Crafting Human™ Episode 11 | Working with Nature to Regenerate Failing Systems

Imagine a world where developers and communities are not at odds but sitting on the same side of the table, where a city addresses its housing shortage by restoring its wetlands instead of paving them, and where the place you live is one you truly know and feel a real sense of connection and belonging.

In this episode of Crafting Human™, I sit down with Bill Reed, a pioneer of regenerative development, principal of Regenesis Group, and one of the founding voices behind the LEED Green Building movement.

He shares what regeneration actually means and how it is already taking shape in the world around us. Along the way, he points to a few ideas worth paying attention to:

Whole-system thinking that moves things forward.

Bill shares what becomes possible when we stop solving problems in isolation and begin working with the patterns of living systems, and why that shift opens up outcomes that fragmented approaches rarely reach.

A more enduring motivator than fear.

Love of place, it turns out, is far more sustaining than scarcity or guilt. We talk about what happens when communities organize around what they care about, rather than what they are pushing against.

Developers and residents on the same side.

 
Bill shares examples where both groups arrive at outcomes neither could have imagined alone. Communities gain more than expected, developers achieve fair returns, and the land itself is left healthier. These projects often move through approval eighteen months faster than conventional ones, and at a lower cost.

Reconnecting to the places we live.

Bill shares why he believes place, not nation or state, is the scale where meaningful change actually happens, where people can care for something, and in turn, be shaped by it.

This is a conversation about what it looks like to design and build for a more human, more connected world, one where places are known and loved, where competing interests find harmony instead of settling for compromise, and where building the future feels less like resistance and more like belonging.

If you've been looking for evidence that another way of living and working is not only possible, but already happening, this episode is for you.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Hi, thanks for listening to Crafting Human and being part of our creative podcast. If this conversation resonates with you, please for the episode. Liking and subscribing helps me to keep telling the stories of the creatives to bring soul into our world. So if you want me to dive deeper on anything discussed today, let me know in the comments. I'd love to bring those conversations to you in future episodes. Now I'm with the channel. Today I am so honored to welcome Bill Reed. He is a pioneer and visionary in the world of regenerative development, and he is the principal of Regenesis Group and the co-founder of Integrative Design Collaborative. He is also the author of many technical articles and a contributor to many books, including the seminal work Integrative Design Guide to Green Building. Bill is a founding member of the U.S. Green Building Council and a key force behind the launch of the LEED Green Building Movement. He has guided hundreds of projects in over 30 countries and spent decades helping communities, cities, and projects move beyond sustainability to regenerate the living systems that we depend on. He's not only an internationally sought-after consultant and educator, but he's also a storyteller who invites us to rethink our relationship with the land and to see every building and every community as part of a living breathing system and to design in ways that give back more than we take. I consider Bill an advocate, a philosopher, a peacemaker. And in many ways, you'll hear that he's also an untire of some of the most complex and complicated knots. He has been an inspiration and a role model to me, and one that is truly living out his calling and place by place and one life and time, and one life and heart at a time, opening minds to seek and create a future that we all want and can create for ourselves. So with that, I just want to say a war give a warm welcome to you, Bill. Thank you for joining. It is truly an honor to have you, you know, contributing your wisdom and insights to this episode of Crafting Human Podcast.

SPEAKER_01 2:32

Well, thank you, Sharon. That is a very sweet intro. Very nice.

SPEAKER_03 2:36

Oh, yeah. Well, yes, of course. Um well, I want there's so much to talk about here today. And I, you know, one of the first things I just wanted to do before we begin is to bring forward from your perspective a really clear definition of what is regeneration. It is a word that we are hearing a lot these days, and um, you know, I think everybody has some little subtle nuances and differences of perspective in, you know, in how they're using that terminology. And I think for the purpose of our conversation, I'd love to hear your definition and the perspectives that you bring to regeneration.

SPEAKER_01 3:22

Right. Well, in the simplest terms, and maybe that's not so simple for many, is that um regeneration is simply staying in the game of evolution. And that means, in order to do that, though, requires us to continually be introspective and explore not only the development of um life outside of it, and I use development in terms of the process of continual improvement, um, but also development in the terms of its uh etymology to deveil, to deveil what is hidden. And so regeneration is not simply restorational, although this is the way many people in the world are using regeneration, is to restore something. And restoration is definitely part of regeneration, but as uh and as things evolve, as climate change accelerates, as genetic mutations, which are always present with us, as life as life changes, we need to be adapting with it. The current paradigm is that we think we can stabilize life. We want everything to be the same. Well, it never is. And in a way, regeneration is just acknowledging what is going on in life. Uh it asks us to participate in it. So the practice of regenerative development and design is to develop the capability to co-evolve. That's pretty much what it comes down to, the capability to co-evolve, which means we have to start paying attention and start paying attention in a new way.

SPEAKER_03 5:00

Yeah, yeah. Well, I love that because, you know, even as people, individuals, we're constantly evolving and changing, growing and learning, right? And adapting to our environments. So I I love that because on a large scale of what you're talking about, I think it's very much something that we can see and um reflect in and understand, you know, maybe from our own personal perspective as well. Um I, you know, it's really interesting because this conversation, I was so excited to speak with you because I felt like some of the principles of regeneration that you that that you have shared and that I've been following hold so many keys to this really um, you know, this very critical kind of time that we're living in. You know, there's I feel like we're facing some of the most unprecedented challenges and we're living through some, you know, when experiencing many breakdowns and systems and um, you know, and there's all these rapid changes that are happening. I feel like every day there's something new that's, you know, we're needing to learn and adapt to. And it's happening at speeds that are really unimaginable. And I was wondering what your thoughts might be in that time, you know, in a time like this, do you feel like we might be living through a bit of a meaning crisis in our culture?

