of 2018, 2019 post World Forum was are we about creating better. Is Akino about creating better conditions for social enterprise to thrive in Aotearoa, New Zealand? Which is where you start getting to the heart of those four issues that they found through the report. Or is it more about creating positive impact in New Zealand through the tools of business, which is a subtle but important distinction. And where, where we kind of landed on this is right as I was exiting, but I was helping broker that conversation. Where we landed on is we would much rather see the whole economy shift towards impact than see an impact economy emerge next to or inside that. And so that shifted Akina's whole sort of direction of travel and focus. And also clarified for me, actually I'm more interested in the purpose led work thing and doing that better because that's kind of the next layer. But, but first people have got to go through the, through the aha moment.

So yeah, because that was the thing. I mean I always look at shout out to Jamie Cashmore from twice. So you know, he, he's almost like a, almost kind of do the original Akina model of. So they sell edible coffee cups. So yeah, it's a disruptive technology. You know, they, him and his dad made the machine that makes the cups. So it's, it's a new thing you're trying to sell. So they're a startup business, they're a family run business and they're doing it as a B corp. It's like that is the hardest thing you could do in the world, hands down. And so yeah, for me that, that was the moment like so we're going to try and create a world of those. So we're going to create a new startup telco company that's going to take on the three embedded telcos in New Zealand as a, as a startup social enterprise. Is that, is that going to be a thing? Or could we get one of those telcos to maybe look at bigger B Corp? You know that, that, yeah, that for me was kind of.

And as far as I'm concerned, the answer is yes.

Both or both. Yeah, totally. But you know, the likelihood of scaling, I mean, I suppose that you could argue 2 degrees is kind of partially in that, in that zone. Yeah, yeah.

If you go back to the start of this conversation or the start of this part of the conversation, Tim, when you're talking about the kind of the polarization risk, you know, I agree with you that I think.

Maybe Internet and algorithms, but maybe just human nature, we like to take sides and it's very tempting to choose A or B and then A fights B and B wins and then A wins. So it's a win lose kind of thing. And it's a, it's a seductive way. Seductive over simplistic way of thinking about things. And you know how Jay said earlier about, you know, our whole gig is around collective approaches to complex issues. We just create spaces where people can come in and sit there long enough without shouting so they actually can hear different perspectives, you know, because yeah, those kind of apparent polarizing issues both have some of the truth.

Yeah, exactly.

So. And that's where we get both and think, yeah, it is. Yeah. And it's. But you know, when you're passionate about things and we are too, it's easy to be fundamentalist about it and therefore everyone else is bad, you know, and it's kind of like trying to put that aside and say actually sitting underneath that is our humanity. And that's common. So let's come around as a bunch of humans and let's actually unpack this, because if it was easy to solve, we would have solved it already. It's complex. It's because it's like this. So we need to actually be a bit less simplistic, you know, and take a bit more time to actually unpack it.

Yeah, I guess that's the challenge of the modern age though, isn't it? And I guess you could both tell me if I'm wrong on my thought here, but, you know, from a psychological perspective, we like to put things in boxes because that makes it quick and easy for us to.

Oh, yeah, just deal with, you know.

Because I can't remember what the status for the number of, you know, imagery, the amount of imagery and ideas that are thrown at us on a daily basis, you know, and then you add on Instagram or Tick Tock on top of that, it's now probably the billions. So I guess we, we need to categorize things as good or bad, A or B, red or blue or whatever for ease of use. But and I guess also the other thing that we typically have the least of is time. And so we, we have polarized lack of time. So even just create. I mean, I remember I did a purpose workshop a few years ago and one of my recommendations, you know, is sort of like, after this, go and take half a day and just go, just think about your life. Am I on, you know, am I, Chris, you know, at my job going, actually, this is not me. And one lady emailed me afterwards, said I actually did that. And I told all my friends I were doing that and they all said I was mental. And it's like, so taking half a day off of your life to work out whether or not people can't even comprehend doing that, let alone, you know, creating space in a busy work environment where, like you say, it's just, you know, profit, profit, profit. More, more, more, more, more. Scale, scale, scale, scale, scale. What, we're going to take a week out and just find our common humanity? Yeah, sure, Chris, you know, when do I schedule that? Now, I think. So kudos to playing in that space.

