Graham Boyd: Rebuild: The Economy, Leadership and You

We interview Graham Boyd, founder of EvoluteSix, a Fairshares consultancy and soon to be incubator. We are talking to him about Fairshares and a new and more antifragile way in which organisations can exist.

00:35 Insights & Takeaways
08:45 Interview

Links:
Book on Amazon: here
Author website: here
Twitter: @GrahamBoydphd
Email: graham@evolutesix.com

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Transcript

Marcus Kirsch: 0:16

Welcome to the wicked podcast where we read business books you don't have time for. I'm Marcus Kirsch.

Troy Norcross: 0:22

And I'm Troy Norcross,

Marcus Kirsch: 0:24

and we are your co hosts for the wicked podcast,

Troy Norcross: 0:27

we take from the 1000s of business books out there and test the author's ideas by comparing them to real world challenges. With over 40 years or projects between us, we've got quite a bit to compare against. We give you the condensed takeaways followed by an interview with the author's we

Marcus Kirsch: 0:43

know you want actions, not theories, and his actions that we want to help shape, because that's what the wicked podcast is all about helping you to become a wicked company.

Troy Norcross: 0:54

Hey, Marcus, I'm really, really excited about talking to Grand today. I mean, I know we've met him before. But this is such an interesting topic. And the book was really, really great. Yeah, so

Marcus Kirsch: 1:04

you know, Graham, he's, he's one of my friends now. And, you know, I met him during the barbecue that we mentioned later in the interview. So his his his book, as it's got a working title at the moment is just about finishing. And so we're getting first dibs here. It's awesome. It's called Picasso and Einstein, the economy, leadership, and you and there's tonnes of things in there that are really strong and big ideas. But, um, let's have a quick chat about that. Start with your takeaways from from the book and interview.

Troy Norcross: 1:34

I think one of the takeaways is the Where can you start? And where can I start? Where can you start working people who are listeners to start the fair share his comments, ideas are really big, and they're really big and far reaching at a corporate structure level. That doesn't mean that you can't bring some of the core ideology into the workplace, even in a small team, or a business unit sort of level. When you start looking at balancing stakeholders across everything that you're doing, and start thinking that way within your teams, it'll have a further reaching effect across the organisation and up to the company level. So that's been one of the first things that I would say is a significant takeaway. The second one is, and I said it during the, during the podcast, this is not a light switch moment. This is not where we wake up tomorrow, and everyone is going to change all of their corporate structures to fair trades comments, it's going to be a slow process. Yes, visa is doing it. Yes, the john lewis and partners is doing it, we need more companies doing it. So if you have any evidence, or any actual companies that are fair trades comments, start shouting about him, start telling people about them and start telling them about the investors that you have in them, and that it's actually working. And those are my two big takeaways.

Marcus Kirsch: 2:52

Yeah, so for me, it's it's like that, you know, when I look at that, towards how to tackle COVID-19, and this new world and uncertainty of it, it's not too dissimilar, what I've been looking at innovation for a long time, as well. So therefore, one of my takeaways is that when you do that, it's a lot about going back to the purpose of your organisation. And can you do that with or without fashions, it actually doesn't matter. But you know, as a first step, as a survival, focal point, what you probably want to do is to say, right, why do we exist in the first place? what problem are we solving, if you pull back on that it makes decisions going forwards, and how to grow and expand and save yourself as a company much clearer and simpler. Because if you will have identified that need to solve for customer, and the way you can expand around that, that's that's where your future growth lies. That's where you should enable your people around it. So one thing for me first takeaway is like, Yes, go back to the essence. And what Graham's has righted into the purpose of your company, because actually, legally, you're not bound to shareholders, by law, and you can us as he said, that's a myth. So you can actually focus on that, and do that as a company. The second part, nearly a second step of that or follow up and dependency on that as a takeaway for me, therefore, is, well, if you want to do that, as a company, you have a purpose. What's the purpose of your people? And how do you have to grow them in order to be able to do that, because I'm pretty sure that a lot of companies have had to let people go or furlough them. And they have less people to recoup the loss everyone just made of a whole quarter at least of financial loss, how to recoup that less people. It's insane because cutting people is just temporary. So the thing is, how do you grow people because now you will, you will likely as a leadership, as a leader, expect your existing left over people to do the same work or more than what you previously did with more people. So that means your people have to grow to have to be Doors more than potentially thinkers, that means they have to learn new skills very quickly, they have to have multiple skills, multiple viewpoints, maybe contradictory viewpoints, in order to test things as quick as they can, in order to actually get everyday a little bit better, a little bit better, a little bit better. So have to try whatever they can be be be outcome and purpose based, based on the organisation, and wrapped himself around a task. And so that's my second takeaway.

Troy Norcross: 5:27

And on top of that, I think it's really important to put in a lot of these fair shares, comments align, not just more doing more learning improvement, but also more reward and more risk distribution. So if we're going to ask the people to do a lot more to help us come out of the crisis, and to reinvent ourselves and to transform our businesses into the new normal, we're not going back to the old normal to the new normal, there's got to be some thing in it for them. And fair shares, comments allows for that. So there should be a temporary structure that allows for those workers that remain, who put in the extra graft to rebuild and reinvent the business to benefit from that process.

