This content was created by Tim Draper. This content was uploaded by Tim Draper. This is a YouTube talk titled "What Gets in the Way of Social Impact | Flynn Coleman" (recorded/posted 2016-06-01). The excerpt is a live presentation/workshop led by Flynn Coleman with audience interaction (an unidentified audience member labeled SPEAKER B). The discussion catalogs barriers to making social impact—worries, money, self-doubt, technology and adoption, bureaucracy/government, distance, lack of connections, co-founder issues, laziness, etc.—and Coleman shares her background as an international human-rights and genocide-prevention lawyer (work with satellite imagery, the UN, The Hague), stories from Haiti and a primate rescue, and ties creativity, mindfulness, and innovation to entrepreneurship and access to justice.
Chapters
So before we even get into it, so what gets in the way of changing the world or making a difference or making an impact? So just shout it out. What gets in the way?
Worries.
Worry.
Money.
Money.
Yourself sometimes.
Yourself. Your cell phone?
Yeah.
Yeah, cell phone, right, exactly. Very important point. We could do a whole discussion on that. Did you say yourself sometimes?
Yes.
Yes, awesome.
Skills.
Skill.
Your office.
Technology. Doubt, regulation, bureaucracy. What else?
Naysayers.
The haters. The haters, yeah, I know, the haters. Check out Brené Brown's work on the haters. She has a lot to say about— she says, you're not the jackass whisperer. So that's a great point. Naysayers, yes. And who, of course, is the biggest naysayer of all? Yourself. Right? Did someone else say something?
Co-founder.
Your co-founder. OK, that could get awkward. I'm not sure what the makeup of this room is. OK, co-founder. And that's a joke he said. Who else? Did someone else say something?
Technology.
Technology or the lack of?
Yeah.
Okay, great. Yeah, great point. We're going to talk about that. Lack of connection. Lack of connection? And do you mean connection between people, networks?
Yeah.
Yeah, networks. Great point. Which is probably why you're here.
Government.
Did you say drama?
No, government.
Government. Yes, like government regulation, bureaucracy, red tape. Yes. Say that again. Drugs. Okay, drugs. I'll take it. I'll take it. Distance, like between people.
Yeah, for instance, we had an earthquake in my country the last month.
Are you from Ecuador?
I'm from Ecuador, so it was hard to help them. I like I send money and of course some donations. It was hard for me not being there, so I couldn't help the people there.
So distance was a Yeah, I really feel for you. That was a— yeah, yeah, exactly, distance. So, and that's of course physical distance, emotional distance, just distance not knowing what to do, and that's a perfect example. Well, I wish you and your family and community well.
Yeah.
Anyone else? Bills and rents. Say that again? Bills and rents. Yeah, bills and rent. Yeah, hello, San Francisco, true. Anyone else?
Adoption.
Adoption?
New technology.
Adoption of new technology, right. Yeah, OK, so this is great. This could be a whole talk in and of itself. Anyone else?
Laziness.
Laziness, yes. Perfect segue into what I was going to say, which is of course laziness and cynicism that it can't even be done, right? So which brings me to one of my favorites by the great Bill Murray. I won't be impressed with technology until I can download food. Right? So among all the things you said, this idea of laziness or just it can't be done. There's so many barriers. And of course, interestingly, we live in a town where it's like almost possible to download food with Uber Eats and Munchery and all that. But exactly, there's so many things that get in the way. As we can see, you know, there's so many things that get in the way. Not only that, but this idea, you know, has anyone ever thought, well, there's no possible way I could actually make a difference, so why even bother, right? You know, we can't just, you know, quit our jobs and become Mother Teresa. In fact, Mother Teresa is even having some issues with sainthood, right? So if Mother Teresa is even getting flak, like, how are the rest of us supposed to even, you know, handle that? So there's a million different things that get in the way, and obviously we can all relate to that. And it all has to do with this, like you said, this distance, this lack of connection, this idea that I actually can't make a difference. And we're going to talk about that. So to kind of keep moving forward, I'm going to share a little bit of my story to give us some background and some things to work with when we're talking about this idea of changing the world through innovation, technology, and entrepreneurship and making an impact. Bless you. So in the introduction it was said, so I'm an international human rights lawyer. I'm a CEO and a founder. And I also teach mindfulness, creativity, and innovation. And my first job in the field was 15 years ago. And just as a little bit of a backdrop, I— we were looking at, my team and I at the Genocide Prevention Center, so I was a war crimes and a genocide attorney for a long time, and we were looking at ways to use technological advances for humanitarian use. Now 15 years ago that meant satellite imagery. So I was trained in the satellite imagery and we were looking at things like for evidence of genocide or mass graves using Russian satellite imagery, you know, how could we find a way to see what was going on? And I actually recently gave a TEDx talk basically that kind of talks about this same story, but what I ended up finding when I was looking at this intersection of human rights and technology 15 years ago, and again, this was cutting-edge technology at the time, to be able to use these satellites to see what was happening on the ground, even when we succeeded