Driving Change

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Books Driving Change: Sharath Jeevan and Intrinsic Mar 23, 2022

Matthew Bishop (MB): Hello, this is Matthew Bishop with Books Driving Change. And today I'm talking with Sharath Jeevan, who is the author of Intrinsic: A Manifesto to Reignite Our Inner Drive. Sharath is a social entrepreneur who came out of the business world, consulting world, and helped launch STIR Education -- which is an organization that helps teachers improve their performance through their better motivation and sharing of insights -- he can elaborate on that -- in many countries, including India and Indonesia, and some parts of Africa. And now he runs Intrinsic Labs, which we'll talk a bit about as well, I hope.

The audience for this show, Sharath, is people who are conscious of this crisis that we've been living through in the pandemic, [and how that] has revealed a need for greater public service to re-engage people with talent and insight and leadership capacity into the public realm of public service. And I wondered if you could say in a sentence for them -- why they should read your book?

Sharath Jeevan (SJ): Thanks Matthew, real pleasure to be on the show. And I think it's so important for those of us leading change in public service to know what deeply motivates ourselves as individuals and leaders. And that idea of really trying to find lasting motivation from within for ourselves, really with a view that that can help us motivate the people around us -- our teams, if we've got teams in our work, but also, of course, as citizens. Our work is ultimately geared towards that, and that applies, whether we're public servants, or we're political leaders, or trying to affect change, in the social sector, or nonprofit sector, etc. And these are universal themes the book talks about.

MB: In the book, you set out in a powerful way a number of the trends that have caused many people to lose touch with what it is that motivates them from within and to be driven by external factors - as to what you call “extrinsic”. To the extent that you really feel there's a huge crisis in the world of loss of connection with ourselves, and that that's underlying many of the issues that emerge all over the place, in different aspects of life, and is proving dysfunctional in many parts of the world. But could you just spell that out for us? What is the key problem that you think we need to solve at this point and that Intrinsic is setting out to solve as a book?

SJ: Yes, I think it's moving our dial, that motivational dial, [away] from extrinsic or external factors. So for example, in the world of work, we would think a lot about pay, about status, how fancy our job title is, how fancy our office is. These are critical things and we're not saying they're not important -- many people in the world don't have them, we need to make sure they do. But for those of us who do have those, they have a diminishing effect over time. That was a ceiling effect.

I was talking to a trader in the City of London who got a £21.5 million bonus for the year. And his first reaction when his boss told him the news was, I had to work harder, because I know that someone else down the corridor got more than me. So that idea that there's never enough in some of these things, but we can keep chasing them, [although] that won't give us fulfillment, happiness, and actually won't give us success in the long term either. What we've got to do is move that motivational belt inwards to thinking about how we can really do what we do -- particularly in public service, because it's genuinely fulfilling, motivating, and rewarding.

It's a bit like driving an electric car compared to a car driving on heavy diesel -- it should feel enjoyable in its own right. And we know the key pillars of intrinsic motivation are around “purpose” -- that sense of how work helps and serves others -- and “autonomy” -- that sense of us being in control of our destiny, as public policy leaders. And finally, becoming a “master” -- or becoming a better and better leader over time. We never get to perfection, but we're getting and developing and growing. So purpose, autonomy and mastery are key to us really moving that dial inwards. And we know that it's much more likely to lead us to be happy, fulfilled, and successful.

MB: One of the things you do very well in the book is marshall a lot of academic research that's supportive of your claim on intrinsic motivation. And I think maybe "purpose" in particular has become one of those buzzwords that I think everyone is talking about -- a lot of company leaders, a lot of political people, saying we need to have purpose, clear and everything. Just what is the evidence that purpose matters and can be a game changer? And, with a slightly cynical hat on, how do we tell real purpose, real change making purpose, from the sort of bullshit PR purpose that a lot of people might be inclined to say [they have], if they're under pressure, in these leadership roles at the moment to try and sign sound appealing to millennials?

SJ: I think that you put the nail right on the head. A lot of problems we are having with this purpose discussion is that it has been taken to this PR territory, and thousands of staff are subject to these kinds of corporate workshops, or government workshops, where they're bombarded with purpose statements from the company and so on.

What I tried to look at on "purpose" was look at that really simple definition. I was trying to define it from first principles around just how what we do helps and serves others -- take away all the airy fairy language and so on. The challenge, I think, is that actually organizations are getting better and better, to be absolutely fair, on defining organizational purpose -- why that company, or how it helps and serves others. I don't think we've yet cracked the question of how do we, as an individual leader in public service, contribute to that purpose. So what tends to happen is we get hired into a job, let's say a government somewhere, civil service, and I'll be honest, [you] seem like a robot who's there to fulfill the purpose of the government department or division. The challenge though I think is, in today's world, especially with younger workers, we ourselves want to feel a sense of a personal mission statement. And by that, what is our own North Star?

Let me just give you mine as an example: I help organizations and leaders to reignite inner drive by writing, coaching, consulting. So I help organizations and leaders to reignite inner drive by writing, coaching, consulting -- just a very, very simple 15-word statement. But it's a really helpful North Star that helps me remember why I'm doing what I do. And if I joined an organization -- I work for myself now, but I do write, consult for one, as you mentioned -- the question I'm asking is how am I contributing to that organization's purpose statement? But also, how are they contributing to mine? How are they helping me achieve mine? And when I think both things are in harmony, we've got a great marriage between an employee and an organization. I think we have a great motivational deal in place. But the temptation is we tend to forget the individual and forget that we all need that for ourselves as much as needed for our organizations.

MB: And then you also talk about "autonomy" and "masteries". What's the key issue today with autonomy, and what do you mean by that?

SJ: If you look at political life today, I'd argue we're in a really difficult autonomy situation, one where we've got two extremes. I talked about some of the research in the book about political leadership where you can have the extreme. For example in the U.S., perhaps both houses where it's almost like individual lawmakers -- it's Clint Eastwood extreme, or if you like, a Lone Ranger type behavior. But the other extreme where when you're an MPs, often in the U.K., they are often micromanaged. And how do you have the right balance between these two things is important. In enough autonomy you're representing a genuine community of constituencies for your elected office. But also, you also need to make sure that you are adhering to the broad direction of the party that you were being elected to join. How do you find that balancing act? That's a key piece. So it can't be either extreme. It can't be micromanagement, nor can it be a complete free for all. How do you negotiate between is a key idea in the book.

MB: But one of the things you generally observe is the people not feeling very much autonomy at work in that sense.

SJ: Absolutely. So I was talking, for example, about teachers in the book, and we have record numbers of teachers leaving every month. In the U.S., 30,000, 40,000, 50,000 teachers a month leave the profession. In the U.K. 40% of teachers want to leave. It's not because they don't enjoy teaching anymore. It's because they feel like they are being micromanaged. And their head teachers, their leaders in the school system are asking, What would Ofsted say, rather than what's the right thing to do for my school, my community. So they feel often like a pawn on a very big chessboard and unable to exert their own professional judgment and discretion. That's a really killer, killer blow for motivation.

MB: And that's a problem across government do you find in particular?

SJ: I think very much. So I spent quite a lot of time talking to lawmakers in a lot of different countries, in the emerging world and the developed world. And that sense of not being able to control their own destiny -- for example, many of them wanted to be in the “for one nation tradition” where they really weren't genuinely supporting the whole country. They feel more and more like they're being held to factions as well.

MB: And "mastery" is the third concept. So you have purpose, autonomy, and mastery. Specialization has been a huge theme -- to the extent that we now have lots of books about how dangerous silos are. Because we've all become so specialized, we don't really know how to reach out across silos and think in a joined up way in decision making. But what do you mean by mastery? You mean something very different to that.

SJ: I talk in the book about the “10,000 hour rule”, and this idea that a lot of the mastery discussions have been about technical prowess. And there's a lot of evidence that's true in technical domains, but a lot of the future of modern jobs today, they thrive because of the human skills. As a civil servant, for example, you've got to know how to develop policy and legislation. But you've also got to know how to influence ministers, how to work with colleagues, how to work with different kinds of disciplines.

I look at the COVID response, for example, those human skills are much harder to subject to simple 10,000 hour rules. It's much more of the broader human aspects of our work. And so how do we codify those -- what I call the "order essentials of mastery" -- and try to make them something [people] actually actively want to work on, and become better and better at? They're often things that are actually not on a public servant's job description, that actually are the magic of the job these days. And how do you make them explicit? How do you codify them? And how do you find a systematic way of improving them, and also find people who can nurture your skills as you progress in your careers?

MB: So give us an example of where you've seen a different approach be applied, [one] that's really moved away from that sort of 10,000 hour rule approach, to something more holistic.

SJ: Giving examples from my own life with STIR Education. I had a finance director who was fantastic. And she was really, really good at making sure we had good reliable management accounts every month. The challenge is that as we became bigger as an organization, that actually a lot of her role was shifting from that technical aspect she was very comfortable into influencing our staff, or running our program for teachers -- for them to spend money better, to know how to use resources better, to make sure they felt more comfortable in terms of financial literacy, and be able to use the numbers themselves to make intelligent decisions. So we did a lot to try and break barriers down. Simple things, like she where she sat in the office. Often, finance tends to have their own little cubicle or room because they feel that what they've got is confidential information. So I said, Why don't you rotate around the office every day, every week, so you meet different colleagues, you can talk to them, see their reality. She spent many days in the field, with schools, seeing the work on the ground, and seeing a lot of the processes that we had time might be actually hindering progress. So it's trying to break down silos. And back to that personal mission statement, if you think my role at purpose level is to produce management accounts on time and accurately, that's one purpose statement. If it's to help the organization as a whole make better decisions, that's a different one. So how do you try and break some of the traditional ways of thinking down to open up jobs in public service and make them fulfilling and motivated?

MB: And you talked about STIR Education, and the book opens with this inspiring story and how you were surprised, in a sense, by the appeal of the message. Can you just talk a bit about what happened and why that's given you hope? And have you seen other examples since?

SJ: So, I got into this whole thing by accident. I'm an economist by background at the end. I was very much someone to believe in the hard skills of life around finance, or economics, and so on. I think what happened is, starting off in the slums of Delhi, we were trying to find some great teaching ideas to be shared around the world. That by looking for the ideas in some of the poorest parts of the world, there was not huge pride. In a sense, my teachers, for the first time, their ideas mattered. And they were actually important people in their own right, and they enjoyed meeting each other and sharing ideas.

That buzz of energy would, almost by accident, even though we didn’t know what these terms meant at the time, but we're unlocking purpose, autonomy and mastery, almost as a byproduct of what we were doing. We realized we had confused the baby in the bathwater. And actually, magic was that ignition of teachers, that reigniting of motivation, and that really shifted my view of the world.

I now work for a range of organizations - as an advisor at L'Oreal, to the Kenyan government. But that core idea that actually everyone goes into a job, especially in public service, with a high degree of intrinsic motivation, as had these teachers, but as we work longer and longer, the cultures around us tend to drag it out of us. And then the trick is how to keep ourselves motivated despite that at the individual level. But if we're leaders in public service, how do we create cultures that build on that intrinsic motivation, and make us feel more and more motivated, rather than taking away that energy over time?

MB: I think the experience of teachers in many parts of the world is similar. There are people that were idealistic when they went into the profession; and then they've just been worn down really by the engagement with the bureaucracy, particularly as you say that the Ofsted-like factors of just being forced to do more and more testing and feeling you're just a pawn on the chessboard.

And I guess, one of the things that sort of motivates us at Driving Change is, that that [also] seems to be an issue with public service -- that people would like to be idealistic about serving the public interest and serving their communities, but government, in particular, is so unappealing because it just feels like in all sorts of different ways that it's not going to be a good, intrinsic, fulfilling experience. As you've tried to help professionals, like teachers, police, as well as other aspects of government, have you found ways to shift the system so that your idealism doesn't get handed in at the door?

SJ: A whole chapter in the book is on public service and centric political life, because our leaders are so important -- as we're seeing in Ukraine now – as in the pandemic of the last couple of years. So just reading Tony Blair commenting on how he wouldn't have gone into politics today, given the level of scrutiny, the trolling on social media, all these kinds of crazy pressures. Whether you like him or not, I think generally a lot of people, our brightest people often, as you said, don't think of service first, [as] they should do. And one of the things I think that we could try to do is to create a more motivating environment for would-be politicians.

I'm doing some work with apolitical and UCL around this actually, a fascinating little piece of work. And take the purpose piece, this idea of our work as a legislator or a lawmaker, helping and serving others. A lot of people I spoke to in many houses of parliament around the world feel that that idea of a one nation -- that you're there to help the whole country -- that's been lost by factionalism. And one of the ideas I explored in the book is how can we all try to create back a sense of genuine national purpose that is genuinely across divides and across political parties, and focuses on what unites us more than what divides us. I was looking at Kennedy in the book and some of the things he was saying many years ago, about how can we try and find that common ground and resist that temptation to exacerbate differences, [just] because it scores points.

That sense of autonomy again -- I was talking to ministers in various governments, including the U.K., where they told me they heard about major policy announcements by what came on the news headlines, often secondhand, and they were the second people to know. And that obviously became ridiculous in the pandemic, where lockdown changes are being leaked to the press before MPs had a chance to even look at them. And that makes a mockery of parliamentary processes and demotivates ministers and MPs more widely. Because of the accountability pressures and the scrutiny, prime ministers, presidents etc. have tended to create kitchen cabinets, where you have five people in a room, and you pretty much decide everything in the country. [But] we have about 100 ministers in the country right now if you take the U.K., all very sensible, talented people. [Figuring out] how do we harness their strengths and place that broader narrative and group there is another part of our autonomy side.

And mastery -- in talking to people, for example, in the House of Lords in the U.K., who got in the chamber, they were shown where the toilets were, shown how to get to the despatch box, but not much more to be honest. And, we would never allow doctors or lawyers or accountants to be trained this way. The Institute of Government in the U.K. does some training for ministers and is just fantastic. But it's not compulsory, it's very ad hoc. And this is a real job. I mean, this is a very, very difficult and demanding role. We need to develop more formal mechanisms of mastery that allow for more peer learning, more discussion, more sharing of experiences, as well as more formal training to help develop our elected leaders.

MB: And would you apply the same framework to civil servants, and people going in other parts of public service, not as elected officials but as building a career?

SJ: I think they're very similar pieces. Now, one of the things that's interesting with “purpose” for civil servants is that I talked to many senior civil servants in the British government, for example, [where] you obviously have to somewhat accept that the party in power may not have the same views that you have as an individual, but your job is to make sure that the direction they were elected on is executed as well as possible. That's an interesting purpose question because there is that interesting tension between personal purpose and what the role may require sometimes. But the civil servants I've talked to really are able to say, Well, whether or not I agree with this, I've been able to really make sure that the needs of my country are put into action. In terms of that piece that's been interesting. I think with the autonomy side, in civil service, there's a lot of scrutiny and it's very easy to lose your job in civil service if you do something wrong. So there tends to be a little bit of guardedness sometimes. And what that concerns me is a bit of a defensive culture. The best civil servants I know, they know how to stick their neck out. But they also know when to be careful. Just knowing when to duck and dive is a key element.

There is more on mastery -- there's more formal mechanisms, professional development, building networks, especially across departments, and across levels. I'm seeing more and more of that, and that's a very, very encouraging sign. Because, again, a lot of the key skills in civil service today are not on the job description formally. How do you actually find that? You do that through learning through peers, and going through experiences, and doing things. Very few policies ever look back on and said, Did that work? What worked well, what didn't go well? [We need to] make sure we create reflective spaces where civil servants can look back at what they've done and try to reflect and then use that as an improvement mechanism as well.

MB: I mean, none of this involves paying them more or anything like that to improve in paying conditions. I think he obviously talked about pay bonuses, status, etc, as these hygiene things, the basics, that you need to have in place. As you look at government and civil service, and perhaps you compare it with the sort of growing trend for people who are committed and pumped to public service but want to go and do it in corporations and nonprofits where they might certainly in terms from the corporate side get better deals in terms of those basic hygiene of pay and status -- how much is pay the problem that is discouraging many idealistic people from really taking the path to government? And do you think we have to fix that basic before we can get to the intrinsic, mastery, purpose, and autonomy points that you've talked about?

SJ: I think the research is pretty clear that it depends on where we are relative to other professions, so it's about the relative gap. I think most people in public service will always expect some kind of discount to the private sector -- in practice, that's what happens. But just make sure that it is manageable as well. And just that you can keep your family fed, if you have a family, etc. All these things are very important. So we shouldn't neglect that point, we need to constantly keep making sure that people can live sensible and decent lives on whatever their pay is, either elected office or in the civil service.

But I think beyond that, looking at India for example, where teacher pay went up and up and the teachers became some of the highest paid in the world relative to per capita GDP, it did nothing for motivation, actually. So we just can't treat pay as a silver bullet. It's good to make sure we get it right and be sensible about it, but really what matters more is intrinsic factors. And most people go into public service because they want to make a difference to the world or the country. We've got to play to that and build cultures that really help them do that. And if you do that, they'll be motivated. And that will lead to better retention of civil servants, [it] will lead to more people wanting to go into the profession in the first place. And you'll create a virtuous cycle and probably the public will be more open to higher salaries for public servants, or MPs, over time. So you kind of create a virtuous cycle if you get on the right intrinsic track.

MB:We [should] pick up the teachers’ point. What did you see that was most effective as you were working with Indian teachers, and these relatively highly paid people, many of them weren't even turning up for work on a regular basis? How do you turn that round?

SJ: Yes, we found it was really simple. For us, we looked at how do we try and inject purpose, autonomy, and mastery into a school system. And we started by running teacher networks -- groups of teachers 20-25 or so who would come together every month and go through a structured process to build their motivation, build a sense of purpose, build a sense of autonomy. They tried new techniques, learned to do things alone, [saw] what's possible, but also “mastery”, they learned how to become better and better. And doing that in a very collective fun engaging experience.

We then learned that actually those networks are to grow and grow. They went from one network in Delhi in 2012, to [now] about 8000 a month, involving about 200,000 teachers, across about 35,000 schools. As that happened, we realized that actually what mattered next was the leaders of the system. So the people who manage teachers in systems, they had to buy into this, because if not, they would always be undermined. And so we started training those people to run the network. And we started working with people, very senior people, in governments and in ministries to oversee that, to make sure it was part of that budget, part of their training system. So there was kind of role modeling happening in all levels of a system as well. But it didn't cost very much. I think the cost for the teachers was about $20 U.S. per year, most of that was taken from existing training budgets. It wasn't about the money. It was more, as you're saying, about building that space in and be willing to try new ways of doing things.

MB: And what was the evidence for you that that was working?

SJ: We saw some pretty strong evidence that absenteeism effort improved quite substantially. Also, the relationships with teachers and children improved a lot -- just teachers knowing kids names, engaging them better, thinking of them as individuals, and nurturing kids more effectively -- was something we all saw from that.

MB: Another big area of public service, that's obviously got a lot of questions being asked about the motivation and culture of the moment is -- policing. And you touch on that a bit in the book -- what needs to happen there?

SJ: So we sort of heard about William Bratton, and some of these stories in the U.S., and Malcolm Gladwell popularized some of them and so on. There's a lot of truth in them. I think data has improved things. But it has slightly given this kind of culture, or created this kind of misconception, that it's all about seeing an individual policeman as a bit of a pawn on a chessboard, and driving into different things. That sense of autonomy has been really heavily undermined.

And I think what we need to do is rethink and remember that policemen are human beings, they've had a lot of challenges -- with everything black lives matter to the vigils last year in the U.K. -- so how do we try and help them see that sense of professionalism again, and bring that sense of professional dignity and motivation in what they do? Targets? I think what's happened is we've overelied on targets for them. But remember that policing, especially, there's a lot of things that cannot be reduced to a spreadsheet -- it's highly discretionary, you have to have very good judgment. It's what I call in the book “a wicked profession”, as in, there's no easy technical solution to it. We've got to help them create the conditions where they can make the right judgments at the right time. And encourage them to do that and make them feel supported to do that, as well. So I think we need to rethink that approach of sort of policing by numbers a bit.

MB: Have you, again, had experiments that have worked in that respect?

SJ: We're just starting, we're working with a group of IDFC. I had a chance to talk to a number of senior officers in India, for example, and really, really dynamic leaders in the police force. Now, take India as an example. What they need is the freedom not to drive change and change culture, that's always the hardest thing. But particularly how to help the constables and other frontline who often feel quite demotivated. How do you help them build trust with citizens, so they're not mistrusted? And there's a genuine sense of their being linked to their community. Get that bit right, huge things can happen. And I saw some small examples through some of that early research work, where that was possible. Now, the question is, how do we try to scale that and try and make that more of a norm?

MB: We're almost out of time. I just wanted to end by asking you -- What's been the biggest change in your own life as a result of diving into this thinking about intrinsic motivation? What would you advise anyone else that wants to really reconnect with this intrinsic drive to do, beyond reading your book?

SJ: So one of the most fun parts for me writing the book was looking at the side of our personal lives -- our lives and relationships, and as parents. And I'm both a husband and father of two young boys. And it really made me question my own assumptions. Take parenting as an example. What kind of parent do I want to be for my kids? How do I help them be motivated? And I, like many middle class parents those days, I was guilty of pushing them from one activity to another. From homework club, to a tennis coaching session, to a piano class ,and all this kind of nonsense. And actually just remembering what matters for them is they loved life, they love learning, and they're good people. And they have high degrees of intrinsic motivation.

So I changed my parenting style quite substantially, since writing the book, to hopefully be more nurturing as a parent to help them find what they enjoy doing. Helping them build on that, helping them nurture their purpose, autonomy, and mastery. But what's also been helpful is if I tried to adapt some of these things to my own life, that role modeling effect -- if they see me trying to do these things, that can be just as powerful. So I think the book is not just about our work lives, those are important, but also our lives as real human beings.

MB: Well, thank you. And what is one piece of advice to anyone that wants to start down this path of saying, Okay, I've heard what you've got to say, I'll read the book, [but] are there practical steps?

SJ: I talked about in the book, a four stage journey you can go on as an individual to think about them. The first thing that it starts with is put down what I call the "cost of inaction". What tends to happen is we don't articulate why the current reality, the lack of D motivation, is hurting us so much. But we forget, we're going to be working the same 90,000 hours in our working lives on average. If we're not motivated, we're going in and feel like we're drudging through the day each day, it exerts a huge emotional, social, even financial cost on us. Just write down what the pain feels like. And that can really inspire us to say, Look, it's worth a try, it's worth taking a little bit of a risk here -- it's worth taking that first small step that I talked about in the book. So I think sometimes we just take things for granted too much. Write down why it hurts so much. And that will give us some motivation to go forward.

MB: On that note, thank you very much, Sharath Jeevan. The book is Intrinsic: A Manifesto to Reignite Our Inner Drive. It's a beautifully written book, as well as full of great insights. So I highly recommend it to all our listeners. And thank you for joining Books Driving Change today.

SJ: Thanks for having me.

NOTE: Intrinsic is currently available in the U.K. It will be published in the U.S. in September 2022.

We hope you are as inspired by these podcasts as we are. If you are, please subscribehere, or wherever you get your podcasts (Amazon Music, Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher), and please rate us and write a review so others can find their inspiration.

This transcript has been lightly edited for context and clarity.

Books Driving Change: Jonathan Greenblatt and It Could Happen Here Mar 09, 2022

Today on Books Driving Change we talk with Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, who has written a powerful new book called It Could Happen Here: Why America Is Tipping from Hate to the Unthinkable—And How We Can Stop It.

Books Driving Change: Agustín Porres and Unfinished Business in Education Feb 14, 2022

The people that work in education and that take the responsibility of leading the education system are mainly optimists. If not, you cannot take the job.

In the latest episode of Books Driving Change, Agustín Porres and Matthew Bishop talk about Porres’ new book, Unfinished Business in Education, in which he interviews 31 previous education secretaries from around the globe. Each of them reflects on their time in office -- what they learned, what they achieved, what they failed to do, and what they would advise people going into that role today. They also talk about why the pandemic may be providing the perfect opportunity to enact sweeping education reforms, because of the crisis it has brought on, the innovation it triggered, and the fact that education is now much more visible in many national debates that it has been for many years.

Porres has spent the last couple of decades working on education policy and is currently Latam Regional Director of the

Varkey Foundation

, which works to build the capacity and status of teachers. It is also the sponsor of the

Global Teacher Prize

. Before joining Varkey, Porres worked in various government roles.

Books Driving Change: Ron Gonen and The Waste-Free World Jan 26, 2022

In this episode, we talk with Ron Gonen, who is the founder of Closed Loop Partners, and the author of The Waste-Free World: How the Circular Economy Will Take Less, Make More, and Save the Planet. Ron believes we have a challenge in the American economy -- and a little bit in the U.K. as well some other developed countries -- where the highest status in society goes sometimes to the jobs that don't always create the most social benefit or require the most amount of intellect. The jobs of teacher, fire person, police person, public servants, soldier are the backbone of our society. Unfortunately, the status we’ve assigned to those jobs, and the financial incentive, is low in society. We hope you enjoy this conversation.

Made in Africa: A Conversation with Yawa Hansen-Quao Jan 13, 2022

Hansen-Quao has also served for three years on the Foundation Board of the World Economic Forum’s Global Shapers Community, has worked as a leadership consultant to UN Women, and in 2016 was awarded an Eisenhower Fellowship in honor of her pioneering work nurturing emerging women leaders.

Hansen-Quao talks with Bansal about her journey, both professional and personal, and how her experiences have helped the vision she has for African governance and leadership. She and her family were forced to flee Ghana when she was a child in the early 1980s, and she grew up in Togo as well as in the United States. She returned to Ghana as a teenager and decided to take a bet on a new university, so she could be part of Ghana's future.

We hope you enjoy the conversation!

Books Driving Change: Anne-Marie Slaughter and Renewal Dec 15, 2021

Today we talk with Anne-Marie Slaughter, the author of Renewal: From Crisis to Transformation in Our Lives, Work, and Politics. Anne-Marie has been a big figure in Washington and thought leadership for the past 20 years or so. This book is both a story about how America, because America in some ways is also a beacon for the world, needs to go through a process of renewal to get itself out of its current, dysfunctional moment. And also, it's a story of personal renewal as a leader. And the way the two themes weave together makes it a very rich book.

Books Driving Change: François Bonnici and The Systems Work of Social Change Dec 08, 2021

Matthew Bishop (MB): Hello, this is Books Driving Change with me, Matthew Bishop. And today I'm talking with François Bonnici, co-author with Cynthia Rayner, of The Systems Work of Social Change: How to Harness Connection, Context, and Power to Cultivate Deep and Enduring Change.

Obviously, this is a book that goes right to the heart of the mission of Books Driving Change, where we're looking at how do we build back better in this moment of crisis that the world is facing. And this book, I highly recommend it because it is full of great practical insights and wisdom, and some great case studies that I think many people will not be familiar with. And also, some very big thoughts about the way change happens globally and the way systems change could be brought about going forward.

But François, I wanted to start by asking you, as I ask all of our guests, in a sentence - given our audience of people who are either engaged in social change work or considering it - why should they read your book?

François Bonnici (FB): Thank you, Matthew, for having me. I'm delighted to be on your podcast, and hello to everyone listening. Probably the same reason that I would want to read the book. Initially, Cynthia and I wrote it, and we thought, well, if we're the only two people who learn from this, then that's almost sufficient.

So as both a practitioner and an academic and also working in the foundation space, and really a bit paralyzed by the overwhelming challenges we have, the complexity of it, and the narrative around systems change, that we didn't feel like we necessarily could take that back to working on a day to day basis. And so the book is called “systems work,” to imply and emphasize the day to day work we all need to do, and to emphasize that to achieve some kind of future systems change that we aspire to, whatever that might be, it's about the process of change. And it's about the people who are involved in that process of change that we wanted to emphasize. So we really hope it's a very practical approach, one that is rooted in 200 years of social change making, deep case studies, hundreds of interviews with experts. But coming away with both stories that move, that inspire, and a set of practical tools and lessons at the end of each chapter. So we hope it will be a contribution to the collective journey many of us are on to try and understand what do we mean by, and how do we do, this work towards the deeper systemic change, what we call deep and enduring change. And I'll unpack a bit further with you where we go with it.