Marcus Kirsch: 6:12

Yeah, I think there's just one of these big things that just came up now that I never realised or Graham never explained to me like that. But the whole idea that actually what it can do is cut out the government by, you know, supporting the local, the local community, through first taxes through the government then back invested into a community, but by directly moving that value of currency into the community, cutting out middlemen off government, which I was like, that's great. That's actually the conservatives, they want more government that's bringing them back on board to really embrace something so different as an idea. But the thing, therefore, I really liked about this exactly that you go, why are we not as a company more connecting? So interconnectedness is what Graham says a lot, which I think is a bit of a predicament to what we're trying to do to to to do things like know a little bit more where your company in your organisation sits, realising that the people who work for you are in those communities. If you start with that stuff, you quickly get to the point where, and you see that over in the US quite failing to go back to like, hang on a second, everyone needs healthcare is an organisation make everything possible that everyone has at least healthcare is safe, secure, has child support all these things that organisations tend to, you know, cut off at times and trying to in order to try to be more profitable, it's like, stop doing that. Because if you do that, and if you put that additional pressure on, people just just don't do that you will not help have people put that extra effort and extra value into your company. Because it becomes a different battle. Right. And that's a battle you don't want to have to battle that happens is surviving and growing the value of your company not minimising the value of giving back to the workers, you're now doing more than ever before. And they have to in these days.

Unknown: 8:09

Cool.

Marcus Kirsch: 8:11

Lovely. So yes, big ideas. It was a really good interview, the book is so full of stuff. And we always say that we can't ask enough questions in the time we have. It's definitely true for this one. But on top of it, it's one of those ideas that sits further out, but is actually already existing. And that's the big point, I think there's already a connection we can make. We're living in a very interesting time with these kind of things probably should happen, and they're probably going to create a better world. So it's gonna be interesting how much you're going to be embraced. So let's listen to the interview. Let's do it. Hello, Graham, and welcome to the wicked podcast.

Graham Boyd: 8:51

Thank you very much, Marcus. I'm grateful and glad to be

Marcus Kirsch: 8:56

with you. Same here. So a little full disclosure to our listeners today. We know each other, so Troy Graham and me. So I think the last time we had a very interesting chat was last year during a barbecue at my place. And at the time, we were already talking about your book, and all the interesting ideas in it. And so jumping into that. So tell us a little bit more Graeme about the very interesting title of the book and how it sort of relates with the core message and context of the book. So that we'll, we'll kind of go and talk about

Graham Boyd: 9:36

Thank you, Marcus. So the book has a long origin. The where I've got to, and what led me to write the book was a conversation with an economist at an economics conference rethinking economics that I dropped into. And I was already exploring the whole question of if we have different ways of leading if we have different ways of structuring and running organisations, and we approach incorporating organisations differently, surely this must lead to a different kind of economy. And I was chatting to him, and we came up with the idea of right, let's write a book that spans the entire arm, all of the layers of complexity from the global economy, all the way through to the complexity of each of us as individual human beings, our inner lives, our development as human beings, specifically with a focus on how can we use the latest understanding across all of these different layers? to address our global challenges, like climate change, the pandemic that we're in at the moment, the 17, sustainable development goals? What do we need to do differently for all of that, and the bit where Picasso and Einstein come into this, my background is primarily physics with a little bit of an understanding of art. And Jack's background is primarily economics, and art, with some roots in physics. And we recognise very quickly is that the reason why we've always looked at the world differently to most people, is because we're solidly grounded in the way that Einstein looked at the world as he was developing relativity and his role in developing quantum mechanics. And the way that Picasso looked at the world that led to Cubism, emerging as a new way of representing reality on canvas. And so the essence of the book is all about how can we use the lenses of Einstein and Picasso and now use those lenses to look at business, the economy, leadership, and individual development, self development, to get a better understanding of what is really going on here. Because it's perfectly clear that the way we're showing up in the world today, the way business works, the way leadership works, the way the economy works, isn't working. And we need to reinvent all of those, to get something that does work that is capable of addressing the challenges that we're facing globally. These challenges all have their roots, in dysfunctionality, he's in the current paradigm, the lenses, were looking at business leadership and the economy through. So that's the essence of the book. And that's the red thread running through the whole book, is using the lenses that led to the development of quantum mechanics, relativity and Cubism. And now a century later reapplying them for the fundamental transformation we need in the world of business, leadership, self development and the economy.

Marcus Kirsch: 13:29

Well, I think, I love this because obviously, I'm part of my background, as well as his art certain bit of art as well. And, you know, work with engineering code and these kind of things. So I love when someone really brings these seemingly far apart, approaches to things together. But I think what strikes me most about is exactly what when you say that, well, there is a paradigm shift essentially, today applied in order to look at things differently. Interestingly enough, and that's another thing, you know, a lot of and patterns reappear, you know, because we know all of us, you know, whenever we talk, it's like, you know, we have these, we have these ideas, and we always feel like, we're just very few people who have these ideas, but it's always great to see different patterns. So as a reference to Sonny Giles, who was the first one, in that we interviewed in Episode One, she looked at leadership under the View of under the filter or under the filter of quantum mechanics. So she, she, she applied something similar to it. So you're bringing art as well into that, about shifting the way we look at things because it's not working? Yeah, I mean, I totally, I totally love that.

Troy Norcross: 14:39

And can I just say that, number one, well done for actually getting it into a single book, because the topic is so vast, you know, you could have easily written, you know, a whole series of books. But the other thing is, if our listeners and other people kind of say, Oh, so we're going to take physics and then we're going to take Cubism and Something else in something else, it can sound really almost x esoteric and really difficult to comprehend. And I read 50 pages, the first 50 pages of the book, I told my partner, I said, this is one of the most beautifully written books I've read in a very long time, I want to send this to about 100 CEOs immediately. Because even though you put them in those lenses, of physics and of art, you put it in a beautifully accessible way. So really, really well done. So thank you for that.

Graham Boyd: 15:36

Try, I very much appreciate your words, we will be putting the book to bed and printing it in the in the near future. What we're doing right now is much as you you found it really easy to read, we still think that there's room to polish many of the sentences with a final round of sub editing. So that the, the effort required to read each sentence is the minimum needed to understand the content of the sentence and put it into practical use in your life. So we're just holding off to find the right sub editor and get it sub edited. And then it will be going off to press as the third book that our brand new publishing company publishes. And it will be the first fair shares Commons publishing company in the world.

