Daianna Karaian

Daianna Karaian is co-founder of Today Do This, which aims to empower everyone, every day (Today) to take action on (Do) what matters to them (This) (LinkedIn, personal website, Twitter).

The theme was people being able to take meaningful action in their work. Why?

First, "The scale of the change that's needed is only going to happen if social and environmental considerations are woven into the daily decisions and responsibilities of everyone in the company at every level in every department." 

Second, "I think there's this really common misconception that action is reserved for those in power, that sort of only a few people, in powerful positions can do anything that makes any difference in the world. And I think that's nonsense. I think power is accumulated by those who take action."

Third, taking meaningful action also makes people happier and more productive.

With that in mind, some things you can do after listening to this interview: 

-Subscribe to the Today Do This newsletter, which "revisits one major headline each week and suggests a simple, practical action you can take that day to make a difference". 

-Contact Daianna through this link.

Links

Business In The Community

Futerra

Powerful Times Podcasts referred to in to interview: Ed Gillespie (the very first!) and Rowan Conway.

Dr Martin Luther King's Six Steps for Non Violent Social Change:

1. Information Gathering
2. Education
3. Personal Commitment
4. Negotiation
5. Direct Action
6. Reconciliation

UN Sustainable Development Goals

B Corp Certification

Timings

0:50 - Q1 What are you doing now? And how did you get there?

10:57 - BONUS QUESTION: How do you support people so social and environmental considerations are woven into the daily decisions?

16:32 - Q2. What is the future you are trying to create, and why?

21:00 - Q3. What are your priorities for the next few years, and why?

22:37 - BONUS QUESTION: Can you unpack what you meant when you said you don't like the word purpose compared to impact on?

24:40 - Q4. If someone was inspired to follow those priorities, what should they do next?

29:16 - Q5. If your younger self was starting their career now, what advice would you give them?

31;45 - Q6. Who would you nominate to answer these questions, because you admire their approach?

32:33 - Q7. Is there anything else important you feel you have to say?

More here

Twitter: Powerful_Times

Website hub: here.

Please do like and subscribe, to help others find the podcast.

Thank you for listening! -- David

Transcript

David Bent-Hazelwood: 0:06

Welcome to What can we do in these powerful times? I'm your host, David bent, and I've been working in the field of sustainability and climate change for some 20 years, feels that the need for change is growing faster than the impact we're delivering. So I'm wondering, what could I do next that is useful. Speaking with others, they have that same challenge, which is why I'm doing this interview series. In 30 minute bites, ask some brilliant people what they're doing now and why, or to inspire and enable the audience which may just turn out to be me through stories grounded in experience. And today, I'm joined by Diana carrion, who is the co founder of today do this. Hello, Dinah. Hi. My pleasure. What are you doing now? And how did you get here?

Daianna Karaian: 0:48

So a few years ago, like you said, I co founded today do this with a guy called Robbie Dale, I'll actually I'll come back and say a little bit more about that in a bit. But I've been working in sustainability. Similar to you, actually, for some, some 20 years or so, in particular, sort of, with and in companies. And that was something that I knew that I wanted to do sort of from from day one of my career was to make business a driver of positive change. And I don't know if I was a bit naive at the time, or brave or rebellious. Because there wasn't much of that going on, right 2020 years ago. So in an effort to do that, I kind of worked my way through just about every sector, I started off in the public sector. during uni, as an intern at the US Environmental Protection Agency, working within what was very, very early days there something they called the sustainability team. And sustainability was literally just sort of barely being defined at the time. So it was this little sort of mysterious team on the top floor of the Chicago Environmental Protection Agency office. And while I was there, I sort of I wrote a report on how to get funding for sort of green green buildings and sustainable urban design. And that was read by a partner at a Chicago architecture firm that was doing sort of specialising in exactly that kind of work. So I got very lucky, I guess, early in my career, and he hired me to be essentially their marketing team. I then spent time after that for a while at a Clean Energy Foundation. Before moving to the UK, there just seemed to be a lot more opportunity here in London to sort of work with business on sustainability outside of the sort of like clean, clean energy and engineering and sort of architecture. Industry. And I didn't feel like sort of getting pigeon holed in that so early in my career, so I was really lucky to be able to move to the UK hired by the environment team at business in the community, which was really a like, lovely formative time in my career. And I got to work with lots of senior business leaders at footsie 350 companies, and, you know, it was doing things like chairing climate discussions at events organised by then Prince of Wales.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 3:30