MB: I want to start just by asking you a bit about how you and Cynthia came to write this book, which obviously came out of your work together at the Bertha Centre in South Africa. But, and I should say before we go further, that you are now currently head of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, which is funded by two of the founders, or the founder and his wife, of the World Economic Forum. [That fact] is in itself quite an interesting focal point of discussions about the role of the system, and how you do systems change, and whether top down organizations can really deliver that. But how did you come to write this book?

FB: It's been a long journey. It's been five years. And so it started pre-COVID and got revised and updated during COVID, for reasons I'll explain. But I had started the Bertha Centre at the University of Cape Town as the first center for social innovation in Africa, dedicated to understanding approaches to social change that were innovative, that thought about social enterprise, that looked at what movements were doing. And we very quickly recognized the superficial approaches, or even the kind of service delivery type mindset, was not getting to the deep challenges and structural and systemic barriers that lay in my home country, South Africa, from hundreds of years of history. And that no fantastic solution was going to undo all of that.

And that was a great barrier, actually a source of failure, for both myself and projects that Cynthia and I had worked in and organizations we'd worked for. Many organizations we worked with had these deep frustrations. But we also saw amazing organizations overcoming that on a day-to-day basis; overcoming the systemic and structural barriers around stigma, around poverty traps, around lack of opportunities, and turning that into agency.

So at the time we started exploring, and researching, and working with global collaborations, like the Rockefeller Social Innovation Fellowship. We did a piece of work commissioned by the Schwab Foundation, when we were at the Bertha Centre, called Beyond Organizational Scale, looking at how social pressures create systemic change. And what we found happening in the global conversation around systems change was quite different to what we were seeing with organizations we were working with, initially in South Africa, and then we were looking and working with organizations in Latin America, and India, and even in the U.S.

MB: When I was reading, one of the things that hit me was, there seems to be this real difference of opinion as to what systems change is, and how you do it. In the sense that a lot of people view it as a kind of fixing a system with a top down approach, and you found, fundamentally, a different experience on the ground with people doing the grassroots work.

FB: I think that's right. And I think we had quite a frustration with even the term “systems,” because we all do mean very different things. And if you ask someone sitting at the World Economic Forum or if you asked grassroot activists, you're going to get very different answers. And so I grew a little bit allergic to the term, and then ended up writing a book on the topic. And it's not to discount any of them. And I think what we talk about in the book is that these challenges have complexity, they have scale, and they have depth. And what we had seen was that the focus of the conversations were around scale - if we can solve problems, and that everyone is doing it in a particular way, that is systems change.

If we can do it in that complexity lens, where we have levers, and we can intervene in a system, and we are able to shift the balance of actors and systems and relationships, that is a form of a complexity view of systems change.

But what we felt wasn't part of the conversation was really the steps. And that we felt that both those other dimensions and approaches could represent a perpetuating of the system of actors of power - if the existing actors, who are architects and gatekeepers of a system, are the ones redesigning it. And so what this book seeks to do is really emphasize a depth component; and more than just say this is an additional component, say it's also the critical necessary one to take all those three lenses on how we are strategic and start to meet the bottom up with a top down.

MB: And why do you think we've got to this position where even at a moment like this with COVID, and the World Economic Forum, and the great reset and all that, there's this very top down approach to social change? That, at least in terms of the general discussion, it is about how Biden's going to spend 3.5 trillion on infrastructure, and it's these big numbers, big change, very industrialized approach. And I think everyone that's been on the frontline in some way or another, quickly recognizes the very people who so much as these activities are intended to benefit, are the last ones to get asked what they think should be done or given any power to say that. How have we got to that situation?

FB: Chapter one of the book actually covers the industry of social change. And I do think there are some deep historical roots, both in terms of the industrial era, but also the kind of postwar period. We talk about the Green Revolution and how some of these big moments in history of social change reinforced certain practices, approaches, mindsets. But also how funding flows, etc.

I think one of the big pieces of all of this is the power concentrated in both public and private sectors and how that is dissipated and fragmented in what remains, the “plural sector.'' I much prefer [the term] to “third sector” or “nonprofit sector,” because of its plurality. But because of its plurality there isn't the collective power for decision making - an authority to really state and influence how social change strategies happen. And they've been recipients of decisions and systems and structures and flows for so long that they've become dependent on it in a way. This is not a new narrative but perhaps looks at it in a new light. So we're somehow at that moment of recognizing that, if we just continue on that pathway, we're not actually going to change any of the rules of the game.

But those of us who work in this sector are also complicit in it in a way. So there's also a bit of a self critique in all of this; that actually, the fact that those of us who work somewhere in the sector, often have our livelihoods and careers dependent on the fact that these problems continue to exist. So in a way, the big shift for me was recognizing that the role or purpose of not for profit, social enterprises, social change making organizations is quite far removed now from the delivery of goods and services that can improve people's lives. And really, I quite strongly have seen that the ability to create agency, to empower and equip both people who experience particular problems or are invested in communities - whether they work for an organization or volunteering in a particular community somehow - [is extremely important]. That the purpose of social purpose organizations needs to shift.

And I won't go too much into detail now, because I know you will want to unpack a lot of that. I've taken your question, and I've gone a bit further. But we are in a position of a great imbalance of power. And the heart of it lies there. But also not recognizing the real intrinsic value of many of these local organizations - whether they be larger networks, or local and small - in creating social capital, in fostering social cohesion. And that we don't have a good way to value and recognize, during this time of COVID, how critical that's been - [looking at] issues of trusts and social capital and being there for each other. And recognizing and having empathy with one another. And so I think that a lot of the book focuses on ultimately social capital and relational value, and how we build that, and how important that is for these longer term aspirational outcomes we have.

MB: That's actually a very helpful framing, because as I read the book, I kept thinking this is really about how do you empower people. Not the vast majority of the population, but the people on the ground, who are the ones that are supposed to be being helped by so much of the activity - whether it be government, or nonprofits, or even business now that it's supposedly finding its social mission. But really, it's about that some of these things that are there in the dialogue, the popular conversations, amongst the elite are around networks, platforms, etc. But here, your book was really about empowering the people, the masses, and really giving them the ability to harness some of those tools and things in a different way. And there's lots of inspiring examples, so maybe just talk to a couple of them. I found the Slum Dwellers International a fascinating example of networking in action, but you'd say it's more than that. And then maybe talk about one other case that you particularly found very, very inspiring.

FB: You hit the nail on the head in terms of practically talking about what kinds of discussions are happening at the global level or in actors of powers - the network organization, background organization. And we actually see some of those same practices at the grassroots - using digital platforms, using those kinds of approaches, but with a different set of actors. And we'll talk later about how we might connect the micro and the macro.

But Slum Dwellers International, an incredible organization I've been following for years, comes originally out of India, had their global headquarters in Cape Town down the road from us, and we ended up working with them at the Bertha Centre. So we got to know a lot about their work. They have, in many ways, quite a traditional and well-known approach to having a federation - in which its members are actually the representatives and leaders of the organization. And the organization itself is some kind of federation secretariat. And it's federated across the world, because these movements of people who live in informal settlements - slums, favelas - self organize and elect their own leadership. And there's a really important history of Jockin [Arputham] and Sheela [Patel], who actually have been part of the Schwab Foundation, who were founders of that movement, but served as very different kinds of leaders than we generally have held up to be the change making leaders that we've spoken about over the past couple of decades.

In the same spirit, I actually would love to talk about Nidan, and more specifically, about one of the other case studies from Bihar in India, that was created in the spirit and traditions of SEWA [Self-Employed Women’s Association] - a self-employed women's collective that works with over 1.2 million women across India, through their cooperatives. And in the spirit of that worked with the street vendors, the informal workers and street vendors in India. So as you probably know well, 90% of India's workforce is in the informal economy. All labor law to protect, support, and uphold rights for workers only covers 10% of the workforce. And therefore street vendors were, in particular, at risk from municipalities and cities trying to clean up and impose hygiene standards, or corrupt officials seeking to extort and impose abuses on street vendors.

An Nidan has been really interesting in terms of, at the core, what it does is not to try to help solve any of these problems - similar to the example of FII, the Family Independence Initiative in the U.S. What they sought to do was actually help to build the capacity to govern, to self organize, and to execute on issues and needs that they had.

So for example, street vendors were collectively saying, well, we don't have time to do anything else in our lives, we barely manage to earn enough livelihood to put food on the table, and if we're trying to also address other issues in our lives, we don't have time to do that. So we actually need to find a way to kind of improve our income, and actually work together and collaborate. And they decided, okay, we'll make and spin off craft cooperatives, or food cooperatives. So they created businesses. They also got together and said, well, we don't have good services for education and health for our children, so let's create non-for-profit organizations that can actually provide preschools and clinics, etc. And so they spun off those organizations. Then they also said, well, we still have a problem in terms of our rights as informal workers, let's create a union and actually advocate for certain rights.

And what Nidan was only doing was really helping the self organizing capacity, and the ability to create organizations, manage them, govern them correctly, and actually be able to implement and execute. And so 30 organizations ended up spinning off Nidan.

And ultimately, it also helped to build this large movement towards creating the first policy in the world around informal workers. The Street Vendors Act in India became a national movement of street vendors, but also helped to change the mindset. And so working on the deeper elements of change around what actually street vending and street food meant to people in India, and meant as part of the culture, and how to celebrate that rather than seeing it only as a problem. So they worked on all of these dimensions, and gave their constituents, their members, a way to self organize and have self determination. But seeing that in kind of a modern context of a modern organization, where you're spinning off, in fact, some kind of incubator. So that for me has been a really inspiring example. And to see so many using the tools available to us in the modern age of these different kinds of organizations but for different purposes. But really, it was driven by the street vendors and their families and selves.

MB: So you mentioned these three elements, which are big themes in the book, the Connection, the Context, and the Power. Connection: different ways you can help people connect is self-evident, to some extent, and you've got some great examples of who's doing that. Power: your message essentially is, empower the people, the primary actors on the ground, the people who you're really supposedly trying to help; the biggest way you help them is by empowering them to find their own solutions. But, talk a bit more about what you mean by Context, and why that's so important at this moment.

FB: So just to quickly talk about the other two, because I think they are all interdependent. And so maybe just to go a little bit deeper, so that your listeners can say, well, this is not the same discussions on connection and networks. But actually looking at what's so important with that was also the ways in the practices and the tactics these organizations took to build collective identity. And that then also relates to the power of context. And so I want to just encourage that there's quite a bit under the surface of these three large principles that we talked about, which we felt was underlying all of the organizations, and how they worked.

What we also looked at, was this concept of the practices. So under each of these principles there were sets of practices. And so what we were particularly interested in was, how does this stuff happen? So we can talk about context, but what's actually happening? How do organizations do that? And we call that principle: embracing context. And in that space, we were really interested in how critical that is right now. And looking at organizations, even large organizations, that are able to distribute information - and that means data, the ability to make decisions - to their frontline workers, and to the communities and citizens that they're trying to empower. And so context is important because that's where decisions need to be made.

Some of our work was also looking very much at the complexity literature, and what was a really interesting insight is that the greatest point of complexity is usually in context. So, if we're talking about schools, it's between a teacher and a child, and a teacher and the family - or [in a hospital] between a healthcare worker and a patient. So the greatest point of complexity also doesn't seem that complex for the people in that position. It's their best place to actually understand well, what needs to be done here? And so what we found over and over again, was that organizations were trying to roll out programs in different areas. This is a common narrative or pattern, where we say, okay, this works really well, in this context, so let's roll it across the country, let's roll it out to other countries. And for a whole bunch of reasons that doesn't work. That's obviously all about context. But what's happening is that, in order for let's say, an employee, or a project manager, or portfolio manager, to roll out a program, they suddenly were doing all of this other work, which was highly relational, to roll out the so called standard operating procedure, the program, the blueprint, that they were supposed to be rolling out. And so not having that recognized, not having that resource, not empowering the frontline workers to be able to do that contextual work, to build the relationships, was part of the reason for failure. But also part of the reason why some of the organizations that we looked at were so successful - whether that be mothers2mothers or Our Labs, or some of the other organizations that we were working with. And what's interesting to say is, that doesn't mean everything needs to be small and local.

So the other really interesting example from the book is Buurtzorg, which is headquartered in the Netherlands. A very large organization, in 20 countries in the world, about a 40 million euro turnover company. So this is not a small, micro NGO. But up until recently, they didn't have an HR manager, they didn't have a CFO. But they had very strong technology that enabled them. This is a neighborhood care, nursing care particularly for the elderly, business. So they enabled and empowered the nurses, who were working with elderly and their families, to have all the information, to make resource decisions, to make budget decisions, to make even HR decisions around their local team that was working in a particular neighborhood. And if you look at what happened during COVID, and what happened with particularly homes for the elderly, how there was an inability to be agile, to react, to have to wait for top down decisions, to have to follow protocols. Having worked as a doctor in a system myself, once you're at that level, you just have to follow the system. And so that was really interesting to see that empowering and equipping the problem solvers on the frontlines to be able to make decisions in context actually allowed for much greater engagement, and much more interesting kinds of outcomes. And particularly in breaking some of the traps that we found ourselves in.

The last example I will give, which I spoke about earlier, is the Family Independence Initiative [now Up:Together], started by Mauricio Miller, whose book is a couple of years old now, but it's probably worth featuring on your program as well. He was the founder of FII and we talk about in the book, a story where he had to fire a staff member for trying to help a family. And [FII] helps relatively poor families in the U.S., primarily from minority groups. And [he got fired] because he was trying to help [while] his job is not to help. Their job was to provide the data, the information, the list of opportunities, the peer group with other families, the IT infrastructure, so that families could make their own decisions about their future. And that was a really interesting shift for us to see how these organizations were adamant about not trying to solve problems, but really equip people to do that for themselves.

MB: You mentioned COVID. Has that made you more optimistic or less optimistic that these lessons can be learned and applied? Because, this is the third or fourth crisis in 20 years, and each time we hear that we mustn't waste a good crisis, that we must build back better and so forth. Are you seeing these lessons being learnt, from your vantage point at the heart of the DevOps community?

FB: I'll start first with the organizations we looked at. Because we went back to all of them with a hypothesis that: would the work they had done to build this deep sense of trust, relational value, and distribution of agency, actually put them in a better position to be responsive and to be relevant during COVID? And, by a long way, we feel that hypothesis played out, and feel that these organizations have done incredible work during this period. Has that been learned by others? Have we all learnt how this crisis has shifted things?

I think the one thing we've learned, now - which in my South African context is quite an open conversation - about racial bias, about the barriers between classes, about gender, clearly have been exposed at a global level. This is not only a South Africa challenge, this is a global challenge across so many ways. In some way, we've been able to raise the awareness that problems do have these deep structural, systemic barriers in place, and that we are failing to overcome those in our more traditional approaches to social change. On the other hand, and clearly my role is sometimes a bit paradoxical, but that's why the purpose of the foundation is to focus on vulnerable and excluded people and ecosystems, and is to interface with the World Economic Forum, which obviously represents a network of today's leaders. And despite the narratives, it's really hard for today's leaders to actually really work out the radical changes we need, when their mandates and agendas are to stabilize to continue as before. There are obviously great rays of hope, but clearly not fast enough or not radical enough.

And so it is perhaps with a mixed answer, I do have optimism, but I also do see us not making the most of the crisis and opportunity. And perhaps it's the mounting crisis at the same time, or the fact that we can't really translate the COVID lessons into long term lessons, and I am deeply worried about that.

MB: So last question. The book's primary focus is people who are in leadership of social change organizations, particularly nonprofit ones, but there is a context, which is that big government in much of the world has most of the money. And then you have the philanthropic sector that has done a lot of funding of organizations involved in social change. And then business is, increasingly now, under pressure and starting perhaps to engage more in a stakeholder centric approach that will require it to get more involved in social change, if that's taken seriously enough. What's the message of the book to those different groups? And if I think about our audience of people who are thinking about where they should go, how they should get involved in driving social change, what's the message and advice you'd have for them?

FB: I think, first of all it is for all of those in the social sector, not only for leaders. Interestingly, I got a call from Brazil where they want to translate this into Portuguese, because of the work that so many social workers are doing on the ground, which is perhaps not recognized, they feel this book would help to affirm a lot of the work that perhaps people don't value as much. So that was really interesting to hear as feedback.

Of course, for social change, leaders, and people who work in these organizations, are grappling and trying to figure these things out themselves. And we hope that this will have some practical insights. I hope it will also enable them to take forward conversations internally and look inside the organization, but also open up the discussions with funders. And so we have been delighted to be invited to a number of donor working groups and with individual philanthropists to engage them in this discussion. Because, there's that internal reflection, and the conversation within philanthropy and how it's evolving.

And I do think, what we're emphasizing here are those participatory approaches, but also that we need to start valuing different aspects, and perhaps becoming slightly less attached to what we've been obsessed about - in terms of value for money, social return on investment, clear metrics and outcomes. Not that those things are not important. But in the process of that, we may have lost something that actually leads to this deeper change, that actually we do aspire towards.

And then I think for the government and business leaders of the world, interestingly, a lot of these practices actually speak to the moment we're at in time where young people have the power, because of technology, to have a distributed sense of agency. We obviously have tools like blockchain, etc. And how do we maybe harness some of the tools we've got that actually can enable these kinds of practices in a modern era. So I think there's something really interesting, potentially emerging there that we didn't think about that actually, these practices might be relevant and valuable in more purposeful business or even just in business with a new generation. And then, of course, with governments, again, thinking about the value of the sector at a time where the trust in governments are, in many countries at an all time low, - even though some countries seem to be faring reasonably well. But I think there's something there to re-embrace the sector as part of our collective future and not as an afterthought of, well just fill in the gaps of things we don't do as we grow the economy.

So I think there are a range of audiences for this, and why we have tried to frame it quite broadly, but then dive deeply into how does this work actually happen.

MB: Well, there's certainly a lot of great information, great insight, great inspiration, in the book. The book is The Systems Work of Social Change: How to Harness Connection, Context, and Power to Cultivate Deep and Enduring Change. And it's by Cynthia Rayner, and my guest today, François Bonnici. François, thank you very much for joining.

FB: Thank you, Matthew, and lovely to speak to you again.

This transcript has been lightly edited for context and clarity.

Books Driving Change: Peter Coleman and The Way Out Nov 19, 2021

Matthew Bishop (MB): Hello, this is Matthew Bishop with Books Driving Change. And today I'm talking with Peter Coleman of Columbia University, one of the co-founders of the Difficult Conversations Lab, which explores what do we do about toxic conversations, a subject that hopefully won't refer to the conversation we're having together now -- which will hopefully be a very positive conversation. But, obviously, we are at a time of increasing polarization in the world. And a lot of conversations seem to end up being more counterproductive than productive.

Peter has written a book called The Way Out: How to Overcome Toxic Polarization, which is something that anyone listening to this podcast will want to know the answer to. So Peter, can I just start by asking you in one sentence, given the audience that this podcast has of people engaged in trying to bring about positive change -- why should they read the book?

Peter Coleman (PC): Well, thank you, Matthew, for having me. So the reason I wrote the book is that I feel that there is significant misunderstanding of the nature of the problem of what I call “toxic polarization”, which is unlike typical forms of polarization -- it's more extreme, it's more entrenched, it's more long term. And so what I offer in the book, and I think is relevant to your listening audience, is a different theory of change. Typically, how we think about addressing things like political polarization is that we go after key pieces of the problem. But we don't understand how the problem works as a whole, as a system, as a series of forces that kind of align and feed each other in complicated ways.

And this book offers an alternative theory of change, it contrasts our typical kind of scientific approach of looking for the essence of a problem, and says this problem of toxic polarization has many essences. And more importantly, these essences align and feed each other in complex ways that really make it, as a cultural phenomenon, highly resistant to change. And so it's important that we understand how problems like these, wicked problems, actually do change, and what to do about them based on science. And so that's why I wrote this book -- to offer this alternative theory of change.

MB: And it is an optimistic book, fundamentally, which is interesting because you start talking about how everyone's feeling so miserable now, and this is actually a reason for optimism. Why do you make that point?

PC: Well, because one of the things we've learned from the study of deeply divided societies that actually do come out of this time and pivot into a more constructive direction, is that there are a couple of basic conditions that often are associated with that kind of change. One is that there is a sufficient level of misery within the political middle -- what in ripeness theory they call a “mutually hurting stalemate”, where you are sort of exhausted and fed up and really don't want to continue to engage in the same way, and you want to do something different. And certainly in America, but in many places in the U.K. and around the world, there is a growing, exhausted, middle majority that's fed up with the political vitriol that we see, the dysfunction that we see, and really seeking an alternative. So in that way, the ground is ripe for a movement that offers people a vision for how to change. But in addition to being miserable, they need to have some clear sense of what to do. What is the alternative? What are the steps? And that's why I wrote this book.

MB: I'm very struck by how you are coming at this -- as someone who, as you talked about in the beginning of the book, grew up in a very difficult situation. You weren't in a well-to-do family, your father was being pursued by violent men, I think you say for gambling issues, you ended up getting your Ph.D. after a long and difficult process and welfare support, and all sorts of things in a single-parent home. And you know many people. You identify as much with Trump supporters in some ways as you do with his critics. About halfway through the book, you say, “Dear reader, I hope half of you are Trump supporters and half of you aren't”, or words to that effect. This is such an unusual voice at the moment, given the politics that we're seeing in America, and as you also say, around the world. How do you feel we can get beyond this pro-Trump/anti-Trump mindset and get to some of these underlying systemic changes that we need?

PC: My journey to some degree is unique, because I was born in a place and at a time with folks that were disenfranchised, and I was as a young person I kind of worked my way out of that. And now I live this Columbia University professor on the Upper West Side of Manhattan [life], which is a very progressive arena. So I've experienced both worlds, and have empathy for both worlds. And ultimately, I think that's the question -- is how do we create some kind of trusted process or system where people can rediscover the empathy that we have for one another, and rediscover some sense of unity and connectedness?

And again, what I propose, or what I argue, is that this is hard. We are, in some ways, in a mass addiction. I see toxic polarization as a bio/psycho/social/structural process like addiction. It's something that's within us, it’s, in some ways, [something] we’ve embodied in our neurological structures -- how we see the world, what we react to emotionally. So there's a kind of basic internal component of this, but then there are psychological components. And it's embedded in our relationships -- who we speak with, who we don't speak with. It's embedded in the media that we do and do not consume, in the internet spaces that we do and do not travel to, and even physically where we go in our life. So there are many levels and layers to this trap that we're in. And it's not going to be something easy to escape from. It's not just that we decide, Okay, I've had enough of this, I'm moving on. We definitely need to have that. But we really need to recognize that this is going to be hard work. And some of the folks that have read the book have suggested, Wow, this is hard work. And the answer is yes.

John Paul Lederach, a colleague of mine who does a lot of peace building around the world, once in Northern Ireland said to a Northern Irish audience, “It's probably going to take you as long to get out of this conflict as it did to get into it.” And he said, he almost got thrown out of the room. Because people don't want to hear that, they want to hear that there are simple solutions. What I lay out is a sequence of processes, strategies, steps, that can move us in a much more positive direction. But they're not simple answers to this complex problem that we're embedded in.

MB: One of my takeaways from the book is, and you also refer to it in various points in the book, this notion of “complicate things” as a way to to help. Because there is a tendency to think quite simplistically about this. Those of us that are saying, “Let's try and heal the divide, or let’s try and put a Trump voter in a room with a progressive and the hope that they'll figure things out.” And it's all quite naive. Where do people tend to go wrong when they try to take that approach?

PC: So that approach is based on something called “contact theory'', which Gordon Allport developed in the ‘40s and ‘50s, to break down racism in this country. And it is the basic idea that if you have groups of people that have no contact with each other, no connection to each other, that sometimes just bringing them together and having them realize that each one is a human with kids and interests, and they like music, and they like to dance, and they start to rehumanize members of the other group. And that can have a transformative effect. And that's a very powerful theory and model that's often used in intergroup disputes. But when you have groups of people that are deeply passionate, deeply ideological, and living in parallel opposing media echo systems, then just saying, Go off and have a cup of coffee in the same room and chat with one another, can easily backfire. And in fact, if you push some of the people that encourage such interventions these days, they'll tell you those stories of these well-intentioned, well-designed interventions that blow up and that backfire.

And in fact, there is Pew Research suggesting that when people get together across political divisions these days, the vast majority of us leave those conversations more frustrated, more alienated from the other side. So it doesn't help, typically, under these conditions, to just bring people together. And so what I argue is that we need to know what the science tells us. Contact theory has been studied over 500 times for decades. And what we know is that there are certain conditions where that works. And there's certain conditions where it doesn't work. And when you're dealing with true believers, it doesn't work, it's insufficient.

MB: And you illustrate this at the start of the book with this discussion, or description, of an effort around the anti-abortion/pro-choice debate in Boston, where a number of leaders on both sides were brought together, and they met together over over a period of time, and it seemed to make a difference. Can you just explain what was the magic sauce in that approach?

PC: I think tenacity, courage, and perseverance. So there was an incident that happened. Boston in the ‘80s and ‘90s was a very divided place. It's highly Catholic, 36% Catholic population. And the abortion debate was very hostile and intense in that community and becoming increasingly so. And then in 1994, there was a horrific shooting that took place in a couple of women's clinics -- women were shot dead, harmed, injured, and it was a rupture. And it really kind of destabilized the status quo.

And so the Archdiocese and the Governor and the Mayor were all calling for sort of talks. And how do you change a culture of vitriol and hate through talks? It seems to be an almost impossible thing to do. So there was a group called the Public Conversations Project. And I tell this story in the beginning of the book, because I think it's a great parable for our time. We too, in the pro-Trump/anti-Trump world or pro-Brexit/anti-Brexit world, we are true believers in some ways.

MB: The abortion issue is coming back up on the agenda in America in a big way, in that true believer way, is it not?

PC: Absolutely yes, it's being triggered in multiple states simultaneously. So, it is a parable of our time. But what happened was, this group called the Public Conversations Project had been doing dialogue processes with pro-life/pro-choice groups, bringing them together before the shooting. And so they had a network there. And what they did is they reached out to three prominent pro-life leaders and three prominent pro-choice leaders, and they said to them, “Would you consider just coming together for a couple of weeks, and have some conversations in order to prevent further violence and kind of bring the temperature down?” And all of these women were afraid of the other side, literally. The pro-life women met in a Friendly's restaurant and prayed to God that they would be forgiven for sitting down with these evil murderers. And the other side was very afraid of their reputation and their physical safety, especially in the wake of this violence. But they agreed to come together, they talked for about a month, and albeit difficult, it went well enough that they decided to go to the one year anniversary of the shooting. And the conversations continued. And they actually had in-secret dialogues, clandestine dialogues, between these six people and the facilitators that their families and communities did not know anything about for five and a half years. And then in January of 2001, they came out publicly in the Boston Globe, they co-published an article called Talking With the Enemy -- which I'd recommend that your readers or your listeners read. And they talk about this experience and how it changed them and their relationships and their understanding of the issues.

And ironically, and I think, importantly, they all to a person became further apart on the issue of abortion. Their attitudes on the issues became even more crystallized, so that they still fundamentally differed on the issue. But their relationships and care and respect for one another, and care for their community, and the rhetoric they used in their activism, all changed fundamentally. And that interaction with those six women and two facilitators had first and second and third order effects in the Boston community in how activism around these issues were taken up and what the rhetoric was. And ultimately, they think even sort of affected the movement more broadly in terms of bringing down the temperature of hate and vilification of the other side.

MB: That goes to one of your points about, Let's get away from the actual point of dispute in these situations and think more about the context, the broader context, that things are operating in, and find common ground in the context, which you can build on.

PC: They were able to recognize that they all cared for women -- young, pregnant, teen pregnancy. That they had common interests about violence and keeping violence at bay in the community and protecting one another from that. They could actually write grants together. And ironically, this was 25 years ago, and today, they're still friends. It's still a group of people that celebrate births and deaths and come together when they need support. So they grew very fond of one another. And they fundamentally differed on this issue. And that is the essence here. It is when policy becomes personal and becomes ideological. [For example when we] take things like “Let's build the wall” or “Not build a wall” as the slogans for immigration, we lose a sense of the immense complexity of immigration policies and over simplify the issue that positions them. And then we're nowhere, that's when we get stuck.

