Anthropy: Inspiring a better Britain

In this episode, Phil sits down with John O’Brien MBE, founder of Anthropy, to explore how a cross-sector gathering at the Eden Project is shaping a more resilient, prosperous Britain. John explains why Anthropy — framed around people, place, prosperity and global perspective — is designed as a hands-on “gathering” (not a conference), why delegates are asked to “leave their ego and silo at the door,” and how mixing business leaders, artists, social entrepreneurs and young voices sparks new solutions.

Listen for a lively conversation on the role of civic engagement, the power of business for good, and the importance of emerging leaders in building a resilient future. 

Thank you for listening to this episode. 

For any comments, questions or insights please contact phil.emonson@jbaconsulting.com.

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:03

Hello and welcome to the Climate Resilience Podcast brought to you by JBA Consulting. I'm Phil Emerson, and in this podcast series, we can pick some of the complexities, challenges, and opportunities on the topic of climate resilience with some inspirational thought leaders. Now, in March this year, I had the pleasure of attending Anthropy, a three-day gathering of the Eden Project in Cornwall, which brings together leaders and organisations to look at how to make the UK a better place. Working with a cross-sector network and welcoming businesses and non-profits alike, Anthropy facilitates changing practices, the building of new partnerships, influencing policymakers and transforming personal behaviour. It's framed around four pillars people, place, prosperity, and global perspective. And I'm delighted to welcome John O'Brien MBE as my guest today. John is the founder of Anthropy and brings a rich background and experience, which I know will make for a fascinating conversation today. John, welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 1:00

Hello, Phil. Great to be here.

SPEAKER_00 1:03

Now, interestingly, you and I are from the same small market town in Shropshire, so it's great to have not only my first Silopian on the podcast, but indeed my first Wellingtonian too. Normally I ask our guests just to give a short introduction at this point, but I think in your case, a slightly deeper dive into your background, your experience, and your career is going to be useful for the context in which we'll discuss anthropy. So maybe we could start there.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

Well, Phil, the start of the story actually is, as you say, is in Shropshire. And I grew up in the early 60s and 70s in a small market town. And when I look back, I could see the relevance actually of some of what we profess today, which is about business and their role in their communities, because I was the I was a child of small retailers and small business people in that in that town and in that area. And I could see how involved they were in both the local charities, in the chambers of commerce and things of that kind. And actually, as a young boy, I grew up standing on a little box behind the counter so that I could see over the counter when either one of my parents or one of my grandparents would go off to make a cup of tea. So the first sort of public-facing role was standing on a little wooden box to look over the counter and watch the shop. But after school, I didn't go to university. I went to the local school. I went into Lloyd's Bank and I spent a few years, three or four years in Lloyd's Bank. But actually, that was a good job, but it wasn't necessarily the job for me at that time of life. So the first formative period of my life was that I spent 10 years as an army officer in the British Army. Obviously, going through the Royal Military Academy of Sandhurst, being trained as a leader of infantry soldiers is quite specific. But I spent 10 years happily doing that around the world. And then when I came out of the army about 30 years ago, I found that those skills were extremely useful in going into what I've done since. And I can talk more about that.

SPEAKER_00 3:11

Yeah, so I think um I think uh anthropy, um, which has obviously come later on in in in in your career and and more recently, was I I think if I'm writing saying a a reaction to COVID. Is is that right? Or you or your what you saw during COVID, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:31