and we could see, let's say, evidence of genocide or burnt-out village or mass graves using this very, right, so if it wasn't a cloudy day and we could get access to the satellites and figure out how to negotiate with the Russians to get them done, and we could see the images, and let's say we succeeded and could use technology, well, what happened? Even when I could see, everyone was already dead and gone by the time we succeeded in seeing these things. So even at this, you know, using cutting-edge technology to see what was happening, we were already too late. We were already too late. It had already happened. All we could do was kind of confirm what had happened. So I went on to work kind of at this intersection of technology, social impact, human rights, and entrepreneurship. And I went on to— I was at the UN. I worked in The Hague for a while. I did a lot of the appeals for the Rwanda and the Yugoslavia atrocities. I worked in Europe. I worked with the UN. I worked at a law firm as well doing a lot of anti-bribery work. And I ended up kind of understanding that there are so many different ways that we can make an impact. And even if we think we are, sometimes we're there too late. or sometimes it's not enough, or sometimes it's not going to work. And interestingly, along the way, I found some ways that it can work, and I realized something kind of very simple. So these are 2 pictures of my travels and experience I've had. On the one side here, you can see these little girls. This is taken in Haiti, and there was an earthquake in Haiti in 2010, and I am not an engineer, and I'm not a doctor, so I couldn't cure cholera, I couldn't rebuild the buildings, But I wanted to do something. And I couldn't do those things, but what I could do was throw a party. So, you know, we realized that these kids had no chance to have holidays, no birthdays, no Christmas, no nothing, because they were so overcome with kind of the rebuilding of their country. So a bunch of volunteers led by a local person from Haiti went down there and we kind of took over a school and we brought all these gifts from all our family and friends and we threw them a party. So in the midst of this kind of overwhelming idea that there was nothing we could do, there was something we could do. I could buy a plane ticket, I could fly down there with some presents, and we could throw a party. We could give them just a little glimpse of what it would feel like to have a holiday. Right? So just because I couldn't do most things didn't mean I couldn't do something. And then this other picture over here, this is my friend Nico in Europe's only primate rescue sanctuary. And I'm not Jane Goodall, I'm not a primatologist, but I can, you know, book a ticket to Spain, and I could make toys for these chimps. And these were all kind of Primates that had been rescued from horrible situations. And I wasn't a primatologist, but I could go there and learn from them. And of course, you know, the moral of the story is always you learn so much— you get back so much more than you give. So the whole idea is just because you can't do everything doesn't mean you can't creatively come up with a way to do something. And if everyone did that little something, like, how much better off would we be? Because so often, and we can all relate, you know, I can't— well, I want to build a profitable company. I couldn't possibly do this. Well, you can. You know, no one can do everything, but that doesn't mean you can't do something. And after that, I went on, I wrote a dissertation on this idea of access to justice through innovations in education and empowerment. So innovation and creativity and mindfulness for me are all kind of one and the same. And it's this idea of creatively finding solutions to problems. And of course, what we're talking about when we talk about impact are, you know, we're talking about the kind of toughest problems in the world to solve. And again, going back to the beginning, these are the very same skills that are going to make you kind of a kick-ass entrepreneur. These problem-solving skills are kind of what it takes to also build a profitable business. So it's the same thing. And what I found when— oops, wrong button. When I found that I was doing this work is kind of what this— what the CEO of Evernote, Phil Libin, said, which is there's lots of bad reasons to start a company, but there's only one good legitimate reason, and I think you know what it is. It's to change the world. Right? So we find a lot of bad reasons, a lot of shitty reasons to do a lot of things, but there is one good reason to change the world. And it's interesting because Gilbraith says something similar, which is all of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common. It was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This and not much else is the essence of leadership. So when you're thinking about building your company, your startup, your co-founder, what you're gonna do, think about, well, what is the major anxiety or issue or problem, you know, or pain points for your people in your time, however that is, however you want to define that. And that's where you kind of get to the crux of, yes, the business you want to start, the money you want to raise, but also who you want to be. Because the truth is, and I've learned this the easy and the hard way, is that there's no such thing as having a personal life and a professional life. There really is no delineation there. Anything, any kind of misery or unhappiness or frustration you're feeling in one sphere of your life is going to carry over. to the others. So figuring out how to start your business, how to launch your business, how to raise money is akin to figuring out who you want to be and what you want to do. We're going to talk about that.