SPEAKER_01 6:29

Well, certainly a crisis. I don't think it's a bad crisis, actually. Um, and by the way, every 100 or 150 years or so, there's always a crisis similar to this. Uh, this is really new, it may be new to us. Um the real issue, I think, is that what are we going to do about it? And I I I think that all of this is leading towards what is inevitable, that the nation states that we think are so important on this planet are actually um Achilles' heels. They're too big to manage. I don't want to get into I don't want to get into politics, but I'll make an incendiary statement right now. The United States is so large. We're we're based on one book called Um American Nations by Colin Woodard. We have 11, I think it's 11 different nations, effectively, 11 different essence descriptors. We certainly know the South is different than the Northeast, it's different than New York City, it's different than um French-Canadian uh you know uh world, the Spanish-American world that were that makes up the United States. The only thing that really holds the United States together in the past is war, if you really think about it. So um that's a pretty weak reason for a nation to exist. Uh now, logically extending that, um even states are too big to govern, is that uh our places, and if you look at Dunbar's number, 150 people, but at least we we know from Eleanor Ostrom's work that places are manageable and we actually can heal our places. So the scale of place is incredibly important to this discussion of regeneration because place is what we know, place is what we can love, and what we love we take care of. Everything else is outside of our domain. So the United States is an abstraction. We don't love an abstraction. We may love the fact that we won a war or that we somehow were united together because of against the King of England, but that isn't that isn't enough to hold a country together. But the physical environment, uh, our love of that particular place, what we grew up with, and what we feel, uh what our genetics are invested in, that's compelling.

SPEAKER_02 8:56

So I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 8:58

So I apologize for going down to maybe a little bit of a um controversial stand, but what what the heck? That's what these podcasts are for.

SPEAKER_03 9:08

Sure. We're making we're we're making bold statements, right? And I feel like honestly, even the whole idea of regeneration and this whole transformative new paradigm shift in and of itself is it's a bit, you know, controv, I don't want to say controversial, but I think it'll push people on the fringes of discomfort, you know. And um but one of the things you said that I love is the idea of place, because what really resonates for me on that is that it is small enough of an idea that we can form and assign value and meaning to these things. And um, you know, that that phrase you use where we where we protect the things we love. And and I know it's like a Jacques Cousteau uh quote where he says, I'm just gonna read here, we only protect what we love, we only love what we understand, and we only understand what we are taught. And um, you know, in that kind of idea, it's I mean, I guess you could say it's a little bit, you know, oh well, it's a very idyllic, you know, you know, rose colored glasses on, sort of a perspective of let's just love and you know, and heal place and you know, and it may seem oversimplified, but somehow when I hear your your lectures and the conversations you have about how we can foster and nurture that perspective, it just feels I know it's a simple idea. It's very much more complicated, maybe to execute, but the ideas and the principles are are very simple. But I'd love for you to maybe take us through what does that look like to uh from that perspective of loving a place? How do we even begin that journey? And can you take us through maybe what are the first steps for freeing ourselves from these sort of other narratives and moving in a different direction?

SPEAKER_01 11:15

Well, the first thing that's required is that people have to be energized about something. If they're not energized, if they're lukewarm, you know, like I could care less, you're not going to get very far. This is not going to be very motivating. But often we are invited in because people are upset about a development, a real estate development, or they're in love with an ecological system they want to protect. But there's some energetic motivation to engage people. And I particularly like real estate because most developers come along and they propose a design and that nobody's ever asked for. The developer's just making a buck. And people are energized because they don't want to have their community changed. Change is hard.

SPEAKER_03 11:58

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:00

So there's usually a uh so people are upset, and what we come in and do is help people understand the nature of what they love or what they're protecting. And often they have they will, well, we should be building a park, not a multi-use facility of million and a half square feet. Okay, that's a good idea, but another person says something else. Another person says we need a railroad station, another person says we need a shopping mall, another person says we need schools. So who's right? And how do you well, they all have they all have a caring instinct. So what we do is we we say, listen, what we all want is a quality of life, including the developer, by the way. The developer wants as much there, they don't want to have a uh crappy environment to sell their product in. They they couldn't it would devalue it. So everybody wants the same thing, they just don't know how to how to go about doing it. And so what we do is we actually help the community to understand the potential. And this is a very important word, not the problems, because you can't solve problems. Problems are there's thousands of problems. You pick one problem to solve, and three or four other unexpected unintended consequences pop up because you're only working on a very isolated thing that's connected. Everything the thing about life, life works as a whole living system, everything is connected. We just are unpractical in holding that whole. So, what we do is we help paint a picture of the essence of a place. What's the core? I mean, Sharon, you have a unique essence. I have a unique essence, everybody does. That's the premise we hold. And I think it's a relatively safe one to hold is that you're a unique composition of biology and spirit and consciousness. And what makes you unique? Well, when I when I take the time to explore what makes you unique, you feel honored, I'm assuming. Because that's who you are. You're you're appreciated. And we do the same thing with the community. We say, who are you as a community, as an ecosystem? Most people don't think about that because we think about the schools, or we think about good transportation, or we think about how many hospitals we have, and that kind of sets the value of a community. But in fact, it's all of that stuff. The natural systems, the parks, the healthy rivers, um, all of that comes together. So there's a there's a unique pattern of life that identifies that place, just like every place on the planet. New York is different than Boston, it's different than Chicago, it's different than Los Angeles. So, what makes the difference? We know that, but we never really take the time to define it and acknowledge it. And that's me like saying, Well, I want you to be like my other friend. I like my other friend. I don't know you, but I like my other friend. So would you be like her? So that doesn't it doesn't work, and so what we do is we we help people see that uniqueness, and that takes a couple literally a couple weeks worth of work. It's not very hard, and most people intuitively know it anyway. So, all we're doing is we're helping people to see that old that umbutu what greeting um that was popularized in avatar. I see you. That's a great way, that's a great beautiful way of of expressing relationship. I see you, and so well, that's what we're saying to the community is I see we see you. And that allows that it honors them, and then from there we can say, well, and what's the potential of this place? Well, go back a hundred years, 200 years, even a billion years. You actually could do that, but let's say even a thousand years, who what was this place when it was thriving and flourishing? And in general, we can recover that. Not not always, but mostly we can recover that. Wouldn't isn't that something we all want to work towards? Now, all these different interest groups, and you have different activist groups in each neighborhood. You have climate change people and habitat connectivity and no plastics in the environment people and recycling people, security people, mobility people. Literally, there are hundreds of groups in every community who are motivated about a particular issue, but they all work in silos. And those silos um never talk to each other because they're out fundraising from the same funders, they're battling each other, or their ego is in the way. And so what we do is we listen, we're all interested in this whole, or we don't say this, we invite them to understand that this flourishing potential of this place is possible. Isn't this what we're all working towards? Well, yeah, how do we do that? Well, we get together and we integrate people. So we integrate these groups, and sometimes it's just a couple handfuls of them. We give them lunch and we say, let's start learning from each other. It takes about a year at the pace of community development for people's minds to start shifting. And the first shift that happens is wait a minute, what are you doing running this meeting to me, right?