Yeah. So in so basically at the time of COVID, and indeed up until last year, I was the emir managing partner of a group of nine global marketing, public relations, and digital agencies at the US company called Omnicom. And uh that had meant that uh I was commuting from my home in Shropshire down to London. I'd been doing that for about seven years. Prior to that, I'd actually spent a decade running what would be known as corporate social responsibility programs for the Nike King when he was Prince of Wales, King Charles. So I'd spent a lot of time in the interface between business and society. I'd also in that time uh built my own business. Uh, and I had done that all commuting from Shropshire on a weekly basis down to London or elsewhere, and then COVID hit, and like everybody else, we were all sort of told to lock down. And so I was locked down here in Shropshire, and two things really came to me. The first was that I could see that there was going to be profound damage to the economy. I could see what was happening to our own businesses, but it was also, you know, how could we as an economy, both nationally and globally, come back after the pandemic and the cost that was associated with that? And also because of the lot of the work that I'd done with the king and also my own philanthropy, I was very concerned about the impact that it would happen on society, be it things like education and health. And so in that first year of COVID in the lockdown, I got increasingly concerned about how Britain would respond once we came out of it. But the trigger was that I had I've written a few books and I'd undertaken to write my last book in that year without knowing that COVID was coming. And the forward was written by Clive Schwab, the founder of the World Economic Forum. And when I received his forward, it just gave me the idea that perhaps what we needed for the country was a sort of I I mean, I I'll call it a Davos type gathering, but a gathering of leaders from all sectors to come together and think how could we build back better? And that's how the idea for anthropy came about.

SPEAKER_00 5:46

So, yes, the British Davos. I I've heard that as well. Uh when people have been describing um anthropy. And as I said, I was I was fortunate enough to attend um early this year, and it was it was an amazing experience. Leave your ego and silo at the door, I think is the the strap line on the banner that greeted me. Tell me tell me about that strap line.

SPEAKER_01 6:13

Well, so the the first thing I'd say is people do call it the British Davos. Some people call it Glastonbury for good. Um, Glastonbury for good would be a disaster if 70,000 people with tents turned up, I have to say. But I'm also slightly cautious of the Davos label as well, because I think there's I've got nothing against the World Economic Forum or Davos, but it does conjure up in certain people's minds a level of, let's say, exclusivity and um, you know, things like that. And anthropy is for leaders, so it's not for the general public. It's primarily for people leading organizations or being thought leaders or leading initiatives or government and things like that. But it's I I wanted to design it so that people could come in from all walks of life. So we do bring social entrepreneurs in, we bring charity leaders in, we bring big business leaders and government and academics and artists and media. Um, and those that can pay, pay, and those that struggle, we have a bursary program and we get people in so that the richness of the conversations is not uh hampered in any way simply by the sort of price that people might need to pay. Um, but if you can imagine that out of the 2000 delegates, you have an awful lot of CEOs and you have a lot of people who are used to having a lot of people running around after them. The one thing that I and my tiny team cannot do is cope with egos. And so uh there was firstly on the ego side, I mean, I really wanted people to come in and be, you know, human and approachable and not standoffish and really enter into the spirit of sharing. And I'm delighted that actually some of the most senior leaders in the land come and they absolutely embrace that. And uh so leaving the ego at the door is really critically important. And over the four years that we've run them, I would say genuinely only about three people out of the thousands and thousands that have attended have ever struggled with that. But I think actually the biggest issue is leaving your silo at the door because um we we need to break down the barriers between siloed thinking if we're going to get new innovations and new solutions for the challenges that we face. So I'm a great believer in if, for example, one has a problem and you ask three bankers for a solution, then inevitably you'll get a bank solution. And three teachers will give you a teacher solution, and three artists will give you an artist solution. But if you put a banker, a teacher, and an artist together around that problem, you'll get something entirely different because obviously their different perspectives will bounce off each other in different ways. So when people come to anthropy, it's fully understandable that, for example, a chief sustainability officer will think, oh, I'll go and go into that session because it's on something that I know about and I'm interested in that speaker, etc. But I also challenge people and say, well, okay, that's fine. But do you happen to be a parent, for example? And if you are, why don't you just go down into that space in the rainforest and listen to somebody like Darcy Bussell talking about fitness in primary schools instead? Or are you interested in culture and heritage and the arts? If so, why don't you go over there and listen to, you know, Lloyd Grossman talking about the conservation of the arts and things of that kind. So I want people to bring their whole self and explore new ideas and experiences as well as just stay in their own silo professionally. So I do also sort of say, don't just bring your business car, bring your whole self.