MB: So what would you draw as lessons from that for today and how the abortion debate might play out less harmfully, then some people feel it will do now, in America?

PC: What I do in the book is try to use the evidence-based science that has been done by our group and by other groups, and pull out five basic principles of what helps to basically navigate the way out of these toxic times. And I use this case as a parable, because I think it illustrates all of the principles in many ways. And, so that's why I use it as a story to begin. And then what the book moves into is what are the areas of research that have shed some light on this? One of the things that happened in Boston, that led to [the conversations], was this shock of the shooting, this destabilization. And you could say that, certainly in the U.S., the political vitriol and the January 6 attack on our nation's Capitol was such a destabilizing moment. In addition [we have] the racial injustice that's happening, and COVID shutdowns, and the Delta variant, and the exhaustion from all of that, so this nation is a nation that's destabilized. I imagine you're seeing similar things in the U.K. these days, with the consequences of Brexit, and COVID.

But that kind of instability, as I suggested earlier, is good, if we take advantage of it as an opportunity to reset, and to really start to question some of the basic assumptions on which we make our decisions. What kind of future do we want to have? How do we move forward? Do we take advantage of this time as a time of reflection?

So again, to go back to addiction metaphor -- what we find with addicts is that A) they need to bottom out, and then B) they need to have the kind of support that allows them to start to do a searing inventory of their life and their choices and how they want to move forward in their life. So similarly, I think that's what this time, this kind of extraordinary time, provides us. But it does require that we all do that work. But what I argue is that's hard to do.

In fact, I just wrote an editorial that I submitted to Politico last night, which is calling for a national movement, like AA in America, that takes advantage of the fact that this is an extraordinary time, but people need help. They need help in knowing what to do. They need support, knowing how to do it. And in the U.S., there's a website called the Bridging Divides Initiative, which is out of Princeton University, a woman named Nealin Parker has developed it; and it has an interactive map of the U.S. you can go to it, click on it, and it tells you where the bridge building groups in your community are physically located. And so what she's identified is that there are at least 7,000 or more of these bridge building groups across the nation that are doing this work of bringing red and blues together in a safe space that's facilitated, that's careful and secure, to encourage people to get to know one another and to work through these issues. But what the challenge is for us as a movement is that most of these groups work independently. Some of them are connected to other groups, but largely, these are independent movements that spring up in communities. And so there is no sense of a movement. There are “1000 Points of Light” as George H.W. Bush used to like to say, which are community-based groups, or sector-based groups, working in journalism, or government, or education, that are trying to bring people together.

MB: Do you think we need a movement?

PC: I think we need a movement. I think we need a movement, because otherwise the challenge with this, the availability of these places, it's most people don't know about them. And there's a good reason that they don't know about them, because the sensitive nature of the work that bridge builders do across political divides in heated times can be a magnet or attractor for negative attention, violence, or protest. And so people generally like to keep low key. But what happens then is that Americans, or Brits, or others, are unaware of these things. And there's also no kind of standardization, there's no sense of what is the best practice that we should be following, what is the evidence base. And there's no capacity for this community of 7,000 plus organizations to come together politically, and really go after some of the structures that are driving this in the business models of the major tech platforms, or the entertainment-isation of news media. These are part of the industrial outrage organizations that are driving so much of this vitriol. So a movement is something that I'm calling for, is something that I'm envisioning the value of, but we're a long way from there. We have a lot of good work being done in communities. And helping people recognize that and find them is a start, because these are very hard change processes to go through alone.

MB: You talk in the book about how something called the “bombshell effect'' can be very important in terms of breaking out of a status quo and creating the possibility of change. And you actually refer to the Trump election as being potentially one of those bombshell effects. And I would imagine that you see COVID in similar lights, although those obviously mostly happened post you writing the book. And I just wonder, in both of those cases, what do you see already happening that makes you feel optimistic that those two particular bombshells might cause significant progress out of some of the toxicity that we're seeing?

PC: Well, because there's some evidence that there is actually work that's being done to address this. So the bombshell effect comes from something called “punctuated equilibrium theory”, it's a theory and a model that came out of biology originally as a sort of challenge to some degree to evolutionary theory. And it argued that oftentimes there is some kind of major shock that takes place that allows communities to change - what we have mentioned on a few occasions already.

Paul Diehl and Gary Goertz have studied the conditions where international relations are heated for decades, contentious, where you have active war or cold war, and then the change of those relationships are usually preceded by these shocks, these bombshells. It might be a coup attempt, it might be the end of the Soviet Union, 9/11. These kinds of major political shocks can really destabilize. But the effects take time. And these shocks don't guarantee change. They just create the conditions where changes are possible.

And so this is all part of this alternative theory of change that I mentioned at the onset -- which is that we typically think that in a problem like polarization we can go in, and if you [for example] fix gerrymandering, or if you get rid of Trump, or if there is the kind of single sovereign thing that we need to do, and that will affect change. And what this science suggests is No, when you have deeply embedded cultural patterns, it takes a different kind of shock to destabilize it enough. And then people need to take advantage of that time, in order to make these shifts.

The other insight from this research that I point to is what we call the “butterfly effect”. And what that suggests is that after an upheaval, our next choices, the things we do to begin to connect across the divide -- how we do that, what our intentions are -- these first next steps are very critical, because they'll set us off on another trajectory.

And ironically, I provided some guidance and advice to the Biden transition team, as they were coming in, they had reached out and asked for me to write some briefs on the science. And Joe Biden was talking about healing the soul of the nation and uniting the nation in his campaign. And I said, that's all well and good, but it's premature. Because you don't go into war zones and talk about reconciliation, or you get shot.

[We need to recognize] that this state of polarization is toxic for us, in terms of our own mental health, in terms of our physical health, in terms of relations in our families, or divisions in families, communities, it's a highly toxic time. And recognizing that that is a common enemy, we can kind of come together in service of that.

But you asked for some evidence of how the shocks are working. And let me just give you one example. There is a group in Congress called the Select Committee for the Modernization of Congress. And it's a mechanism that our Congress has when things are broken to at least put together a temporary committee to work on it. So about a year ago, they were put to the task of trying to work on depolarizing Congress. And it is a bipartisan committee. There's Republican and Democratic co-chairs -- they split the budget, they have consensus decision making. And their objective is to look critically at the structures of Congress, how Congress does its work, and make recommendations for how to bring the temperature down and reintroduce more decency into the legislative process. They offered Nancy Pelosi 98 recommendations at their one year mark. And then most of the Congress wrote policy and said, Extend this group, we need this. And so they will have a mandate now to work for another two years, trying to take a hard critical look at the incentive structure of Congress and what needs to change and shift in order to affect the vitriol that is there in the belly of the beast.

Let me give you one specific example: Freshmen Congress people that come to D.C. on their first day, typically show up and are put on separate buses -- a red bus and a blue bus -- and they drive off in different directions and they start the war council, they start the strategy about how to defeat the other side. And that's the first thing they do on the first day. And so their first recommendation was don't do that. Bring them together in service as citizens of this country, as servants of this country, and have them meet each other and build some kind of rapport and shared vision before you move into political camps. And so that's what they're systematically trying to do. And that has come from January 6th, and come from the vitriol that we see in Congress, and the dysfunction of Congress. And so when there are these kinds of extreme shocks, there can be reactions like this that can ultimately over time have positive effects.

MB: Because I suppose on the surface you look at Congress at the moment, and it seems to be more fiercely partisan than it's ever been. It's interesting that there is enough recognition within the Congress that they need to do something about that, that this committee has been given extra lifespan on it.

PC: Absolutely. And they recognize that most of what we see of Congress is the things that happen in front of the camera. So one of the recommendations is that they create more spaces for congress people to get together that are away from the cameras so that they can speak candidly and openly and have some kind of contact, and build some kind of rapport. And they're not constantly positioning for their public audiences. So yes, we all get a sense that it's as bad as ever. It's not good. But the good news is that there is a cohort of them that recognizes that and are actively working to try to change the structures in order to change the climate.

MB: So throughout the book, you draw on evidence from your Difficult Conversations Lab, and I just love the name of the lab - besides anything else, it just really gets immediately to the point. But I wonder if you would back the clock to when that lab was founded, and what's been the biggest positive surprise, and what's been the biggest negative surprise for you over the years?

PC: So we built this lab -- we got funding about 15 years ago from a foundation. A group of us [got funding] from the James S. MacDonald Foundation, who tend to fund people that have kind of wild ideas but aren't ready for NSF funding. So sort of crazy but possible ideas. And we put this team together of complexity scientists and anthropologists and psychologists and this eclectic group of mathematicians. We had an astrophysicist, a modeler, and we were tasked with trying to think about long term stuck conflicts, things that go on for 10, 20, 30, 50, 100 years. And political polarization in the U.S. currently has about a 60 year trajectory of increasing vitriol. And so this is one of these more intractable kinds of problems. So we came together to study this, to make sense of it, to try to bring lenses in from complexity, science, physics, and biology that help us think about when do communities or family systems get stuck. And what are the conditions under which they change?

And so we were studying this and we wrote a bunch of papers and mostly theoretical pieces. But we needed data. We needed to be able to collect data in real time to see if our half baked notions were valid. So one of the things we did is we built these Difficult Conversation Labs, one at Columbia, in my space, and then a former student, who's a colleague now, Katharina Kugler, built one in Munich, Germany, as well. She was very central to the development of this. And it really was just a space, that is what we call a “capture lab”, which allows us to bring people in who differ on a moral issue or have different political views, and then study the conditions under which conversations over divisive issues, go well or go poorly. And I have to repeat that, because what this Difficult Conversations Lab is, it's a laboratory, it's a place where we study the phenomenon. And so we've tried different kinds of interventions, to see what helps the conversations, shepherds them into more constructive directions, versus where are the places where people just shut down and get frustrated and angry and it devolves into a shouting match. That's what we study.

And the challenge I found is I've had journalists approach me and say, Oh, okay, well, I want to bring a team of people there that are having a dispute, and we want you to solve it. And I'll say No, we're a research lab, we study conditions where things go better or worse. I can tell you what our evidence suggests. And you can apply that in your situation. But that's not what we offer. You know, people come into our lab and don't solve the abortion debate. They don't solve the Trump debate, but they can have conversations that they're willing to continue, and they feel like they've learned, and they feel sufficiently positive about themselves and their understanding and the other party that they'll continue the conversation. Much like the women in Boston did around the divorce abortion debate.

So what we try to do is study specifically those conditions and the main take home that we've identified is really the difference I guess, between what I would call dialogue and debate in how people communicate in this country, and in the U.K. as well and elsewhere. So many of us in Western society are trained for debate. I was trained in high school as a debater; we see it in our Congress, we see it in political campaigns, we see it on television. It's how we assume people talk about politics. And debate is a very particular form of communication. It's basically a game that you're trying to win. In a debate, I have a position, I'm trying to sell it to you, I'm listening to you in order to identify flaws in your assumptions that I can weaponize in order to show you that I'm right and win the game. And that's a very specific form of cognitive process, it's a much more closed and focused process. Dialogue is fundamentally the opposite. Dialogue is a process of learning and discovery, where we communicate with each other in a way that [means] I may learn things about my positions -- why I hold them, where they came from -- that I wasn't even really conscious of. I'll learn things about the nuance or complexity of the issues that we're talking about, and learn things about you and where you've come from and what your take is. So it's a fundamentally different process of learning and discovery that is much more nuanced, and much more complex in people's understanding of the issues, and the other, and of their emotional experiences, and ultimately, how they treat each other.

And so that's the main distinction that we found is that when we set people up for a debate -- so for example, we'll take an issue like pro-life/pro-choice and we'll present people with both sides of an issue -- and then they begin. And what happens when you present people with that kind of information in that manner, is that they pay a lot of attention to the facts that support their position, and they ignore the other side. This is something called “selective perception''. And then they come into these conversations armed for war, and battle, and they go into debate and it escalates and they get stuck. And ultimately, they want out. Alternatively, if you take the same information -- the pro-life/pro-choice set of facts -- and say, Abortion is a highly complicated set of linked issues -- there are moral issues or religious issues, there are family issues, physical health issues, physiological issues, it's a complex constellation of things -- here's that information, have a conversation about it, and try to reach some kind of consensus in your understanding. And if you frame a conversation like that -- which many dialogue groups will do, they'll say, No, they're not two sides to this, there are five sides to this -- those types of conversations tend to be more nuanced, and less certain, and less vitriolic. And people move into very different kinds of experiences of themselves, the other, and the issues. Which can be very transformative, and encourage them to at least continue the conversation.

And that's the primary learning that we've walked away with -- that these conversations don't have to go poorly. But typically, for example, in our media, what we do is we present two sides, right? There's a pro-Trump side and the anti-Trump side, and we pit them against each other and have them go. And it is the business model of much of the media because people are drawn to conflict, and they like provocation. And so they enjoy it. It's like a reality show. But they learn about their own side, they don't learn about the other side. And the understanding that they walk away with is over simplified.

MB: Is there an alternative media model to that? That could be about dialogue?

PC: Yeah, there is. So a colleague of mine, Amanda Ripley, wrote an important piece for a group called Solutions Journalism, which is an organization that supports journalism. And she did a study of conflict resolution and mediation processes; she came and participated in our lab. And she wrote a piece called “Complicating the Narrative”. And it really is a challenge to journalists that they reflect critically on basically the business model behind how they do their reporting, and how they in fact contribute to polarization, and how they might actually begin to mitigate it by using different strategies. So, she lays out a series of steps for journalists to consider. Solutions Journalism then went with that piece and ran with it and now have a program where they train journalists to think differently about how they do their work in a way that introduces sufficient nuance and complexity in the context and is still compelling. So they recognize that there is a need to have an audience that will engage. But they also recognize the either intended or unintended consequences of oversimplification of these complex issues. So there is a movement in journalism to mitigate that, to affect that, to change that. But it is going against a huge business model that is all about provocation in order to gain attention.

MB: Well, this has been a very rich conversation. And, we're almost out of time, so I wanted to end by asking you a question as we think about our audience of people who feel they want to get involved in being change leaders in today's world, they maybe want to be those bridging leaders. Obviously, your book has got lots and lots of ideas and tips and laws and rules and all sorts of things in it. But is there one overall overriding piece of advice you would have for someone who wants to get involved in that form of public service?

PC: Sure. Well first of all, I would strongly recommend that they read the book. And that they reach out and engage with me -- I'm more than happy to have continued conversations about it. But one of the wondrous benefits of these hard times is that there are more and more groups and organizations -- there's a group called Starts With Us, there's a group called FixUS, there are many different constellations of either thought leaders or change leaders -- who are taking this time seriously trying to understand what to do and how to do it, and trying to learn the science. So there are many groups and organizations to engage with. Again, one place to go, if you're in the U.S., is the Bridging Divides Initiative and you can see where the local community-based places are. But there's the Bridge Alliance as well, which is a constellation of significant organizations like Search for Common Ground, that have made a pivot to the U.S. and are now focusing locally in the U.S., or Generations for Peace, which is a youth-based organization that is also now pivoted to the U.S. and is shifting focus from international peacebuilding to domestic peace building in the U.S. So there is a lot of energy and movement in the nonprofit world to work in constructive ways, in different sectors, and at the community level. So there is a lot of opportunity to do that. But I would begin by taking a look at the book and getting back to me with your questions and challenges, and insights.

MB: And the book is The Way Out. Peter Coleman, thank you very much for writing it, and thank you for talking with me today with Books Driving Change. Thank you very much.

PC: Matthew, my pleasure. Thank you for having me.

This transcript has been lightly edited for context and clarity.

Made in Africa: A Conversation with Bright Simons Oct 28, 2021

That was also a very interesting lesson, because eventually, that will be the way we managed to make the most difference, not by convincing people about the goodness of our mission alone, or trying to shame them into doing good, we found out that ultimately strategic alliances, where people see the enlightened self-interest was almost always a more effective tool, which is where my activism was then balanced by my intrapreneurship. And this continuing dance went on.

In this episode of Made in Africa, Sarika Bansal talks with Bright Simons, President of mPedigree, a social enterprise working on three continents to secure communities from the harmful effects of counterfeiting. They pioneered a technology that lets one send a text message from a pharmacy where you are buying medicines and learn immediately if it is an authentic medication. mPedigree is bringing this same idea to other sectors, such as agriculture, cosmetics, and the automotive industry

In addition to being an entrepreneur, Simons has strong activist roots and is a leading thinker in Ghana. He serves as the honorary Vice President at IMANI, a leading think tank, where he talks and writes about political accountability, anti-corruption, and civil liberty projects.

Simons has received a large number of accolades. He is a member of the World Economic Forum Global Future Councils, an inaugural TED Fellow, an Archbishop Desmond Tutu Fellow, to name a few. He spends a considerable amount of energy working to build and sustain networks of solution seekers around the world, united by common values.

In the conversation, they talk about how Simons brings two competing sides of himself together: his activist brain, through which he sees injustices in society, and his entrepreneurial side, which wants to find solutions. He has been finding ways to bring a bit more justice and security to the world since he was in high school when he fought the government on raising school fees.

Made in Africa is Driving Change’s conversation series with African visionaries whose work impacts the public good. We are interested in learning how leaders across the continent got to where they are today. The inflection points along their journeys, their inspirations, how they pushed through moments of self-doubt, and how they came out the other side.

Books Driving Change: Meighan Stone and Awakening Oct 25, 2021

Show me the social movement where there was no backlash. I'll wait for an answer, because there is none. There is not an example of a social movement that didn't trigger backlash. Because these things feel very threatening when we start to change the structures of society. --

Meighan Stone, Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign

Relations; Former President, Malala Foundation

Books Driving Change: Paul Polman and Net Positive Oct 06, 2021

Paul, thank you for talking with us today. The audience of this podcast is people who are interested in being involved, in building back better, and dealing with some of the big global challenges that we're now facing. In a sentence, why should they read your book?

Paul Polman (PP): Well, in a simple sentence will be one question: is the world better off because your company is in it or not? This is probably the most important question to ask. What the book is trying to do is to create a movement that really describes how successful companies can profit -- not from creating the world's problems, but from actually solving the world's problems. So we describe officially in the book Net Positive as: a business that improves the well being for everyone it impacts, and at all scales -- be it product, operations, regions, countries -- and obviously caters to the multiple stakeholders.

World Overshoot Day this year was July 29, which is the day that we use up more resources than the world can replenish. In other words, every day after that, we're stealing from future generations. So it's not anymore enough to be linear or to be circular. But more and more companies have to think about what can they do to have a positive impact on society. If they really can't answer that, then why should society keep these companies around?

So the book talks about two things, personal transformation, because it starts with leaders, you cannot have systems changes without leader changes. So leadership transformation, and then systems transformation. And it takes you, with very simple steps, through what you need to do to get your own company in shape, to play a key role in your own value chain in your industry associations, and ultimately, in the broader society that you play in. And, the book doesn't shy away from some of the tougher choices, such as how you deal with tax, with corruption, with trade associations, with money in politics, with human rights. It's written for everybody, small and big companies, others who want to play a role in changing society for the better. So we think it broadly resonates.

And, if I may, the characteristics perhaps would be good to talk about of a net positive company. That basically boils down to companies that take responsibility and ownership for all impacts and consequences in the world. Intended or not. Many only look at scope one and two under their control. But you have to take responsibility for your total handprint. You cannot outsource your value chain and also expect to outsource your responsibilities. That simply doesn't work anymore. It's companies that operate for the long term benefit of business and society, that try to create a positive return for all stakeholders. They see shareholder value as a result of what they do, not as a goal in itself. And last but not least, they partner to form these broader systemic changes that society needs.

MB: So we're in a very interesting moment where in some ways, business appears to be at least talking the talk on being a more positive force in society. You know, you've had the Business Roundtable decision, that you note, to sort of abandon the Milton Friedman view of the world and to sort of focus on more stakeholder capitalism. And you've had lots of companies saying they're committed to net zero carbon emissions by 2050. And more companies generally stepping into some of the political issues around elections in America, or issues like transgender rights, and yet there's also tremendous skepticism. You take a book like Anand Giridharadas' Winners Take All, which really regards all of this as a giant charade by capitalism. How do you view this data? Because in the book you do acknowledge that, even at Unilever, with some of the things, that you didn't feel you went far enough with, but you were one of the leaders there. Are we getting there? Is this real? Is it just greenwashing? Rainbow washing? What is it?

PP: I've read Anand's book Winners Take All and frankly, that's a book heavy on the analysis and light on the solutions. This book is really more practical and offers solutions to move it forward.

It's very clear that governments are not functioning the way we have designed them, that multilateralism is not really delivering what we expect from it. The multilateral institutions that were designed in, basically, 1944 with Bretton Woods are not adapted to the current changes. And the bigger issues are more global -- climate change, cybersecurity, pandemics, financial markets -- and we're just not getting to it. And what I think what you see is a few things, [such as firstly] technology always developing faster than people realize. So it's easier to change things. Now take green energy [as an example], the International Energy Agency was expecting solar and wind in 2014, to be five cents per kilowatt hour in 2050. We have achieved that in 2020 already. So technology is advancing.

And the other thing that is happening is the issues are creeping up on us faster than we realized, especially on climate, we're getting closer to a negative feedback loop. And business sees that pressure. You see the weather disasters -- we literally have the world on fire -- disruptions in the food supply chain, and the logistics, and many other things. And in fact, COVID has been a rude awakening that you cannot have healthy people on an unhealthy planet. Just in Europe and the U.S. alone, we've spent $16 trillion on stabilizing and saving lives and livelihoods. The economy itself has probably lost $25 or $26 trillion dollars, according to the IMF.

So people are starting to realize that the cost of not acting is becoming much higher than the cost of acting. And that's why you see this high level of dissatisfaction with the young people, with employees, with your customers, with people in your value chain. And good companies understand that, they understand that they have to be part of the solution, not the problem. They're internalizing sustainability, they put it at the center of their business, they become more purpose driven businesses. And what you see is that businesses that operate increasingly under these longer-term, multi-stakeholder principles at the core are actually also better performing. That bifurcation has been even stronger during COVID. That's one of the reasons why you see ESG funds taking off, green bonds taking off, the investor community getting actively interested in it, standard setters moving forward. Some of the responsible governments, like Europe, are embedding it in legislation, like the Green Deal or the taxonomy, so it's definitely moving. But as usual, as these things are becoming more topical, thousands of flowers bloom -- for example, we have over 600 standard setting bodies. And it's time to make some bouquets.

And yes, if there are no clear standards, then companies will interpret things differently. And some people might call that greenwashing. And there's undoubtedly some of that going on. But broadly, it is clear that we're moving in the right direction, but [just] not fast enough, and not at the scale that we need. We now have about 20% of the companies, for example, that have commitments to be net zero by 2050. But what about 2030? Because we cannot wait that long. What about beyond scope one and two, and including scope three, four or five? And that still is unsettling for many.

MB: Because in the book, you talk about how these goals ought to be. You use the acronym SMART, which is measurable and realistic. I think a lot of the netzero pledges have been made without the companies that are making the pledges really having much of a sense of how they're going to get there. And so you feel like it's more of an ambition that may be far enough into the future that the company's current leadership need not own it and there's no pathway. Is that a problem?

PP: Well, I think increasingly, for some industries, it is difficult. If you're in the fossil fuel industry where investments are being made by your predecessor or your predecessor's predecessor, and it takes 30 years before you get a return on drilling a well, etc., it's difficult to change very quickly. And some of the heavy industry, which happens to also be heavy emitters, might not have all the answers yet. How do you totally decarbonize airlines, or shipping, or steel, or aluminum and some of the other things? And the fossil industry itself needs careful reflection. But what is clear is that, increasingly, companies understand that it actually can be done, and it is within reach.

Companies from Salesforce to Microsoft to Unilever, or to Pepsi and others [like] Walmart are making commitments that not only green their supply chains well before [they are expected to] -- Amazon itself, 2039 -- and they have clear plans and pathways to get there. But they're actually going beyond that, they're looking at restorative commitments, they're looking at integrating biodiversity and planetary health into their thinking. And what we find is that companies that proactively work this are often better run, their leaders are more in tune with societal needs, they come out with better products, have more engaged employees, better relationships in the value chain, and increasingly, that is linked to better returns.

You can now measure the negative environmental impacts of companies. And even within the same industries, there are some companies who take mitigating their environmental impacts more seriously than other companies within those industries. And what we clearly find is that accounting for these externalities about a quarter of these companies would not be profitable. But even within the industries, the ones that are less productive, also have lower valuations. So I think the market is starting to factor it in. And, looking very much at the leading companies that position themselves well for the future, and starting to reward those. So it is moving.

But again, as I mentioned before, these issues are creeping up on us quicker than we thought. We're getting close to the situation that the Amazon are becoming negative emitters, that the Borealis melting releases methane that is up to 100 times more potent in the short term, and we don't have that luxury to wait.

So what you need is to get critical mass behind this transformation, which is a big transformation, we all realize that. And that critical mass can only come from working together with civil society, with governments, obviously, and with the private sector, to drive these broader system changes.

MB: You open the book with this example of [when] you were quite far along in your time at Unilever, and the the CEO of Heinz comes along and makes this hostile takeover bid offer to you. And it seems like this is a battle between the old style capitalism and the new style capitalism. In this case, you were able to persuade shareholders to back you in this new model against the old model. Do you feel like that marked a decisive turning point in the attitude of big shareholders towards how big companies should be managed -- that they seemed to be saying: now we will support this net positive type of leadership?

PP: Well, it certainly raised awareness. I was happy that it happened during my eighth year of tenure in Unilever. We had produced very good returns for our shareholders. We also had worked very hard on changing our shareholder base, which was more loyal and had benefited from this value creation. So it came at a good moment in that sense. But it points out the dichotomy that there is in two legal systems. One that is focused on a few millionaires and billionaires, and financial manipulation, high leveraging up, cutting costs, frankly, something that anybody can do. And one that is more working for the billions of people invested in longer term value creation. And Unilever has certainly done that. Since the Kraft/Heinz attempted takeover bid, their share price has lost about 60%. They've had lawsuits, they've had change management three times, [while] Unilever share price has continued to grow. And I think this longer-term value creation model is also a better model over time for the shareholders, and you don't have to wait too long for that. So that game, I think that was being played there is increasingly being called out as not being constructive for society. And I broadly think that the longer-term shareholders understand that there's just so much money that we've put in the global economy, that a big part of that is chasing short-term returns at every cost. And there are some people that think their own greed is more important than the future lives of their children.

So you always have to deal with these challenges, but in order to avoid that over time, and to move it in the right direction, we indeed need to be sure that the regulatory frameworks and the moral standards that we put behind it, the obligations that we demand from companies as they operate in society, that they also fulfill the needs of society and get a real license to operate. It hurts to see a company like that at the bottom of a human rights index. And it gives me pride to see Unilever at the top. And if we can square that multi-stakeholder focus, in our case there was a 300% shareholder return over 10 years, then I think that is a much better thing for society. I've always said, I'm a proud billionaire, because we've focused on improving the lives of billions of people. And that's a good way not only to live your life, but if you can also show that it is good for your shareholders, I think you square it, and give people more confidence that this should be the direction we should be pushing for.

MB: I wanted to focus on the last two or three chapters of the book where I think you really push into some of the very cutting edge developments that need to happen if a business is to really achieve its full potential in improving the state of the world.

One is this whole issue of how you in the industry can partner with your competitors to actually, overall raise standards across the industry. And one example you give us is the fashion industry, which, obviously, increasingly, people are scrutinizing for the fast fashion, and in particular for its lack of sustainability. What have you learned about making a cross-industry partnership successful? What are the conditions that can make that a really positive thing?

PP: There's a whole chapter in the book which is called “One Plus One is 11” that deals with these broader partnerships. It's very clear that CEOs alone are held to very high standards and often higher standards than they actually can fulfill themselves. No CEO can move the whole market to regenerative agriculture, or solve the issues of plastics in the ocean, or even get to green energy, if a broader system around you doesn't pull in that same direction. And that's difficult for CEOs then to move things forward. Also, sometimes they feel that if they do it, and competitors don't, they might be at a disadvantage, because obviously there are other forces at play. So one of the reasons I created Imagine as a social enterprise is to bring a critical mass of CEOs together across the value chain, to look at some of these issues. Sometimes they are value chain issues, sometimes time availability, or knowledge issues. And together, they become more courageous. And if you have 20% to 30% of the market represented, civil society wants to join, NGOs want to be part of it, governments start to listen, and you can drive the broader system changes.