SPEAKER_02 17:15

And to us.

SPEAKER_01 17:17

We should be running this meeting. Yes, you should. Step right up. Yeah, and we'll give you some guidance on how to do that and not waste time, how to accomplish stuff. And also things start getting accomplished, little bits, little little achievements. Well, at about the end of 10 months or so, there's a field, an energy field that gets developed in those groups of people. And they say, you know, this is different than everybody else because they're not just trying to uh jam a development down our throats. They're actually concerned about all of us and all this place. Maybe, maybe we should be talking with them. So more people come and more people come and more people come. And what happens is this energy field gets expanding because we are working on what's meaningful to everybody, or at least 95% of the people. So that's it. That's all you need because now what they've done is work there, they are beginning to fall in love with their place. They're they're understanding it, Cousteau's statement. We're learning from each other, we're understanding it, and understanding is the beginning of love. And that's a heck of a lot better motivator than fear or a lead checklist.

SPEAKER_03 18:24

Yeah. And how much of, and do you think it's in that process of discovering or maybe rediscovering what they love about the place to be able to kind of be unified in a a bigger bit, a bigger vision and a bigger future beyond just their small.

SPEAKER_01 18:46

Yeah, but they but here's the cool thing is we want them working in their small thing because somebody has to do it. It's not that you don't work on problems, you just need a vessel that unifies all those problem solving. So we're working towards the same thing. And the the vision is expanded. So we want you people to be working on climate change, we want you people to be working on habitat connectivity or beach erosion or wetland protection or saving the alligators, it doesn't matter. Um, all of those are important, and now we're beginning to connect them together as a whole because we are working with a core, we've actually assembled a core team holding representatives from those broad sectors, so they're actually hearing from each other, and that begins to create a unified approach that we're all working towards.

SPEAKER_03 19:37

It sounds simple, it just sounds so like utopia, to be honest. It just sounds so idyllic and amazing.

SPEAKER_01 19:48

It's just what people want to do. We are social animals, we want to do that way. Our government, though, does not know how to operate. So, government is you think, well, this is what the government's for. Yeah, it could be, but it they aren't, because government is typically reactionary and politically oriented. What we're doing is we're creating an aspirational governance that actually works with it's like a DNA spiral. You want the management, you need management, you need kind of reactionary government. Snowplow the streets, pick up the garbage, right? Um, we need all that. We also need people that are looking ahead. And um ultimately they find we had one project where the mayor did not want to, she commanded her staff not to talk to us because she, you know, she was perceived us as a as destabilizing and a threat. But a year and a half later, once this group started working at meeting in the city, she called up and said, I get it. This is great stuff. We want to help. So it just takes time for that field to be built.

SPEAKER_03 20:51

Yeah, that's amazing. What do you think are some of the maybe I don't know if you want to call it like a false narrative or uh, you know, frameworks maybe that we have um kind of either believed or been told to believe or accept, maybe just be resigned to accepting that it is what it is. What do you think these things are that limit us from being able to engage with each other and with our you know fellow, you know, collaborators in this type of a way?

SPEAKER_01 21:30

Well, I think there's two there's two fundamental ones. And one is that um we believe that reductionism is the way to work effectively.

SPEAKER_02 21:39

Meaning take one problem at a time.

SPEAKER_01 21:42

It's not science. Science is basically saying let's narrow down the field so that we can solve problems there because that's easy, easy to solve problems that way. The problem the financial industry calls it exponential discounting. You discount everything else and you focus on one thing. Well, that's you may solve the problem. From a short-term standpoint, but long term you've created more problems. Look at the environmental movement. We've had 50 years we've been working on this stuff in a very fragmented way. Lead is a fragmented solution. The SDGs are fragmented. I mean, all the pedals are fragmented. Even though we acknowledge that they're all integrated, we work in it, we work, well, we work in a uh take one thing at a time and address it. And um how are we doing? It's only getting worse. 50 years of this work, and it's only getting worse. So there, I'll put that out as proof that it doesn't work. Yeah, but the other half, the other side is that I mean it's not really proof because you need time for this stuff to happen. But 30 years generally is enough to change a culture. We have not struck the right note, and I think we've struck the wrong note that we've struck is that we're working from fear, we're working from um that nobody is being told uh the potential, the opportunities. We're saying we're gonna die. Well, most people don't even want to acknowledge that. Yeah, so um so it so it gets no traction. The Clinton administration in the I guess it was the 90s did um studies on the word sustainability, and 95% of the people surveyed hated the word. The word they liked was health. So even our branding is stupid. Um, and our also, but our branding also is is scarce, is again scarcity oriented because sustainability means the way we practice it, as let's reduce the damage. How does reducing the damage motivate anybody? Means as Bill McDonough says, sustainability is a slower way to die. That's it's subliminally. Okay. So the other side of this is the scarcity mentality that I need mine. And the United States, by the way, is here's here's a sobering thing. The United States is the least interested country in our work.