SPEAKER_00 9:48

And that was something that I experienced very much firsthand. And I think the you the concept of breaking down silos is something that we've talked about on the podcast many times in the context of resilience and resilience to climate change, because if we are to achieve whole society resilience to climate change, then breaking down of those traditional silos is is absolutely essential.

SPEAKER_01 10:13

Um yeah, and and if I can, Phil, I mean, one of the things is that I to be perfectly blunt, I mean, sometimes people think that anthropy is like another conference, and I don't call it a conference, I call it a gathering. We have 230 sessions over 18 stages with 600 speakers across three days. So it's very unlike anything else that runs in the UK. But also, it goes back to my own experience, particularly the last sort of uh I guess the time at Omnicom and the time that I had my own business, I would be invited to two different types of conferences to talk. I would be invited to marketing communication conferences, and I would be invited to ethical purpose and sustainability conferences. And it got to the point where I was actually towards the end of those. I would say to an audience at, say, a sustainability conference, I'd say, right, put your arm up if you've got sustainability in your job title. And just about everybody's arm would go up. And I would then challenge them and I'd say, okay, so you are a bunch of sustainability directors talking to other sustainability directors about sustainability at a sustainability conference. You know, how dull can you get? Yeah. And then the next week I'd go to a marketing conference, and the same thing would happen with marketing. And I would say, same thing. You're marketing directors talking to marketing directors about marketing at a marketing conference. My God. Now, actually, I knew from my own experience that one of the things that I did in my business, and one of the things we did at OmniFrom, whatever, was to break down the internal silos and barriers, where you'd literally, I mean, in one instance, and I won't name the company, but in one instance, I literally almost grabbed the head of sustainability by the scruff of the neck and walked them down the corridor at their head office and took them into the office of the marketing director because they just did not talk. And actually, the two of them could then develop a much greater richness in terms of storytelling about what the company was doing. And at the same time, the people that were championing their sustainability programs actually felt they were being valued. And so I'm a great one for breaking those silos down wherever we can. And that makes for some um interesting mixes because, of course, across the sessions, some of the sessions are curated and developed by our members and by people that apply for session space. Some of those are curated by myself and my team. And those that we create often will mix those silos up. So that will mean that you'll have somebody like a historian sitting next to a pop star, next to somebody that you know come comes from banking or something. And then you ask them a question which is well, what does it mean to be human? You know, and actually some of those extraordinary conversations can be very engaging.

SPEAKER_00 12:57

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm Keen. Um we we we sort of move on to your your views around some of the these concepts. But before we do, one final question about anthropy, which is why the Eden project.

SPEAKER_01 13:15

Well, exactly. Well, um, obviously some of your people, I'm sure, will have been to Eden, many will know of Eden, and some will not have been there. So uh there are there are two things I guess would describe. I'll I'll explain why it is a great example of something, and then I'll explain why I chose to do it and do something that nobody else had ever done.