An example is fashion indeed, where we have 80 companies now in the fashion industry, together under the fashion practice. It's a very destructive industry. But together, they have decided to move to regenerative cotton. Together, they are now buying green energy to get to the Paris Agreement and stay below 1.5 degrees. Together, they're learning on how to integrate, with the help of Conservation International and others, biodiversity targets into their business models. So things that they could not do alone.

And I believe that, increasingly, when it concerns the future of humanity, we shouldn't compete about that. But leave enough space in other areas to obviously compete. Now many of the CEOs get that. We get an enormous demand. We're working also with the food companies, where we have 30 companies. We are starting now as private equity, with tourism and travel. So I think the needs are there. And creating these neutral platforms as we've done at Imagine is one way of addressing that.

But increasingly, you see these broader partnerships emerge, with partnerships for the greater good. And what most of these CEOs find is, whilst you cannot solve all these issues in one minute, and you have to space it out over a period of time (that we, to some extent still have), that a lot of things can be done, that are also immediately beneficial to the top and bottom line of your company. And not only from a risk mitigation point of view, but also from an opportunity point of view. And that makes these partnerships so powerful. The challenge is to get that translated into working together with governments to change the frameworks. Because right now, be it the carbon transmission and decarbonizing our global economy, or changing the food chain to make it more in line with the planetary boundaries, currently, many countries have frameworks in place that actually push you in a different direction. And that's difficult, ultimately, to achieve your objectives if you can't change those.

MB: But you have another chapter looking really at multi-stakeholder partnerships. It seems like we've been talking about how you get government, business, and the civil society organizations, NGOs, to work together for a long time. What have we figured out about what makes for a successful multi-stakeholder partnership? Because a lot of them haven't succeeded.

PP: Successful partnerships -- many partnerships obviously don't work out -- there are numbers floating around that 75% of partnerships might fail. But ultimately, if the aligned objectives are there, you have the same purpose, you're very clear on what each partner brings to the party, you work with transparency that creates that trust, you have clear accountability mechanisms, everybody clearly understands what his or her contributions are, then these partnerships can work very well.

Unilever built a tea plantation in Rwanda, where we needed the government from Rwanda, and where we needed organizations like Dfid, the U.K. development aid, and where we actually got high net worth individuals, like Ian Wood from the Wood Foundation, that were willing to help and protect the smallholder farmers. And we could create a value chain that was good for all of its stakeholders, and delivered the quality tea that also was feeding our brands. By the way, interestingly, [speaking of] the brands, people want to know if these products are sourced sustainably and where they come from. So building these whole models with these broader partnerships are very important. When we went into Ethiopia, we first worked with the government with our brands like bar soaps or toothpastes, or [we worked] with the health workers, they have about 30,000 health workers there, to teach people the benefits of hand washing, or tooth brushing, that are far more preventative solutions than waiting for the problem to occur. And only when we created that credibility over the longer term, we [were then able to] make these brands available into society on a broader level. And these are the broader partnerships that work for us.

It's interesting in the book, we talked about $3.5 billion being [spent] in lobbying in the U.S. alone -- I wonder how much money goes to self-interest? Well, one company says A and the other company pays money to say B; where politicians are in the pockets of some of these big spenders, we see, increasingly, that that's not the type of democracy that ultimately builds the value. And I think you see the enormous price we pay for that. Ceres, which is a company that is very capably led by Mindy Lubber, is pulling the financial market to a higher level of responsibility. It was looking at all this government spending and lobbying etc., and it actually found out that 40% of the companies in the U.S. were not actively even engaging with governments, or moving things forward in the right level, on let's say on climate change, when they know it's a big issue.

So the book is talking about: how do you create these partnerships? Why would you do that? What benefit do you get out of that by being a participant? And frankly, the employees and the companies expect the CEOs now to increasingly participate. About 76% of the employees expect this. And it's interesting, because CEOs broadly think they do. But when you ask their employees, there's a big gap between what the employees think and what the CEO themselves think.

MB: And as you say, one of the things we're seeing now is employees becoming more vocal -- in social media and elsewhere, at meetings, and so forth -- and holding their bosses to account. And we're almost out of time, and I've got two more questions. One, is really, I love your last chapter where you go, what the next frontier of…

PP: Engaging the Elephants

MB: Yeah, the elephants. And obviously, one of the elephants that you acknowledge right up front is companies trying to avoid paying taxes, and you really argue against that. Another is this lobbying issue, you want to basically end, and political donations, you want to get rid of those. And then you talk about corruption. Are you starting to see company leadership and shareholders really want to get into these, to address these elephants in the room, or do you feel like there is still a long way to go?

PP: On some issues more than others, obviously. But you mentioned a few. I don't want to respond to all of them, but take tax for example -- one quarter of the Fortune 500 companies paid zero tax in 2018. 10% of GDP is in offshore accounts. 500 or 600 billion of taxes are lost as a result of that. At Unilever I put my tax principles on my website. We got out of these constructions that were purely organized for tax reasons, and the company did fine. We hire people that get free education, we would use the road systems, we need social safety nets around people. When you get things like COVID, I think it's quite normal that you pay tax as well. So it's hard to square over time that society will give you bonus points on being a purpose driven company, if you don't find a way to contribute your fair share there either.

And it’s the same thing with some of the other areas that we talked about. If you look at the shareholder propositions right now, the shareholder resolutions, they are actually demanding more and more transparency.

Take in the U.S. the issue of money and politics. If you will have taken 2009, well before this January 6 event of storming the Capitol, in 2019, there were over 50 political spending proposals on the ballots of shareholder meetings, non-court accepted; if you look now, to date, already in 2021, there are over 40 on the proposals, and you're already running at a significantly high level of support.

MB: For disclosing what the donations are and who to.

PP: What the donations are and for what they are. So you see, actually, the shareholders are demanding more. Now more CEOs are getting fired for ESG related reasons, then for performance related reasons. You see shareholders demanding, like in the famous Exxon case, that they are more aggressive on mitigating climate change. We saw it with Shell and some other companies [too]. So if you don't embrace these elephants proactively, and have a strategy around that, which is what we're really talking about in the book, then I think you will be exposed.

You mentioned in every company there is an activist; every company I think has a Greta Thunberg inside of them. And if they see, increasingly, these companies, on the one side, saying we want to do this and making these public statements, but then, for example, financing trade associations, like the American Petroleum Association, or some of the others actively advocating the opposite, then you lose credibility, you undermine your culture, and ultimately, the fabric of your company, and that gets reflected in your success, and share price.

So it is important that you discuss these issues, it is important that you take positions on them, and it is important that you do that in a holistic way. And not do it in a CSR way, where you pick a few topics that you think suit you well, but then go horribly wrong in the other areas. That's why this book talks about net positive in a more holistic way. And which makes it such a powerful book, actually.

MB: I wanted to end with asking for some career advice for our listeners. You mentioned every company having a Greta Thunberg maybe lurking within it, but the book really, I think, raises more clearly than any other book I've read, this notion that you can be a net positive leader. If you're someone who is committed to public service, you can actually go into a company and see that as a way of living a life of public service, which is an idea that 25 years ago would have seen laughable or even 10 years ago, but now seems to be a choice that many people are wrestling with. If I want to give, if I want to be part of the effort to build back better, should I go into business? Or should I go into government? Or should I go into a nonprofit? Or what? How would you advise someone trying to wrestle with that kind of calculation as to where they should focus their energies and their life, if they really want to have the biggest positive net positive impact in their career?

PP: Well, I ended up in business, by a little bit of serendipity. I wanted to be a priest first, then a doctor, and none of that really worked out. So I ended up being in business. But I discovered that, business being 60% of the global GDP, 65% or 90% of the job creation and the financial flow that you cannot solve any of these famous Sustainable Development Goals, bar a few if you don't have business actively in there. So you need business, but for the same reason, you also need government, and you need civil society. It's really what the book ultimately talks about is this partnership that needs to be formed between all of them.

And my advice to anybody listening and looking for a job is: find out what the world needs, what you're passionate about, and what you're good at. And if you can work on that intersection of what the world needs, your passion, and what you're good at, then you're going to have a very fulfilling and and very gratifying life.

Mark Twain said there are two moments in life that are the most important: the first one is when you were born, and the second one is when you figured out why you were born. If you can operate on that intersection, it is giving you a meaningful life that I think most people aspire to. So it's not one or the other, it's really finding yourself and realizing, above all, that we are lucky. Most of the people listening here have been educated, they didn't have to deal with the issues of food security, or stunting, or open defecation. But that, unfortunately, is only 5% of the world population that you belong to, and have that freedom to some extent. And then it is important, I believe, to put yourself to the service of the other 95%, who still have not been so fortunate.

MB: If I asked you to build on that, if I asked you to take a 100 mile up view of the world, I suppose you would say that for someone wanting to have a positive impact for good, there's never been greater opportunity to do that through business than now perhaps. But if you looked at each of business, civil society, and governments, and you looked at their human capital, where are people with a service orientation, most needed? Is it business? Is it government? Or is it civil society at the moment?

PP: Well, I think frankly, we have a leadership deficit everywhere. It's clear that the MBA programs, which have given us the leaders for business, are a version of Milton Friedman on steroids, and are in desperate need to be reinvented. In politics it has become, for different reasons, increasingly more short-term oriented. Many of the NGOs have also been called out. Whilst they play a very crucial role, many of them are mono issue end result focused, and are not willing to walk the journey, or walk in partnership. So I think the biggest deficit is not in one or the other institutions. The biggest deficit ultimately, is the leadership. And that's why this book starts with a very famous question: do you care? And that's why we believe and what makes it so powerful, is that you need a personal transformation before you get a systems transformation.

MB: Well, thank you. I think that's a great note to end on. I would like to thank both you, Paul Polman, and Andrew Winston for writing this book Net Positive: How Courageous Companies Thrive by Giving More Than They Take. It is an incredibly positive and practical book that anyone who is thinking about if they should live out their public service through business, will find very useful and very inspiring. So thank you very much for talking about the book with Books Driving Change, Paul, thank you.

PP: Thank you, Matthew enjoyed it.

This transcript has been lightly edited for context and clarity.

Books Driving Change: Paul Shoemaker and Taking Charge of Change Sep 29, 2021

Matthew Bishop (MB): Hello, welcome to Books Driving Change. I'm Matthew Bishop, and today we're talking with Paul Shoemaker, who is the author of Taking Charge of Change: How Rebuilders Solve Hard Problems. Paul is a podcaster, activist, philanthropist, founder of Social Venture Partners International, which is a network of philanthropists, and has been really involved and an activist in change for many years.

Paul, our audience is really people who are feeling a calling to get involved, in trying to build back better, trying to make the world a better place. In a sentence, what's your elevator pitch to them? Why should they read this book?

Paul Shoemaker (PS): Because I'm identifying the leaders and the leadership traits that we will need to meet the complexities and reverse the inequities in America for the decade ahead.

MB: The book was written before COVID, but clearly anticipated many of the topics that we've been talking about in terms of building back better. And what I really like about it is you have five leadership characteristics that you identify, and you put people to each of those characteristics, people who are actually doing change on the ground. And I like the fact that your five things are not obvious in some ways.

You do have authenticity as your first one, and I kind of inwardly cringed as everyone is in favor of authenticity at the moment. And I think it is a bit like what Groucho Marx said about sincerity -- it is the key to success in public life, you can fake that you've got it made -- and you wonder whether authenticity is the same. But then you go into the things like complexity, having a complexity mindset, and being able to deal with cross sectoral complexity, to be very data centric, things that aren't so obvious to people who were just sort of picking the five characteristics.

And I wonder how you came to those five, what made you pick those? And the other thing you do, which I love as well, is that you have a downside to each of those five as well. So many leadership books just talk about the virtues and they don't say well actually some people who are data obsessed are quite a pain to deal with or these cross sectoral people may not really get it in depth enough or whatever. So how did you pick those five?

PS: In 2018 while working on a project about poverty in America, I was studying different aspects of inequities that affect poverty, race, health, economics, social, etc. In the middle of that project, what slapped me in the face was, while I certainly understand we have inequities in America, I did not know the pace and the downward path of economic, social, and health inequities over the last 25 years in America. And I think people think 2020 was this year of inequity, but this has been building for a generation. And so that's what I finally recognized. And that follows 50 years in America where we were slowly, haltingly, unevenly making progress. And we've sort of gone back down the other direction. So that was my original sort of motivation.

Then I said, okay, how do I think about how we're going to reverse these inequities? What kind of leaders are we going to need? So I took the next six months, and I did three things. One, I talked to nearly 100 of the best leaders I've worked with over the last 30 years, and several traits and characteristics started to sort of fall out of that. Number two, I was also looking for evidence of programs and organizations where there was also true social impact. The ones that were starting to reverse that 25 year trend going the wrong direction. And then number three, was understanding the complexities that are coming in the decade ahead. This is the most insanely complex, not just inequitable, but complex decade, I think America has faced in at least 75, maybe 100 years.

And so if you think of those as three overlapping circles -- leaders, impact, context of complexity -- the intersection of those three things, yielded those five traits for me. So it was a very well thought out, subjective, qualitative process that has a prospective point of view that I feel very passionately about, and think that these five traits are going to make a huge difference in the decade ahead -- 24/7 authenticity, generosity mindset, data conviction, capacity for complexity, and cross sector fluency.

And the last thing, in terms of downsides, a good example of 24/7 authenticity, which is in bleak short supply, these days in America -- I have several examples in the book where standing up with integrity and honesty, and particularly with personal accountability, will cost you in the short term, and it may cost you a lot career wise, by making some enemies, etc. But in the long term, I think it's an enormously important leadership trait.

MB: A lot of people have been forced to confront the inequities that you've written about, and that you and I have both been working on to different degrees over the years to address, but have been forced by COVID to address them, and are now thinking, how do I get involved, I'd like to get involved in in some kind of public service trying to make the world better. And yet they find it a kind of intimidating world. A lot of people who have been in the business world may be thinking, it looks like unrewarding difficult terrain and so forth. What do you say to them?

PS: It is absolutely difficult terrain, as you well know. At times, it will be deeply frustrating. And it will be occasionally, hopefully, enormously rewarding. The challenges we've got -- whether you want to think on a local or global level -- climate, geopolitical, cybersecurity, rural urban divide, go on and on and on. These are generational kinds of challenges, and they are at real inflection points.

So for someone to feel daunted is honest and correct. What I hope people don't feel is hopeless. Because you can make a difference. The book is full of 38 people who have found ways to make a difference -- some of them on a local level, some of them on a national level, some of them at the top of an organization, some of them in a medium part of the organization, or on the street in a community. So part of the reason to write the book was not just to have a point of view, but also to tell 38 stories of people who are making a positive impact, and how they're doing it, and how that positive impact reflects those five qualities that I think are so important.

MB: And there are some great stories in there. The person that you start with is Rosanne Haggerty, who I know as well, and has this extraordinary record of actually figuring out how to get to zero homelessness in a number of cities around America. When you see what she's done, what can we learn from that in terms of how we could achieve real, dramatic change? Because I think homelessness has been an issue that no one really ever believed you could solve.

PS: Particularly on the West Coast. I'm sure it's true on the East Coast, but on the West Coast it's just absorbing us.

MB: And you were quite honest that you were involved in Seattle in trying to solve homelessness and couldn't do it.

PS: I will say my case study was of Seattle, I wasn't directly involved in it. That's not letting myself off the hook. I'm trying to find an entry point in Seattle about how to be involved, because we do have a new housing authority that's trying to go after it.

So what do you learn from someone like Rosanne? I would say a couple things. One, the people in this book, every one of them, sort of exemplifies one of these particular traits. And I think all of us, we have to be multifaceted. But there's also something about us picking a particular principle, or a particular strength, that's going to guide our work. And it needs to represent who we are.

So in Rosanne’s case, what she exemplifies is what I call the generosity mindset. And it's because she told me that phrase. She has to walk into so many communities and deal with some of the most complex, contentious issues there are. And I just said to her, how the hell do you have a chance? She says, I have to have a generosity mindset. And we went on to have a whole conversation about what that is and what that means. But she has a grounding in that approach and that strategy. So she doesn't randomly walk into a community to do this. She doesn't just say, I'm gonna do my best. Generosity mindset is a strategy. It is a hard-edged strategy.

So I say, the first thing is, as a leader, we need to have an approach. We need to have a mindset. We need to have a particular leadership strategy that we're going to lead with that represents who we are and what our strengths are.

The second thing to learn from her story is that literally from the day she got out of college this is what she's worked on. Now, I'm not saying everybody has to commit their whole life to it. But there's definitely the story of when people hop around to different causes and different issues, you're just staying shallow. If you want to make a difference, you have to pick at some point -- a place, or an issue, or a cause to go deep on, and stick with it, and go hard, and go deep. That is the one where you have a chance, that's the second thing I think you learn.

And the third thing you learn from her example, and it's reflective in the trade of cross sector fluency, is everybody from every sector has a role to play in this. So if you're in the private sector, and you feel like homelessness is hard to solve, believe me, we need you. If you're in the public sector, and you feel like nobody cares about homelessness enough to really do something about it, that's not true. What her stories exemplify also is that we need all three sectors to converge on these problems. We do not have a chance to solve these huge problems one or two sectors at a time. We need all three of them.

So have a strategy, stick with it over the long term, and understand that we need all three sectors.

MB: This is a very challenging point, though. Firstly, near the end of the book you use a quote from McKinsey, which is obviously a firm that is very much associated with public private partnerships, but also currently is in the news for not being brilliantly ethical in this respect. And yet, there is this general thing that we all kind of know in principle, that we need public private partnerships to work at scale, if we're really going to move a lot of change fast. But yet, there are very few examples of public private partnerships that have really seemed to work. And there is this imbalance that I think is there between what you get paid if you're working in the private sector, and what you get paid in government. And the worry that many of the people who end up in government are not the best, that many of the most talented people go into the private sector. And that actually, where you want more of the talented people to go is into the public sector. And they don't, because it's not an attractive career, in many ways.

How do we get beyond saying we need the public private partnerships to work to actually setting up the conditions where they can work? Obviously, there are many talented people in government, but how do we solve that problem?

PS: I would say in the last three to five years, the most hopeful part of that equation is the private sector, not because they're the best, or whatever. I mean, all three of those sectors genuinely contribute a part of the equation. If you take one part of the equation away you do not have what you need. But in the last three to five years, you can look at the statement on stakeholder capitalism in September 2019, Larry Fink at BlackRock making the statements he's making, the way that CEOs had to step up in 2020. I think we've reached a convergence point where it's great if the CEO wants to be socially conscious, because they care about it or they have a good moral ethic. That’s nice. That’s great. It is even better if it's truly woven into the business, and it's truly going to affect the bottom line. Somewhere in the last three to five years, I believe we crossed over that. And in 2020, we absolutely moved past that point where it isn't just a nice thing to do, to varying degrees for companies, it's something they have to do. And so I think we have this place where profit and purpose are now not this incongruent, or forced together, equation. They genuinely can live together. So that's a really hopeful part of it.

And what is also true is, there has been for a while there, this sort of a pedantic relationship between the private and the public/nonprofit sectors. And I would say in particular in 2020, a lot of private sector companies realized, man, I better have at least a nonprofit partner or a public sector partner, or both, that actually understands what's going on the ground, because I need to navigate this for my business, for my company. And I can't do this if I just sit over here in my private sector silo. So I would say the most hopeful thing, while it’s still complex and it will always be, but the most hopeful thing is there is more alignment of natural incentives than I have seen in a long, long time and I think that gives me hope.

MB: I agree with you, that business has definitely changed his tune. I think what remains to be seen is what the reality is underneath that. But I do find that the public sector part of it is the one that I find hardest to solve. Because there are so many aspects of working in the public sector that you really have to feel incredibly called to do. You have to be willing to put up with a lot of obstacles, and often feeling that things are moving at a very slow moving pace, that you are not well paid. And lots of risks in terms of politicians, particularly, who are very much subject of 24/7 scrutiny and in this current moment, can easily find themselves suddenly out of office for something that might have been seen as relatively minor in the past.

What do we do? I mean, you have some examples, this Chief Performance Officer that you quoted, who is very impressive. How do we make it more palatable to go into government, into the public sector?

PS: That's a hard equation to solve for. What I'll suggest is, at the national level, it can feel enormously discouraging. I don't know that I would tell anybody to try to run for one of those 535 spots in Congress, or anything at that level. So I'm gonna sort of bag off of that. But at a local and a state level -- and there's plenty of complexity there, too -- there's a lot of local and state issues, where I do think there is a chance to make change. You know, we talk a lot about mayors. I have one example of a mayor in the book, Mayor Nutter of Philadelphia who was there a few years ago. I think mayors, sometimes governors, sometimes local city council, they absolutely can have an impact.

And what I do find inspiring is, I think that there are still enough people that care about that civic ethic, and that want to commit to their community. And I actually think that the Gen Zs have this, even more than you or my generation did, so I think there's a little more supply coming at it.

And the last thing I would say, based on several of the examples in the book, is that cities, some states, some counties, they're never going to be okay with the private sector coming in, that it's just not gonna happen. But what they can do is hopefully create a working environment and a sense of purpose that is strong enough, and clear enough, that enough talented people will want to continue to want to work in the public sector. So absolutely a hard challenge. I see enough hope at the state, county, local levels, where there are enough people that have that sense of civic service, and enough of those entities that I think create a working environment where people do want to be a part of it, and that they can contribute something to public private partnerships.

MB: One of the things that your book does, that is one reason I would recommend it to people, is you tell these 38 stories of people who really are making a difference. People who in some ways should be household names, but most of them aren't. And they could be. One of the things that we need to do better as a media is to shine light on some of these stories of people who are builders, who are taking charge of change. And, not in a naive way. And one of the things I like about the book is that you are willing to concede when people have not have not been perfect. What makes you optimistic as we come out of this pandemic?

PS: So the simple answer, which is also true, is it's partly the people that I profile in the book and other folks that I talked to that are not in the book. So that is true. And I guess I would also sort of suggest that that's the easy answer. So I would say the less obvious answer is in doing the research on those people, and understanding those five traits, I had to come across organizations that were doing things that I didn't know they were doing, and I didn't expect. I came across a lot of private sector organizations that are not just in this stuff because they think it's a nice thing to do, because they have to do it. I see a lot more talented CEOs that are now willing to apply themselves to this wholeheartedly.

I am probably as inspired by the public sector examples. The city of Cincinnati, Nicolette [Stanton], the head of waste management, the city of Phoenix, Philippe Marino, there are genuine examples of not just good people, but good work getting done. And, like you said, we are not telling those stories well enough. And in the midst of all the noise, and the division, and the silos, and the lack of facts we can agree on, which man they could win the day, I think there's enough good work, solid work that's going on. And these kinds of leaders, that gives me hope.

It's a real race, where it's like, the good and the evil are both racing to the tipping point for America. And I know that's a little dramatic. And I think people like to always say you're at an inflection point. But, at least to me, America truly does feel like over the next five to ten years here, we're gonna make up our minds about an awful lot of things. And if we get it right, I think we will be going in the right direction. Again, if we get it wrong, then it's going to be a bitch.

MB: So just to wrap up, do you have one challenge for listeners of Books Driving Change? And do you have one piece of advice for anyone who does feel that they want to take up the opportunity to take charge of change?

PS: Sure, on the latter one, if you literally can't find somewhere my email is: shoe@paulshoemaker.org. And I've helped people many, many times to find that point of entry. The latter part I would say to folks is: start. We can get intimidated by, overwhelmed by, the size of the challenge, the complexity of the challenge. Where do I have an entry point in the community? Pick somewhere. You can find it -- there's volunteer match, there's your local nonprofit directory, there's your local city, etc, etc. So find a place and start.

And then what I would say to folks about advice on a personal level -- in addition to getting the book -- is don't underestimate that everybody's got a skill or skills, a trait or traits, that actually have significant value. And I don't know that everybody realizes it, and doesn't necessarily sort of see where they have a pathway to: I have an expertise in finance, [but] what the hell does that have to do with this social problem or that one? Your skills and traits, they always have applicability. And it may take a little bit of a journey to find it. But part of the reason I wrote about these five traits is that every one of them can make a difference.

So find a way to start. If you can't find a way to start, contact me. And look in your own skill set, and your own strength, and your own assets, and realize there are ways that they can be applied into a community beyond what you probably know, you'd probably expect, and beyond your checkbook and your wallet.

MB: Great. Well, that's a great note to end on. Thank you very much. I've been talking with Paul Shoemaker, the author of

Taking Charge of Change

. It's a great book. Read it and get started. Thank you.

Made in Africa: A Conversation with Chinny Ogunro Sep 13, 2021

“If I have to decide between creating one large hospital that impacts a small number of very, very wealthy lives, but makes me personally rich, versus having a large number of small clinics, that impacts probably the lowest income populations and makes me reasonably okay to eat, I will always choose the latter because I'm very much a utilitarian. I want to do the greatest good for the greatest number of people so my focus has always been on the low- to middle-income population. How do we make sure that we're creating hospitals and clinics that are good for them?” -- Chinny Ogunro

In episode four of Made in Africa, Driving Change’s conversation series with African visionaries whose work impacts the public good, Chinny Ogunro speaks with Sarika Bansal about her life and career.

Ogunro has focused her career on building healthcare systems across Nigeria, Ghana, and other countries. She is a systems thinker, first and foremost, interested in doing the most good for the most people. Through the course of her career, she has helped improve the operations of hundreds of hospitals, which has delivered high-quality, low-cost healthcare to over 40,000 people in West Africa and India.

Ogunro was most recently the Chief Executive Officer of WellSpring Health, a Nigeria-based integrated care consortium committed to delivering quality, affordable healthcare at scale. She is a co-founder of Africa Health Holdings (AHH), a healthcare investment and operations company born out of her doctoral research and her first company, CarePoint Hospitals and Clinics. She was selected as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2020. Ogunro holds a Ph.D. in Health Management from the Harvard Business School, a masters in Health Administration from Cornell University, and Bachelors degrees from Stanford University.

She also talks about her career as an All-American track and field star and why she chose academics over working towards the Olympics.

I hope you enjoy the conversation!

Books Driving Change: Gillian Tett and Anthro-Vision Aug 27, 2021

I'm going to start, as I do with all the authors that we have on this podcast, by asking you, Gillian, the audience we're aiming at here is people who are interested in how we can do a better job at improving the state of the world and who are interested in public service in some way. And the question to you is, in a sentence, why should people, our audience, read your book?

Gillian Tett (GT): In a sentence, most of the problems in policy making and corporate life, and as general citizens, stem from the fact that we have tunnel vision. We can't see the consequences of what we're doing or the context. And I believe that cultural anthropology is one discipline that can really help you overcome tunnel vision, and get lateral vision, a wider view of how our actions impact the world.

MB: Now, you've written a fantastically wide-ranging book. I mean, it starts with you as a young student in Tajikistan, studying marriage rituals under a communist state in a Central Asian country. But you go across everything from the Cambridge Analytica scandal and trying to make sense of Trump, the financial crisis back in 2008, the emergence of ESG [Environmental, Social, and Governance] and impact investing, more recently, and sort of interesting issues in car manufacturing and consumption habits and all sorts of things. But can you start us off with what drew you to anthropology in the first place, and how you found yourself in Tajikistan and why that actually led you into journalism, which is where you have spent your career?

GT: Well, I got into anthropology, like many things in life, by accident. I wanted to have adventure and travel the world, and I was curious about the wider world, which is something that I hope we teach all of our kids to be. And so, I studied anthropology as an undergraduate, then went to do a Ph.D. in it, and ended up in a place called Soviet Tajikistan, just north of Afghanistan, where I was studying marriage rituals as a way to look at the clash between Islam and communism.