SPEAKER_03 24:02

Oh, really? Really? Oh yeah, oh my.

SPEAKER_01 24:06

We rarely work in the United States. And I think that's because of the cowboy mentality we have. We're independent cusses, we had our genes, you know, our relatives came over, they're independent thinkers, and also uh not interested in community. New England is the only place that has really been settled with community at its heart. The Puritans came over and they said it was set up a schoolmaster and a minister in each community. And New England is relatively coherent. And look at the the blue states versus the red. Um, it's wonderful. I mean, even health, I mean, New England's right now is gathering together to create a health um uh health insurance um collective because of the lack of leadership from the federal government. So New Englanders have a different different perspective, but the rest of the country in general, and even New England, we're all kind of um don't bother me, I'm in my own little castle, and uh yeah, very individual an individualistic kind of a mindset that definitely I you know I agree because I after having lived outside of the US, you know, for a number of years, living and working, and also myself coming from you know a Korean, um you know, coming up from a Korean family where we are very much you know communal in how we live and value family and community with each other, and we use community to help support each other, right?

SPEAKER_03 25:44

It's it's so different, it definitely is a different uh cultural mindset, maybe is you know, one of those things. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:52

Um, no, how we how do we get down that?

SPEAKER_03 25:55

I'm sorry, I went down, took a set of well, no, well, and I think part of that was because of the question of like what are the kind of the narratives and maybe the incomplete frameworks or uh the frameworks that have been established that yeah that helps prevent these are the frameworks that have yeah, okay, sorry, go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 26:14

Scarcity mentality, right? I have to protect what's mine, don't come near me. Um I'm the only guy that's gonna take care of myself, that kind of thing. So we we lack a cooperative spirit, which means with each other, and and and if we don't have it with each other, we're not gonna have it with life.

SPEAKER_03 26:33

Yeah. And I you know, and you say that you the US is one of the places where you um are not working as much as in the outside in the other, you know, in other regions. But even still, I'm sure when you've gone into those places, it's there's still been that the maybe the mental hurdle, and you know, there's the the journey of going from where you once were thinking to this whole transformative paradigm shift. It still needs to happen, right? So, what are the kinds of things that unlock that ability to be able to adopt that new mindset?

SPEAKER_01 27:15

Well, that's a great question. And the the uh we I don't know if it was manipulation, but it was certainly it was sneaking this stuff in. I would sneak this kind of work in on our projects. You know, people would hire us for a green building and say, well, uh remember one project they asked, we want to do a lead goal building. And I asked them, Do you want lead or do you want sustainability? Because there's a difference. And um they said, Oh, yeah, we want both, which was a cool answer. But then then we had to actually help them understand that their building was was part of a larger context. And what I mean by that is that uh one was a grocery store where we had to help them understand that the food system was really more important ecologically than the building. And so we worked on re-establishing a local food system that's integral to the project. They didn't ask for that, in fact, they were actually quite upset, and it took them about a year before they realized, oh, yeah, that's right, that's what we need to be doing. Yeah, so paradigm shifts are tough for people, and as I as I say, it's not a great business model, but it's very effective. But you know, being fired and then being rehired, we've always been rehired, we've been fired a number of times, and we've been rehired too, because people think about it.

SPEAKER_02 28:34

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 28:34

But wow.

SPEAKER_03 28:35

Um, so I was just gonna go on, go on. I well, I wanted to maybe go back to that when you're going through this experience with them and you know they're upset with what you're what you're sharing, you know, and and they're like, that's not what well, that's not why we hired you. I mean, how did that make you feel the first time you heard that? And how did that did you think, oh gosh, maybe we're not maybe we're wrong, maybe we're not onto something?

SPEAKER_01 29:05

I have never I this may sound arrogant, but I've never felt we're wrong. I felt I felt like maybe we didn't communicate what's important, it's more of a communication issue. And one one client, as he was firing me, said, My minister doesn't get away with saying the shit you say, Bill. And then we let it go. But a year later, he hired us for many more projects. We worked with him for many years. Um, because this is transformational for people, and it's hard, it's a hard pill to swallow. Um, now, however, the the field has changed, it is getting easier. More and more people are asking about this work, more and more people are realizing that the ways we've been doing things just don't work, so why not give it a try? And now I in fact I just negotiated a contract last two weeks ago where I told the client, um, a very, very wealthy and uh well-established developer, I said, you know, regeneration requires, you don't know, but we're gonna tell you, regeneration requires an ongoing rebirth of relationship. Like every year, you got to think about how do we do and how do we improve. We are not going to be here for the duration of the life of this project. We'll be dead. You're uh gonna be here, and your kids are gonna be here, your staff are gonna be here. What is most important about this is that you need to understand this work, and so this is a very expensive education process for you. Not only are we going to help you with your project, but the most important deliverable is that you and the community are able to regenerate. And so that's so profound. We are we are right up front with that now. And people are saying, okay, I get it. In fact, we have our first meeting in a week and a half with this with this client to get it moving. So and so the point, the cool thing is that people say, Yeah, that sounds important. And I'll can sure I can assure you, 30 years ago, most people would not have gotten that.