There's a bit of, I mean, there is probably a. This might be a bit of a rabbit hole too, but there's a bit of psychology around codifying things and then simplifying it. So I agree with that. But I think it's also what you're describing a bit as a Western way of thinking, and that's actually learned, not born, you know, and you can trace back the roots there. If you think about indigenous ways of thinking, the more I have sat and listened and learned is, you know, indigenous way of thinking is everything's connected, not everything's disconnected and categorized, you know, so everything. So the idea of systems thinking is a very Western way of trying to codify indigenous thinking, you know. Yeah. And. And I guess, you know how I said this has been a rich journey for us as a company. This is part of what we've really got into is kind of slow it down long enough, take time. You know, we're going away tomorrow for two whole days with the team on Amara. We do that twice a year now. Does that cost. Yes. Does it cost time, money? Of course it does. But that's probably one of the key successes of a company has been prepared to do that and we call it W is sitting in a circle and unpacking things at length, you know, and doing it multiple times, you know.

Yeah.

And I think that.

Sorry, go J. I was just concerned. The value that comes out of that is much greater than the cost that's gone into it.

Yeah. Yeah. Rather than. Hey, guys, you got 30 minutes. Get in the meeting room. We need to solve a. Solve. Yeah. Which is how. Just. Yeah, it's how most. Most businesses run, isn't it? It's like, right, focus group, go 32nd. Yeah.

Yeah, it's. It's. Yeah, it's fascinating work that you're doing.

A classic example, Tim, is. And if you don't mind me jumping in there is because people might like to get their teeth into something. But, you know, we. We saw an opportunity. I told you earlier about Queenstown and, you know, Covid, and they were bleeding out, basically. So as listed on gets as a tender. No, it was a talent retention project in Queensland.

Retention key.

Talent retention. Yeah. And. But the. The western way of thinking about getting a job like that is you have to tell. It's called the proposed solution. You have to write down your proposed solution, and then they judge you based on your proposed solution to win the job. We were in a terrible irony here, because we knew that there might be a solution, but it certainly wasn't going to be us that was going to be imposing that. What would be required is a conversation between, you know, business owners and Queenstown Wanaka IWI community. And together they might be able to figure out about the solution. But how do you explain that to the client? That we don't have a solution? Yeah, you know, we could one if you like.

You pay us loads of money and yeah, there might not be a solution but yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah but.

We, but we actually, we do do that time. We actually, we could you now and make up something. But actually what we can do is we've got a really good process which is, you know, and it's, you know, tested. You can see what's happened in Christchurch. Now what we did in Christchurch won't work in Queenstown, but the process will be, you know, and I'll never forget, I mean there's many stories but one was the client, which was the council.

One of the things we said to them is we work with iwi, we always work with IWI because that's, this is place based. And they're like, oh, I'm not sure if there's much IWI around here. And we're like, don't worry, we've got connections. And so we got picked up from the airport by the Queenstown Lakes District Council and we said our first meeting of the day is around at the Kamatu's house. You can come with us if you like. And they oh, okay, cool. Never dunno who. Yep, cool. We turned up there and there was all these cars parked on the grass on the side of the road. And we went in and there was about 30 of the Mori community there with a lunch.

Welcoming us into Queenstown and also saying let's sit down and talk. And so we stayed there for the whole afternoon and we sat around and talked about it and it was kind of, you know, there was successes and there was some tears, there was some real pain and, and I kept looking across at the three council staff and they were just totally mind blown at this kind of conversation and had, didn't have, hadn't really thought about it, hadn't access it before. And that kind of set the scene for the next sort of 18 months. Two years of work of like, you know, there is, there is really good solutions. I mean humans are very good at putting it together but you need to actually be able to hear all the perspectives, you know.

Yeah.

And for clarity, we did bring half the food. We didn't just show up in the house.

Yeah, but we didn't expect like 30 people, did we?

No. You have fellas.

Yeah. And it was beautiful, you know, and that's the. So I guess you can see for us, you know, we're an Aotearoa based company. So for our belief, and this is what we're talking about this afternoon, is that utility of Waitangi is the reason why. That's the deal that we signed to be part of this place. And it's a welcome mat for everybody and it's the foundation for everything. And so we, we lean into that heavily, we honor that and we find it very successful.

And I'm yet to see a space that's truly fertility honoring that isn't genuinely better for everyone.