Troy Norcross: 16:28

That's really good. But at some point, you can only Polish a diamond to a certain degree.

Graham Boyd: 16:33

And this appears,

Marcus Kirsch: 16:35

oh, let me let me let me tell you a little story, therefore, about my art. So when I, when I did the second of my BA up in Hamburg and graphic designer, I took painting classes, and I worked with an artist are quite renowned artists over in Hamburg at the time. And he actually told me exactly that, which helped me greatly when I was writing my book or last two years, you know about how to get to is it perfect enough? Is it good enough? You know, and, and he said, Well, you know, they're always pieces to work at. But at some point, you have to stop because you've got to find other things once you stop and you move on to the next thing. So there's, there's there's about, you know, how much can you learn from this as much as i think i think in particular with with a message like that, and you know, I love big ideas. And I know, they're always really hard to communicate, because oftentimes, you need to find a new narrative for these kinds of things. And that's always hard to get to people. But what a lot of people say like, just just get it out, because you actually never know who's going to actually pick it up. So the quicker you get it out, and the more time you give yourself to just put it out there and work on it. And I definitely experienced that on my book as well as to, you know, you suddenly realise things are coming back. And then you're already like, okay, that definitely is going to rather go into the second book, it's, you know, the first step is often the hardest, but it's never going to be perfect. And so, you know, I think this is this is a really good book. I mean, again, you know, like Troy said, to so much in there is such a big complex things to tackle. And I think just sort of metaphors you use with with art and quantum physics, I think it works really well. But it gets me a little bit to sort of the one big thing, obviously, I want to talk about which is which is around what we met gramme, which is to fair share comments. And that's the real, that's the real big one. So over the last couple of episodes, and obviously, through all the years, try, and we've been working on all sorts of things. And same for you, you know, one of the big hurdles is not to be more creative and more innovative some way it always fails and breaks with the legal structure of any organisation, which says, Your first thing you have to do is for your shareholders, and the quicker you go into short term benefits. And you look at that, and you show very quickly that you can improve something or bring some more money back. That's the main focus. And that legally binds an organisation or most companies up so badly that they just can never quite ever get out of that, and give themself the freedom to actually do what they're supposed to be doing. Yeah. So therefore, the fair share Commons is the big idea. So can you can you a little bit, elaborate more and tell us a bit more about that? What it means if it's really a premium, far away idea, or, as we discussed before, right, there's companies already that have been existing for where two people don't even know about that actually have implemented some of that or to existence in that kind of legal framework. Is that correct?

Graham Boyd: 19:33

Yes, I'll dive into that. Let me start with a concrete example that everybody listening to this podcast is likely to know and they probably have in their wallet, a square piece of plastic with the brand of this company, the V have won the visa Corporation. So the V Cooperation when it was founded, de hoch, who was the catalyst for the visa corporation to come into existence, and the first CEO, he was really clear that for the visa corporation to do what it needed to do, which was to unite all of the competing banks, who were all trying to launch credit cards, unite them in such a way that the credit card business as a whole could take off, and each bank could continue to compete with the other banks. In terms of their client base. The visa cooperation had to be a company that satisfied many of the characteristics of the fair shares comments. So the visa Corporation was incorporated as a company that could not be bought or sold. It was a stock based membership Corporation, the shares could not be traded at all. If a member ceased to qualify to be a member of the visa Corporation, they couldn't sell their shares to anybody else. If, if they merged with another company, the newly merged entity had to reapply for membership, the shares that the one member had had, could not be transferred into the merged entity. And D is very clear in his book, one for many, that the it was precisely this way of structuring the company that was at the heart of visa, turning the haemorrhaging of value that the credit card industry in the banks were going through at that point, turning that around, and creating what has since then consistently been one of the most valuable companies in the world. So the visa corporation is gives ample evidence that it works. It's phenomenally successful. And you could already do this in the 60s with a US company. One of the big myths that has emerged in the past half century is that a company exists to maximise total shareholder return. And that's actually a myth that has emerged, in part because of economic thinking and neoliberal thinking. Bringing that in, as let's call it make up after the fact. But if you look at, for example, in the UK, in England and Wales, the way that company law is actually written, what's written there is that the executives the company, have a duty to enable the company to maximally fulfil its purpose. There's nothing in company law in England and Wales that says that purpose has to be maximising total shareholder return.

Marcus Kirsch: 23:18

So are you actually sorry, Graham, are you actually saying then, is that more US law? Or why do we believe that is such a, I haven't looked up the law? So I don't know about that. But you know, in my central never read things, it seems like a legal part of it. But it doesn't. So you say it certainly doesn't exist in UK and Ireland? why it doesn't exist? Is it a US thing? Is that why we think maybe it's a thing

Graham Boyd: 23:39

not to us, either, the US as well, um, states that the the duty is to maximise the purpose of the company. The the thing where this has come in is primarily if the purpose is not defined. And most company founders, up until very recently, simply didn't define a clear purpose for the company in a way that was legally watertight. And then the interpretation was that if there's no explicitly defined purpose, then the implicit purpose must be to serve the needs of the investors. And that's where this whole total shareholder return has come in.

Troy Norcross: 24:31

Now, that's interesting, because I'd never heard that position. So clearly. So because they didn't put the effort in to define a purpose. They were left with the default and the default was to maximise value to shareholders.

Marcus Kirsch: 24:43

Yeah, and even like, you know, when we talk to I think, what Episode Three is on Tom Peters, he was referring us back to Drucker Institute, over in the US and says, you know, the Drucker Institute itself tries to change that and find alternatives to propose to organisations, to have a different focus off of that thing that holds us back. to really do and, you know, be there for the purpose of societies actually rather than purpose of the shareholders so that they don't have to believe in the same thing? Or if they have a different reason why they want to create a new narrative to say, you know, shareholder value, forget about it. On. Wow, that's interesting.