SPEAKER_03 31:18

That must be so encouraging for you to see this shift that's happening in a time where I mean I don't know, have what was that like for you? Did you ever do you ever how do you maybe even maybe the better question is how have you overcome the constant no's or the the resistance and the pushback and you know, and stay kind of being this voice of hope and possibility and inspiration?

SPEAKER_01 31:55

Well, that's flattering to think that. I I I guess I don't feel like I have a choice, Sharon. I I think that I mean I started doing this work in 1974, 75 with passive solar energy, and people rejected that. I said, Why would you reject that? It's free energy, but it you know it's just different. So I remember being incredibly upset that I couldn't this logical, perfectly logical, logical approach to design wasn't accepted. And then we went to lead all building, and then we went to integrated systems design. Where do we stop integrating? That becomes a metaphysical question, and then regeneration that basically embraces consciousness. You know, our tagline is we partner people with their places to regenerate ecosystems and the human spirit. So we're very upfront about this is a journey of consciousness. And uh and yeah, most people kind of roll their eyes, uh, but pretty quickly I realize that uh you can't force people to change. You need to, and so my approach has been writing and speaking, mostly speaking, just getting out there in front of people, and there's you typically one or two people in every audience that says, uh, would you talk? Can we talk to you about that? Yeah, that's how it's grown. So I don't try to convince people to change. Uh, there are enough, and now there are enough people that want to change that there's not it's not hard anymore.

SPEAKER_03 33:27

Yeah. So can we maybe go back to this idea of essence? Um you know, because what you're talking about is uh you know, understanding the essence of place. But I remember in some conversations we've had that that work also starts from on an individual level too. And, you know, what I mean, what can we be doing in some maybe practical terms? How can people begin this journey for themselves? And I know Regenesis Group also has cohorts and classes and things, but um, are there some maybe some key points that you can bring up and take us through that would allow, you know, maybe the first domino and the first ripple to start in a new way of thinking and embracing this?

SPEAKER_01 34:26

Yeah, it's a tough it's tough because people actually have to stop solving problems and start realizing they've got to be working in multiple areas at once, and that's tough to do on your own. So we uh we do have classes, and we do have short ones, shorter classes, and longer classes. I don't want to make this an advertisement about the institute, but it's open to anybody, uh, the regenerative Regenesis Institute or Regenerative Development and Design. But um, and there are other people teaching similar, similar, not the same, but similar courses around the world. I would say that the first first thing that any community member needs to do is to understand the essence of their place. And because what makes your place different than the next town? I live in eastern Massachusetts. Um my town is Arlington, I live next to Lexington of Concord, you know, the Revolutionary War, right Massachusetts Avenue, where the whole first number of days of battle are literally uh 400 yards from my house. And yet these towns are significantly different, and we never asked that what makes it different, and how do we honor that difference? And instead of being generic, why do we why would we accept planning and design to look borrow stuff from San Francisco, let's say, and implant it here? So the whole idea of and not just every town talks about sustainability, but what are you sustaining? Are you sustaining the unique aspects of life here, or are you just doing generic efficiency, like reducing carbon, reducing cleaning water? All that's important, but it's insufficient unless it's associated with the nature of your home. So how do you fall, how do you fall in love with your home? You have to know your home. That's the first step.

SPEAKER_02 36:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:24

The other step, of course, is you can you can we call this three three lines of work in our practice. But three lines of work is that self, group, and system. So we need to what we want to improve the system, but it takes a group of people to do it. We don't do things as individuals in our culture. We in our nobody is, we're social animals. We need a team of people, an organization of stuff to get effective stuff done. And then there's the individual. Now, reversing that, if I'm a jerk, and I've certainly been known to be a jerk, we're all jerks at time, right? I'm not going to be very effective working in a group. So I what we ask group members to do is reflect on who you need to be, and we give them some resources to do that, to maybe not be a jerk in the group. You can be a jerk at home if you want to be, you can be a jerk, but in this group, you can't be a jerk. So, or we invite people not to be a jerk. And so you're working, so we're actually getting people to reflect on well, gee, maybe I am a jerk. Maybe I need to actually calm down and not be so impatient, right? There, but I'm I'm now less of a jerk, and that makes the group work a lot better. The group has to work on their skill set to work effectively together. That's what organizational development skills are about, very important, and they're how to facilitate that. In service of what, though? What gives you the will to actually get together and do this work is that you're you need to understand the nature of the system. And that gets right back to the essence of the system. We do something we call a story of place to help people experience the uniqueness of their town and ecosystem. And that storying process is not just telling a narrative, it's actually engaging people in a collaborative unfolding and understanding. Like we we come in and we do initial research, we just do desktop research, computer research, maps, et cetera. Look for, we look, we're looking for patterns that keep repeating themselves that make this place identifiably unique. And then we meet with people and we say, Is this our understanding? Is this what's going on here? And they say, No, you don't have quite right. Here's what's really going on. Oh, that's so cool. So we take that back, we process it a bit, we come back with a refined understanding, we go back to the same people and we say, Here's what we've here's what we figured out, here's what we're learning. And they say, Okay, you got that right, or nope, you're still wrong. Here's where now the story doesn't matter. What matters more is that we're in relationship with each other. We're working now with community members to actually collaboratively discover something, and that's the pattern. That's the most important pattern. So, in a way, the story of place is a proxy for relationship building in a positive way. I'm pissed off that you're building this building. We want to change, that doesn't go very far. But out of that, now we can talk about what the community needs in terms of this development. And by the way, this is what we tell the developers. The only thing, these are the developers who hire us. We say to them, the only thing you deserve is a fair profit. That's it. You do not deserve to tell the community what is going to get built. Now, the community has to acknowledge that the developer deserves a fair profit because he or she is taking a big risk. Therefore, we have to harmonize the developer's profit nature and the nature of community. And we've never seen that fail. Never seen that fail.