SPEAKER_00 13:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:36

The first thing about Eden, for those that don't know, is that it's an extraordinary visitor attraction, but it's an ecological and environmental um experience, is the best way to describe it. And what is most famous about them are these enormous biomes, extraordinary structures, one of which houses the world's largest indoor rainforest, with trees, et cetera, growing, you know, to a great height, and you can actually walk up into the canopy of the trees, and it's full of wildlife. You hear the insects, the birds are walking around, etc. And the second big biome is a Mediterranean experience where you get a Mediterranean environment. Um, the thing about them, however, is that all of that and all the other buildings of different types were actually constructed through the vision of Sir Tim Smith in what was a redundant quarry. So if you it was a clay pit, in fact. So if you imagine this hole in the ground, which was an old clay pit, which was just redundant, there was no life in it, it was just a barren hole in the ground. It took vision, it took um innovation then to obviously envisage what this could be and then get the engineering and raise the money and all the rest of it to create this unique, uh this unique experience. Now, from my perspective, if we look at what Britain and indeed the world needs now, it needs inspired thinking and it needs innovative solutions and it needs examples, which I think Eden is, because Eden then, of course, not only created something which is both educational, but it also created employment, it created something very beautiful, et cetera, et cetera. So, as an example of the type of thinking that we need, I couldn't think of anywhere else uh better than that, really, in that regard. That's the first thing. From my perspective, most people thought that I would run anthropy in London because most people create conferences in London. Uh, I then had a group come to me from Oxford who wanted to sort of effectively get me to take it to Oxford. But I thought if I do that, firstly it'll be like any other conference. And as I say, I don't see anthropy as a conference. But what I mean by that is that the senior leaders would inevitably come in, sit on a panel, go and talk on something, and then frankly, they disappear back off to the office. Yeah. So the big gamble that I had in year one was could I get people to make a really serious decision to go to somewhere that's really inconvenient for most people to get to? So the distance between London and Eden project is on the train, I think about six hours. You know, if you're coming from elsewhere in the country, it can be even more. And we've got people coming from Scotland and everywhere else. So it takes me, I think, about seven and a half hours to get from where I'm based in Shropsham. But if people make a serious decision, then you know they're committed. And of course, the other thing is once they're there, they're stuck. So actually, they can't escape, which means that they can come and do their panel, but then they'll go and sit in the audience. So one of the remarkable things about entropy, and you'll have witnessed this, is that you'll end up sitting in a row of seats or you're in a discussion in a circle in the rainforest or whatever. The person sitting next to you might be somebody from the House of Lords. It might be the CEO of a FTSE 100 company, it could be one of the great social entrepreneurs of that time, et cetera, because they're stuck there. So they may have done their speaking, but they actually just stay for obvious reasons. Um, and the other thing that we've had an increasing number of uh is that we have a lot of people coming now who are philanthropists, very successful business people, and they don't even speak. They just sit in the audience and just absorb and they listen to what's going on. And then, you know, I tend to know who they are. Um, but because of the way they dress and all the rest of it, they just sort of blend into the whole movement, really, that's there.

SPEAKER_00 17:23

Yeah, yeah. And it is, it is a it is a fascinatingly rich um dialogue and discussion over those three days. And and you know, I I was able to challenge myself um in going to different uh panels, as you say, bring the whole self and and I and I certainly did, and uh the experience I had was uh unlike no other uh that I've that I've had. Um I I've been writing down a few notes as we've been going along here, John, and I've already I've already written down sharing, innovation, and storytelling. And you wouldn't believe how frequently those three uh terms and topics come up on the podcast, actually. So already I'm starting to see just how vital your vision and indeed anthropy is in terms of resilience, actually, and and this whole society approach and indeed the importance of cross and multi-sectoral engagement and involvement. And so, with with that in mind, then um uh you know, and and and and anthropy very much about being about how we you know we we we can be a catalyst for change and and make change happen and then sustain that. There's a couple of topics that I want to I want to dive into a little bit further with you, and the and the first of which is the role of civic engagement and the role of society, because obviously that's a very important role uh or has a very important place in in the anthropy discussion. Yes, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 18:53

Um well the first the first thing I'd say is I mean you're absolutely right, and and one of the things about breaking down barriers, etc., is also to ensure that people understand and appreciate that they can have an impact in the world that goes far beyond the job that they do. It's an obvious thing to say, but often sometimes people forget that. And one way that that happens is where people get actively engaged in civic society organizations and activities. One of the other reasons related to doing anthropy at a place like Eden was that I didn't just want to change or make people think differently, I wanted them to feel differently. And so obviously the environment that one's in can make people feel differently, and undoubtedly the biomes do. So if you're discussing net zero or you're discussing, you know, climate change or something of that kind, and you're doing it in a rainforest being dripped on, it's humid, and there's insects and there's birds walking by, that will make you feel differently than doing it in a in a normal conference room, for example. And equally, when we look at the societal issues, when we when we look at the challenges around young people, when we look at the challenges for children and education and health and things of that kind, one of the things we do with anthropy is also bring in emerging leaders, we bring representatives, youth organizations, and all the rest of it. And and the critical thing here for me is that we are a connected society. Uh, we don't live in our, you know, a little box that is defined entirely by our job. And what we try and encourage, therefore, is to people through the three days to explore how they might have a wider impact by getting engaged as an active citizen. And that can be something formal by volunteering or something of that kind, or it might be about considering becoming a parish councillor or a magistrate or something of that kind. We are constantly believing that for us to have a cohesive, sustainable, successful, and frankly happy society and quality of life, we should encourage people to obviously be active in the society, not retreat from it. So that's a key tenant of what we try and achieve.