And just at the end of my research, the Soviet Union broke up. There was a very brutal war where I'd been living. So, I went to journalism partly because I was frustrated that no one was paying attention, and I wanted to draw attention to it for human rights reasons. But I then quickly realized, actually, the business of telling people about other people can be, in some ways, quite similar to anthropology, but also a way to try and drive some change in the wider world as well.

MB: So, it's a very natural follow up to your previous book, The Silo Effect, where you talk about the problem that people lock themselves into siloed thinking and here you talk a lot about lateral vision, this ability to sort of see things from multiple perspectives, but also to see yourself as others might see you. You know, if there's a single message about anyone going into public policy work or policymaking, what is it that anthropology teaches them?

GT: I think this single message can be presented in two ways. One, is to think about culture. And that kind of sounds obvious because we all know we're affected by our culture. But defining culture is a bit like chasing soap in the bath. It's kind of everywhere, but nowhere. And we know it affects us, but we don't actually have many ways to think about how to reflect on that. And what I offer in the book is really an argument that we all need to take a three-step process. Periodically, immerse ourselves in the lives of others or people who seem different from us. And that being different can be at the end of the street, in a different department, or the other side of the world. And to do that to get empathy not just for others and realize that not everyone thinks like us, but also then to fit the lens and look back at ourselves and see what we're missing. And see above all else, the kind of social silences, the parts of our world that we tend to ignore, because they seem boring or dull or irrelevant or just too obvious to talk about.

So, in many ways, the second way, I think I'd frame it is to say that anthropology gives you lateral vision in a world of tunnel vision. It enables you to see the context, the cultural context, beyond our models, or balance sheets, or simple policy programs. And when you wrap those different points together, what anthropology really gives you is an awareness that if you are engaged in public policy, you need to look at the world in a connected way, with empathy, both for others and a sense of empathy for understanding all the shortcomings in your own approach.

MB: You have a very interesting chapter on contagion where you start with the Ebola crisis in Africa. And actually, with a character, Chris Whitty, who went on to be quite a central figure in the British response to this current pandemic that we're going through. You also cite Paul Farmer [co-founder of Partners in Health] in this in this context. At various points, you note that a lot of the international aid failures around Ebola were due to not thinking through and understanding the culture of people on the ground. But then you flip it, I think very nicely, and talk about how we didn't necessarily do a good job of understanding our own culture when we were pushing many of the public health messages that needed to be communicated as we responded to the crisis. In fact, Chris Whitty himself didn't necessarily do a brilliant job in the U.K. I mean, I'm wondering, as you reflect now, on how we've responded to the pandemic, what should we if we brought an “Anthro-Vision” approach to it, should we have done differently?

GT: Well, I think, that we could have done two things differently. The first is to actually be curious about people who seem different from us and try and learn lessons from how they've handled pandemics in the past. This is a fundamental point in my book, that actually it pays to embrace strange, not run away or deride it. And to ask questions and be curious about how other people live. If we'd had that mentality at the beginning of COVID-19, it could and should have prompted policymakers to pay more attention to Wuhan. Look at the experience of SARS. Look at what happened with Ebola in West Africa. Not just assume it was a bunch of strange, weird people in a faraway place that had nothing to do with us. Because the reality is that the pandemic has shown us the world is interconnected and prone to contagion at all times and contagions come from people who we don't necessarily understand. And if nothing else, we need to try and understand that to, you know, protect ourselves. I happen to think there's a moral reason why we ought to try and understand each other. But if you want to just play to fear and greed, that's it.

But separately, if we had actually paid more attention to lessons from other countries at the beginning of COVID, we might have learned some really good lessons and tips. Like the efficacy of masks, that was well-known by anthropologists from the SARS epidemic in Asia. And what they'd learned was actually the way a mask helps in an epidemic is not just through the physical barrier of germs, but also through the simple act of putting on a mask each day as a psychological prompt to remind you to change behavior, or the fact that masks can be a signaling device culturally to show adherence to a wider group of norms, and a desire to uphold civic responsibility. And that really matters and it could and should have been imported into the West a lot earlier.

But the flip side is, of course, that thinking about how other countries handled an epidemic enables you to then look back at yourself, too, and say, “well are we making the right decisions or not?” So again, a tiny example is that in the U.K., there was a tremendous focus on top-down messaging and orders and coercion in terms of trying to change behavior during the COVID-19 lockdown. The messaging was very often conflicting and changeable. And the U.K. didn't use its existing excellent network of health centers, which were bottom-up local areas, which they should have done. If they'd looked at the experience or something like Ebola or even Asia with SARS and others, they would have seen what a mistake that was. And they would have actually asked themselves, you know, “why are we in the U.K. not using our wonderful local network of healthcare providers to try and battle the pandemic, you know, get messages about lockdown across in the way that people feel empowered, and want to relate to?” You know, “what can we do better?”

MB: And I mean, this theme of top down versus bottom up is another theme that comes throughout the book. And particularly in a chapter that you start in Davos with the gathering of the World Economic Forum (WEF), where we've both been there many times. And it's hard to imagine a more top-down orientation than the global elite gathered in Davos. What do you feel if Klaus Schwab [founder of the World Economic Forum] was to say, “Gillian, tell me how I should change WEF so that we can get Anthro-Vision at WEF?” What would you say to him?

GT: I would say two or three things. Firstly, look at the Davos tribe with an anthropological lens and see all the elitism, see the networking, and see above all else, how it often encourages people to ignore other people's points of view. You know, you need to probably get people who are not part of the Davos elite into the room much more effectively and get their views actually embedded into the conversation.

Recognize that not everything can be solved through top-down analysis in the form of big datasets, economic models, corporate balance sheets, political polls. Those can be very useful, but you need to supplement top-down models and intellectual tools with some bottom-up analysis that looks at qualitative, not just quantitative metrics. I'm not saying that, you know, anthropology has all the answers, but I'm saying it's a really useful way to conduct checks and balances to provide other perspectives into a conversation. Or to use another metaphor, you know, most of the tools we use today to look at the world, our bird's eye views, those taken from 30,000 feet. Anthropology basically cherishes a worm's eye view, a bottom-up view. And that can be incredibly important.

MB: You touch on that issue a lot. One of the questions I would have is why is it that we're so dismissive? I mean, it seems by now, we should be recognizing that we operate in silos. I mean, you wrote a book about this many years ago, it seems to be a well-observed effect. And yet, you actually quote this one point, a famous author pointed out that getting people to understand when their job depends on not understanding it is actually very hard. Is that what's going on, that our policymakers, our leaders are locked into this? They have too many incentives to ignore the general view, so they certainly don't go down to the worm's eye view?

GT: I think the reality is that someone in the book asks "why, dude, don't more companies hire anthropologists” or look at themselves, not other people? One reason is that what anthropologists say often make people uncomfortable. Because if you're part of the elite, if you are in a position of power, you tend to be there not just by controlling economic capital by making money, or political capital, net worth of power. You shape cultural capital in the sense that you have a belief system, which often reaffirms the social order and makes it seem natural, that elites are in charge. And that's very comforting. But the reality is that, you know, every society has creation myths and cultural frameworks, which might prop up the position of the elite, but are often full of contradictions and leave people prone to tunnel vision. And that's why we need to challenge them.

To give you a couple of tangible examples, before 2008, financiers working in the field of financial innovation derivatives had this wonderful creation myth about how innovation was going to make the financial system safer, because they were going to create perfectly liquid markets, where risk was dispersed. And that was riddled with contradictions when you dug into it. But the people who were peddling it couldn't see it, because they were such a tribe set apart, such a tunnel, they had so little challenge. So, the value of anthropology to come in and say, "well, this is what you're not looking at". It offers checks and balances above all else.

MB: You have this very interesting discussion of Trump and how the media and many people in the global elite missed what it was that gave him a connection to so many voters and particularly you focus on this word "bigly" that he used and how the elite was sneering at this interesting linguistic "cofefe", I guess you might call it. But what is it that we should now be thinking about the Trump tribe who, again, I think, in the elite, there was this feeling that January 6th and the storming of the Capitol would, you know, would somehow bring the Republican base to its senses, whereas the opposite seems to be the case? Are we failing again, to understand what's really going on with the Trump tribe?

GT: What I write about in the book about the elite and Trump is really a sort of mea culpa on my part because when I heard the word bigly in one of the debates I laughed, too, instinctively. Laughter is always very revealing, because it reveals the social group boundaries, you know, you have to be in a group to get a joke. If you're not in a group, you don't get the joke. And laughter tends to reveal unresolved contradictions in our own cultural patterns, or ones we don't talk about. And what laughing about the word bigly really revealed was that the ingroup of journalists tended to assume and take for granted that to be in a position of power and have credibility, you had to have command of language. And in some ways, you know, having command of language and being educated, you know, has hitherto been one of the few accepted forms of snobbery in America. And the reality is that lots of people find that very irritating, and they resent it. But the fact that I was part of the in group that laughed, meant that I kind of was failing to see what a lot of Trump supporters and voters were actually seeing in Trump and applauding, which was that he spoke in a way that used not just so much words, more a kind of performance, ritualistic style of communication, that connected very deeply with a lot of his base. I write in the book that a lot of it was borrowed from the world of wrestling, in fact, in terms of how it tapped into emotions, and had stage mock fights and things like that, which was, again, a set of performative cultural messaging and signaling that was very familiar to Trump voters, but not elite journalists for the most part. So, I missed a lot of Trump's appeal because I didn't really get it on an emotional level, because of my own tribalism. I tried to counter that by listening to people in 2016. And that did in fact that help me see the likely victory of Donald Trump.

MB: You were certainly one of those people who was, I mean, actually you're harsh on yourself in the book, because you say you missed the Brexit vote, but on both Brexit and Trump's victory, I heard you saying that you were quite concerned that would be the result before they happened. Do you feel now that there's this danger that we still haven't learned that lesson about Trump and his appeal to his tribe?

GT: I think there's a danger even today, that we fail to see that what we're dealing with in America today is not just a political split, but an epistemological split. And that sound like a very big grandiose word or at least

MB: A bigly word, I guess.

GT: A bigly word definitely. An epistemological split means, basically, a split in the system of knowledge, in how we communicate and actually reason. And anyone who has been trained for years in education, as I have been, tends to have a rational, logical one direct mindset in terms of evaluating knowledge, and to take things fairly literally and to try and pass them. And, you know, that's a very valid mindset. But it's not the only mindset out there. There's another type of mindset out there, which is much more about impressionistic, emotional, holistic reading of situations. And, you know, looking at performative signaling, and that's the mindset that Trump uses as much of the time.

In the book, I talk about the difference between weird and non-weird cultures meaning “Western, educated, individualistic, rich, and democratic.” That's the use of man called Joseph Henrich, who is brilliant, who looked at these different modes of reasoning. And I think even today that when we talk about political splits, we need to recognize that there's a part of America that's responding to events like the January 6th events at Capitol Hill, not through one-dimensional, logical reasoning, passing, etc., that we value as journalists, but instead through much more emotional, impressionistic, performative, signaling patterns.

I see the same truth in other areas as well, by the way. I mean, you can't hope to make sense of say, some of the mean cultures erupting in the financial markets, unless you recognize that there's performative signaling going on that can be very potent, but which can't be passed through any economic economist's model of rational expectations, or any kind of portfolio allocation approach to mind.

MB: Now you talk at various points about the media as a tribe, and maybe a tribe that it's got its own narrative a little out of whack or doesn't look at itself through a lateral lens. I mean, what do you feel is the biggest danger that the media has at the moment, in terms of how it might go, you know, way off track in understanding how the world is going at the moment?

MB: Well, I do look at the media, because I think we have to be honest as journalists, and if we're going to analyze other people, we have to analyze ourselves. And the real issue is, I do think we should realize how we're tribal how we're creatures of our own environment. And how, in many ways the sheer polarization in America and the attacks in the media have intensified the sense of tribalism. And that affects us in two ways. Firstly, in terms of how we define stories, and what stories we look at, and how we communicate them. And, you know, I think that in many ways, it's natural that we're tribal, everyone's tribal, it's part of human nature. But it has been exacerbated also by the competitive pressures afoot in journalism today, where essentially, there's a very crowded marketplace for information. So, there's a presumption that you have to shout loudly to get attention. There's a presumption that you have to try and get a really sticky audience, which tends to force people to take quite extremist views. Journalists are under tremendous time pressure. So, they tend to gravitate towards the areas of social noise, the things that are easy to see, and ignore the really important areas of social silence. And also journalists tend to have silos within their own news operations, which reflect a ton of silos in the outside world. You know, we have banking teams, and political teams and legal teams. Stories often fall between the cracks, and sometimes get caught, sometimes not.

So, in an ideal world, you know, journalists would be given a lot more money, and the ability to go forth and roam and collide with the unexpected and look at social sciences. They'd be encouraged to try and communicate with audiences in ways that didn't just reaffirm existing prejudices. I mean, you can connect with where the audience's head is up front, as if you're playing dominoes. And match one half a domino to someone else's domino, but then you can take them somewhere else, with a second piece of a domino if you like. And in an ideal world, you'd have journalists who were able to, essentially, you know, get out of their own mental tunnels and explore different points of view. But that's hard to do with the media under such pressure. And when essentially, there's constant demand to create quick hits and returns in the form of stories that meet the normal pattern.

MB: So, you're optimistic that journalism will change or are you quite fearful about it?

GT: I hope journalism tries and changes. And one of the things that does make me more optimistic is a checks and balances are emerging. Partly because the sheer plurality of voices coming through, partly because we're seeing new models of journalism coming through, like investigative units funded by donations by ProPublica, in podcasts, and in other forms that are actually creating ways to have checks and balances. But I'm concerned about the degree to which it has become politicized and polarized. And above all else, I'm concerned that not enough journalists are flipping the lens and looking back at their own tribe and trying to work out how that is creating a sense of tunnel vision.

MB: Now, one of the big trends that's been going on for the past few years has been to see business and finance as a way of making the world better in some ways, you know, through ESG and impact investing and so forth. And that's attracted a number of people who probably would have gone into traditional public service in government in the past, to think they can drive change, positive change through business and investing. And you founded Moral Money at the Financial Times.

But in the book, you're quite candid, that initially, you used to roll your eyes at the letters ESG. And so, what caused you to change? And how substantial do you think this phenomenon is? Is it really going to deliver the goods or is it still more in the greenwashing/stakeholder washing category than real change?

GT: Well, I initially used to call ESG, "eyeroll, sneer, and groan," because I thought it was basically about corporate BS. And that's the way the most journalists think. And so, I just missed it. I used to delete all the emails about ESG. And then I finally thought you know what, that's my view about what ESG is, as a journalist, who is paid to be cynical. I should at least try and listen to what the people's view is of the people who are trying to do ESG. And when I try to look at the world through their eyes, I realized that there was a bigger Zeitgeist shift going on, which was really to do with the fact that ESG had started out as a, you know, campaign to change the world in a really positive active way, which was very laudable, driven by, you know, nuns and Danish pension funds and people like that. But by 2016/2017, which is when I began to look at it, it was also being driven for the most part by a desire amongst companies and executives and finances to save themselves, and essentially engage in risk management, because people were increasingly realizing that if they ignored things like environmental risk or gender issues and sexual harassment, slavery in the supply chain, they could end up suffering reputational damage, regulatory controls, loss of employees, clients, customers, investors, etc. And you can be cynical and say, "Well, listen, that's just, you know, very hypocritical in the part of ESG it is just a way for companies to engage in self-defense at a time when radical transparency and changing societal norms, and it's all just for show.” Or you can say, “actually, it's pretty amazing that ESG has gone so mainstream, that companies feel they even need to talk about it or make the effort to do it.” And that, you know, revolutions succeed, not when a tiny, committed minority of activists are screaming, but when the silent majority thinks they need to go along with a change, because it's dangerous to resist it. And I think that's where we are with ESG right now.

Does that mean there is a lot of greenwashing, woke washing, reputation washing? Yes, there is some. Does it mean that the rituals of ESG, to be anthropological, don't match up with the reality? Yes, quite often. But you know, anthropologists believe that rituals are interesting, because they show an idealized version of what people think the world should be like. And the very fact that people have a different idealized version today from what it was 30 years ago, I think is very interesting. And overall, what is striking is that, you know, as say, fossil fuel emissions become less acceptable, you're actually seeing that feed through to changes in the cost of capital for energy companies, and dashboards embracing renewables, and a change in actual corporate behavior, to a degree.

I can't stress strongly enough you need government action too. You know, companies alone, ESG alone, are not going to fix problems. But if people are all rowing roughly in the same direction, and cultural norms are changing, it makes it easier to both force government action, and potentially to do business and financial action as well that's going to be in the right direction.

MB: Now, I want to bring up an issue that you touch on at various points tangentially in the book, but not head on. So, I'm going to push you a bit. I'm very concerned at the moment about the quality of government. We could do with better people going into government and we could do with much more joined up government. It just seems to me the narrative around government is pretty horrible, and that most people that aren't in government are quite put off by it. There's not much attraction to it, except for people that have big egos or ambitions to be famous politicians or whatever. It's not an attractive narrative. Have you thought much about that with your “Anthro-Vision” lens on like, why it's got into that bad narrative and also what how we might encourage more people to see it positively?

GT: I think you made a great point there, Matthew about the issue of government, because I was very struck, talking to Paul Volcker, the wonderful former Fed Chairman, who had gone into public service in the post-war years, when public service was revered, and spent many years working in public service and was very dismayed to see how attitudes towards public service changed as the 20th century wore on. So upset that when he finally left government, and, you know, had time on his hands, he created a center at the Harvard Kennedy School to try and champion the idea of good governance, and then found it almost impossible to get funding because it was so unpopular and unfashionable. And I think that's terribly dangerous. And I think we need good government. We need respect for good government and better organization. Michael Lewis's book, The Fifth Risk, showed that so clearly.

What I think's interesting is that history shows that, you know, we go in pendulum swings in terms of Zeitgeists, and anthropology shows that in fact nothing is ever fixed in stone. Culture is like a river. It is constantly flowing and changing, and new streams are coming in. And I suspect we may, just may, be at a point when the pendulum is beginning to swing a tiny bit away from the idea that government is the source of all problems towards slightly more respect for government. I think the pandemic could end up being a bit of a turning point in attitudes, not just in the sense of public and private are working together, and also private and private, over things like the vaccine, which is laying down train tracks for the future. But also, I suspect that the idea of having a government mission looks a little less unfashionable than in the past.

MB: If someone is thinking about going into government or a career in public service, is there a tip that you would have as to how they can use Anthro-Vision to sort of be a different sort of government leader, different sort of bureaucrat, civil servant?

GT: In a nutshell, I'd say that a key tip from Anthro-Vision is to embrace a concept that at the heart of the American political system, which has checks and balances. What anthropology does is give you intellectual checks and balances. You embrace whatever field you are passionate about, be that medicine or economics or law, or whatever part of government you're working in. You do that job well, but you never forget to look around corners and think about context and think about the cultural patterns that you're working in and how it might make be giving you tunnel vision and make you blind to what you can't see. And you respect the fact that there are going to be cultural dynamics inside the office and outside the office. And I think that getting that wider vision of what you're doing is perhaps the most important thing of anyone who's working in public service today.

MB: Well, that's a great note to end on. And as I say, this is a really interesting book. It's full of great stories and tremendous practical advice about how to learn some of the tips from anthropology, even if you aren't an anthropologist yourself. And I think you certainly succeed in making the case that we do all need to get some “Anthro-Vision”, so we can see the world differently. So, thank you. Gillian Tett and the book is highly recommended.

GT: Thank you. Great to be on your show.

This transcript has been lightly edited for context and clarity.

Books Driving Change: Adam Grant and Think Again Aug 16, 2021

If you change your mind because you're telling people what they want to hear, and you're trying to curry favor or get the approval of your constituents, you're doing that for purely political reasons. And you are flip flopping, and we should be critical of that. But what if you change because you've encountered stronger evidence or sharper logic? That's not flip flopping, that's called learning. And I think we ought to separate the two and start to recognize that some leaders when they change their position, it's because they've actually evolved their thinking, and they have better ideas than they did when they developed their earlier stance. – Adam Grant

Matthew Bishop (MB): Hello, this is Matthew Bishop with Books Driving Change. Today, I'm talking with Adam Grant, the author of Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know.

Adam is an organizational psychologist at the Wharton School and the author of a number of bestselling books, including Originals and Give and Take. In this book, he addresses one of the big themes of today, which is that we seem to be in a world where our leaders feel they have to be right about everything. They don't seem to think again. They seem to double down on bad ideas when those ideas don't work. People are becoming more entrenched in their opinions. There seems to be less concern about facts and learning and more sort of just sticking to your guns come what may. And this book is really a challenge to that mindset and, actually drawing on a lot of science, about how do we create an open mind, both as individuals and also in society?

So, Adam, I wanted to start by asking you this question: our audience is made up of people who are feeling some kind of call in this pandemic to public service to building back better. I'd like you to tell us in one sentence, why should they read your book?

Adam Grant (AG): I think they should read my book, because 2020 forced us to do a lot of rethinking and my hope for 2021 is that we do our rethinking more deliberately, and more proactively. And this book is about the science of how we can question a lot of the assumptions and opinions and even outdated knowledge and beliefs that are holding us back.

MB: So, in the book, you talk a lot about how to create a learning mindset, to be open to being wrong, and so forth. What are the practical tips that you would highlight for leaders as they try and move us in this world of entrenched opinions back to that more open-minded approach to leadership?

AG: As far as practical tips, I think the first thing I would say is, when you make a plan, make a list of the conditions that would change your mind. It's so common for leaders to roll out a plan, and then find out that maybe it was the wrong choice. And get stuck in this trap of escalation, of commitment to a losing course of action, where they double down, they invest more time, more energy, and more resources. And then the cost of failure just gets higher and higher.

One of the major reasons that escalation of commitment happens is people are too motivated to rationalize their behavior. They want to convince themselves and everyone else that they made the right call. And that means they actually stay wrong longer. As opposed to recognizing that the faster I admit I was wrong, the faster I can move toward getting it right, which last time I checked is where they want to land. I think the danger of committing publicly to a plan is that it becomes attached to you and you become attached to it. It becomes your baby. If you can separate your ideas from your identity, and say, "Okay, this is a plan I'm going to test. And right up front here are the things that might happen. Here are the early signals that would lead me to course correct or maybe pause to rethink it. “If I identify those upfront, then I can keep myself honest.

MB: It's interesting that I think social media and, in fact, many of the forces that are shaping the world we live in at the moment, seem to play well to the kind of leader that is the opposite to the sort that you talk about in the book. The sort of person that is really about simple opinions, polarizing opinions, never being wrong, sticking to their guns. Seems like we live in a world where it's incredibly hard for our leaders to be humble. To admit that they are fallible human beings. That they can get things wrong.

AG: I think that we put so much of a premium on conviction, confidence, and certainty; when what we should be elevating in leadership is the confidence to be humble. I think it takes an extraordinary amount of security to admit what you don't know. You have to be fairly confident in your strengths to acknowledge your weaknesses out loud. I think that we've had too many leaders, especially over the past 15 months, who have felt tremendous pressure to say I have all the answers, as opposed to taking what I would say Jacinda Ardern modelled much more effectively, which is to open with, we don't have the answers. We're not sure what it's going to take to stop COVID. And because of that, we're going to take some pretty drastic measures. As the science evolves, as we learn, this may change.

MB: One of the forces that you talk about very persuasively in the book is this human tendency to what you call the escalation of commitment? Can you tell us a bit about that?

AG: Well, a lot of people think that escalation of commitment is driven by sunk costs, right? You put your name, your reputation, your money, your time behind a course of action and then it seems like it's not going to pan out. You think, well, if only I try a little harder, especially in this world that worships at the altar of hustle and praises to the high priest of grit. If only I just persist a little bit longer, I can turn this thing around. And, yeah, the economic factors do matter. But the biggest drivers of escalation are not economic, they're emotional. It's about ego and image. I don't want to admit to myself that I made a stupid decision, or I might be an idiot. And I don't want anybody else to think I am either. So, it's easier to try to convince myself and everybody else that, you know, I'm not throwing good money after bad. I am heroically persevering.

MB: And in that moment when you are faced with a choice of admitting you were wrong or the error is more complex than you think, why is it that today so many of our leaders are choosing to sort of double down on being wrong?

AG: That's a great question. I mean, there's been a lot of social science trying to dig into that in the last few years. And I think one of the most compelling answers is that we've made the mistake of equating consistency with integrity. That when somebody changes their mind, we call them a flip flopper or a hypocrite. And I think we need to be more nuanced about that. If you change your mind because you're telling people what they want to hear. And you're trying to curry favor or get the approval of your constituents. You're doing that for purely political reasons. You are flip flopping, and we should be critical of that. But what if you change because you've encountered stronger evidence or sharper logic? That's not flip flopping, that's called learning. I think we ought to separate the two and start to recognize that some leaders when they change their position, it's because they've actually evolved their thinking, and they have better ideas than they did when they developed their earlier stance.

MB: You quote the case of Andrew Cuomo, the Governor of New York, who has had quite an interesting year or so where he's been flavor of the month and quite hated by the public, and the media response to him quite early in the pandemic, saying we don't know what to do, so we're going to do something and see how it works. You quote approvingly that the New York Times was very critical at the time. I wonder about the role of the media. You know I spent all my career in the media, even in one of the more nuanced publications like The Economist, but the media is always wanting to reduce complexity to simple narratives of this person versus that person, this tribe versus that tribe, this country versus that country. I mean, how do we change the way the media helps society be more open to thinking again, and to dealing with doubts and complexity and experimentation?

AG: Oh, good question. Well, first of all, I disapprove of Andrew Cuomo's leadership. And, in fact, that anecdote was a little bit of a head fake, and the real source of the quote and the story is Franklin Delano Roosevelt. So, there's a little bit of a twist in there. But I think the fundamental question of how we can get the media to help is something that I rethought while I was writing Think Again.

I believed going in that the solution to all this polarization was for people to see the other side. And the data convinced me that, in fact, seeing the other side is not a solution, it's actually part of the polarization problem. The biggest mistake that the media consistently makes is they amplify two extremes. What does that do? Let's say, for example, you're on one side of the abortion debate or the gun debate or the climate change issue. If you see only the opposite extreme, those people sound stupid and wrong and crazy. You might even think they're evil. So, what are you going to do? You're going to become even more extreme and more entrenched in your own camp.

What we need to see is the complexity of the issue. We need to see the nuances, the shades of grey. And so, whenever somebody in the media says, "Well, here's one side and here's the other side," what I want to know is, what's the third angle? What's the fourth perspective that's missing here? There's some research by Peter Coleman and his colleagues in Difficult Conversations Lab at Columbia, where they show that just presenting the same issue, not as two sides of a coin, but instead as if you're looking through many lenses of a prism, is enough to get people to rethink some of their extreme convictions and become a little bit more open minded and more nuanced in their thinking.

I think the climate issue is a great example of this. Because if you look at the data, the media has actually paid more attention to and done more amplification of climate deniers, then they have of climate scientists. And if you look at where people's stances actually are in most developed countries, the vast majority of people are not in a denial camp. If they're skeptical, they might be uncertain about how severe climate change is. Or what exactly is causing it. Or what all the different solutions might be. What we need to do is raise up those voices and say, you know what, there are a lot of people who recognize that climate change is happening, that there are human decisions that are contributing to it, and there are things we can do about it.

MB: I suppose the simple response that a media executive would give to me if I made that pitch to them would be, actually simple conflict sells and some black and white messages. Things that reinforce people's existing positions will play into deeper psychological biases and trends that are in there, than complexity and nuance. How do you make complexity and nuance engaging to an audience that is willing to pay for it?

AG: Well, I would say to that media executive, that's your job to be creative about telling the truth in all of its complexity and shades of grey. And, I think obviously, it's very hard to make nuance go viral. But I don't think it always takes that much to signal complexity and to add a little bit more of it into the conversation.

For example, there's some research, this is a little bit meta, but the evidence tells us that just saying “more research needs to be done” is enough to trigger people's awareness. Okay, you know, we haven't fully understood this problem yet. Or we don't have all the answers yet, right. That's a helpful step for journalists to take.