Graham Boyd: 25:20

Yes. Yeah. Part of the issue now is that this has become, let's say, so established in the conventional interpretation of what the law says that, in some countries, the law has now been modified to fit this interpretation. So some, in some countries, it actually is in the law, in other countries, you know, in the UK and the US fall into this category. Whilst it's still perfectly possible to put in the purpose, if you didn't do it, when you first Incorporated, the probability that you can then do it afterwards. And get the shareholders to agree to that change in your incorporation statutes gets smaller and smaller, the more valuable the company gets. And in particularly the startup world, as soon as you get VC backed, and the VCs are driven by their partners, to to push for a sale of a company as the kind of exit, then it becomes almost impossible to retrofit that money most the time. I'm, even Historically, the point where this really caused problems was not in the day to day running of the company. It was at the point where something went wrong, and there was a court case. And then in the absence of any specifically declared purpose, all that the judges could do is interpret it in the best way that they could given the facts on paper. And that led to the interpretation. It's to increase total shareholder return.

Marcus Kirsch: 27:08

So is there So essentially, at least for the UK, and us, and you just mentioned, other countries might have changed their laws now to incorporate it, there's a there's actually no reason apart from the power of the existing shareholders the fear of the leadership to go if you don't go with the shareholders, money gets pulled out, or we get booted out. Don't even architect not that works. But you know, it's actually just that that holds companies back to pivot or refocus on what actually should be doing.

Troy Norcross: 27:41

Yeah. And then pivot is the word that I was going to ask you in as well, because let's say a startup starts off trying to serve hospitals. But in the process of trying to solve a particular problem in the hospitals, they pivot, and they're suddenly serving pharmacies, you know, it's still kind of safe space, but it changes the fundamental purpose. And, and that means they'd had to go back and amend the articles of incorporation to redefine the purpose, if they pivoted.

Graham Boyd: 28:07

That would depend very much on how the purpose in the articles of incorporation is defined. Yeah, for First of all, I actually recommend define the purpose after you've defined what is the cause the context and the need, that is served by that purpose. So that as soon as the context and the need changes, you automatically build in the need to redefine the purpose.

Marcus Kirsch: 28:46

So I think that's a really, really strong point, because I think, you know, like putting a bet to to COVID-19. But I think also, if I look at at least the last seven or eight years, when I was working across multiple industries, I think, most predominant, predominantly, so when I was working at advertising agencies, I'm working with loads of different brands, apart from the fact you know, a couple of p&g brands. So, you know, all about that ground. Need heavy, heavy having worked to is, you know, where, as an agency, we will often held to look at the brand of a company and go, okay, we hired you, as an agency tell us what our purpose is, tell us how we should look, you know, as a company to the outside world, because this is sort of our image and this is sort of also a purpose and ad agencies on points in order to go and say, well, you have to you should try this higher purpose thing, like be around sustainability or, you know, preserving potted planet or something that is a higher purpose and not just here's a product, and we're good at that product. There was always seen as that's not good enough, because actually, just giving someone a product doesn't really cover isn't emotionally close enough to a need. So you know, since then we have customer centricity and all these things becoming recognised as actually a better value of a qualitative beyond quantitative value that can exponentially increase the value of your products, but also the way you solve people's problems. And that's where it starts to become really interesting. Because actually, this is the thing that should happen. First, as you said, a company should probably write in their starting document or revisit it at times to go, are we still fit for a purpose? Has the purpose changed? Because our world has changed and that that's when the COVID thing comes in, where you say, well, the need has changed. Now. There's a new need for people in that section that we serve before. So is there anything you reckon organisations can do

Troy Norcross: 30:48

before you go to war? Let's go back. Tell us about fair share comments? No, no, we all agree that there is indeed a situation there's a lot of misunderstanding. Tell us about fair share comment.

Graham Boyd: 31:00

Right, I'll dive into that, and then weave it into what Marcus has said. So thank you. Imagine the the situation you're a successful company. And something like COVID-19 comes in. The company is now under stress. Most modern companies have far more of their value lying in the human capital than in any of the other assets of the company. If you think of a company like Google, for example, if every single person in Google walked out of the door, and didn't come back in again, the next morning, the residual value of Google is low. Most of the value of Google lies in the human beings completely free to walk out the door, and not come back again the next day. So if you're in a modern company, the most important thing is to really maximise maximise how much of each individual's time and energy. In particular, their discretionary effort goes into delivering results in the company. You want to minimise the amount of time and effort that goes into what I sometimes call job to after Keegan, into the effort of protecting themselves showing up and looking good in the company, despite the internal politics, etc, etc. Well, the best way of doing that is already well recognised in the co op world, if all of the staff have a fair amount of voting rights in the general meetings, and all of the staff have a fair share of the wealth generated by the company. All of a sudden, the interests of the investors and the staff are aligned. And now, the staff are far more likely to go the extra mile to really work in the interests of the company. Because the balance of risk reward between investors and staff is now there. Whereas for normal, limited company, in times of crisis, if the staff give up on money, or take a lower salary, put in extra effort without any guaranteed salary. They're carrying a huge amount of the risk. And the only reward they will get is they get their salary back again, which is not a balanced risk reward anymore. Whereas the investors will they're not actually carrying much residual risk anymore, because the value of the company probably collapsed in the first place when the crisis hit. So their shares either way or not worth much. And they have all of the upside potential for reward if the staff turn it around. The fair shares Commons takes what we already know works really well from cooperatives. For example, a Mondragon cooperative in Spain during the previous recession in 2008. They didn't add a single person to Spanish unemployment statistics, because of the way that a cooperative keeps risk reward in balance. So the fair shares common simply takes us to the logical conclusion. Now you include not just the staff and the investors in the general meeting with governance rights and Welfare Rights. You include all of the other major stakeholders that have a role to play in the success of the business. And the final bit is you recognise and take truly seriously the centre Fourth tenet of business law, which is that the business is an independent legal being compared to any of the human beings involved in the business. And so law states or law declares that there are two types of legal beings, there are human legal beings and non human legal beings, ie incorporated entities. And so the fair shares common simply takes that to the final logical point of saying, Okay, if that's really true, that a company is a nonhuman legal being, that as you and I are legal, human beings, or human legal beings, we need to regard the company really seriously as a fully independent legal being. And then you see that the company has satisfies Eleanor Austrians description of a commons, and that the company is actually will function best if we take it really seriously. And structured as a commons of productive capacity with all of the stakeholders engaged with the company as part of contributing to this Commons of productive capacity, part of benefiting from the commons. And therefore, part of speaking on behalf of the commons part of governing or stewarding the commons, very much in the same way that the trustees of a trust will engage with the trust part, or as the parents of a child will engage with the child, they don't own the child, but they have an accountability for raising the child to be a viable, responsible adult.