Who's a patron of BRTC if I remember, yes,

Daianna Karaian: 3:32

yeah. And yeah, and now the king. And by that stage, I was kind of 10 years into my career. And, and still, I felt like even my sort of closest friends and family didn't really understand what I was doing with my life. And to be honest, I kind of felt a little bit like I wasn't making as much of an impact as I wanted to, it sort of felt like a lot of what I was doing was more was more talking than than actually doing. And so I decided to go to business school to sort of increase my level of knowledge and influence, I guess, with with companies. And while I was there, I was, you know, lured by the likes of McKinsey, and very nearly quit sustainability to sort of get a real job working for the man. And, and then the end, coming out of that I sort of I managed to do both really. I was hired as a brand strategist at a big energy company back here in the UK, having gone to business school in the States. And I was faced with two really, really big challenges while I was there, one of which was kind of working out how to reconcile the fact that we were a big nuclear energy company with questions around sustainability. Because there's obviously some controversy there in terms of you know, part have part of the solution, but also part of the problem. And, you know, challenges more sort of marketing focus challenges as well. Things like, you know, how do you reconcile kind of customer focus with, you know, things like growing a business. And, and I think that probably one of my biggest learnings from that was that I'm much happier working with big businesses working in them. So at that stage, I sort of moved back to small companies. And actually, that was when I worked with one of your previous guests and Ed Gillespie at Futera. But I still sort of continued to feel really impatient, I guess, about the pace of change, and I and I'd started thinking, you know, there must, there must be a better way to Yeah, to make a bigger impact. And so I decided to quit my job, and and figure that out. And, and I did it in that order, which is a really financially challenging way to go about it. First, yeah, first, giving up a salary, and then figuring out what what you're gonna do. So I sort of spent a couple of years experimenting, and listening and learning and kind of trying to find my way into a business model that, that I guess, would do three things. One, that would make a real impact two that would make some money. And three, that made me happy, that was something you know, I actually really wanted to do with my life. And that's what today do this has turned out to be. So so that's what I'm doing now. What we do is, we make sure that companies live up to the commitments that they are increasingly making around social and environmental issues. And we do that by enabling employees to take action as part of their day to day work. So you know, volunteering, and kind of employee, you know, resource groups and environmental advocates and ambassadors, and whatever you want to call it within organisations have definitely have their place. But the scale of the change that's needed is only going to happen if social and environmental considerations are woven into the daily decisions and responsibilities of everyone in the company at every level in every department, whether that's the finance manager, that's making a business case for a netzero climate target, or a design engineer creating impact metrics for new product development, or a procurement director that, you know, decides to prioritise local and minority owned businesses or even, you know, we once had in one of our workshops and admin assistant that started sourcing only vegan and vegetarian food for meetings. And that's really sort of the core of our our mission is to make it everybody's business to change the world for the better.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 8:07

And I suppose a few little thoughts for me about some of that one of my one view, or one thought part of my work would say that you can sort of date when a company started thinking about the issues based on the name of the department. So you mentioned how sustainability in that Chicago EPA was or Environmental Protection Agency was the word sustainability was only just coming into existence. And I remember working out for for the future in the early 2000s, most of the departments would call things like CSR, corporate social responsibility or CSR, corporate responsibility, and then they became being called sustainability. So you could almost almost to the year, it's, you could say, if it's full sustainability must have been founded after about 2008, something like that. So there's that way in which the language sort of matures and changes. And I think there's also another theme you have there and share a bit with Ed about the frustration of the normal work and the work that we had been doing. And it's interesting to the other thing, theme I hear and what you've been saying there is, this will, I suppose I'll put it as a question and see if it's true. I mean, would it be fair to say that there has been a shift in the the work on sustainability or business that you've experienced from a sort of why should we do this making the case for action into now how should we do this actually, performing the action and getting the action to happen? And then now do today do this is a sort of manifestation of we're moving in much more into the house? Because the Y is much more settled?