Nice, super, super cool work that you're doing, I think. Yeah, just, it's in the, you know, like I say, this modern sort of westernized world of just busy, busy, busy. Just pick a team, pick a team, pick a team. It's, it's really interesting work that you're doing and it's good to see that you're, you're getting, you know, you're making, making progress, you're, you're making some wins, you're, you're working with some, you know, organizations that will be, I mean, do you track the, the impact of the effect, you know, like working with, with that Queenstown region? Yes, there's the immediate process that you've run and maybe some outcomes, but, you know, the ripple effect that that's, that's had, I think that's always the really hard thing to track and whether even you should try and track it, it's just kind of, you know, you put stuff out there, you're not always going to know the impact, the long, long term impact of what you've done.

I mean, we do not track as in like every single person, every little, you know, like not that rigorously, but certainly in terms of impact stories. And we've stayed connected down there. You know, for example, we got invited back to the Mori Business Awards, which we didn't even know what it was. And that was last year. We went along and it's basically the Maori economy, you know, which is thriving. And it was like a black tie event, you know, celebrating these incredible things. And the person who was actually running the thing was one of the people in our program initially, you know, so, you know, he'd been fired from working for Skyline and Da Da Da and something, you know, whatever. So was that connected? Yeah, maybe. Were we the main reason? No, but we probably contributed along the.

Way, you know, and it's great. Like, I was just in Queenstown, Monica, two days ago and showed up to the client I'm working with, looked up and we're straight across the road from The Comato's business. So I just sort of wandered over and knocked on the door, had a big old quarter with his wife. He was away at the time, but I'll see him tomorrow at the normal. You know, I was just like, ah, this is just genuine relationships that have come out the back of business, which is not a new thing, you know.

Yeah.

And I think the other. Sorry to me probably trying to manage the time. But one last thing for me is.

You know that the, the idea of. Because we're talking about sort of different ways of thinking about business.

Right.

More purpose led list about polarities and polarization. But the other real big one is it doesn't have to be a win lose scenario in terms of competition. You know, you own a company, we own a company, it doesn't have to be you when we lose. And yet that's the kind of classic old school business way of thinking that we need to protect our ip, you know, and we have our market share, we need to have non disclosure agreements and all that stuff is complete. My bigger. Because, you know, and well, I gave that example earlier. The ministry of it, they were going to employ four companies to compete with each other. Right. Now that would have been a dog fight. Right. And it would have been bad for the client. Yeah. It would have been a race at the bottom. But and I'm not saying it was easy, but because we agreed that this would be a collective. All right. We actually had to go through the process of saying even though we are competitors, you know, through an alliance here, maybe we can all win and more particularly can the community win, you know. Yeah, yeah.

That's the real result that you're looking for.

Oh yeah. And I love challenging that sort of I would call an old school business way of thinking which is this is us and we need to protect us and grow us our kingdom, you know, that the collaborative collective impact thing that Jace talked about earlier is just a superior way of doing business.

It's, it's, it's tough to get out of that mindset though, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah.

And that's obviously, you know, part of the work that, that you guys are doing. Yeah, it's the, you know, I think for me, I mean, and that's the definition of purpose, you know, doing something bigger than you for, you know, shared benefit. And I think, you know, you look around, you know, there are some, there are some good examples that, you know, I use Volvo as a sort of a mainstream example who you know, invented the safety belt and then they, you know, they're the company known for safety. I'm sure their IP lawyer was having kittens when the company's like, no, we're going to share that with all the other car companies because why would we want more people dying? And then just a couple of years ago, they did another big. They released all the safety data on what, because statistically, women were more likely to be more harmed in a, in a car crash than a male. So they had done a whole bunch of research on that. You know, what is the biomechanics. What's. Is it seat positions? You know, what is it? They shared that data with the rest of the car industry. So yeah, examples like that. It's just like, so we, you can do it. And it's connecting to that feeling of meaning. It's like, well, does that feel really good as a company having done that, or would you be kind of happy knowing that actually a load of people died and we could have stopped that? I think sometimes when it's human, human life or the, or the planet involved, it's kind of maybe a slightly easier. It's, it's. For me, it's. What is it? You know, the, the hard.

The hard right decision or the easy wrong? It's kind of like the easy wrong would be keep the IP sit on it. Yeah. Maybe we'll release it in 10 years once we've sold more cars than Ford or whatever.

But.

And I think what you're creating is that opportunity for that dialogue, for that space, you know, for individuals, corporations, entities to go, well, hang on, let's, let's actually work through this and listen to all the views around it rather than just going, well, the obvious option is this. Yeah.

And you know, side note, what happened in Queenstown was, you know, tender. So we won and someone got second and third and fourth. You know, that's how it works.