Troy Norcross: 37:03

So if you people have heard me say, several times on this particular podcast that I keep trying to figure out, how do we reinvent capitalism, to get balanced between stakeholders, so very much aligned with with what you're talking about, by putting the employees and you know, front and centre as being on par with the shareholders. But typically, I also include other stakeholders, customers, our stakeholders, society at large IE and how they pay taxes is a stakeholder. And you know, external externalities, external consequences on the environment are indeed stakeholders. So is there part of including indirect people in this fair shares? Comments approach?

Graham Boyd: 37:47

Absolutely. That's right at the heart of it. What I see is that long term, the environment will be a stakeholder in all fair shares, comments, companies, there will be representatives in the general meeting, speaking on behalf of the environment, and exercising their voting rights, as stewards speaking on behalf of the environment, even perhaps even more importantly, the dividends that they receive the share of the capital appreciation of the company that they receive, they will be duty bound to spend that for the environment, they are in local parameters for the environment. Equally things like local taxation, that the money that the local communities get from businesses to invest in the community infrastructure that the business as a whole depends on to function governments in terms of the taxes that they get to keep the whole country functioning at an infrastructure level. If all companies were fair shares Commons, most of that could come in directly. them coming in as stakeholders that have governance rights and wealth share rights, in a highly collaborative symbiotic win win win approach, rather than the current approach, which is through taxation and legislation, which is a combative us versus them approach that just creates the opportunity for various kinds of games to come in that simply suck value out of the system rather than multiplying the value in the system.

Marcus Kirsch: 39:41

Yeah, they're also quite ineffective, right? So exactly what you're saying I was just like listening to him go, Oh, my God. Yeah. That is exactly talking about cutting out the middleman, in this case, the government because why would you not have a company that's made out of people who live in a certain area, have a company that produces other things attributes are in that, you know, which is surely part of what we could call circular economy kind of style things, to contribute directly to those things like let's say, give money to rebuild a park or something like that, or roads and whatnot. And so you wouldn't actually even have to pay for the extra management overhead of debt, being taxed going to the government and then being put back into building streets after a tender to a company to build a street or Britain bridge or something that could literally directly go there. Which would then question or would be super interesting how that is, you know, just in my head, this would be your atomizing voting, because you're not just voting for a person that represents X amount of money in taxes to the best distributed and laws to put in place to change things. But it would directly say, right, because I'm working in that company, their company supports those kind of things I'm in the company voting against, towards either the park or the bridge, and I want to bridge so this money to some extent goes rather than that. It's a direct correlation between the values of work that I produce and the impact that then has of that some of that value being put directly into the community. I mean, that's it. What I love about these kind of thoughts and ideas is that from a technological from a technology standpoint, as much as digital voting is totally could could only be a thing. It's doable, right? I mean, you know, maybe I want to ask Troy around, you know, using blockchain, any of that to enable these kind of things should be totally doable

Troy Norcross: 41:36

before you go down the blockchain angle, and I was really trying hard not to do that. Because I always wind up with blockchain. That's what I do. But I think the other thing is there are so many people that are desperate for small government. I mean, in the US, though, Bonfire of regulations, you know, we've no more new regulations, because it's crippling business. In a fair shares Commons structured business, there is far less need for regulation, because the incentives are already aligned.

Graham Boyd: 42:07

Precisely. I'll pick up on that briefly. There's a US president for the moment I forget which one it was that said this. He was asked at one point why he had invited into his central circle, somebody who has consistently been an opponent of his. And the reply was, well, I'd far rather have him inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in. And this is the whole essence of the fair shares Commons company. We need regulation, court cases, lawyers, all of the money that is haemorrhaged into the system that is lost to productivity. We need that because we've invented a game of opposition, the fair shares Commons company, it brings everybody into the tent, and it maximises the opportunity for them to collaborate. And so absolutely, paradoxically, the fascist Commons meets the needs both of the left and the right, it leads to light minimalistic government, which, on the one side, people, some people love. And at the same time, it achieves many of the objectives as Mondragon in Spain illustrated. They carried inside the company, or the consequences of the financial crisis in 2008. Because of the way they structured, they didn't need to put any load on the state. So it was state light. But it wasn't at the expense of any individual, North expensive, any businesses. So they actually delivered on all of the interests of the left as well. And the beautiful.

Marcus Kirsch: 43:52

Yeah, I think this just literally the first idea ever heard that would give me hope to ever rein back in the republicans on to something that can be very

Troy Norcross: 44:04

good, right? Because the republicans are going to be happy because there's going to be smaller government and less regulation. So it's not about necessarily reining them back in, but it does give me a certain amount of hope. Now, I can hear in the back of my head, a bunch of people, not necessarily me, I'm more of a growth person that I am a lack of person with somebody saying, woo, if the environment is going to win, if employees are going to win if customers are going to win, who's gonna lose? So tell us Graham, is this going to take all of this kind of other people winning and take it value away from the shareholder? Are they going to get smaller dividends are going to get smaller growth, because that's what people start thinking. If you're gonna do all of that, then you're gonna have to take it out of my pocket to give it to somebody else.