Daianna Karaian: 9:44

Yeah, I am. I am starting to see that shift. And thank God for that for a lot of reasons. One of which is because that's basically the entire business on but also because it means and hopefully that we're finally sort of making that transition for After talking to the doing, so I guess when you are in that stage of trying to get across the why, and you know, I feel like for a long time, and I'm sure you probably had a similar experience just having to answer the question over and over and over again of what is the business case. And, you know, who are the companies that are doing this and who are doing it well, and who's succeeding and, and I, and it finally feels like people are now starting to ask, okay, we, okay. It makes business sense. We get it, we have to, we have to do it, or we want to do it. How do we do it? Yeah. And so yeah, so I am starting to see that shift. And it's about time

David Bent-Hazelwood: 10:41

is, and you knew, you gave us a little hint of how to do this helps people to do this, you have the intention that all people at all levels are integrating the sustainability factors into their decisions. And you mentioned workshop. So how do you make this happen? How do you support people in their endeavour and that integration?

Daianna Karaian: 11:03

So I guess, right now we work mainly through through workshops, with, with lots of big companies, we've had the pleasure of working for some, some really well known, like FMCG, and pharma, and media and apparel brands. And, and we take groups of employees, sometimes from within the same team, sometimes from across different themes, depending on how the company wants to go about it, whether they want to, you know, sort of create more, I guess, connection within a certain department, or whether they kind of want to cross pollinate ideas. And yeah, we take them through a process. Typically, that's done in a workshop, but we're looking now at how we sort of scale that by offering sort of more virtual digitised solution, I guess. And, and yeah, I mean, I can say a little bit more about sort of what what that looks like, but that's essentially the kind of delivery model is taking employees and helping them work through what are the things that they could do to help the company meet their goals? And then most importantly, taking them through a process to help them actually start doing those things?

David Bent-Hazelwood: 12:26

Yeah. Because I mentioned is that my experience people don't, people often have the motivation, they get that these are important issues, but they're already full. They already have responsibilities, they're already stressed that they don't have any time. So it's the moving to action, which is, in some ways, the hardest part, what can give us one or two little snippets of how do you how do you help people to move into that action?

Daianna Karaian: 12:51

Yeah, sure. Um, so I guess the process that we have, you can kind of split it broadly into into two parts. And the first part is kind of asking them three questions. And those are broadly sort of the number one, what are the skills, the responsibilities, the areas of influence associated with your work? So you know, is it that you're a really good communicator? Are you great with numbers? Do you play a role in hiring people? Do you have an influence over customers or over what you know, is purchased into the business? So that's kind of question number one is just kind of Who who are you in? What do you bring to the table professionally? And then number two, sort of what are the issues that you care most deeply about? And, you know, is that climate? Is that around racial justice? Is that gender discrimination or disability or mental health issues? And when we're working specifically with with a business, so we've run lots of these workshops for kind of, you know, people in general at conferences and things where you have people from lots of organisations will sort of leave that question quite open, if we're working specifically with a company will make that second question more about, you know, what the company's priorities are around social and environmental impact, and then and then get people to think about, Okay, if that's kind of the landscape that we're playing with, which of those issues do I personally feel most passionate about? And then the third question sort of brings those first two things together. So how can you use the skills of your day to day job to make a difference on the issues that you care about? And we get people to list all of the ideas that they can? And then really crucially, we get them to pick one thing, right? Because it's that sort of thing of the paradox of choice where you know, if there's so many things that you could do and so many challenges in the world and sort of so many things that people want to do to help sometimes if they feel a bit overwhelmed, and rather than then make a choice, they kind of choose to put that choice off and end up not doing anything. So that that part is really important, picking sort of one action to get started on. And then we basically take people through sort of six steps. Those are inspired by Martin Luther King's six steps of social change, informed by a bunch of behavioural science, and that helps them to sort of turn their good intentions, as you say, into into action and helps them get started. Because that's the hardest part really, if taking action, I think in any area of your life, is usually the Getting Started part. Yeah, taking those first few steps is, is really important. So we make sure that you know, everything that we do we do involves, you know, getting people to start taking action.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 16:00

Wonderful. And I have to confess, I don't think I know, the Martin Luther King six steps, I will definitely put them in the show notes. Most of the reasons I want to read them and understand them, but

Daianna Karaian: 16:11

they're amazing. Yeah, steps of nonviolent social change, formally, great,

David Bent-Hazelwood: 16:16

thank you. So if that's what you're doing now, and you sort of coming out of all your experience with companies, you're helping to work with them to activate their staff on and people to do the things that they can contribute to based on what their passions are based on what their skills are. What is the future you're now trying to create, and why.