SPEAKER_03 39:56

How when the I'd love to hear when you have said that to developers. Um is their first what's their first response like?

SPEAKER_01 40:08

Well, well, one one developer I remember saying to me, because they'd already done the master, they'd worked three years on the master plan, and he said, Well, you're not gonna make us change the master plan, are you? I said, I'm not gonna make you do anything. You're gonna want to when we're done. And that actually was an intimidating answer for him because he realized, oh, this is gonna take some work. I've got to re- I have to rethink. This isn't just hiring Regenesists to make it better. This is, I have to be engaged in this. Um, we work with a developer out of New York City who has this, is they do this on their own. When they buy property, they sit on it for a year to two years and they spend the time getting to know the community. They don't propose a development at all. They set up a storefront office, they spend time getting meeting the business owners, the residents, developing a relationship. And they get approvals, just that, not even talking about the ecology like we do. With that, they said they get approvals, land use approvals where no developer has ever gotten an approval before. In fact, they're being consulted now to do zoning work for other towns because their processes respect. Again, there's no myth, this is not hard stuff. It means, but you have to stop thinking that you're in control because you're never in control. So they acknowledge we're not in control, let's figure it out together. And as a result, and their their comment to me was, and they meant this in a in good spirit, we laugh all the way to the bank. We don't know why the developers don't do this. We make so much more money because you don't have to have lawyers, you don't lose time. Their time to market is so much fast, time for approvals is so much faster. Why wouldn't you do that? No, Tyson Young Tyson Young Caporta, sorry, I'm just kind of on a roll now, but no, I love this.

SPEAKER_00 42:01

I love this.

SPEAKER_01 42:02

Tyson Young Caporta in his book Sand Talk talks about one of what his aunties teaching him that a framework for working with community is respect, connect, reflect, direct. So what his auntie said is well, what Western people do is they've reverse that. They direct, then people are angry, then they then they reflect, saying, Yeah, what did we do wrong? Well, we hire the lawyers and we are taken to court. Then we connect because now we're negotiating through lawyers, but that's expensive and time consuming. And then finally there's respect. But you've wasted five years. Why not just refer reverse that?

SPEAKER_03 42:49

So this is true.

SPEAKER_01 42:51

About relationship building. You know, we don't need to make this mysterious, Sharon. This is simply about but this is where essence to essence comes in. This work can all be summarized as essence to essence relationship. I need to be respecting your essence. If I assume you are anybody else than you are, I'm what? I'm colonizing you, right? I'm um I'm forcing you to be, I'm putting you in a box that you shouldn't be in. And your role with me is to respect who I am and to and collaboratively and we're collaboratively discovering, wow, you're pretty cool. And Bill, you're pretty cool. Well, we may not necessarily get married, but we're but there's respect there, right? And um so it's the same thing with an ecosystem. What's the essence of that ecosystem? We need to be honoring that. That ecosystem needs to be honoring what the social system needs because humans are part of nature. We just can't destroy nature. So, how do we actually build housing without destroying? How do we actually build housing in a way that accelerates and expands the health of these ecosystems? And if we're not doing that, pardon me, we're screwed. And this and that. And once we start doing that, when people say, Well, we need more housing, yes, we also need to stop to start to stop uh flooding cities that the jobs need to go elsewhere. It's gonna ask us, it's gonna cause us to ask other questions than we're asking now. The fragmented problem solving is we need housing, so we're just gonna build housing everywhere. Screw the river, screw the wetland, because that's what's more important right now. Well, no, the wetland is actually more important. So, how do we build and where do we build to actually honor what nature, what the the lungs of nature, which is our support system? We just never take the time to think that far. All right, I'm sorry, I'm I'm on a ramble here.

SPEAKER_03 44:37

So no, I I love it because everything, I mean, what you're shining a light on is to your point, so simple, but we you're right. And can't and what was the what were the five principles you were mentioning?

SPEAKER_01 44:53

And I I I'm just blinking on the respect, connect, reflect, direct.

SPEAKER_03 45:00

It's just so it's so simple. And and yet, and by even just flipping that order, right, we have created you know, just a jam every single step of the way for ourselves and made it harder for ourselves. And so much of that is, to your point, like a culture establishing kind of even a mindset and a culture of honor and respect. And I mean, in very simple terms, to your point, you you just if you don't do that with your fellow humanity, right? And this is where you start seeing all these people who just can't the conversation just shut down and dialogue is shut down.

SPEAKER_01 45:40

And um, but having said that, how have you guided people through these conversations that require harmonization, where you don't necessarily want to compromise what you want, but I mean it's just we're not compromising, we are harmonizing, and harmonizing means each side gets more than they ever thought they would have gotten before. And that being a lot of people.

SPEAKER_03 46:08

Oh my gosh, can you say that again?

SPEAKER_01 46:10

Each so typically, and we use the law of three as a way of describing this. The law of three basically says all life can be seen as an activating force, you want to build a building, and a restraining force. Nature, gravity, budget, permits, land use, whatever, NIMBYism. And what we have a tendency to do is we transact, we compromise. Oh, I'll give up two stories of my building, I'll give up, you know, 20,000 square feet of buildable area, and nature only has to give up half of the wetland.