SPEAKER_00 21:08

Absolutely, absolutely. And um I think there's again thinking about other other episodes of the podcast that we've done, we we had a whole episode on on the role of um social value, but also with with that social capital as well. And I think what you're what you're describing here is you know the importance of contributing to your local community, being active and and having that um uh that agency to provide um a a contribution to your local community. And when we look at that through the lens of of of climate and climate resilience and climate participation, um, you know, the importance of local flood groups, for example, and people getting involved and providing their time is is So vital and um I think there's another there's another sort of conversation to be had there. But the other the other sort of strands to anthropy, John, so we've got we've got the role of civic society. Because I I know that you are a a firm believer in um not only harnessing the potential that that civic society and whole society can provide to making a better Britain, but also harnessing the greater potential from business. So perhaps have a let's have a little discussion around the role that business play here.

SPEAKER_01 22:40

Absolutely. So uh first, I mean, the first thing about this is that I'm a great believer in the power of business for good. Um, I obviously, for 10 years, as I mentioned earlier, I ran business engagement programs for the then Prince of Wales, now King Charles. When I set my own advisory business up from 2010 to 2017, uh that actually was a strategic advisory business promoting what we would call ethical core purpose. And my books have been based on that. So I'm a great believer in it, but it possibly um I I probably have a slightly different angle to a lot of people, and it falls into two different things. So there's firstly um the first thing that we have to understand about business is that in our society and our Western capitalism model, the only organizations that actually can create value and create wealth are businesses. Governments can't. Governments, public services, et cetera, rely upon an engine, and that engine of the production of value is actually business in order fundamentally to pay tax. If we don't understand that actually we need to incentivize business to grow, I'm not saying grow irresponsibly, but we need to have successful businesses in order to fund the public purse. Then the public purse can obviously do the range of things from protecting us as citizens. So that includes obviously um our military requirements as well as our civic police and things, but the NHS, our education services, et cetera, et cetera. But all of those things uh are reliant in our current model on the generation of tax revenue. And business, you know, sometimes I think that is forgotten. You know, people when they criticize business fundamentally forget that that is a critical component to the prosperity we have as a country. Yeah. Then if you look at actually the key thing that I advocate so much about is understanding how a business operates. So if we if we think, well, we know and understand that the business does that as an as an asset, what we want as citizens is to have the most responsible businesses to be most successful. So, you know, if we have children, for example, we want children to be able to get jobs of value in workplaces where they are respected, where they have opportunities to grow, et cetera, et cetera. We want those businesses to be respectful of their local environment in whatever form that might be. We want those businesses to source their services and uh or supplies ethically. We want those services to have a commitment to the local community in some shape or form, be they a factory on the edge of a town or a small business in a town. So it is beholden upon us as a society to want business to prosper, but we want the best of businesses to prosper. And we want that so that we as both customers, employees, et cetera, have a great experience of that business, but also we need it as a society to pay for the services that we need. Um, and therefore, business sits at the absolute heart of anthropy. And indeed, the balance that I've tried to achieve in this, and I have so far, is that around about 60 to 65% of attendance is from the private sector. So that ranges everything from the biggest companies to the small SME type businesses. But actually, you need that business motivation to be able to interface with our societal uh leaders and our arts and our heritage, et cetera, to say what is the quality of Britain and how do we pay for that effectively? So, how do we maintain the prosperity that allows us to have a quality of life that we've grown used to?