Marcus Kirsch: 44:49

But the only thing we're going to talk about redistribution of wealth to some extent, right, I'm pretty sure. But anyway, sorry.

Graham Boyd: 44:55

Yeah. Yeah, yes. So Almost everybody will win from this, because the the big idea behind this is make the pie bigger overall, instead of fighting over who has the largest slice of a small pie, let's just all make the pie bigger. And it's really well proven that if you structure, the way that stakeholders collaborate with each other in such a way that all of the stakeholders are enabled to put all of their energy into delivering results, rather than into internal friction, you end up with a much bigger pie. So almost everybody will win out of this simply because the pie becomes so much bigger, we're stepping out of the simplistic way of win lose thinking. And that, by the way, is at the heart of what Einstein and Picasso brought into physics and art is we need to step out completely of our old ways of thinking, and look at the situation through fundamentally new lenses. And then we can transform things we can transcend and include. The only people who are at risk of losing out are those who are right at the extreme end of benefiting by extracting wealth from the system. And so yes, there are, some of these people will lose out at the immediate surface financial level, however, even they will gain, because at the end of the day,

Unknown: 46:51

where

Graham Boyd: 46:53

we're all dependent, we're all part of the the, the, the planet that we're living on, we're all dependent on the nature that we're in. And we're all embedded in the cultural system that we're in. So there are many people who are at the extreme end of wealth, where the wealth is not bringing them the kind of satisfaction the kind of enjoyment of life, the well being the self esteem or whatever it is that they were originally after, when they went down this path. Simply because they're now trapped inside an us versus them combative system. So bringing in something like the fair shares Commons, which transforms the entire fabric of how we structure society as well, or has the potential to do that, it opens up a lot of space, for people to recognise that winning isn't just about having more money in their bank account. It's about many elements of life, and how much money you have in your bank account, may or may not be the most important one for you. And even if it is the most important one for you, it's certainly not the only one. This opens up space for them to win on all of those axes as well. which really means that net, it opens up space for everybody to win by simply changing the game to a different kinds of game.

Troy Norcross: 48:38

And I think that's that's right. And Marcus and I were talking about this, this is big. I mean, you're talking about changing the fabric of society, changing the basis upon which, you know, corporate, you know, non human entities exist, it's not going to happen overnight. And even if you get a company like visa, or a company like john lewis and partners, and the few ones that are out there to start moving, they're competing against a whole raft of other companies that still have the old mindset. And they will take advantage of whoever else suddenly decides to be a good upstanding citizen, because they're still driving to make profit. How do we move this? What's the smallest incremental step that companies can take? That starts building a true momentum of change? Because this is not going to be a light switch? We're not going to turn the light switch and suddenly society is going to realise that a holistic approach to what is wealth is is the right way.

Graham Boyd: 49:40

Correct. So step one, the easiest place to start is if you are about to start up a company, incorporate your startup, seriously, consider incorporating your startup as a fair shares comments. As soon as you've got that A whole bunch of other things become a lot easier, that unleashes uncapped capacity in all of your stakeholders to contribute to enabling this company to thrive. And I'll give you an example of weakness you're pointing at. This is a weakness that comes from come or is only present in companies that are incorporated as standard limited companies, whether private or public. If I take as an example, Unilever, Paul Polman at Unilever did a superb job during his 10 years tenure as CEO at stepping towards this paradigm, the point where he needed to pull back was the point where Kraft began a takeover bid. And at that point, he needed to roll back on a few things. He needed to do that, because of the way Unilever is incorporated. Somebody can buy the company and through that takeover control. If Unilever had been incorporated as a fair shares Commons at the beginning, and they there's not much chance of reincorporating Unilever as a fair shares Commons in the near future. But Had it been a fair shares Commons, it could not have been sold. And so all of the excellent initiatives that Paul Polman was working on and bringing in it would have happened far faster. They might even have happened before he arrived and he would have just taken it even further than that. And he certainly would not have had to row back a little bit to defend against this potential takeover. Now, where that really pays off, we have the SARS Coronavirus to pandemic right now, as we're speaking when I was living in China, in the early 2000s SAS Coronavirus, one came in. Since then we've also had Abdullah, we've had MERS, we've had another number of health crises that have threatened the global economy. We've had financial crashes, we've had this, that and the other. We have the climate emergency that is coming in stronger and stronger right now. Just today, I was looking at a report on the incredibly high temperatures in Siberia right now. So we can expect in the coming decade, more bigger and more frequent crises that hammer businesses and the economy. Well, we have more than enough evidence from a number of companies around the world that if you incorporate in unusual ways, and the fair shares Commons is simply taking these ways of incorporation to the logical end point, you are far more likely to continue to thrive in a crisis at least to survive. And therefore, even if your only motivation as an investor is maximising your financial return. In a world where change crisis is the norm, you are far better off putting your money in one of these companies than in a standard type of limited company where the power to extract money, the power to use it as a tool for one individual to maximise their return at the expense of everybody else. Simply by putting that potential into the companies in cooperation. It sigman, it makes the company seriously fragile whenever any crisis hits versus a fair shares Commons, which is seriously anti fragile when a crisis hits.