Daianna Karaian: 16:37

So our vision is that everyone who wants a better world is doing something about it. I think there's this really common misconception that action is reserved for those in power, that sort of only a few people, in powerful positions can do anything that makes any difference in the world. And I think that's nonsense. I think power is accumulated by those who take action. And you know, somebody like Greta Thunberg, is probably the most obvious example of, you know, just a school girl who decided to stand in front of her parliament over and over and over again. It's an action that she took, and that other people, you know, saw and, and then, you know, ultimately created a global movement. And really, you know, the world as it is today is just the result of all of us doing, or not doing things, right, little things, and big things, and good things and bad things. And almost everything that we experience really is just the sum of human scale action or inaction. And because all of us can take human scale action, you know, we all have the power to change the world and, you know, maybe change the world sounds quite grandiose. So thank you, if people feel more comfortable, you can sort of narrow that lens to changing business, right, which is what I sort of, always felt quite passionate about. And, you know, there's a lot of people, I would, I would assume, listening to this podcast, who live in a democracy. But within that, many will work in companies. And if you look at how most companies are run, they're not democracies, right, you have little or no say, in big decisions. And often, even the small decisions, you do what you're told, it's very top down. And so really a big part of what I want to do. And what I feel really passionate about is giving more people more power, and meaning and purpose. And that part of their lives that often makes up you know, half of their waking hours, which is which is work. Because when people find a better alignment between their day to day work and their values, theirs, they're happier, like that's been proven over and over again, in lots of research over decades, and, you know, ultimately happy people don't destroy themselves, or the planet or each other. And they're also much more motivated to contribute to their company's success. There was a study done almost 10 years ago, I think, by the Centre for Economic studies that showed that people who feel that their work is contributing to something positive is making a positive impact or 30% more productive. So, you know, it's, it's, it's good at the individual level, it's good at the company level. And of course, you know, weaving social and environmental impact into employees. daily responsibilities is really the only way I think that business can truly become a driver of positive change. And, you know, going back to the Beginning that's that's what I always wanted to do. And after 20 years of searching for it, I feel like I've finally sort of found the best path toward doing that there's a sense of, you know, bringing more democracy to business by empowering employees to contribute to their company's social and environmental goals in the ways that they best see fit. That's what's going to enable companies to make a more positive impact, I think,

David Bent-Hazelwood: 20:25

yes. And I think it's interesting that your work here has a kinship with various other people who've been interviewed in the past on this in this series, about increasing the power and agency that people feel and that they act on, whether that's within the domain of their working life, or in the domain of their life of, as citizens we say, Rebecca Willis and John Alexander, or in other ways, as well, that that people are able, was it everyone who wants to a better world can act for that better world in their own way, and they have the space and the ability to do that, including in their working life? That's great. So within that grand vision of the future you're trying to create, what are your priorities for the next few years and why.

Daianna Karaian: 21:15

So we have a goal of enabling millions, if not billions, of people to take action on the issues that they care about, we're still a very young company. So we're a long way off that goal, still, but our priority is basically working with more companies to reach more of their employees, because we think that's how we can make the biggest impact. Like I said, we've been really lucky that our first clients had been, you know, brands that people have heard of, and no interest, so that makes it easier to attract, attract more of them. And yeah, I mean, I invite anyone who's trying to embed impact, or purpose, you know, sometimes it's called, I don't particularly like that word myself. Anyone who's trying to sort of embed that stuff in the organisation, or make progress on, you know, the UN Sustainable Development Goals within their business, or trying to achieve or maintain something like B Corp certification, you know, people who would, who maybe think of themselves as kind of social intrapreneurs, would invite them to get in touch because I really want to help them achieve their goals. Yeah, in the most effective and efficient and credible way, often, those are the people within organisations who are basically told, you know, here's a, you have a mandate to go and change the world. Now, here's a tiny budget, almost no team go on and do it. And that's just not gonna work. So yeah, helping helping them do their job by giving all of their co workers a sense of sort of ownership and agency over those goals, too, I think is the way forward,