SPEAKER_02 46:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:44

And we call, and that's compromise, and we call that a day. So to lose, lose. I lose profit, nature loses, we all we all lose. Nature doesn't work that way. Nature works by with potential. So basically, is that it's always harmonizing around potential. What can be, not what are the problems, because you can't solve, you cannot solve the thousands and thousands of problems that are facing us. It's impossible. I'm gonna make a statement: it is impossible to solve problems and get anywhere. We have to work on the potential of life. So that's always top top of mind. And when you harmonize around potential, each side can get ahead. I'll g I'll give you an I'll give you lots of examples, but I'll give you one. My the classic one is Playa Viva with the developer David Leventhal. And um, have I told you this story? I think I have.

SPEAKER_03 47:41

No, but I actually just spoke with him, so I'd love to hear your perspective on that.

SPEAKER_01 47:45

Good. Well, so the the first time we visited the site, we were hired, and the hill that David was going to be building his originally 75 casitas on turned out we discovered to be an Aztec pyramid.

SPEAKER_02 48:02

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_01 48:03

So yeah, that was pretty easy. You were literally walking through three feet of clay shards. Um so no building there. So David said, Well, we gotta move, we move, gotta move the casitas down to the barrier dune. And we said, No, you're not. Not in our watch, you're not, because you build anything on a barrier dune, the minute there's a storm surge, the the found the sand just dissolves around the foundations, the hard-edged foundations, you which would have destroyed ecosystems, the land, etc. So I said, we can't be associated with that, David. We're gonna have to we're gonna have to recuse ourselves from this project. And David said, But Bill, you said you could harmonize anything. I expected I expect this to be harmonized. And he was right, I did say that. So I said, gulp, all right, let's go to work. So we had we had a meeting, and we figured out that, well, the area was filled with palm o palm trees, and turns out the palm trees are grass, you can easily transplant them. So there were already palm trees on this barrier dune. Why don't we transplant more of these and make them foundations for the tree houses? So make instead of building casitas on the ground, build them a meter off the ground, supported by the palm trees. And so the barrier dune gets stronger, not weaker, because of the root system, even though small that they are, the root system of the palm trees. David makes more money because it's cool being in a palm tree tree house. Yeah, and and the storm surge goes underneath the tree house, so it's protects the structure. And oh, it sways a little in the wind, right? So that's even more cool. You charge more money. So you make more money, the good is improved, and the and the buildings are protected. So in three ways, it was a it was harmonized, right? Better, better results. That's an example of harmonization.

SPEAKER_03 50:11

That's amazing. Um, you know, and uh I I want to go back to what you said, you know, in in creating harmony that everybody's getting more than what they wanted. And I I just wanted to bring that up again because it's such a it just doesn't seem believable, you know, and and what I'm gathering from what you're saying is a lot of this just takes time. And I'd love for you to I'd love for you to talk about sort of how this regenerative way of, you know, for the purpose of our conversation of development and designing and um how it sort of flips the concept of the immediate ROI a little bit maybe upside down. And you know, that you know, can you talk about maybe some of the time frames it takes to see meaningful results?

SPEAKER_01 51:08

Yeah, it it's pretty fast actually. Uh the fact uh there's it's we don't have enough statistics to make this a really bona fide claim, but on an average, we see ourselves go increasing, decreasing time to market, meaning approvals, by about 18 months. That's worth a lot of money. So this work actually saves money. Uh, and you work in an integrated process with the green buildings. That's even we typically build lead platinum at about 2% less than capex, plus you'll reduce operating costs. So you're actually winning in multiple arenas. But people say, well, uh, yeah, I mean that it's true. And people and yet developers say, well, tell me exactly what you're gonna do for our project. Well, we can't tell you anything that we're gonna do because we don't know the we don't know the the dynamics of community, of ecosystem, even in your organization. We can't tell you what we're gonna do. We can tell you that we will go through a methodical process and things will continue to emerge. And this means that you're not in basically them. That means I'm not in control. People are feeling, right? I'm I'm supposed to be in control. Are you ever in control? You are never, I'll just make this a hundred percent statement. You are never in control. You think you are so true, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 52:32

So true.

SPEAKER_01 52:32

Too many variables, and yet we are trained to think that we're in control. And I mean, engineers who are trying to stabilize nature, building concrete walls, and say we think that's control. No, no, no, it's just slowing down death, that's all, because nature will always win. So, why not work a keto-like with nature and and the on the on its own terms? It'll be a lot easier. That is an act of faith that is very hard for many people who are trained in our culture to take. I was working in Chile on a project, and the CEO of a very large corporation who had hired us was standing next to me. We we had since we had gotten to know each other pretty well, and there was a meeting uh, and I changed the agenda because the energy in the room was shifting. It was just not the meeting that we had designed. And he said, Bill, what are you doing? You're changing the agenda. He said, Yes, are aren't you in charge? I said, Are you kidding me? I'm not in charge. This is uh we're we're we're we're we're we're surfing energies here. And and then I turned to him and I said, Are you in charge? Do you actually think he blinked, blink, blink, had to think about that. Um so we have uh we we live in a fiction, uh our our system, you gotta find the leverage points, and and typically a building, you know, building construction is a great leverage point. That's why I like real estate development. It usually really gets people excited and energized, good or bad. And and you can't, like I said, you can't work with lukewarm. You want people to be negatively enthused, negatively energized or positively energized. That you can work with, but people just say, well, whatever, go home. It's not worth they don't care. You you you're not gonna be able to influence anything effectively.

SPEAKER_03 54:23

So I love it when people well I that's so surprising to me that you say but it absolutely makes sense. It's surprising, but it absolutely makes sense that whether it's negatively energized or positively energized, you normally would you know you kind of sometimes don't want to engage with the people who have all this negative energy, but in on the flip side of that, it's because they're so passionate about maybe they care.