SPEAKER_00 26:25

Yeah, yeah. And of course, the the the other the other contributing factor of um of business is to identify, nurture, and and help grow our our next generation of leaders. Um that's which again is so important for the resilience of of of of Britain and and and and um our society. Um and in that and in that context, um, I think it's probably our final point, you have developed an emerging leaders program, which I think you you quickly alluded to, but expand on the role of the emerging leaders program.

SPEAKER_01 27:04

Yeah, so so back in year one, uh I mean over the years, actually for King, I did a lot of I I created several school mentoring programs and things of that kind. Now, what I would say is that uh anthropy is for adults. So for various very practical uh reasons, uh everybody on site has to be over the age of 18. Uh so it is adults, but we do have the uh leaders of the major youth organizations and education organizations, so we get the appreciation of children's needs in the UK. I just want to park that. But one of the things I developed in year one was to try and encourage a, let's say, a more youthful voice and perspective into the conversation. So if you have all, if you have the tranche of established leaders in the UK now, then you're generally thinking 40 plus. And many people will be nearer my age, you know, early 60s or whatever, or certainly in their 50s. And of course, they're fine, that is absolutely fine because they are the established leaders running the organizations of today with the responsibility of how those organizations operate. But if we are talking about a longer term, which is the next 30 years for the next generation, which is what I wanted to set as opposed to just being dominated by short-termism, then we need people of a younger generation who actually are not just thinking of themselves, but most importantly thinking about the children they've yet to have. So I created a program of people between the age of 18 and 30 who would be nominated by either our members or by societal organizations where they had seen a younger person doing something exceptional, either in their organization or in society. And we give birth three tickets to over 200 of those to come and integrate into the whole of the event. And the the final thing I would say about this is very interesting because people um look at the diversity we have at Anthropy. I'm very proud of the fact that every year we have had 50% of over 50% in some years attendance has been female. And definitely 50% of all speakers is is women every year. And that is not by false construct. That is actually because we have an extraordinary number of very engaged, you know, women as well, running businesses and all that sort of stuff. However, it is right to say that actually, if you look across the piece at the established um leadership card, it tends to be less diverse than the emerging leadership card. And I think this reflects Britain, and we need to take note of this. I think you know, Britain is a changing society, and those at the forefront of change are obviously those that are of a younger, uh, younger age. So this is why they're so key to our conversations.

SPEAKER_00 29:50

And that it was, it was the it was the the richness of voice and perspective, which again um contributed to me having such a great experience last year, you know. And I I remember I I it was at the time of the um the the Netflix documentary about or pro program about um uh yeah uh adolescents. Adolescence, that's the one. Yes. And um there was a there was a a session on the Friday morning, I think, about what it is to be a man in you know in 2025. Um and it was it was a such a fascinating um session, men and women from all backgrounds and all ages, and they were queuing to get in. It was that popular. Um, and yeah, it was it was fascinating to hear the voice of you know that future leaders and our emerging leaders in in that context, but also across the whole um event across those three days. Um, John, I've really enjoyed this conversation. It's been so nice to um sit down and have a chat about um what you're aspiring to, what you are doing very successfully, and um you know how your experience has shaped your um perspective when it's when it's come to anthropy. Um I'd like to just congratulate you on again um designing and delivering what has been undoubtedly the best event that I've ever been to in 19 years of of of my my career. Um and I will come back to those three terms that I wrote down earlier, which is sharing, storytelling, and innovation. And I think those are three key uh terms that we've spoken about so many times in the podcast and are clearly close to your heart as well. So thank you for a great discussion, John. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 31:44

Well, Phil, thank you. It's always good to talk about it. It's uh you know, it's great to get your enthusiastic endorsement. Thank you so much for that. And I look forward to uh to bumping into you there in March next year.

SPEAKER_00 31:55

You you will, you will indeed. Ticket already booked. So we've reached the end of our time today. As always, if you've enjoyed listening, then please hit the subscribe button so you're ready for the next episode in a few weeks' time. Till then, thanks for joining us. I'm Phil Emonson, and you've been listening to the Climate Resilience podcast brought to you by JBA Consultant.