Marcus Kirsch: 54:10

So that's really interesting, because I think even without COVID, you know, I've been in companies where, because I work, you know, with a lot around innovation and these kind of things, so new efforts of a company to expand. So I was more in context where things get defunded very quickly, because that's the first thing that goes and that often happens from quarter to quarter. You know, so if we look at some ad agencies have worked for that, you know, let's say are either owned by publicist, Omnicom, the secondary wouldn't hit that target, they would slash stuff very quickly. So the pressure was always on, not just in dire times like this. The other thing is done. You know, if we say that and we say there's a new round a new types of startups, a new kind of organisations being built like that. And so are you saying there is particular so there is enough a sense incentive for investors to say, you know what, I'm going to not invest in this market kind of market anymore. That gives me more power. And there's a lot of pressure on it for the wrong reasons on any organisation. But actually, I invest in this purpose. And because this is a Yeah, can you talk a bit about that? So what really is the different incentive how easy it is for if I would be a normal investor that's been doing that with the market, not a VC but some, you know, on the scene angel investor is, so how much better is it 10 to invest in this new types of organisations, essentially?

Troy Norcross: 55:39

And and following on from that, if I'm a start up, and I'm desperate for capital, if I make myself fair share Commons? Is there going to be harder for me to raise that critical early capital?

Marcus Kirsch: 55:51

Yeah, could I shift even out? Exactly,

Graham Boyd: 55:54

yes. So diving into that, at the moment, it might be harder for a startup to raise money, because the investor needs to dive into two things that are new. One of them is the business concept of the startup. And the other one is how they incorporate. So there's certainly a smaller pool of investors, who will be willing to dive into understanding both. For the investor though, once the investor has understood this, then it becomes visible that by incorporating the fair shares Commons, you shift the whole game. It's now instead of either I put my money into something that is going to make huge amounts of money back for me, or I put my money into something that does good. Now, the fair shares Commons turns this from an either or opposition into a reinforce a self reinforcing circle. The fair shares Commons means that it really tackles one of the issues with impact investing, where most of the focus is on how do we have impact. And not that much focuses on the return on investment. This really makes impact investing work, as well from the investment side as pure profit investing. And as well on the impact side as pure impact focus. And the reason for that is very simple. The fair shares Commons eliminates the wastage that exists if you do either all by bringing the two together. And that means you have far more time F and effort and human energy going into making the pie bigger, which simply means that there's more impact on the impact side, and more money on the financial return side.

Marcus Kirsch: 58:09

So essentially, somewhat, yeah, cutting out multiple middlemen. One is to financial or, you know, potentially different currency that we're creating and not looking at the financial aspect and refocusing on what what what in other places we could call outcome based, you know, the purpose. The purpose is achieving a particular outcome, focusing on that, and investing in that.

Troy Norcross: 58:37

That I hear people in the background in the back of my mind saying, who I thought might be risky. And if there's one thing corporations say, there's one thing investors hate, it's it's risk. They love the most, but I'm not sure that they're comfortable that it could actually happen. And we need more evidence. We need more visas more john lewis's.

Marcus Kirsch: 58:59

Yeah, and that's not just you know, like, your risk is one thing, but even, even if it's something like let's say, service design, customer centricity, or when we talk to Richard about, you know, behavioural science, that are all great mechanics and methodologies to look at, hang on a second, isn't it about people, isn't it about, you know, fulfilling the need and solving the problem for people out there in society and I want to a little bit tired back as well, because maybe just is not trying to make things more complex. But I think it's a great point because you you mentioned grey him somewhere. I think it's Keegan and I'm picking up again on a quote from from Tom Peters, who, after 40 years of working with lots of organisations is so he his bottom line is like people first why if you treat your people right, you're gonna have a great company. And you talk about I think it's Kingdom might get the name wrong about a different levels of maturity and that the purpose of an organisation could be just To, to to elevate to grow, what people can do and how they grow themselves. And Tom Peters said exactly that the purpose of an organisation could actually be internally at least, to grow the people who work there and externally to solve the needs of the people out there. So it actually fulfils two needs and has two purposes internally and externally. They're both positive. And that's what everything should be based around. So do you want to maybe talk a little bit about Keegan, if Tesseract met with his face level of maturity? Or generally, you know, is there a correlation between the purpose for an organisation outside what they do the value and inside? Is that sort of all connected or not? Or how does that play?

Graham Boyd: 1:00:46

Absolutely, it's, it's all connected. And one of the things that we've developed in evolute six is a maturity model for organisations, that looks at the maturity in the human dimension in the organisation, structure roles and tasks I mentioned, and in the legal incorporation. So legally, the fair shares Commons is the highest level five maturity. The highest level five maturity on the human dimension, again, is where development is one of the purposes of the company, and inseparable from any other purpose of a company. And it's really clear only if a company is level five on all three dimensions, is it going to be truly powerful and successful long term, any company that is not, especially in the times of crisis we're in is not going to get there. And development as a purpose really means that a core part of the purpose of the company is raising the stage of development of every person in the company. Not doing this, the consequences of not doing this are rarely visible right now in the world, both in the business world and in the political world. Developing an individual means fundamentally developing three lines of development in the individual. The first one is their fluidity in using forms of thought, that go beyond simple binary logic. And Bill Gates said that one of the key indicators of a CEO that really has what it takes is the capacity to hold opposing thoughts in their head simultaneously, and work with them, even though they're mutually contradictory. That's a central capacity that any top leader needs in today's world. So development has a purpose means you develop people to develop that capacity, because that's the capacity you need for the business to succeed in nebulous vuca times. The second line of development you have to develop is the maturity of meaning making of each individual. Your and Keegan's stages model is a good way of referring to that. And that's simply different stages, source their sound, their self identity from different places. And the leaders of a business today, especially a big business, they have to source their self identity from inside themselves rather than from outside themselves. And in particular, they need to recognise that their self identity needs to have a fluidity. So they can respond appropriately to the rapidly changing context that they're embedded in. They can't afford to be anchored in the opinion of others. nor can they afford to be anchored in principles that were absolutely perfect 10 years ago, but are now out of tune with the values that are actually necessary and relevant today. And the final line of development that the company has to take care of, if we're to have the kind of leaders that we need in the future is each of us comes in with our nature, things that we can't change, you're I'm tall and skinny, I'm never gonna change that. I need to develop ways of being subtle, with my hardwired nature that I can't change so that I can show up with my full unique power. Power powerfully without any of my unique weaknesses, harming what I'm trying to do. And again, that's a core part of the organisation. As Peter Drucker says, the organisation is a tool that human beings invent. So that large numbers of us can work together in a way where our strengths are useful. And our weaknesses are irrelevant.