David Bent-Hazelwood: 22:59

as you say, it's both necessary in terms of the delivery, because so many of the issues that you're talking about, are in so many roles within a business, if not necessary, the primary part of a role in procurement or whatever, but it's a feature within it. And therefore, a necessary part of delivering is that some of the responsibility has to be distributed. But it also is necessary, just because rarely does the sustainability team have much in the way of resource or money or power. So to be enabling others to do it. So it's a very important part of it. And I just want to pick up one thing that you said you don't like the word purpose compared to impact on, you have to unpack that for us having having said that out loud.

Daianna Karaian: 23:43

I just think purpose is has become, you know, a bit like innovation may be one of the or I think even design, this is a topic that came up in one of your previous episodes as well, a term that's become a little bit sort of diluted, and so people don't quite know what it means. And you know, at best might be a little bit confused as to, you know, what is purpose all about? And is it something that's about me personally or about the business and how are those things different? And at worst, I think that confusion leads to cynicism, where people just think like, it doesn't mean anything. So it's a bunch of bull. Yeah.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 24:23

Okay. Yes. And I think it was on design and design thinking it was Ron Conway, who was making the point about that for those who wish to hear that episode. So there's one thing you said which I had a question about, which I've now lost, so we'll keep on going. If someone was following inspired to follow these priorities about helping people to act where they are, especially in business. One thing they can do is obviously contact you and get they do this involved. But if as well as that what else can they do to act on these priorities?

Daianna Karaian: 24:59

Yeah, I mean, And I love this question, by the way, because we always make it a point Robbie and myself never to do it a talk or anything like that without giving people something to do. Action obsessed. And, yeah, I mean, those going through I think those questions that I went through before, I think for anybody who's sort of interested in that idea of changing the world in your day job, regardless of your industry, or your role, or your level of seniority, those three questions of kind of what are my skills that I bring to the table? What are the issues I care about deeply? And how can I use my skills to to make a difference on those issues, I think that's a really good place to start. But then, I mean, I said, I talked about these three sort of steps, or sorry, six steps, based on Martin Luther King, six steps that people can can take, and I guess, the most, probably one of the most powerful of those six steps, I think is we get people to write to somebody who can help them and to call their support. And I really encourage people to kind of take, take that one action, like, if you've gotten to a point where you know that there's something that you can do, to try and make a difference as part of your day to day work, just reaching out to somebody literally taking five minutes. And, you know, either via email, or slack, or text or DM on your connecting on LinkedIn or whatever. Just saying, you know, it's as easy as I'm starting to do X, I think you can help. And, you know, whatever your ask is to them, can we have a call? Or can you help me, you know, can you introduce me to this person? Or can I have permission to do whatever? And yeah, it's, you know, literally kind of a five minute task. And maybe added on to that, you know, the 10 minutes before to go through those three questions. And by the end of those 15 minutes, you've gone through that hardest part of of taking action, the sort of getting started part. And for anyone who doesn't who feels like, oh, no, that's too much. Yeah, I suppose the only thing they could do is, is subscribe to the newsletter that Robbie and I write. So we call it do something about the newsletter. Because every Friday, we take a headline from that week's news. And we tell you about a person or organisation that's doing something about that issue. So it might be, again, anything from like environmental issues to how to deal with grief was one of the recent ones. And we'll probably be doing something on the protests in Iran this week. And we suggest one really simple thing that you can do that day to make a difference on whatever that issue is. So that's, that's the easy, easiest action, I guess to do would be to do that, which which people can do by going to today do this.com/subscribe?

David Bent-Hazelwood: 28:02

Great. And that will also be in the show notes. And I think what I hear in what, in your suggestion there the going through the three questions of roughly, what am I good at? What am I passionate about? How can I combine those two, that step into reaching out to somebody else is both a first action and therefore you're getting started. And it's also a sort of semi public commitment. And, and by by engaging others and sort of declaring that desire to make that change? That's crossing a threshold. And that's why it's so important, that as part of action that you you talk to others about it, because then it goes from a private desire to a public desire.