Another example would be just to cue the complexity of the problem or the solution. So, you know, one of my favorite headlines reads, "Scientists say that planning a trillion trees is probably not going to fix climate change." Right? And immediately, what does that do? That activates for you an awareness that, okay, this is a really thorny issue. And we can't just fix it by planting a bunch of trees. I wonder what else would work. And that ignites my curiosity. Makes me more skeptical of a silver bullet that somebody might be trying to shoot at the problem. That seems to be good for the conversation. It doesn't stop people from clicking and engaging, right? In fact, it makes me want to know, it creates a curiosity gap. I want to know, well, what's wrong with planting a trillion trees? What else might be helpful here?

MB: I did wonder whether a late-night politics show called 50 Shades of Grey might sort of attract an interesting audience, maybe the wrong way audience.

But another area that you touch on in the book is vaccination denial and how to address that problem, not actually in the context of the COVID virus, but obviously with massive resonance for that issue. You talk a lot about persuasive listening as a way to change minds. Can you just talk a little bit about that, specifically, in terms of maybe what we should be doing now with the vaccine refusers and COVID?

AG: Yeah, I think one of the systematic mistakes that we're making is we're doing way too much preaching and prosecuting, right. So preaching is “vaccines are safe and effective, and everyone should get one.” Prosecuting is “you're wrong if you're not getting one. Why don't you believe the science? Why are you endangering yourself and, you know, your community?” What seems to be much more effective is showing humility and curiosity. Approaching the conversation by saying, "You know what? I don't know what's motivating somebody to be resistant, and I'm awfully eager to find out."

The research on this has been spearheaded by a vaccine whisperer named Arnaud Gagneur. He applies a technique called motivational interviewing, where you say instead of forcing somebody to change their mind, what if you try to help them uncover their own motivation to change.

So, Matthew, I'll give you an example of this. I have a friend who is very resistant to the idea of any vaccination. I swore a few years ago that I was never going to talk to him about the topic again. Because, you know, I saw him as stubborn and pigheaded, and he saw me the same way. It was not good for our friendship. Then COVID happened. I'd written this whole chapter about persuasive listening and I thought it was an opportunity to figure out whether I could practice what I teach, and have a thoughtful, open-minded discussion with somebody who I knew did not share my views. I approached it really differently. Instead of going into logic bully mode and trying to win a debate with him. I started asking questions to learn. The pivotal question that I asked was, "How likely do you think you are to get a COVID vaccine?" And he said, "Well, not very. Like, the odds are pretty low." And I was stunned. I said, "Why didn't you say zero? I was sure you were going to say I will never get one of these." He started listing all these reasons why. He said, "Well, you know, maybe if I'm 85 years old, I'm not concerned about the long-term risks. And, you know, if the contagion rate is really high, and the mortality rate is extremely high, then I probably roll the dice and take my chances." All of a sudden, I saw all this complexity and ambivalence that I had never heard from him before.

What those kinds of questions do, is they allow people to recognize all of the uncertainty in their own attitudes. To say, yeah, I have some reasons for staying the course and not getting vaccinated. But there are also some forces that would lead me to consider getting vaccinated. Then you can try to encourage them to reflect on what would have to happen for them to say yes. Ultimately, it's not your place to change their mind, right? What you want to do is get them reflecting on what might lead them to opt in.

MB: That's very helpful. And you talked about preaching and prosecution, and you also have politician. You have these three Ps, these types of personalities we get into when we do get into this sort of unthinking mode. I wonder a lot, and going throughout the book, you have great moments of humor throughout, whether you thought about offering up the comedian as the sort of figure that actually is the one figure in society at the moment who can speak these truths about uncertainty and experimentation and not being black and white about things. Because, you have this great example of Melinda Gates reading feedback from her staff at the Gates Foundation about some things where she actually ends up reading a tweet that has a swear word in it, and how that completely changed the dynamics in the room between her and her team. I do wonder, is humor going to be the way that we navigate to a better place as a society? Is that what leaders should be trying to figure out how they can deploy? Self-deprecating humor, I mean, more often than attacking humor.

AG: I think it could be helpful. This is such an interesting idea to consider because my first reaction was no. If you look at the data on The Colbert Report, for example. Yeah, liberals found him hilarious and brilliant in pointing out what they saw as all of the fallacies and contradictions and flaws in conservative thinking. And conservatives took him as sort of making fun of a liberal's caricature of a conservative and said, yeah, the joke's on the liberals. Right? And so, it didn't get through to the people that he was trying to persuade.

But then when you shift this into self-deprecation, I find myself thinking again and saying, yes. I think one of the hallmarks of humility is being willing and able to laugh at yourself. To say, I take my work seriously, but I don't take myself too seriously. If you can't laugh at yourself, every time you make a mistake, you're going to feel pressure to cover it up, to hide it, to rationalize it, to explain it away. Instead of saying, I was a little bit dumber yesterday than I am today, and here's what I've learned from that experience. And yeah, I think comedians are a great model for self-deprecation.

I will say that, unfortunately, the research on gender stereotypes that's been published recently suggests that men can get away with self-deprecation, whereas women tend to be vilified for it. When men make fun of themselves, they're judged as more competent. Wow, he's really confident in his strengths. He's willing to laugh at his weaknesses. When women do it, they are judged as incompetent. It's seen as a signal of insecurity and that is obviously ridiculous. Right? This is the 21st century. We should stop judging people when they self-deprecate based on their gender, and we should start recognizing well, you know what, she has the integrity and the humility to be willing to poke a little bit of fun at herself. That's probably something that's good for our culture.

MB: So, one final question. You've written this book now, because obviously you feel this is a moment in time where we really need to be thinking again and open to experimentation and self-doubt, and all those things. For our audience of people trying to get involved in building a better world and wondering if it's possible, what words of encouragement do you have for them that reading your book and taking onboard some of your insights, of which there are very many, is a good idea and that can succeed in this moment?

AG: Well, I'm not here to sell anyone on buying my book. I think you should be the judge of whether the insights I bring as an organizational psychologist are going to make you think again, and whether that's helpful in your life. I think the reason I was persuaded to write the book is I have had too many moments of sticking with the comfort of conviction over the discomfort of doubt. I've had too many moments of stubbornness, where I refuse to change my mind for too long and I've regretted it. I wanted to try to spare other people those regrets.

My goal is not to get you to believe everything that I think. What I want to do is challenge some of the things that you think and invite you to rethink. I think that's something most of us could benefit from doing more of, but I think that you know that's something that everyone has to judge in their own lives. I think there are people who do too much rethinking, and they get stuck in analysis paralysis. My read of the data and my experience is that most of us are too far to the opposite end of that curve. We're a little bit too hesitant when we should be eager to think again. And, I guess, my hope in writing the book was to say, next time you discover yourself caught in one of these dilemmas of should I say, “I don't know”, or “I was wrong”, that instead of being threatened by that, you could look at that and say, “Oh, this is an opportunity to think again”, which means I might actually evolve and learn something.

MB: Are you optimistic that as a society, we can become more of that kind of society?

AG: I am cautiously optimistic. I think as a social scientist, I'm impressed by the range of techniques for opening our own minds and for opening other people's minds that I wasn't aware of before writing this book, despite the fact that my job is to make me think again, and I've been doing research on this topic in one flavor or another for two decades. And just the sheer amount of knowledge I gained from the evidence made me think there's a big gap between the expertise that's available on how to build a culture of lifelong learners, and what most of us do every day, and I think we could probably make progress toward closing that gap.

MB: Well, on that cautiously optimistic note, we will end. Thank you very much, Adam Grant for talking with Books Driving Change. It's been a pleasure. Though you aren't selling the book, I would certainly recommend the book to everyone that's listening. I say, personally, I've learned a lot from reading it and will make changes in my own life that I think will open my mind a bit more. So, thank you very much for writing it, Adam.

AG: Well, thank you, Matthew, I'm honored that you read it, I hope you don't rethink that. And yeah, there are some things we should never rethink.

MB: I think that's a sunk cost at this point.

AG: Exactly, escalation of commitment, here we are. But I do think that, you know, the idea that books can drive change is something that I was resistant to early on. I thought I’m really writing to share some of the things that I've learned and hope I have accumulated some evidence and some experience that might teach someone something else. I think I was resistant to the idea because I was afraid that my books wouldn't drive change. I felt handicapped a little bit and said, “No, no, no, this book is really just about helping you think differently about a topic and maybe even rethink it.” But the way we think shapes the way we act. It shapes the world we create. And I don't know if the pen is actually mightier than the sword, I do know that it's in class longer. And so, I think the work you're doing here is extremely important.

MB: Thank you very much, Adam. Best wishes for the rest of your work in this area and your next project.

AG: Right back at you. Thank you, Matthew.

This transcript has been lightly edited for context and clarity.

Books Driving Change: Noreena Hertz and The Lonely Century Jul 26, 2021

“Loneliness thrives in an ecosystem that its drivers are structural, and political, and economic, as well as to do with choices we make as individuals, and therefore that its solutions need to be comprehensive. That we can solve today’s loneliness crisis, but only if we as government, we as business leaders, and we as individuals, make a decision to do so.” -- Noreena Hertz

Books Driving Change: Enric Sala and The Nature of Nature Jul 14, 2021

In this week's episode we talk with Enric Sala, Explorer in Residence at the National Geographic Society, who has written a terrific new book, The Nature of Nature: Why We Need the Wild. Enric is an extraordinary enthusiast for nature and a practical person who has personally led important work to save large amounts of the ocean through his Pristine Seas initiative, which we discuss in this podcast. For people who are committed to building back a better world, there could be no better practical guide to some of the challenges of nature of which there are many: preserving our climate, preserving our planet in a healthy way, than Enric Sala. We ask why we do need the wild and many of the calls for action that he makes in the book.

Books Driving Change: Jacqueline Novogratz and Manifesto for a Moral Revolution Jun 28, 2021

Today, I'm talking with Jacqueline Novogratz, who is the founder and CEO of Acumen, a nonprofit investment fund that takes businesslike approaches to building a better world. Jacqueline is an extraordinary leader herself and has experienced some really demanding challenges throughout her career, including having launched a microfinance institution in Rwanda, where some of the leaders got caught up on both sides of the genocidal civil war. She is looked to by many of us for wise counsel and inspiration, as we think about how we contribute as leaders to solving some of the most intractable problems facing the world.

She's written a new book, “Manifesto for a Moral Revolution: Practices to Build a Better World", which I recommend to everybody. I'm going to be talking with her now about some of the key ideas in the book.

Made in Africa: A Conversation with Elizabeth Wangeci Chege Jun 23, 2021

In episode three of Made in Africa, Driving Change’s conversation series with African visionaries whose work impacts the public good, Elizabeth Wangeci Chege speaks with Sarika Bansal about her life and career. Chenge is the CEO and co-founder of WEB Limited, a sustainability design consultancy based in Nairobi, Kenya. Until recently, she was also the chairperson of the Kenya Green Building Society.

Chenge wants to transform how we think about designing buildings, and cities more generally. She believes the built environment can be designed to accommodate the needs of human beings as well as the environment.

She got her start working on high-profile design projects around the world -- from the UK to Australia to Dubai -- and then decided to bring her expertise back to Kenya, where she helped form the Kenya Green Building Society, a nonprofit organization dedicated to advocacy, education and certification of green architecture in Kenya. She also frequently works with the Kenyan government, including helping them update their policy codes from the 1960s British ones that were passed on during independence.

Chenge has big visions for Africa’s future, and we hope you enjoy hearing some of them in this conversation.

Made in Africa: A Conversation With Dalberg’s James Mwangi Jun 04, 2021

“The thing that I found actually resonated [with potential clients] was less of saying how much we knew, and actually playing into how much we didn't know. And actually coming in and saying, look, you shouldn't hire me if you think you shouldn't hire us, our team. If you think that we know more about this topic or your industry than you do. Because then you know, we should be in your job. What you should hire us for is we will take nothing for granted. Because actually, we don't take anything as settled wisdom, because we're not part of the set of wisdom that shaped this context.” -- James Mwangi, executive director, Dalberg

In episode two of Driving Change: Made in Africa, Dalberg executive director James Mwangi talks with Sarika Bansal about what it was like to start a business with no name and no brand and build it into one of the most respected international development consultancies. He walks through Dalberg’s journey from its days as a start-up in the US to opening its first office in Arica to becoming a global firm offering sage advice throughout the conversation.

He is open about his setbacks as well his successes. For example, his choice to stay with Dalberg and to use it as his “bridge” to Africa was unexpectedly tough, coming with a unique set of challenges.

Mwangi is particularly insightful about what it was like to be elected the first global managing partner in 2010, at a time when Dalberg was debating its future strategy. His honesty about what he learned and would do differently in retrospect is unusual.

The most interesting part of the discussion may be Mwangi’s description of what it was like to be challenged as global managing partner, how and why he stepped away from the role and how he continued to shape Dalberg without the top title.

“I remember walking up and down a beach on my own at night in Dakar, [Senegal], right after we'd brokered some sort of agreement to keep the whole firm together, and feeling really bad. But then also getting clarity that actually no, this is guidance on what you're actually supposed to be doing in the world right now. And, frankly, it's a good outcome for everyone. If you can just get your ego out of the way.”

Today, he is focused on answering one of the biggest questions of this age: “How do we create prosperity through climate action?”

For all public policy, international development and consulting professionals, this discussion is both instructive and inspiring.

Government for a New Generation: Q&A with Donald Kettl Jun 03, 2021

Professor Donald Kettl is a world-renowned expert in and professor of public affairs at the Lyndon B. Johnson School at the University of Texas, Austin. He’s a senior fellow at the Volcker Alliance and the Partnership for Public Service as well as the author of eight books on government, global management, democracy and public policy. Professor Kettl joins Driving Change in a conversation about what the post-Trump era bodes for the future of public service recruitment, which is now a top priority of the Biden Administration. He also offers sage advice to those who seek public sector work, and a perspective on how the public service landscape will shift to address the needs of our rapidly changing world.

Made in Africa: A Conversation with Dr. Tlaleng Mofokeng May 13, 2021

Dr. T is someone who seems at home in every space she enters, whether she is with sex workers in a tiny clinic or with heads of state at the UN General Assembly.

She began her career as a medical doctor in the rural Eastern Cape of South Africa where she specialized in sexual and reproductive health, HIV care, and youth-friendly services. She was inspired to become an activist by her experiences growing up in apartheid South Africa, as well as by the experiences of her young patients.

Today, she is bridging her clinical experience with the policy world. “My role is to assist [the United Nations] with my knowledge of being a clinician and assist them in understanding how it is on the ground. One of my biggest frustrations, especially in global health, is the absence of the nurses and the doctors from the policy tables from the global institutions.”

Dr. T is dedicated to treating everyone she meets as a whole person who deserves to live with dignity. The work is personal to her. She says that she sees herself as the first beneficiary of her activism; she isn't just working in the abstract.

To this end, she is unafraid to walk away from spaces that are not serving her needs or do not fit her values. After resigning from one prominent post, “it was all support,” she recalls. “There's also that trust that I am always clear on what I'm fighting for. And so the fight is not lost, because I'll be useful in another space. I’m happy to not know where I get the audacity to just, you know, up and change my life.”

Dr. T also offers hard-won career advice. “I'd say find one thing that moves you and be good at that thing,” she says. “And, and have clarity in terms of why. And if your answer is to save someone else, you're probably doing something wrong. No one needs saving. We just all need to be active in removing the systems that already exist, that oppress people. People have an inherent desire to survive and to thrive.”

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to Driving Change podcasts wherever you get your podcasts, and we’d appreciate it if you would rate and review it so more people may find it. We will have another episode of Driving Change: Made in Africa for you in two weeks. Thanks for listening!

From Professional Provocateur To Political Insider. Q&A With Tim Wilson MP Jan 13, 2021

Driving Change (DC): In many ways, you have built your career by courting controversy and critiquing the system that you’re now part of. Can you tell us about that journey

Tim Wilson (TW): I’ve gone from the experience of working in the world of ideas to what it means to be practical and to have to implement [those ideas] in terms of policy. That’s been a journey. When you’re in the world of ideas, or the think-tank world, you can stick with very ideological worldviews, things that are very sharp in their focus and sometimes that have an abrasive edge. Whereas the journey I went on, particularly when I was Human Rights Commissioner, and as a parliamentarian, is that you’re exposed to the full complexity of humanity.

What you learn when you keep your mind open is how to translate your big idea into something that’s practical and saleable and connects with people in their life. That’s a sustainable base to affect change. I think you become more aware, more empathetic and more human in the process of your engagement.

DC: What prompted you to seek public office?

TW: It came down to frustration, working in the world of ideas, or even what I was, as Human Rights Commissioner, a statutory officer of the Parliament which has the legal standing and authority to raise some really serious issues. What became obvious is that you can raise [these issues] in the public square, you can shape public debate, but in the end the decisions are made by the people in the room at the time. If you can be in that room at that time, standing up for what I would say are classical liberal values or modern liberal values, about the type of country we want to be [you can have a greater impact].

I saw that, time and time again, and then ultimately the opportunity came up to represent the amazing community that I do, and I seized on that opportunity. It’s been a thoroughly worthwhile journey.

DC: Let’s talk a little bit about the state of policymaking in Australia, which you’re now charged with. People overseas often scratch their heads at Australia. On the one hand, there’s this incredible economic record: 29 years of unbroken growth until the pandemic, the longest growth streak of any developed economy in the world. Australia has largely managed to avoid the very bitter partisanship that we’re seeing in the US and some other places around the world. Yet Australia had six Prime Ministers in 13 years, a carousel of leaders, suggesting that something’s wrong. What are the strengths of Australian policymaking that other countries could learn from, and what needs to be improved?

TW: One of the things that makes Australia unique, particularly amongst Western liberal democracies, is that we have a relatively unified culture across the country. In practice, that means that most people are going on a similar journey. Yes, there are regional differences, but they’re not as stark as they are in other parts of the world— say, for instance, in the United States. I’m in the Southernmost state [Victoria] which is sometimes referred to as the Massachusetts of the south. In the northern state of Queensland, our lived experiences are different. Our cultures are different, they grew up organically, but there is still a common thread of nationhood which I think binds the common values that have made policymaking more straightforward.

The other thing that I think does matter is – and this will be heretical to many international audiences – we have compulsory voting. I realize that’s an infringement on liberty, but what it means is everybody has ownership of the government.

We don’t have a debate about whether the government was legitimately elected or has a legitimate right to implement its reform agenda. Governments are elected, everybody’s had their say, and as a consequence people accept the outcome.

One of the great tests of democracy is not who wins and who’s the victor, it’s whether those who were defeated accept their defeat and accept the legitimacy of the victor. I think that’s central to it.

The other thing, of course, is that 29 years of uninterrupted economic growth has enabled Australia to confront many challenges. It has enabled our country to finance restructuring of the economy or parts of society and to take many people with us on the journey. Now, I’m not saying public policy in Australia is perfect, it’s not. But when you can cushion the impact on people, you’re able to take more people on a journey.

DC: Like most other countries, due to the pandemic Australia is now facing major economic headwinds. Have we been complacent? Have we prepared for this? Do we have the right policy institutions in place?

TW: We are going to face some big challenges, where we’re going to have to have reforms where we won’t have winners and uber-winners, we’re just going to have people who benefit or see the benefit of reform.

There’s going to be a cost, and people are going to have to carry that cost. But not doing anything would impose an even bigger burden. Half of it is about how we get the public discussion right, how we get to a discussion where people understand that there’s a cost to inaction. I think that is going to be a problem.

The other thing is, we’ve built in a lot of welfare and support measures to cushion the impact of previous reforms. The trade-off from that now is there’s quite a lot of financial fat in our welfare system. We’re going to have to become leaner and more agile in the way we operate the country.

I’d still rather work from a position of strength and find a way to slim down than already have significant debt burdens and not have many support measures while trying to address the issues of a globally competitive environment.

DC: Responding to the pandemic is requiring difficult conversations with constituents and the public about the trade-offs involved. How are you seeing this playing out? What needs to happen? How should policymakers go about communicating these trade-offs and the risks involved?

TW: Part of it, unfortunately, is going to require people to experience the consequences of the Covid recession. At the start of the pandemic Australia, because of its relative bounty, was able to cushion the impact— particularly through wage subsidy programs that carried many people through a crisis that’s nearly unprecedented in our history.

But until people feel the consequences of the economic crisis, I think it’ll be hard to make the case for reform. The Economist once wrote of Australia that we’re a “country that’s not very good at managing prosperity but we’re very good in crisis.” When we are confronted with a crisis, when we understand the nature of the problem and that the impact is human, then people will accept that there is a need for change to build a more sustainable future for the country.

I think this is a good time to be prosecuting ideas, particularly around how you restructure the economy to make it more liberal and more dynamic and fit for the 21st century. It’s going to require that lived human experience of Australians to accept that, but I do believe once they do [experience a recession], they will [accept the case for economic reform].

DC: There have been quite a few different policy approaches to managing the pandemic in Australia. As in the US, state governments have responsibility for many aspects of public health and other [policy areas] pertinent to the crisis. What are some of the different approaches that Australian states have taken and what are your views on them?

TW: Different states have taken quite radically different approaches based largely on the attitude of the governments they elect. In my state of Victoria, we have a Labor government, which would be seen as a left-wing Democrat-style government in much of the United States or other countries. They’ve approached [the pandemic] by empowering themselves through the centralization of power, implementing giant lockdowns across the whole of a state, and then deciding which sectors they’re prepared to open. They’re empowering themselves at the expense of citizens.

The state of New South Wales, which is where Sydney is, has a Liberal or Centre-right government, and took a completely different approach. They looked at how to empower citizens to take responsibility but understood that the government’s responsibility is to articulate the case about what needs to be restricted and to justify it.

You see two very different models of governance. One is [based on] high centralization where the citizen has to justify their behaviour to the government – which is the social democratic tradition – and [the other is based on] the liberal democratic tradition, where the government has to justify why it is restricting people’s liberties and the terms on which they’re doing it.

Consequently, Victoria was in lockdown for about six months continuously, with huge detriment to the economy, to livelihoods and to people’s health and welfare. In New South Wales it’s been the complete reverse. Their health circumstances aren’t identical, but their approach is radically different.

DC: As we come out of this emergency phase, how do we ensure that some of the rights and freedoms which most people willingly gave up as part of the public health response are protected in the long term? What does an ongoing response to the crisis look like in terms of balancing rights with the public health response?

TW: We don’t have a bill of rights. In fact, the state of Victoria, which has had some of the harshest measures, has the most rigid legislative Charter of Rights [among Australia’s states]. That was completely discarded once the pandemic started.

It says something about the fact that people were prepared to trade [rights] away and weren’t prepared to stand up for them when they were under attack.

I think that the best approach is to adopt the one that New South Wales has taken, which is to understand that the government has a job to do. We know that the pandemic poses very serious health risks, particularly to the elderly and people with immunosuppressant conditions. But the trade-off should be that the government should then have to justify proportionally why what they’re trying to do is necessary to protect people’s lives.

Things like face masks I have no problem with, and I don’t think they’re a big deal. You can see the proportional relationship between the imposition, or the denial of people’s liberty, and the outcome in terms of public health. Whereas with other measures, like Victoria’s curfew, there was no evidence: in fact, the Chief Health Officer said there was no evidence or public health need for it to be implemented.

I think it’s about getting that sense of balance and proportionality right and understanding that the government has to justify the restrictions and the citizens shouldn’t have to defend their freedoms.

DC: You talk in your new book about the need for a new social contract. This is a topic which is currently rising up the political agenda around the world. Why? And what do you think is uniquely Australian in the need for a new social contract?

TW: I think there’s some fundamental generational imbalances in the structures of our society. I wrote The New Social Contract because we’re seeing issues around young people feeling dispossessed or not being able to realize their full opportunity.

Now, this is not a unique threat to Australia. It’s the same in the United States and the United Kingdom— around the cost of education, limited employment opportunities after the global economic crisis, and of course now this is going to be compounded by Covid-19.

But we also see it in things like house prices. Loose monetary policy has led to asset price inflation, which has been good for people like me who own their own home or own assets, [but has been] at the expense of young people wanting to get opportunities.

We need to have a conversation about what is an intergenerationally just society. For me that is one where older people are able to secure what they have, but don’t get preference for their years of effort and labor and won’t skewer [young people’s] opportunity.

You can create a more inclusive society that moves forward together yet can make quite substantial reform to promote home ownership, to level out tax rates, to remove tax complications and to build what is essentially, in the classical sense, a more liberal, democratic society that’s open for everybody. And a more dynamic capitalism too.

DC: It sounds like you could write a sequel, ‘intergenerational equity after the pandemic.’ It is only getting worse at the moment, right?

TW: That’s right. I wrote the book mostly pre-Covid and warned that Australia’s intergenerational tension was ready to pop as soon as we had an economic crisis. [The pandemic] just started when I was concluding the book and it’s now quite obvious that this is a problem.

We have sacrificed opportunity for younger Australians, as many other countries have for their younger populations, to secure the health and welfare of their older populations. This is only exacerbating an already existing trend. This trend is prevalent in popular culture here, as it is elsewhere

It’s particularly a problem when the systems of governance, tax and ownership structurally work against young people being able to get ahead. We need to address it. Covid-19 is only compounding it. The book was written for the 2020s in the expectation that a lot of the problems I was outlining would be revealed in 2030. In fact, I would argue that the clock is now ticking, that they’re already present and the sort of political crisis that will follow the health and economic crisis will probably hit closer to 2025

DC: If you were going back to the very beginning of your career, what advice would you give yourself?

TW: Never be afraid. One of the things about the contest of ideas is that the worst anybody can do is demonize and criticize you – but it actually has no lasting effect. Particularly in the modern age where people seem to throw around verbitude without any sense of restraint or responsibility, it is really important to stand up for what you believe in and do it with a sense of conviction and passion.

Ultimately, timidity is in surplus in the world. Courage is rare. The more you stand up, the more you can affect change in whatever position you are in. You also, frankly, encourage other people to stand up.

There are other people who will read to scripts or learn off the ideas of others. The people who genuinely have ideas, are genuinely prepared to prosecute them and communicate not just the idea, but their passion and commitment to it with sincerity, ultimately win the day.

Note: This conversation has been edited lightly for clarity and context

Jobs After The Pandemic. Q&A With Nobel Laureate Michael Spence Jan 04, 2021

Michael Spence (MS): The economic outlook is a little grim and tough in the short to medium run. There are two things going on. One is the pandemic, which forced us to conduct experiments in the economy that we normally would have conducted at a much slower pace. And some of those experiments are going to result in learning that changes the whole pattern of work - maybe more working from home, maybe a lot more collaboration, and maybe less international travel.

But the flip side is that the pandemic economy both domestically and internationally has suffered an adverse shock with respect to distribution. I looked at a study done at the University of Chicago by a couple of professors early on in the pandemic, and they asked the question, “What fraction of work can be done at home in the United States?” Their answer is (an approximation, because they did it really quickly) was one-third. They also looked at it by geography and then by sector, which is really striking, ranging from around 80% in the tech and financial sectors down to 4% in hospitality, which we've had to mostly shut down in the pandemic.

Then there’s a serious question that none of us knows the answer to: how fast they can come back? That, I think, depends primarily not on policy so much as how fast we can get the pandemic under control, meaning the prevalence down to the point that people's risk aversion doesn't cause them simply not to go places.

And that looks like it is a process that varies across countries. The Chinese have done it more aggressively using tools, including digital ones, that we are not willing to use. And in the west, it is pretty clear the process is not going well. Certainly, there are a set of sectors that are going to struggle to come back.

Driving Change (DC): Let’s talk first about Europe versus America, where different approaches were taken to the question of, “Can we keep people in jobs for as long as possible, and hope that we come through the pandemic with as much of the existing economy and workforce in place that when things do start to grow, again, we're not having to rebuild from scratch?” How are those experiments and different policies playing out?

MS: There are real differences, but the similarity is that everybody basically decided they had to buffer the economy, meaning the household sector and lots of businesses that weren't going to make it. The shock - and most people don't think of it this way - is to the balance sheet. There are a bunch of parts of every economy where the people's balance sheets are fragile and thin enough that they are not much of a shock absorber. So what governments in general have done, basically, is run big deficits and transfer some fairly substantial amount to the sovereign balance sheet, where it's not perfect, but certainly easier to manage.