Yeah.

But the client quietly said to us within the first month, we'll tell you who's second and third, just in case, you know, there's any way. And. And they ended up being part of the project, you know, just like you said earlier. Jason, another one, you know. You know, and yeah, I mean that's a real win. Win for Queenstown, isn't it? You know.

Yeah.

And we didn't lose.

Yeah. Yeah. I think that's, that's the difference between a purpose driven organization and, and not though, is, is the out. Like I said, the outcome is bigger than us getting the, getting the client. It's like, you know, the outcome. Well, is this better for, for Queenstown and actually what this community needs right now. Or do we win this contract and we, we get to buy some new cars which would be possibly the traditional consulting.

Some of those bigger consulting companies clearly not buying cars. They're just putting the money. Who knows?

I like hearing you talk about purpose like that because it makes me think. I've said a million times to lots of different clients and places like if you think about the roots of what an organization is, any company, any organization, it's just a group of people choosing to work together for collective benefit and establishing what that collective benefit is and the back and forth and whatever, we've kind of reduced that down to contracts and salaries and payments. And then we fight and try and sweat the assets to steal your wonderfully disgusting term from before. It's like, it's like, no, no, no. What's the value we're trying to create here? And that's really the nature of the conversation.

Yeah, that's fantastic.

So much easier.

Yeah, yeah. There was one of the, the UK drag, the Dragons Den, you know, Shark Tank, that he's a Duncan Valentine. I mean he, I'm sure he's a ruthless business guy, but one saying he had was, you know, business isn't complicated, people make it complicated. And he saw that was such a good. I actually put that at the top of my terms and conditions. It's like there's a bunch of T's and C's like a lawyer said I kind of have to do. But I mean it's interesting. I'm trying to write three books badly because you know, Labrador chasing down all the cars off the porch, but doing a bunch of research on the sort of the history of organizational purpose. And it's interesting when you look, you know, in the western world, the rise of the Quaker led businesses where you know, they didn't have contracts because my word is God's word, therefore what I say to you is, is the truth and we don't need complexity and I will pay that. You know, I will just pay the bill and you know that I will because that social contract is then it's really interesting how, yeah we've kind of, even in our own culture we've had connections and that sense of community. You know, I often talk about, you know, people with surnames like Glover or Shoemaker or Fletcher or Cooper. It's like, you know, you were named after the contribution you made to the community. And we know if you make a bad pair of shoes, I know where you live. So you can't you can't sell me a cheap pair made by some kids in, you know, Southeast Asia, because I'm gonna know, you know, and I'm not saying that labor conditions and environmental impact of shoemakers in the medieval era was amazing, but in terms of that social contract in connection to, you know, it's not. It's not long before you'll run out of town if you're making shonky shoes every day and you're charging stupid amounts of worth money for it. So I think a lot of this stuff is stuff, and I think that's for me, I'm. I'm early on. On any journey of connection, really, to true learning and curiosity around indigenous business principles and. And thought. But it just seems that we've. Even if you look again, you know, just through the western philosophy, philosophical legend, like Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, we've kind of known these basic principles. And so for me, it feels like it is innate to us at some level. We've just been sold this other way of doing it, which taps into a lot of psychological areas.

That we can. We can change it. And you guys are doing that.

So, yeah, what you just said is absolutely true. And, you know, we're all indigenous somewhere.

Yeah.

And I think it comes back to that, you know, we've got. That all got back to humanity, and we're all just trying to get to 80, 90, maybe 100 if we're lucky, and just go, you know, that was a bit of fun. And I had a couple of good ski days and I did some. I did some good with some good fellas and some good, you know, good ladies, and it was a great all time. And look at that, you know, I've left the world a better place. And I think, you know, that's really what everyone's looking for. But they just. They get sent down these, you know, misdirected roads and they stay as civil engineers making.

Manhole covers.

Every time I look at a manhole cover, I'm gonna go, is that Chris's? Did Chris jump on it?

It's actually a really cool art project. I think it came out in New York, where they roll ink on manhole covers and then press them onto T shirts and sell the T shirts.

Oh, I like, hey, this could be an impact love side hustle. I can hook you. Hook you up with Nick from Etiko for the T shirts.

Yeah.

Fantastic. Well, I guess we'll just finish off. What's the. What's the plans for the future? You know, you guys are kicking some goals. You're you know, it feels like you're a bit stealthy, you know, you're kind of a little bit under the radar. You're not sort of mainstream. You know, what's, you know, you've obviously got Jason in hanging out in the States.