Daianna Karaian: 28:43

100% Yeah. And that's where that's where the behavioural science meets sort of those. Martin Luther King six steps. Yes.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 28:50

We've said this so many times, I feel like I have to just read them out. And having just looked them up, just to make sure. So for those who don't go through the show, let's go through the link. Looking at the King centre.org. The six steps, they have their information gathering, education, personal commitment, negotiation, direct action, and reconciliation. So anybody who wants to learn more about those should follow up in the shownotes to be a link through to them. Last few questions. If your younger self was starting their career now, what advice would you give them?

Daianna Karaian: 29:24

I think that would be to not be afraid to make mistakes. Um, like a lot of people that I know, I tend to suffer from perfectionist tendencies. I'm a I'm a recovering perfectionist. And although, you know, if you were to sort of look at my CV, it might look like I took plenty of risks moving from this sector to that one to the next one, you know, moving to a different country and halfway through and then ultimately kind of starting my own business. I always tried to do all of those things. kind of perfectly. But you know, perfection, of course, is is impossible. And I learned very quickly that you cannot start a business without making a lot of mistakes. But I also learned really quickly that each each of those mistakes is is a chance to learn and grow. And I think that looking back on maybe you know, the first 10 to 15 years of my career, I might have learned more and gone further, faster. If I had been more open to making mistakes, to trying things out to just having a bit of more, I guess, playful approach, or a willingness to kind of like, let go of control a bit more. And it's and it's something I'm still working on. But at least I'm I'm more aware of it now.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 30:49

And I would say that I'm not even a recovering perfectionist not reached that point. But I mean, I know the truth of the perfect is the enemy of the good. And I what I hear what you're saying there is trying things out. And by trying things out in a way that if any failure is not catastrophic, so you can bound that failure. So there's a limited risk of money or time or status or whatever else. And therefore, by doing lots of those types of things, iteratively, you can make much more progress than sitting at home, and worrying about what the perfect solution is, with.

Daianna Karaian: 31:23

Yeah, and I think most of the things that we think of as failures are just mistakes. They're a bump in the road, and they're a learning opportunity and you move forward.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 31:34

The failure is where you make the same mistake continuously, rather than rather than actually try something and finding out that it's a mistake.

Daianna Karaian: 31:43

In fact, when you don't do anything at all,

David Bent-Hazelwood: 31:45

because you're so busy trying to find the perfect thing. Who would you nominate to answer these questions because you admire what they're doing.

Daianna Karaian: 31:53

So recently, just last week, I met wil Moy, okay, is the founder and chief exec at full facts. He's the independent charity that fat checks the British news and politicians and sort of claims circulating on social media. And I think along with climate change, and you know, all the various forms of discrimination, I think disinformation is one of the biggest challenges facing the world today. So I'd be really interested in hearing what people can do in these powerful times about disinformation.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 32:33

Cool. Well, I will, I'll reach out to him. And then just finally, is there anything else important you feel you have to say?

Daianna Karaian: 32:42

So in the early days of setting up to do this, I saw this great thing online, I think it was on Tumblr. That said, when people talk about travelling to the past, they worry about radically changing the present by doing something small. But barely anyone in the present really thinks that they can radically change the future by doing something small. And I think that really sort of like neatly sums up my philosophy and everything we've kind of talked about, it's it's our small individual actions today, that lead to big collective change tomorrow. Because everything that we do or don't do, the way we treat people around us the things we buy all the little sort of choices we make every day, you know, how weather we vote, all those things have an impact on the world and across all of us. And across a lifetime. Those things add up to make things better, or, or worse. So let's go make things better.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 33:48

Yeah. And that the future is much more contingent on our choices today than we realise. No, we realise that's the sort of message of that motto that you had there. as well. It's been wonderful speaking to you. And hearing how you found a path to having I think you said was impact money and enjoyment was what today do this gives you? Which is absolutely fantastic. And it's part of a wider theme of giving people more and more power to act where they are, which is fantastic. So thank you very much to you, Dinah. And thank you very much to everyone who's listening. This is powerful times and we'll be along with another episode.