Marcus Kirsch: 1:05:28

That's a great quote, I'm not just looking at the time, and I know I have at least another 510

Unknown: 1:05:36

we always use it,

Marcus Kirsch: 1:05:39

as usual. So I'm going to do a little bit of what statement may because I think, you know, in the podcast, we're always trying to give people something that is quite actionable. And I think the thing that I'm hearing here, which I which which, I know, always helped me, whenever I walked into any bigger complex organisation, and are going to are going to make the comparison here between, as an individual walk into, into a big organisation and basically walking in into essentially a paradigm shift, you know, if I would start working with p&g, or HSBC, or nationwide or bt whatever, I would walk in there. And it's a different culture, it's a different thing. It's a different world, right? So from yesterday, when I didn't know much about it to today, when I'm in the middle of it, trying to find out what's really going on how people do things, and they're different, everything's different changes hitting me, that's a situation where I'd usually benefit from the fact of what you just described, where I was able to go back to what the essence of me as because that's the thing that gets me back to the core value I represent. And therefore that can't shake me despite the change. And the other part, which is, I look at what's in front of me what my new reality is. And this new reality can contradict itself. Or it can contradict to the point like, well, I look at things like this way, and this thing that stares back at me looks at it in a different way, how can I put this together, and I might end up with compromises and two things might be equally true. However, as long as I can recognise them, and understand them enough and learn more about them, I'll be fine. And change is not scary, I can move forward. So I think that sounds to me, and that goes a lot with the maturity level section, you're saying it's leadership and organisations who should aim at a higher maturity level, and I think it is the individual worker these days. And probably, if I, if my money would be on it, I would say a lot of organisations are facing the fact that they have to cut a lot of people. And then they have to ask the remaining people to do more to have multiple opinions and multiple viewpoints and build up skills really quickly and shifting paradigms in order to cope with what's now staring at us as well. So I think you're making a great point exactly of that to be quite the essence of what's probably ahead of us. And as an action to focus on that and go, how can I help my people and the organisation to do that to deal with these new things? Is that sort of? Is it? Is there sort of a little bit what you said, That's

Graham Boyd: 1:08:33

absolutely at the heart of it. And it's why I see all of these things are so integrated and interconnected, is that if we think of it in this way, then let's say that a company is in a crisis, and they are faced with the choice of do I keep people or do I let people go? Well, if the company is incorporated as a fair shares comments, people are far more likely to stay and each person will find the appropriate balance between investment risk and expected future reward. Because their relationship with a company is no longer one of subordination. Their relationship with a company is one of equals, and you don't exploit the other person. Instead, you you work together to maximise the chances of success. If the company is level five, in terms of how it works with people, you maximise how much human energy and ingenuity and creativity is freely available to deliver results and minimise the amount of human energy and time that is going into Protecting oneself. And then if you're at level five in terms of how you structure the organisation around roles and tasks and work, again, you're maximising the amount of effort that goes into delivering results. You're maximising the design of the organisation, to be just what is needed to maximise the efficiency and minimise the amount of energy that is wasted in useless political battles between silos, arguments between, let's say, finance and marketing about how much money should be spent for how much money that might come in it cetera. And so in a time of crisis, if you're at level five on all three axes, you will be far more successful on any measure of success than a traditional company.

Marcus Kirsch: 1:10:57

Yeah, I think that's, it's, it's, it's really powerful stuff. And, you know, it also reminds me back to, you know, reinventing organisations with Frederick Lalu. And, by the way, Frederic laloux, if you listen to this, contact me we want to talk to you, too, you know, I love I love to parallel and it's like, so it's, it's yet again, there's so much in this book, I think it's beautiful, the way you put it together, Graham and your co writer, jack. And it's, it's, it's worth reading in times like these, because I think it gives you 33 years in reference to art and quantum mechanics and these things, it gives you a really great shift, it gives you really correct shift of view on, on what everyone already looked at, for a long time to change to see new things. And the other part is the fact that it brings you back to the essence of who you are as a company as an individual. Because it does both things, right. You do things on a more organisational level, you do things on a personal level, and I think it's it's, it's, it's great to somebody that in one book, as Troy said earlier, it's great to bring this together because it's all interconnected. As you said, it's all interconnected, we need to sort of shift all at levels, otherwise we'll we might not get there. So it's, as you Graham, you know, you know, this, we could talk for hours. Always beautiful to talk to you. So I thank you very much for making time for us and and have a great chat and

Troy Norcross: 1:12:36

thank and and yes, I just one more time for you and for everyone listening. It is a beautifully written book, even before you send it for the final subreddit. I really plan to get a chance to to read it again. Not just because I'm reading it, because I want to do the podcast with you but just to really absorb everything I missed the first time. Thank you for your time so much.

Graham Boyd: 1:12:58

Wonderful. Thank you try it. Thank you very much, Marcus.

Troy Norcross: 1:13:03

You've been listening to the wicked podcast with CO hosts Marcus Kirsch and me Troy Norcross,

Marcus Kirsch: 1:13:09

please subscribe on podomatic iTunes or Spotify. You can find all relevant links in the show notes. Please tell us your thoughts in the comment section and let us know about any books for future episodes.

Troy Norcross: 1:13:22

You can also get in touch with us directly on Twitter on at wicked n beyond or at Troy underscore Norcross also learn more about the wicked company book and the wicked company project at wicked company calm