After that, it gets more complicated. In the United States, we had a bunch of programs and unemployment insurance, which is not new, we had programs to support businesses keeping people on and so on. The Europeans were further down that road well before the pandemic, having used this kind of technique in the great financial crisis of 2008/09 and even before, most obviously in Germany and some of the northern countries. But it is also true in Italy, where I live some of the time, which has a program that's similar, where the state absorbs some of the costs.

What these economies do is encourage businesses to partner with the state, basically to redistribute the costs around. So jobs get slimmed down, but fewer people are unemployed - they kind of spread the work around. I think that is actually a pretty sensible way to do it. But it is hard to implement. So if you haven't put such a scheme in place beforehand, you can't you can't snap your fingers and get it done overnight.

DC: So do you think that America is going to suffer from prolonged higher rates of unemployment because it hasn't had that kind of job sharing scheme? Or at some point, as the furloughs and other job-sharing schemes reach their time limits and stop in Europe, will the unemployment rate there eventually soar too?

MS: Yes, we have too many variables! I would say that, if you held everything else constant, American unemployment would be higher. But there are elements in the American economy that might produce faster growth. Where I am in Italy, we have grown essentially negligibly since the year 2000. So that factors in as well. While I'm not wildly pessimistic, I think there are going to be pockets of real distress, people in sectors that really do struggle to come back. That will make unemployment higher than we would like. Especially as it will be a struggle to move those people into other sectors as the economy recovers. There will be a challenge of structural transition of a certain type.

DC: There's an ongoing debate about what shape the economic recovery will be: V, W, square root shaped, even a K, where half the economy goes up and the other half goes down. What is your default prediction for how the economy grows from here?

MS: The square root is the one that's been used most often in the United States, or as the French call it, the wing of a bird. So you get a sudden very big contraction across countries, then you get a flat period where you're trying to get the virus under control. (I'm speaking now mostly about the developed countries just for a moment.) And then you get things that can come back fairly rapidly, so you get something that starts to look like the start of a W after the after the trough. And then you get ones where the headwinds are a lot bigger, like international air travel: I don't know when people are going to feel safe and comfortable doing that or when all of the bilateral international restrictions are removed (which doesn't look like it will be very fast). So you go down, back up fairly fast, and then start to level out: that's where the square root square root idea comes from. I think that pattern is a reasonable guess.

DC: In terms of job creation, normally economists would say just get the economy growing again. Is that the right policy at this point? Or is there more that can be done beyond the stimulus packages there have been so far?

MS: The thing we lost track of in America is that the other best thing you can do is get the pandemic under control. I think the differences we see across countries are mainly attributable to that. So a widely available vaccine, provided people actually have it administered to them, would produce a V very quickly, but there's hurdles, even there. I'm appalled at surveys that I read, that a third of the people say they are unwilling to have the vaccine injected. I'm not terribly aggressive about this, but there's a balance between individual freedoms and rights on the one hand and collective interests.

My friend, Mohamed El-Erian, put it well. He said, in finance, everybody knows what counterparty risk is. And, if it is big enough, the system stops because nobody trusts the other party. What we have now is individual human counterparty risk: as long as the prevalence of the virus is pretty high, everybody is a risk to everybody else. So we need to do things that reduce that risk, to restore confidence that you can safely engage in ordinary economic activity, like riding the subway to work, and stuff like that.

We'll talk more about China later - but China uses digital tools in a way that we probably can't, because of concerns about data and privacy and even trust in the government. So the Chinese are walking around with mobile health certificates that are color coded. So if you're in circulation in China that means that a system powered by a fair amount of data thinks that your probability of being infectious is relatively low. We basically can't do that. Put it into crude terms: we are all yellow.

DC: To what extent has a mask become a sort of proxy for that? If people are wearing masks, does that overcome the counterparty risk sufficiently that normal life can resume some extent?

MS: It certainly helps. I'm no expert on the medical and epidemiological side of this. Social distancing, I think, is helpful. Being outside is certainly helpful. It seems pretty clear that the most dangerous situation is lots of people in an enclosed space with poor ventilation. So if you're outside, you're not gathering in large crowds, and you're wearing a mask, while it is not a perfect substitute for what we were just talking about, it certainly helps if everybody complies.

DC: You brought up China. It started there, but they got on top of it pretty quickly. What is the economy doing in China? What happened to job losses and then job creation after they started to get the pandemic under control? And what does that tell us about what might happen elsewhere?

MS: China's recovering pretty quickly. It basically took the hit in the first quarter, mainly, whereas we took the hit in the early part of the second quarter. So they are ahead of us. But because they were so aggressive about it, they literally locked down a whole city of 11m people and didn't let anybody go in and out, China is looking more like a V shaped recovery. But even there, you know, there are sectors that are going to be stubborn with respect to recovery. And China is still an economy, like many others, that is dependent on the state of the rest of the global economy. And there's nothing they can do about that except live with it. So it's a faster recovery than we're seeing in some other places, but it's not just snapping back.

DC: We have been talking mostly about the developed economies. What are you seeing in the developing economies? Does this set back the path of development for a lifetime?

MS: I think it does, for a while. So if you think of the resources the developed countries went into this with, we're richer, our balance sheets are a little bigger. The sovereign fiscal space is bigger in developed countries than in than in many developing countries. And the medical situation is, they have less capacity. In terms of the kind of basic economic policy tools that you need to use, they are less well armed.

If you look at the tracking data for India, the economy is coming back but it's coming back with the virus still growing at a pretty rapid rate. I'm not sure the data are all that good to make significant comparisons across, especially, the poorer countries, but what I'm worried about is that the health/ livelihood trade-off is much starker in the poorer parts of developing countries, or in just plain poor developing countries, and that they'll be forced open up the economy, and then just have to accept the consequences in terms of health, because the alternative, which is locking down the economy for extended period, is worse. That's not necessarily an economic catastrophe. But it's not something that from a health and human welfare standpoint you would wish to see. A vaccine, or some other therapeutic that really works, if it's widely available, would help. There is some international support on all those fronts, medical, financial, and so on. But I don't think it is big enough to blunt the blow to a number of countries.

DC: If so, will they continue to be isolated from the global economy, to some extent?

MS: They will and they will have to deal too with the unknown consequences of a fragmenting global international infrastructure. For much of the postwar period, these poor countries lived under the big multilateral tent that the United States and others built. It was an important opportunity for growth for many of them - and they still need it, especially the poorer countries. So we don't know, at this point, whether tensions between the US and China and other tensions - Europe is not getting along all that well with China right now, either - will produce some kind of fragmentation that diminishes the opportunity for smaller developing countries, I'm not saying the whole thing is collapsing, to the point that the opportunities are gone, but it is getting there.

The other thing they have to deal with is that digital technology is moving so fast, in the area of automation, vision, robotics, and so on. Labor-intensive process-oriented manufacturing as a source of competitive advantage may not be as powerful a driver of the export side of growth as it was in the past. That means not that the global economy is unimportant, but that they have to invent or discover other ways of leveraging the global economy, other sources of comparative advantage.

DC: So the old Chinese model of making lots of cheap stuff for the West is not going to work anymore?

MS: I think a lot of countries are hoping that the baton will get passed, and the opportunity won't collapse so fast that that it cuts them off. But it looks like it is at least a threat.

DC: So we have these two big policy challenges in terms of what we do about the future workforce and getting people jobs. One is the pandemic-related concern about industries where there's high human counterparty risk, as you put it: tourism, travel, etc. The other is where these digital trends have been accelerated by everyone being stuck at home. What policies should governments be adopting to deal with those two quite different shocks in terms of equipping people to get back to work?

MS: You are right. They are different. I don't think there's a magic bullet, other than vaccines, that are a substitute for getting the virus under control. So on that one, I'm pretty clear. If you are in an industry that is reliant on basically having trust and low human counterparty risk, such as tourism, your only strategy is to convince potential visitors that it's a virus-free safe place, and you have to convince domestic folks that it's safe to let them in.

On the other one, digital and jobs, the lion's share of the discussion, which is not misguided, has to do with really ramping up our capacity for helping people change what they do, their skills and so on.

Actually, digital tools are showing, partly as a result of the pandemic experience, that they're really quite useful in doing that. But we are going to need more collaboration that involves business, educational institutions and government. You know, we thought that before and it's even more true now, but can we get it done?

DC: What do you have in mind, specifically?

MS: Everybody has pieces of the puzzle, right? Businesses know how their business model is evolving and they have a pretty good sense of what skills they need. Armed with the right tools, they can be pretty good educators or partners with educational institutions to get the job done. There's a reasonable amount of evidence that done at a local level, with state governments or local institutions, that these partnerships actually kind of work.

A second piece of the puzzle, that nobody I know, is wildly enthusiastic about, is the current scattershot approach to international relations and international trade. We could have a strategy for dealing with China and for dealing with international trade and institutions and so on. We know all that has to change; we are not going to go back to where we were before. That strategy could include domestic employment, around where jobs reside geographically. Done stupidly, that doesn't really help, but done smartly, I think it could.

The part that seems to me hard I wrote about recently. In the publicly-traded equity markets, an increasing part of the value that is being created is in is being created by intangible capital. And the entities that are creating it are doing it with a relatively small number of employees. If you stand back from it – and I’m overstating it for simplicity - employment is diverging from value creation measured in that way. Then you ask the question, “Who owns that capital?” The answer is, it is a highly concentrated set of people at the upper end of the wealth distribution, and a bunch of institutions.

I think, to fully solve this problem, we are going to have to figure out a way to have broader participation in value creation, the turbocharged parts of the economic value creation process. We don't have that now; actually, nobody has it. This is a challenge that no country I know of has actually addressed effectively.

DC: This crisis has brought about an acceleration of a lot of the trends towards greater concentration of wealth amongst a small part of the population. As you say, this does open up some very big questions. Firstly, if most people aren't going to be in jobs that are high in value creation, or there won't be any jobs at all, do we need to provide some kind of universal basic income or equivalent of that to keep people in a decent standard of living? And do we need much heavier taxation of the wealth - and how easy would that be to do politically and practically? Is there a need for nationalizing chunks of the value creating part of the economy, maybe into a common or sovereign wealth fund of some kind?

MS: Well, these are things that, if you get them wrong, can really screw up the economy. On the other hand, the trajectory of the distribution of balance sheets in the economy is not very promising from the point of view of political and social cohesion. I think the most promising avenue to explore (and I don't want to pretend that this is a worked-out solution), is to have the public broadly, maybe through the government, be passive owners of the growing parts of the economy.

DC: How would it be different from more taxation, the traditional way that we've done that?

MS: Given the outcome of the election, I think we're going to do more taxation. But I think exploring this other avenue as a complement to that is a worthwhile idea. We've discussed bits and pieces of this. The late James Tobin put forward a widely discussed, but not implemented, proposal to finance college essentially with loans you pay back based on what you later earn. You would basically pre-commit to a very small fraction of your future income. So people who become artists and musicians, for instance, those who become fabulously wealthy would pay a lot, while others who go into the nonprofit sector and do a lot for their fellow human beings wouldn’t pay so much.

The mechanics of these things need to be worked out. There's all kinds of moral hazard and other problems that have to be thought through. But I think this is the right time for creativity in these dimensions, as well as the responsible, effective use of the existing tax system.

DC: Are you optimistic that we are going to see that? People have been aware for years of the threat that digital posed to a lot of traditional jobs, traditional middle-class employment. Yet there didn't seem to be much policy reaction to that. Might the pandemic shock the world's governments into doing something more ambitious and creative?

MS: It depends on where you are, I think, because the exact challenge varies. In the United States, we still have reasonably powerful engines for generating innovative new economic activity, and we don't want to destroy those. But we need to address the problem that a significant subset of the population feels, with some good reason, that they were abandoned over the last few decades, and they don't - I'm going to put this mildly - like their leaders, and the people on the coasts. and so on. It's a little hard to see that, regardless of electoral outcomes, turning into something that, at least in the short run, looks like a constructive dialogue about how to achieve inclusiveness. I’m just trying to be realistic.

In Europe, at least on digital, the challenge perceived here is that the industry is way behind. They need more platform companies, they need a cloud computing system, that goes along with their policies with respect to data. They need opportunities for very talented, innovative young people to build companies with supportive ecosystems around them, so they don't have to go to New York or California. So the challenge is to modernize, digitize and get to somewhere near the forefront of innovation. And that has consequences for growth.

This is a slightly different perception of the challenges in Europe, which if you look at Gini coefficients, is a more egalitarian operation. It is not exempt from the pressures that we've seen in the United States. David Autor and others have documented that job and income polarization to varying degrees is occurring across a broad swath of the developed world. But we've had policies in Europe that have muted the impacts of that to a greater extent than, say, in the UK or the US.

DC: Europe hasn't had a great record of catching up on these sort of innovation deficits. In two or three years, however we think about the relative effectiveness of the policy response to the pandemic in America and Europe, how likely is it that America will emerge with stronger economic prospects than Europe for the decades ahead?

MS: People in Europe are a little more optimistic because of the new emergency fund financed with European debt. They are saying this is the first time, unlike in the great financial crisis, that Europe has taken the position that we're in this together, as opposed to “If you're in trouble, it's your fault, get out of it”. It remains to be seen if that turns into more momentum on a broader front. Europe’s economy is still fragmented. It needs European level institutions - not bureaucratic ones, but ones that really pump energy into the system. This is bottom line: Europe is pretty far behind.

DC: What is the number one policy recommendation you have for policymakers around the world as they think about how to give their people the best chance of getting good work in the years ahead?

MS: On the work question, I would first get the virus under control. We need to recognize we have a common problem and cooperate with each other on finding solutions to the pandemic, including technological ones, and then focus on skills, job creation and retraining.

Were you paying attention in 2020? Take our quiz to find out. Dec 29, 2020

What an extraordinary year it has been, with a once-in-100-years pandemic, an historic US presidential election, the long-drawn-out saga of Brexit in Europe, and a host of other lesser-spotted occurrences. But have you been paying attention? Take our quiz to discover if you are top of the public policy pops or whether the finer details have somehow passed you by.

How Public is your Country's Wealth? Take our quiz. Dec 28, 2020

Oliver Cromwell once described English land law as “an ungodly jumble”. More than 350 years later, Dag Detter has a similar view of the way cities and countries value what they own. Their property and assets represent two times global GDP – almost twice the size of equity capital markets. Grouped in public wealth funds, they could release capital equal to 3% of annual GDP – $600bn in the US – for vital infrastructure spending.

The fundamental problem, according to Detter, is that the public sector globally still uses cash accounting. This is a medieval method long left behind in the private sector by the accrual accounting innovation that helped develop capital markets, limited liability companies and the industrial revolutions that catapulted The Netherlands and Britain beyond Italian city states, funding transatlantic adventures and burgeoning empires.

Detter, a Swedish former investment banker at BZE, Credit Suisse and BNP Paribas, now runs an eponymous corporate advisory consultancy advising on unlocking value from public assets and is not impressed with what he finds. “The public sector has no clue what it owns,” he says. “It doesn’t have a balance sheet for its infrastructure, so doesn’t understand what’s coming in and what’s going out. If you operated like this as a company or private individual, you’d probably go to jail.”

Britain is a particularly egregious example. “They can’t even find their real estate a lot of the time,” groans Detter. There’s no Land Registry record of London’s Liverpool Street Station and countless other pre-war public buildings, because they haven’t changed hands in the last 50 years. “It’s very convenient. If something isn’t on the balance sheet, nobody will care to manage it. No-one will make sure you’re using it in the best possible way.”

Detter believes this led to Britain privatising its water utilities so cheaply in 1989. With century-old pipes leaking up to half their contents, the vast state borrowings needed to finance urgent investment were politically unacceptable. “The balance sheet wasn’t connected to the profit and loss account and the budget, so the Government privatised the water utilities for next to nothing,” he says. “If it had a proper balance sheet, it could have carried out maintenance and registered at market value the increase in the value of the assets, which would be higher than the debt incurred. The Government would have looked like the prudent owner of a commercial asset.”

Detter also criticises local authorities borrowing heavily from central government as well as paying top prices for commercial real estate without possessing institutions that can manage risk with proper accounting, capacity and professional management. “Governments throughout the world don’t have that,” he says, pointing to Croydon Council in South London, which is facing effective bankruptcy after a series of property deals. The result is an awkward engagement with private capital through public-private partnerships. In Britain, Detter says the Private Finance Initiative has “screwed up and transferred undue wealth to the private sector”.

No change of ownership needs to take place. Assets would simply be “placed into relevant packages” in public wealth funds operating as holding companies and using private sector accounting standards and transparency and governance models. Government-owned property would constitute two-thirds of the assets, with the remainder coming from operational assets, such as water and electricity utilities and public transportation systems. A report co-authored by Detter for University College London Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, published in November, suggested separate public wealth funds for public venture capital, climate change mitigation and environmental protection and regional and urban economies. The cost to the public sector in the UK example is put at a maximum of 0.12% of GDP – £2.7bn a year.

Public wealth funds are not a new idea. In Europe, they have been utilised in various different ways in Austria, Italy, Sweden, Denmark and Greece. In Asia, they have been spectacularly successful in Singapore. In the US, Detter says they could enable a city like Boston, with reported assets in 2014 of $3.8bn, including just $1.4bn of property, to leverage hidden wealth of $55bn in its real estate alone. He says accounting for market value at current use is “the first step towards quality asset management”. The next stage involves understanding the returns that could be earned on such trapped value.

Detter was drawn into the public sector in the 1990s, helping restructure his nation’s public assets as president of the Swedish government holding company, Stattum,. “It helped save Sweden from bankruptcy,” he says. He went on to advise private equity group Terra Firma Capital Partners and consulting firms McKinsey and Boston Consulting Group. “Financially, this is not rocket science,” he says. “It’s very simple, but politically it’s incredibly hard to do, unless you have a crisis, because it’s all about political will. In the private sector, the game’s about holding people responsible to deliver a certain result within a defined time. Politics is about promising things that can never be quantified.”

“Whole of government accounts” have not helped much. “They don’t include real estate and are published nine months after the fact, which means they’re completely useless,” says Detter. “It’s information that’s nice to know, but you can’t make decisions with it. It’s like publishing English Premier League scores six months after matches have been played. Who cares? But nearly all governments do their accounting this way.”

Except for New Zealand. This nation of 5m people manages its public assets “brilliantly,” according to Detter, publishing monthly public finance statements plus five and ten-year forecasts before elections or major policy decisions. Any policy suggestions in the run-up to an election are matched against forecast statements on the balance sheet. “The balance sheet comprises all the assets at market value, not historical value,” says Detter. “If Britain did things New Zealand’s way, the discussion around Brexit would have been completely different. Instead of using silly numbers, arguments would have been based on net worth.”

COVID-19 is an even better example. “One of the reasons New Zealand could act so quickly was because it could measure accurately, taking quick and hard action in the knowledge of whether it would pay off and whether it had the money to pay for it,” says Detter. “The Western world is going to be shocked and paralysed by debt incurred to fight COVID-19. Creating public wealth funds are one way of releasing capital without raising additional taxes or returning to austerity.”

The idea may be catching on. With Citigroup seeing a need for global infrastructure spending of $58.6 trillion over the next decade, its special economic adviser Willem Buiter believes public wealth funds “make economic sense”. Financial Times commentator Martin Wolf adds that they’re “an idea whose time has come.” Corralling capital in this way may be particularly suitable for governments determined to ‘level up’ regional inequalities and ‘build back better’ after COVID-19. “I’ve been trying to do this for the last 20 years and you could say it’s been with limited success,” says Detter. Now this man from the nation of the midnight sun may get his moment in the limelight.

The Case For African Optimism. Q&A With Ndidi Nwuneli Dec 22, 2020

Ndidi Nwuneli (NN): We have 10 years to achieve UN Sustainable Development Goal 2, zero hunger, yet it is 2020 and we have actually seen almost a doubling of food insecurity around the world. Instead of getting better, our indices are getting worse, not only around malnutrition, but obesity, and all the related diseases.

Our focus is on the role of private sector as the engine of growth and change. We believe private sector has to take a lead in innovation, catalytic financing, and addressing zero hunger by leveraging innovation and technology. We’ve convened about 20 amazing speakers, like Dr Rajiv Shah of the Rockefeller Foundation; Dr Agnes Kalibata, the UN Special Envoy on the food system summit; Lawrence Haddad, the ED of GAIN, the global alliance to improve nutrition; and last, but definitely not least, Dr Akinwumi Adesina, the president of the African Development Bank. I’m looking forward to a very exciting and engaging summit, and we have over 2000 people registered, so it’s going to be really interesting to see how private sector actors across Africa and across the world can collaborate to address zero hunger

Driving Change (DC): The outside world has often looked at Africa both as a source of food and also as a place beset by a very inefficient, sometimes catastrophically so, food ecosystem. Give us a sense of how Africa is catching up, or could catch up, with the rest of the world in terms of its food system, particularly through that lens of ending hunger

NN: So Africa is naturally endowed with agricultural abundance. There’s no reason why we’re a net importer of food or wine, or why one out of every three African children is stunted. And, like you said, it’s really hinged on policies, fragmented ecosystems, histories of focus on primary production instead of processing, and a really disjointed ecosystem that is plagued with challenges around infrastructure, access to water, energy, and roads, which make our value chains very uncompetitive.

Now what new technology and innovation allow us to do is to leapfrog. And as you know, Africa has embraced cell phones and digital ag in way that other regions have not. Over 600m Africans will have access to a cell phone by the end of 2025. And we can leverage cell phones, not only to get access to data for weather patterns, or access to markets, but also to train our farmers and provide ongoing support. So there is an opportunity to leapfrog and an opportunity for Africa to demonstrate how to do it the right way

The rest of the world went through a very unhealthy pattern of agriculture, which contributed to the climate change crisis we currently face. There is a unique opportunity for African farmers, Africa’s private secto, and policymakers to collaborate to ensure that we learn from the mistakes of other regions and embrace technology and innovation and collaborate across food ecosystem to build back better and also to leapfrog

I spent the last year writing a book called “Food Entrepreneurs in Africa: Scaling Resilient Agriculture Businesses”, learning from those entrepreneurs who have scaled on this continent. I really believe that we can address the food insecurities that currently face us and we can also ensure that we can feed ourselves and feed the world. I believe that in the next 10 years, we can transform this food ecosystem, working in our countries, working in our regions and then collaborating globally, to take on key challenges for our current food ecosystem and address them collaboratively.

DC: So what are the two or three highest priorities, the things that need to be changed in order to make that possible?

NN: There are two key interventions required. The first is that we need investment in catalytic financing. And we need a whole range of options when it comes to patient capital that comes in at every point of the value chain to address the huge ecosystem challenges, bottlenecks across the entire ecosystem. We need to mobilize that capital locally, from pension funds on the continent, from our private sector investors, from our philanthropists. But we also need to galvanize funding from the rest of the world

I really believe that you can make money on the African continent in the food ecosystem, I mean, we have currently 1.2bn people; by 2050 2.4bn people. Everybody needs to eat three times a day. And we can de-risk investment in agriculture and food by partnering with insurance providers, partnering with public sector officials who can provide them the risk capital as well.

The second intervention is policies. We need an enabling policy environment, we need an ecosystem approach when it comes to policy, and we need to stop working in silos. We need to design ecosystems that work

When I think about these ecosystems, and the actors required to build back better and streamline policies, it is actors in food and agriculture, actors in health and nutrition, gender, climate, financing, innovation and technology infrastructure. Each of our countries, at the local state, federal and regional levels, needs to have these actors sit together to plan for the future.

DC: How is catalytic capital different from traditional aid or traditional investment in Afric

NN: There are a broad range of financing options available, but when you come with catalytic financing it is patient; it is tailor made to the particular investment opportunity; and it doesn’t just look at financial returns, it looks at social returns. And to be catalytic, it picks investment opportunities that can serve as triggers for other actors in the ecosystem.

DC: You mentioned the book you have been working on. Can you give us one inspiring example that gives readers a sense of what is now possible in Africa in terms of entrepreneurship

NN: here’s There are so many examples, so many. If I have to pick just one, there’s a company in Kenya called Twiga Foods. It actually started off as a company that was going to be exporting bananas to the Middle East, and quickly realized that we needed to set standards for the fruit industry in Kenya to be able to meet international demand. And what they then did was ask, “How can we leverage technology to connect our farmers to small retailers in the city of Nairobi?” They essentially figured we have cell phones, we’re going to connect farmers directly. They built a whole supply chain of farmers, helping the farmers meet their standards. So now, within 14 hours, a small retailer can order fresh fruit and it will be delivered to the small retailer

Now they are serving 14,000 retailers, and they’re working with hundreds and hundreds of farmers. They’ve raised $16m and are expanding rapidly. Not only have they improved the lives of the farmers who are now earning more money, because you’ve cut out all the different glitches in the value chain, they’re also ensuring that retailers have access to fresh produce. And the customer has fresher food and a healthier lifestyle. So the entire chain is more efficient, more transparent, they’re getting lots of data. They are enabling the leapfrogging that we talked about. During this COVID-19 era, where we’re all forced to embrace technology in ways that we never did before, this company was already ahead of the curve

That’s just one example, but there are so many examples of companies, from seed systems, to commercializing great research, to improving, nutritious food. I’m so inspired by these entrepreneurs who are at the cutting edge of what is possible and inspire us to see what is possible in our own ecosystem

DC: You have been working on an entrepreneurial project of your own, Nourish Africa. Tell us a bit about how that is going

NN: So we started Nourishing Africa because we felt this is a $1 trillion industry in Africa and that entrepreneurs should be growing their businesses, scaling up, yet many of them lack access to data, to financing capacity, support networks. So Nourishing Africa is a one stop shop for entrepreneurs who are going to transform the African agricultural landscape. We’re providing all the support the data, the knowledge, the capacity support they require. Our vision is a million entrepreneurs on the platform. So I tell people, it’s Facebook, LinkedIn, and WebEx, all wrapped together for African entrepreneurs in food and agriculture

What we’re so excited about is that it has taken on a life of its own. I meet people who say I’m part of Nourishing Africa, I’ve benefited from Nourishing Africa. Right now we have over 650 active entrepreneurs and agri businesses on the platform. We have been able to connect them to funding and networks, amplify their voices and change their narratives. And we are gradually growing. We have entrepreneurs from 34 countries, which is so exciting, and partners across the board. It shows you what ecosystem solutions can do. When you gather people together, you amplify their voice: they can shape policy, they can learn, they can grow. And they can trade with each other and network with each other to create more wealth, work together to solve problems that affect them and affect others in their communities.

DC: Let’s turn to COVID. How is Africa coming through this crisis?

NN: A lot of people expected Africa to really be hit by this health crisis. In the beginning, there was a lot of fear. But Africa has not been hit by the health crisis in the magnitude the West has. What we have been hit by is the economic crisis, which has set back some of our countries 30 years. Nigeria is experiencing a recession. I don’t think we’ve had one this deep in about 20 years. Many other countries are facing that negative GDP growth wave.

There’s a sense of urgency for all of us to figure out how to work collaboratively to grow the economy to create jobs. We have also been hit by declines in remittances. As you know, many in the African diaspora, who used to send money home. are affected by COVID, especially the job losses in the countries they are living.

You see statistics like 57% of household income spent on food, when we’ve experienced an inflation rate of 17% in the last four months. That means that the average family cannot have access to nutritious food, and definitely cannot enjoy three meals a day.

So what does that mean for us? As actors in the food ecosystem, we have to not only push for innovation and technology, we have to lead the way on what is possible.

I spent the last few months as the coordinator of a visioning exercise for Nigeria, for 2021- 26, 26-30 and then to 2050. This has been an exciting opportunity to say how can we build back better. Agriculture will serve as a great, great opportunity for building back better because, as I mentioned, we are naturally endowed with agricultural abundance. It’s going to take bold action, decisive action. It’s also going to take leaders who can see a better future and a new way of doing things. For this visioning exercise I’m working with a group of 25 people appointed by the government to change the narrative. We are already coming up with very tangible and implementable actions at the national level and at a regional level

DC: One of the inspirations for Driving Change is our desire to inspire many more talented people to go into public policy, into public service – to be a new generation of inspired, servant leaders. Leadership in Africa is a big passion of yours – you founded LEAP Africa nearly 20 years ago, to encourage better leadership. How do you see the leadership challenge in Africa today?