Yeah.

What's. What's the, what's the future look like for the Impact Lab or Leadership Lab. Sorry, Leadership Lab. Sorry.

Yeah. Yeah, that's cool. I mean, Impact Lab, pretty cool, too. But we're not. We're not then.

Sorry.

That's right.

All the talk about Impact.

Yeah. I mean, to be honest with you, the. Tim.

You know, we're. We're probably in a. With many chapters in our company, but we're in a chapter transition here because of the current government and what they believe. And that's probably a bit polarizing to say that, but because they're a client or, you know, of ours, things are changing there a lot for us. And so we're, we're.

Considering kind of what markets and what audiences we want to work with over the next few while. And so pivot would be that tried and true word. Yeah. Certainly open to working with government, but probably philosophically don't agree with them. So. But, you know, philanthropic world is big for us too. And, and as I said at the beginning, we haven't really leaned to the business side, and Jason and I are very excited about this new B Corp. Standards. We're looking forward to the webinar this afternoon because it feels like finally we. We've got a, like a bit of a lever to actually encourage our colleagues and companies in New Zealand to actually take context seriously, you know, and it's not a, it's not a lose, lose, woke kind of thing. It's actually just a really holistic way of honoring people in place, you know, and so I, you know, if we can do some more work in that area, I think we'd be pretty stoked as well.

Yeah, I just think on that, the, the lose loose thing, it's so easy for conversations to just be zoomed in into a really short time period. And actually, really, I think all we're doing is just zooming out and going, okay, first, let's be aware of what's come before us, which is a lot of people just aren't aware of what's come before us. It's like, so let's, let's start there, but then also let's start to turn a. Look, where do we want to be? Where do we want to be? And where do we want to be. And then what's our role in that and how can we get moving together?

That's really what it's about. But, yeah, I really think that the.

You know, Leadership Lab is a pretty unusual company in New Zealand and it shouldn't be. So we're just trying to make it easier for more people to do similar sort of stuff, but in their own way, in their own places, with their own people.

Yeah. And don't underestimate the value and the work that you're doing there because, you know, people need to see, you know, it's the people like you guys who are doing this and proving that it can be done. You're the. That, you know, you're the pathfinders. You're. You're the ones. It can, it can be done differently. Look, and it works. Go give it a go. So, yeah, like, kudos to. Thanks to what?

Appreciate it.

Yeah, man. Well, let's, let's call it quits there because we've got a short turnaround back onto our webinar, which is going to be super cool. Looking forward to it. But, yeah, look, just, I mean, look, if, if listening to what Chris and Jason are up to has inspired you, go and check out Leadership Lab, I'm guessing, Yep. You guys are Both active on LinkedIn. We'll put links in the show notes. Go, go. If you're in the Colorado region or I guess somewhere on that sort of west coast region, get, get in touch with Jason.

Yeah, look me up.

Have a, have a cover. And yeah, just if, if this is, you know, just piqued your interest, go and just give them a call. Say, hey, what do we, what do we start? What do we do? But, yeah, thanks, guys. Really, really love the conversation. And yeah, we'll go get some lunch and then we're back on Zoom.

Awesome. I will add one thing quickly. Chris, Tim. Well, both of you actually just, you know, Leadership Lab moving forward. It's like we've done a lot of stuff in, in house, working sort of behind closed doors. And what we're learning a lot through the, through the conversations that have been bubbling away in public over the last few weeks is there are a lot of just individual people out there who want to be involved in some conversations like this. So the Leadership Lab is. This is what we're doing the next couple of days is turning our attention to how can we make some opportunities a bit more open to individual members of the public who care about things, particularly relating to Te Tiriti and honoring it. So, yeah, if you're interested in that sort of stuff. Two really useful resources. First is there's a podcast series that one of our colleagues has made in partnership with Plains FM called Become Two of Our colleagues. Sorry. Called Becoming Tangata Tiriti. You'll find it anywhere that you find anything. It's part of Redo Conversations, which is Leadership Live thing. And the second one is jump on the website, scroll to the very bottom. Sign up for the newsletter, because we're going to start announcing public facing things, and we'd love to see anyone in there who cares about these things.

Fantastic. Too easy. All right, team, thanks, Jason. Thank you so much.

Thanks.

Catch you in a bit.

Thanks, Tim. Pleasure bar. Bye.