NN: I share your conviction that leadership is critical for any transformation to occur. What we’ve been doing, at least over the last 18-19 years, is about creating the next generation of principled, dynamic, credible leaders in Africa. LEAP itself stands for leadership, effectiveness, accountability, and professionalism. Africa desperately needs these four attributes, and so does the rest of the world

One of the things we do at LEAP is work on changing mindsets – which is what is needed all over the world right now. The concept of leadership has been distorted. At LEAP we teach that a leader is an individual who has a vision for positive change and galvanizes others to affect that vision, to impact the lives of people

So from when I started LEAP to this day, it has become ever clearer that we need a concept of integrity, that character has currency, and that authenticity is critical to effective leadership. That mindset shift is where we start. What we teach young people and what we teach entrepreneurs is that leadership is an act, not a position. It is what you do that defines your leadership, not the positions you have.

We also distinguish between leaders and rulers. And there is a difference between those right now in Africa and across the world. We must not confuse the two. There’s a leader, there’s a ruler. And just because you have a title that does not make you a leader. So what we try to do with that program is help young people actually start initiatives to affect positive change in society. Through these initiatives they build their leadership muscles. They have started social change project in their communities, in their country. And I’m proud to say that many of our alums are leading today in the public and private sector, and they have a tangible impact on the lives of people.

Now we work in six African countries. What gives me hope is that you can start with a group of people and create an army of change agents. We need enough people who believe this, who live it, and who can effect change one person at a time, one community at a time

There’s a quote from JFK, which I used to post on our walls when we started LEAP. It is about a pebble, a pebble that creates a ripple, which creates a wave, which can pull down the mightiest walls of oppression.

I’m still an optimist that we can create those waves of social change in our community, in the health sector, in the food sector, in the governance sector across the board, creating those waves that will push down some of the mightiest walls of oppression that we continue to face. That’s what gives me hope. That’s what gets me excited every day as I embark on fighting some of the causes that I’ve taken on in my lifetime

DC: What a fantastically optimistic note to end on. Thank you, Ndidi, for talking with Driving Change.

Science, Policy Making & The Pandemic. Q&A With William Haseltine Dec 07, 2020

During the pandemic, WilliamHaseltine has been a trusted guide for many people to the intricacies of Covid-19 science and the public policy response. This contribution has included writing an invaluable book of advice for parents of younger children, “A COVID Back To School Guide”. A pioneering academic scientist, serial biotech entrepreneur, philanthropist and founder of the NGO, ACCESS Health International, he recently published an autobiography, “My Lifelong Fight Against Disease.” This begins with a fascinating, slightly risqué, story from the 1980s about how he successfully teamed up with Hollywood actress Elizabeth Taylor to get politicians in Washington, DC to make the fight against HIV/Aids a public policy priority. Driving Change began by asking about how to reverse the recently growing public skepticism about science.

What Giving Tuesday Says About Movement Building. Q&A with Asha Curran Dec 01, 2020

Giving Tuesday was launched in 2012 on the Tuesday after American Thanksgiving, as an annual celebration of generosity in all its forms. It has grown rapidly into a global grass roots movement, drawing together people around the world who share a love of serving their fellow humans with their time, expertise and money. Asha Curran has been involved in Giving Tuesday from the start, helping her then boss, Henry Timms, launch the idea. Now she is the CEO. For Driving Change, Matthew Bishop – another member of the launch team – asked Asha to reflect on what lessons have been learned over the past 8 years, including about how to engage people in working for a better world.

On World Toilet Day a Q&A with Jack Sim, Mr Toilet. Nov 19, 2020

It is 20 years since Jack Sim founded the World Toilet Organization, to campaign for better sanitation and hygiene. In 2013, the United Nations designated November 19th as an annual World Toilet Day. When he talked recently with Driving Change, we began by asking Mr Toilet, as Sim is affectionately known, about how he first got interested in sanitation, and about an influential meeting he had with Mr Condom.

Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals: Q&A Arturo Condo Oct 30, 2020

Arturo Condo is the president of EARTH University in Costa Rica, an innovative global university which trains students for futures in sustainable development, particularly in rural parts of the world. Prior to his work at EARTH University, Condo was the president and professor of strategy and competitiveness at INCAE Business school. In total, he has committed over 24 years of his career to teaching and researching sustainable development. As a result of his dedication, he was named one of the World Economic Forum’s Global Young Leaders. Driving Change opened our conversation with him by asking what challenges the food system faces, how close we are globally to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, and the impact the pandemic has had on it all.

Solving homelessness during the pandemic: Q&A Rosanne Haggerty Oct 30, 2020

Rosanne Haggerty is one of the most influential voices on homelessness in America and around the world. She is the president of Community Solutions, a nonprofit working to make a lasting end to homelessness. Haggerty uses her expertise in real estate, finance, management, and strategic planning to create innovative housing solutions for disadvantaged urban residents. Prior to COVID-19, Haggerty remained optimistic about achieving zero homelessness in America. Driving Change began our conversation by asking her how, and if the prospects have changed, and the unique challenges that come with trying to solve the homelessness crisis during a pandemic.

The Future of work after Covid 19: Q&A Michael Spence Oct 30, 2020

Michael Spence is a Canadian-American economist and a recipient of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. He is the Phillip H. Knight Professor Emeritus at and former dean of the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University, a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a William R. Berkley Professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business. Spence is also the author of The Next Convergence, which looks at what’s at stake for the global economy in the next fifty years. We began by asking him what the future of work is poised to look like, post COVID-19.

Climate change and the pandemic: Q&A with Gavin Schmidt Oct 30, 2020

Since 2014, Gavin Schmidt has been director of the influential NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, located in New York's Columbia University. One of the institute's key objectives is predicting atmospheric and climate changes in the 21st Century - and Schmidt is one of the world's most trusted guides to the latest data on the impact of rising temperatures and advocate for urgent action to limit climate change and its adverse impacts. Driving Change began our conversation by asking him about how, if at all, the pandemic has shifted his thinking about climate change.

The Endgame For Fossil Fuels. Q&A: Mark Campanale Oct 28, 2020

Mark Campanale (MC): COVID changed a lot. What it’s done is forced a huge contraction in the global economy. And that contraction has worked its way into energy demand. If we think of climate change as perhaps the big existential problem of our age, and certainly for the coming century, [Covid has] meant that people are looking at where energy is generated and the burning of fossil fuels which contribute to climate change. People have realized we can switch to clean energy: it’s cheaper, it’s more efficient, it’s cleaner. All those fossil fuel companies that used to dominate the S&P 500 like Exxon, their valuation has collapsed. Investors are fleeing the sector. And of course, the darling of the past year has been Tesla, the miracle of new technology.

People are thinking: Well, actually, this changes everything; how we communicate, how we transport, what energy we generate, how offices function, etc. [The pandemic] has brought forward the peak in demand for fossil fuels. It has really tipped us over into the end days of the fossil fuel economy, giving us the freedom and hope to deal with climate change.

Driving Change (DC): That’s a big claim. You really feel this is an inflection point. Would you say it’s brought forward the peak for energy demand?

MC: I think energy demand is growing, particularly in the developing world. That will remain the case. But in the developed world, I think demand, particularly for fossil fuels, has peaked. The internal combustion engine car has almost certainly peaked. It looks like demand for oil has peaked. Demand for coal, globally, has almost certainly peaked, particularly in the western economies.

DC: What about these reports that coal plants have been reopening, and new ones built in places like China?

MC: Yeah, that’s true. But you need to look at their efficiency and how much of the time they spend on stream. A lot of these new coal fired power stations are only operating at 30-40% capacity. Part of the demise story is that they’re not achieving the revenues that a lot of the modelers forecast they would. Even in China, you’ve got dispatchable power from renewables getting onto the grid before fossil fuels. In many parts of the world, what counts is who’s getting onto the grid first, and renewables are getting on first.

Some economists ask me: “Well, Mark, we’ve seen this before, we’ve seen something similar in 2008, when the economy contracted after the financial crisis only for energy demand, particularly fossil energy demand, to bounce back.

So what’s different today? It’s very simple. What’s different is, renewables are cheaper. It’s cheaper across most parts of the world, if not all of the world, to generate power from wind, solar and battery storage compared to new build coal or new build gas. But soon, it is going to be cheaper to build new renewables than to continue to operate old coal plants. That switch I think will be the death knell for the traditional energy system.

Soon, it is going to be cheaper to build new renewables than to continue to operate old coal plants. That switch I think will be the death knell for the traditional energy system.

DC: So you really see this as an inflection point?

MC: Demand for energy will grow back, particularly in the developing economies, but that demand is not going to be met from fossil fuels, it is going to be met with renewables. We’ve got far more renewable energy capacity being built today than traditional fossil fuels. The very simple reason for that is that the cost of production for renewables has dropped below that of fossil fuels.

It’s a technology switch. Across the world, it’s cheaper to build wind and solar plus battery storage than it is to build new coal-fired power, and typically, often new gas power as well. And even in economies like China’s, when it comes to dispatchable power, renewable energy is getting onto the grid first. Renewable suppliers increasingly have first right to get their power onto the grid, ahead of fossil fuels. That’s making traditional fossil fuel capacity expensive to build, expensive to run. It’s just accelerating the demise of the old technologies.

DC: You mentioned policymaking. Are you seeing in some of these stimulus packages that this time around policymakers are leaning towards the new technologies over the old technologies? Or is there still a default mentality of pouring money into whatever creates jobs and keeps the economy growing?

MC: Good question. I’m going to give you an answer that’s broken into two halves, a good and a bad. The good news is there are many green stimulus packages, including at the European Union level. The French and the Germans have been driving it. Even the UK, which is preparing to Brexit, has a Green stimulus. If you look at the Biden election program, it does include a Green stimulus, and envisages a Green recovery.

There are simply more jobs to be created in retrofitting clean energy and energy conservation than there are from fossil fuels.

The bad news is in the purchase agreements used by central banks to stimulate the economy. They’ve been buying fossil fuel company bonds and high carbon company bonds at the same rate, or faster, than Green energy bonds. That throws a whole lot of cheap capital to fossil fuel incumbents. What that has done, including in the UK and the US, is turn the stimulus into a bailout of an industry that was teetering on the edge.

I’m disappointed by central bankers, who had a lot of choices. They should have known better, but didn’t really think it through. As a consequence, we’ve got businesses that were on their last legs being bailed out by the taxpayer. No thank you.

DC: So as you look forward, firstly to the next year and then beyond, what are you hoping that policymakers who care about fighting climate change will do?

MC: We need everything from certainty around carbon pricing to certainty around green power and power purchase agreements. One bet that I’m thinking about is slightly technical, but needs to be talked about it. At Carbon Tracker, our analysis shows there’s around $30 trillion of fixed assets in the fossil fuel economy: pipelines, oil rigs, coal fired power stations, and coal mines. These are going to have to be written down, written off, aggressively depreciated over the next ten, fifteen years. Oil wells and the rest of the fossil fuel economy is going to become redundant. Currently companies are not putting aside the capital to deal with this.

I want policymakers to make sure that the accounting profession actually does the write-downs, and does the stress tests. It’s a bit like going into the 07-08 financial crisis with those triple A mortgage-backed securities and insisting that they are still triple A. It is the same problem with fossil fuel assets; regulators and governments need to do something about it.

We also need to see more clearly the endgame for fossil fuels. The world is continuing to invest in fossil fuels when we should be winding down the industry. The International Energy Agency reckons around $1 trillion is invested in fossil fuels annually. That has to stop.

To do that we need to focus not so much on energy demand reduction – turning off the lights, switching to electric cars and so on (all good, of course), but on constraining the supply of fossil fuels. That’s why I and others have called for a Fossil Fuel Nonproliferation Treaty (fossilfueltreaty.org). Governments, policymakers, civil society and companies need to prevent all those projects that stand to take us above one and a half degrees [increase in average temperatures]. We’re gonna have to constrain supply, we’re gonna have to cancel licenses, cancel production. You may have seen the announcement from British Petroleum, one of the world’s biggest fossil fuel companies, that they are going to cut production by 40%. It was the first time I’d ever heard a CEO talk about this when Bernard Looney referred to the declining carbon budget limiting how much fossil fuels we can burn. The company wrote off $17 billion of fossil fuel reserves. But it needs to be more than BP; everybody should be doing it. That’s what I want to see policymakers focus on in the year ahead.

DC: That is a big, big idea, the Fossil Fuel Non-proliferation Treaty. Is it something that could be announced and signed next year? Is it something that governments get? Also, is it still down to the government to lead, or can the private sector now be in the vanguard of this shift?

It goes to the heart of this question: what’s the point of a retirement plan if there’s no planet worth retiring into?

MC: The treaty idea has been driven by scientists, academics and civil society. You may ask, how good is that? Well, actually, the nuclear treaties of the 1970s were driven by civil society. NGOs and civil society were the first to go off and start counting missiles and then sat around the table and had them draw up the agreement to cut those huge missile reserves that the Americans, Chinese and Russians had. We have to do the same with fossil fuel.

I do think it’s possible that it can happen. I spoke to somebody in the UK Government just last week, and they said, well, look, all policy has been focused on emissions reduction from the demand-side. Nobody’s thinking about supply, because the politics are really tough. But they added that this may not be such a bad thing, as there is space for fresh thinking and for governments to embrace new ideas. So I’m hopeful that this will get onto the agenda.

As to private sector leadership, over the last two years individual private investors and investment institutions have mobilized regardless of government. There’s Climate Action 100, a coalition of the world’s largest investors, taking on the world’s top 200 polluters. It has a combined $46 trillion under management. It’s the biggest coalition that has ever been created of investors who are sitting down with management and challenging them to change.

Now, the government didn’t tell them to do that. It was driven from the bottom-up, driven by individual policyholders of pension schemes, driven by trustees, driven by fiduciaries. It goes to the heart of this question: what’s the point of a retirement plan if there’s no planet worth retiring into?

DC: How serious is this shift? Is it largely rhetorical, or is there something fundamental going on here? After the Paris Agreement, there were lots of business leaders and investors saying, yes, we’ve got to do this. But they also said that we mustn’t scare the fossil fuel industry, and that there needed to be a “just transition” with compensation to fossil fuel companies that lose from the shift to renewable fuels.

MC: I think the level of ambition and expectation is now there. What people have told me about Paris is that in previous years of climate negotiations, you had power blocks – the business power block, lobbying, government not doing anything that’s damaging for jobs. Then you had the scientists and the NGOs saying, please do something. What changed in Paris was investors turning up en masse, saying to the governments that a strong climate agreement is in the interest of investors.

They were coming as a counterforce to the narrative from the business community. People often make the mistake thinking that finance and business are the same thing. In fact the business community is often in conflict with the interests of the shareholders. Investors are starting to find their voice. There have been many shareholder resolutions on climate, and investor groups that were previously slow to act, like BlackRock, are fundamentally changing. BlackRock now is in favor of a progressive climate deal.

That’s really the switch that we’ve seen. Finance saying, “Now, we’re going to stand for our own position and our own status as interlocutors in the climate negotiations by setting out the kind of climate agreement we want.” Finance is now increasingly on the side of the angels.

Is it going to be enough? Fast enough? Well, one of the things we’ve worked on at Carbon Tracker, along with the UN Principles for Responsible Investment and others, is a concept we’re calling the “inevitable policy response”.

People often think that governments are slow to act, and nothing is going to change. What we are saying to investors – and investors are agreeing – is that actually, there’s growing evidence of climate chaos: ice caps increasingly show signs of melting, forests are burning, 100 degree temperatures in the Arctic, London is a hundred degrees for three, four days in a row – unheard of. We’re saying it’s inevitable that governments will act, they won’t sit aside, because the public will call on them to act. We should expect governments to act and it’s that inevitable policy response that companies have to fear and investors have to ask for. People are not going to sit around and do nothing. That’s for certain.

DC: So if policy response is inevitable, what is the policy that you would advise a policymaker to make their top priority over the next 12 months?

MC: Switch the narrative from trying to constrain demand, – which I feel is a bit like boiling the ocean, telling a billion people to turn their lights off – to constraining supply. We know where the supply is coming from, who’s producing the fossil fuels. We know who it is. We know which projects are going to take us to above one and a half degrees. We know who‘s developing them and who owns them. Policymakers should be focused on getting an agreement that reflects the science. A Fossil Fuel Non-proliferation Treaty is the policy I really want people to think about today.

Is The Great Online Education Experiment Working? Q&A: Vikas Pota Oct 28, 2020

Vikas Pota (VP): You are right to say that COVID, as a phenomenon, has absolutely turned everything upside down. What’s really interesting about it is that it’s affected people from what you would call the Global South as much as it has the Global North. Therein lies, I think, a huge number of opportunities to look at how change can happen in education systems.

This has been a rare opportunity for a teacher in Nigeria to have an influence on a teacher in Norway, simply because there’s a commonality of experience. We’re all experiencing very similar things, whether it’s new inequity of various types or whether it’s to do with teaching and working out what works well. We’re thinking about how you engage with the process of homeschool, which many of us have been engaged with over this period. I do think that yes, there’s a huge amount of disruption and chaos. But we also see some incredible stories, which provide me with a bit of optimism about the future.

Driving Change (DC): Now, the teachers you’ve given prizes to have all been just brilliant in the classroom. That’s what they were really getting recognized for. Yet for most schools around the world, we haven’t been in the classroom. So what have the best teachers been doing to actually deal with that challenge?

VP: Well, you’ve got to remember that the reason why countries and education systems don’t make the progress that they ought to — as evidenced in things like the PISA rankings or such surveys — is because not enough effort is made with regards to the teaching profession. Workforce is such an important part of the healthcare system, as well as the education system, but in one we absolutely seem to ride roughshod over.

If I look at teaching and teachers, we have had a huge crisis even before COVID came along to achieve Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4 on quality education by 2030. In 10 years time, we need to have recruited sixty-nine million new teachers just to fulfill that target. So when you look at it in that context, you think, well, you know, teaching and teachers are not just about being in the classroom. Actually, the winners of the Global Teacher Prize demonstrated something even bigger than that. They demonstrated their heart for the community, their engagement with the community. They talked about the commitment towards learning and children. Then it goes beyond just the four walls of their classroom or their schools, as evidenced by Peter Tabichi from Kenya. You might recall Andria from London or Maggie MacDonnell from the Canadian Arctic. What we have are examples of teachers who go all out every day, in the service of learning and in the service of our kids.

DC: So what does that mean in terms of how we then think about what we do in the COVID environment, where it’s going to be hard to go back to school as we knew it?

VP: So, I recently hosted a conference call where we had over 100,000 registrations from teachers from all around the world. They’re all interested in how the profession is evolving, given COVID. We all ask the question about what the new normal looks like. It’s only natural given what’s happened. You have teachers asking, well, what is the new normal when it comes to education, given all of a sudden the mass adoption of technology in our lives, especially when it comes to schooling? The reality is that teachers now realize that they needed to grasp technology at many, many stages over the last decade. This has been a huge concern where teachers are not comfortable with the use of technologies, often with stymieing the classroom environment. Now they understand the potential.

I think there’s an opportunity, given the mindset change, that a lot can happen to harness the power of technology in education. What we see is not much has changed since the first Industrial Revolution. There’s a reason why. Now what we have is a situation where with personalized technologies, with productivity technologies, with online spanning distance technology, a lot can happen. I think teachers are attuned to that. And they see the potential.

DC: There’s been this debate about technology and education for a long time. It may be, partly, the conservatism of the teaching profession; that they don’t want to embrace the technology. But there are also concerns that maybe there was a kind of techno utopia around education, and that technology actually doesn’t really deliver. How do you weigh out? Are we now at a place where we can know how to actually use this technology to educate better?

VP: Actually, I think your observation is spot on. There is an issue regarding the efficacy of a lot of this stuff out there. The question that we ought to ask the providers of these software services or products and solutions is, what proof do they have, apart from anecdotal teacher quotes as to whether it really improves learning outcomes?

That, I think, is the challenge that we have to set ourselves to and embark upon. That being said, if I look at technologies like Microsoft Teams, or Google Classroom, these are connectivity, this is the tissue in the fabric of what’s getting us along. By using such online platforms, we’re able to continue education, which is a different type of technology use in that sense.

What teachers need to look at is how they incorporate technology in their teaching and in their function. Let me give you an example. If I look at a teacher’s core task, lesson planning lies at the heart of it. So every teacher, at least in the UK, where I live, will say that they spend between an hour and three hours every evening, planning the lessons for the next day. Now, when you think about the application and technology to that one toss, you can probably reduce that by half, and actually drive improvements in the way they plan the lessons and free up their time to do other things in the classroom. Teachers are now realizing those opportunities.

DC: So I’m just going take the big picture now, with regards to COVID. We were 69 million teachers short before we thought about getting to 2030 and achieving the SDG. Do you think it’s going to be easier or harder to recruit teachers now?

VP: One of the things that I realized during my last tenure had to do with the status of teachers. No one really wanted to become a teacher, because every time you think of a teacher, you start thinking negative thoughts about your kids in schools, and then little Johnny not doing his mathematics in school.

What COVID has done, actually, is reframed that discussion. All of us became teachers at home and therefore, understand and appreciate the role of teachers. Now you will agree that actually teaching is very, very hard. There’s a reason why people go through training to do it. Now you might say to your children, maybe you should consider teaching as a profession when you grow up because it is a very intellectually demanding profession.

I think that’s what’s required in education. There’s a long tail to everything. There’s no quick fix. We just have to incessantly work at it. The question I think you’re asking about, with regards to SDGs — we have 10 years left, is there something that’s going to happen that’s going to lead to us accelerating towards the SDGs?

When I look at this question, I think in terms of all the policy conversations that I have with people in institutions like UNESCO, UNICEF, the World Bank, Education Commission — I think they have a valuable perspective and insight — but what is often missed is what actually works and what actually happens in schools. That’s why on the fifth to the ninth of October, we’ve planned something called World Education Week. A hundred schools will harness technology and present on an area of expertise to accelerate the SDG. Teachers and schools around the world can actually learn, harness and imbibe in their practice.

DC: So one of the big parts of the billion dollar question for everybody is, can we get kids back to school for this next academic year? Does it really matter that we get them back? Can we do it safely?

VP: That’s a really great question. The one thing I can tell you that every single person on this planet is united on, is the fact that kids need to go to school. The learning loss that has occurred is so significant that the World Bank and other such institutions put the loss to an equivalent monetary value of billions of dollars, in terms of the future GDP growth that we stand to lose out. Putting that to the side, education also has a really important role in imparting values. Everyone signs up and agrees with that basic tenant. Where the disagreement lies is where politics enters the question. You have ideological differences in many countries. In the UK, the union’s pitted against this Conservative government. Likewise, in America it’s the unions pitted against Betsy DeVos and the administration.

The argument is: do you follow the science or do you follow the economic trajectory? But you know, in many, many parts of the world, this is a luxurious conversation to have. The reality is that the systems are so challenged, they have no choice but to think about how to bring together multi-stakeholder partnerships and approaches to make sure that schools can function.

DC: Do you think it is safe for kids to go back into school? Or is as you say, in parts of the world, they’re not safe at home, either because everyone’s in such crowded conditions. Obviously, it’s the crowding together that seems to be the most worrying aspect of getting them back in school.

VP: I’ll just use my example; I have an elderly mother who shielding from COVID in my house. If the kids go out to school and come back, they bring something that puts my family at risk. Not only that, but we also have to think about the health and well-being of teachers and the school workforce, who are adults. I live in London, where the government has been very straightforward in terms of trying to make sure everyone gets back out and re-energize with the economy, but the rate is shooting up. We have real concerns as to what will happen. At the beginning they said that September is most likely when schools will come back, while actually, I’m saying wait, wait. Watch this space. If the rate does ramp up, I don’t see how schools can open. In principle, everyone agrees, schooling is a very important thing.

DC: What will it take for you to feel confident to send your kids back to school?

VP: I think a combination of things. One is: actually look at the science, look at the evidence of what’s happening. If I see the rate go down, it fills me with a little bit more confidence than where we are now. I accept the fact that the vaccine is somewhere down the line and we can’t wait till then. But we have to do everything we can to stop the spread of this and make sure that we’re safe.

DC: If we don’t go back to school in September, what have we learned from this first phase of trying to do education remotely, that would make you optimistic that come September, we could deliver a much more satisfying and less economically disastrous education.

VP: I’m not optimistic in that regard. Even in the last three months, there’s lots of research and lots of reports that have come out about; the average number of hours a child engages in online learning is nowhere near a school day. Even if they have the technology these inequities haven’t been fixed, so what we’ll find is just the most horrific situation regarding the most disadvantaged parts of our society. For that reason, I think that’s why schools need to come back. Just yesterday, for example, there’s a report in the Guardian which talked about how child malnutrition has shot up massively over the last six months. Likewise, I spoke to a friend of mine, who is one of the leading special-needs educators in London. She’ll tell you about how vulnerable children are having a really tough time with their families. This is an untenable situation that needs to be fixed.

DC: So lastly, what are you hoping will come out of this big gathering you’re planning in October for World Education Week?

VP: Well, like I said at the beginning, I think the opportunity lies in that every single person engaged in education has an equal and fair chance to influence what happens in the education system. A teacher coming up with a novel practice, or an idea can probably have the same impact that a Minister of Education can have today, purely because they speak from experience at the frontlines.

That is the purpose of World Education Week, where we see the schools who did remarkable things. We want to scale up their practice in all these different areas we’ve looked at so a school Nigeria can have an influence on a school in another ecosystem. So far, we’ve not succeeded in actually accelerating towards SDGs. We’ve had policymakers, government figures, all those people, to try to grapple with this issue unsuccessfully. So that’s why I’m saying, throw the ball to the people that are actually delivering education, and say let’s hear from you now. That’s where I think we can accelerate.

DC: So the silver lining in this dreadful situation might be that we finally get a kind of bottom-up, tech-orientated innovation revolution in education. That’s pretty exciting.

VP: It is very exciting. But I wouldn’t just say tech, I would say a teacher-centered approach.

DC: You mentioned how this lockdown has really given us all a newfound appreciation for how tough it is to be a teacher. I think it’s been my case, and I think lots of other people’s cases, that we’ve realized how useless we are as parents and felt rather overwhelmed by having the responsibility to help our child learn during these long days of lockdown. What advice do you have for parents, in terms of how they can do a better job, or at least not feel so bad about themselves in this situation?

VP: It’s a great question and actually one that I’ve been asked a few times now. The reality is that we feel the pressure because our kids are at home that we have to do things. Of course, the younger the child, the more attention must go in. That means that you yourself cannot attend to your day job, and so on and so forth.

My first advice is: don’t beat yourself too much about this, simply because it is an unfair expectation. We now realize that actually teaching and learning is silence, in many respects. And the one thing I’d encourage and implore all parents to do is to reach out to the teacher or their child or the school and take their advice, engage with them. These are the professionals we’ve invested in over time. They understand what best practices are, they understand your situation. Trust the process.

When we ask the question of how do we catch up for the learning loss, there’s an answer in Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers. There, he talks about this summer brain drain as the learning loss that traditionally happens with some vacations in the Western Hemisphere. Schools catch up, schools know how to do that. When our kids go back at the beginning of the next academic year, the first thing that teacher does in the first few weeks is see how much they can reinforce learning, in a similar way. Trust the process, trust the teacher, and engage with them to make sure that your child, you know, has the record required amount of learning.

DC: So when we finally feel we have to succumb to the child’s request to use the iPad, because we really have to do those business phone calls, we just say to ourselves, we’re not so bad.

VP: I can’t fault you, everyone’s done it. If you have an iPad or iPhone device, I wouldn’t beat yourself up about this. There’s a lot of actually emerging research that shows this whole obsession with screentime, is not accurate. So we just have to make sure that kids are gonna grow up with additional devices just as much as we have.

DC: Thanks to Apple for funding that research, no doubt.

VP: No, no, there’s actually some independent university academics in America. There has been fantastic research in this space. The thing is,they’re growing up as digital natives, and we have to make sure that we are conversant. Just because we feel threatened, we don’t understand it, it doesn’t mean that we put them in the same predicament. But you know, all these opportunities exist, and we as parents have to do our best.

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