SPEAKER_01 54:56

And they may be right, right? I mean, who knows? But uh it's important to get all those voices in the air. What we do is we offer a structure and a way to organize this complex thinking. That's the the art of our work, is that we f our front the frameworks that we use actually allow us to manage that complexity.

SPEAKER_03 55:18

Um it is so powerful what you are talking about. It's powerful on so many levels, um, individually. I mean, and then the riffle ripple effect on projects, our culture, society, it's it's really um it's so life-giving, literally. It is a life-giving process as well. And I um I mean, every time I'm uh every time we engage in a conversation or I hear a lecture from you or a recording, I always, I just always have so much to learn. And um but what you're talking about is truly what this podcast has been, what what was the inspiration for my podcast is in this world that feels like we're losing touch with our humanity, you know, what you're doing is bringing life like you're injecting this new way of bringing life and allowing humanity to create a world in their place that feels like it's thriving and it's flourishing and it's doing that alongside what at one point may have been all these competing interests, including our planet. And I love that. Do you have any stories of some major transformations you've seen that have really inspired you? And you always look back on it and thinking, I never thought we were, I really thought this was gonna be the one where we weren't gonna be able to do it, and it just something clicked.

SPEAKER_01 56:53

And well, yeah, I did we have lots of those stories actually, but um, I particularly love we worked on uh a multi-billion dollar wastewater treatment plant in Vancouver, and the first one was about a billion-dollar plant, and their their objective was saving the taxpayer money. Okay, and John Becker and I were working together as a team, another colleague of mine, and um we said, wow, that's a terrible objective, saving the taxpayer money. There's nothing positive about it. And there was environmental goals built into that, but that was the primary purpose. No one no one enters a project. Profit is we have everything has everything deserves to have a profit. So money is really kind of a neutral thing. Uh, nature works on a profit, nature works with high margins. And so, and we they they they were interested in integrative systems design because they were managing a 150 135-person design team with 15 staff members, so 150 people on these design on these charettes, and this is something we know how to do. So, we managed and we'll make a long story short. Uh, oh, they also said we we we might be interested in regeneration, and when I explained it to explained it to them, they their eyes glazed over and they said, just do the integration stuff. So we knocked a lot of our work in anyway, to the point where conceptually they were working with uh essence thinking, and yeah, they didn't know it, but they were. And then at the end, we we had saved 98% of the change orders. We brought in the project 18 months faster than expected, um, but 98% of the change order budget, 90% 18 months faster. Um, every oh, you first unanimous vote, one of the first unanimous votes on infrastructure projects in British Columbia history, and every engineering firm and architecture firm that participated in the project said it was the greatest project they'd ever worked on. Now, wow, no, that wasn't because it was so beautiful, it was because they were in a new way of being in relationship. That's what made it meaningful to them. This is what we really longed for. Now, this and because of that experience, this and the same team was hired for the next wastewater treatment plant in Vancouver, and we were leading it. The first meeting, the director stands up and he says, the purpose of this plant is to save the orca whales. Now, remember the first one was save the taxpayer monies. Now he was saying, This is about saving the ORCA whales. So this guy and his organization made the commitment, the understanding that the system is what's important, and how do we serve that system? And that's a gigantic shift. And that's a kind of a cool story, I think.

SPEAKER_03 59:58

That is there's so much there, it's so remarkable. I mean, to even get a hunt to navigate through 150 people, was that 150 people design team and bring everybody to the shared consensus and agreement of that picture?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:20

We developed a very powerful purpose statement, and it was kind of the project manager was not really into it. The first project manager, which was manager, was really into it. The second project manager, he just needed to build a wastewater treatment plant. The Orca whales, well, that'd be a nice thing. So we had a purpose statement though that was incredibly deep about basically stewarding the health of this ecosystem in an ongoing way forever. The chief technology officer, innovation technology officer, it was a year and a half later, we were still with these are long projects, right? Year and a half later, he basically he stands up in a meeting and he says, WTF, what are we doing here? This purpose statement has we've had this in front of us for a year and a half, and no one is taking this really seriously. WTF, let's get our act together. Boom. So just the fact that we had done that, we had worked it, we we couldn't convince them anymore. It had to come from within. And when it came from within the organization, people said, okay, and then it began a transformation. So it it does take time, it does take faith that you can only you can only you can't you can only lead a horse to water, you can't make him drink, right? So this work is about indirectly helping people experience life on its own terms and being true to that mission. So the most I'm what I'm most proud about our work is that we maintain a being state that allows this stuff to emerge. We don't get pissed off. I mean, true, we get frustrated, and I I whine a lot. That's one of my techniques is whining, but it seems to work.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:01

And uh are you the squeaky wheel in the process, Bill?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:05

I can be, I can be, but you know, typically that only much hope so far. I just can't imagine that. Oh, yeah, trust me.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:14

So um anyway, the the that you you just have to you have to stay true, you have to hold to your course, yeah, and you have to manage your state to allow that course to unfold. That's the hard work. That's why we say this work is mostly about you being and becoming. This is a being and becoming process. This is metaphysical work ultimately. Whatever your spiritual tradition, I don't care. But what this is is it requires introspection and managing your state of being so that you can work through the thrashings and destabilization that happens when you're presenting this new stuff to others.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:58

This is just so I mean, this is so profound. I I I'm speechless, honestly, because what you're painting a picture of is a reality that we can all be experiencing, um, and a way in which we can all be living out who we are and our unique talents and gifts and skill sets that we can be bringing into the world. And um and and really kind of at this very kind of critical moment in our time, having a way forward that is proven over and over again that it can it can succeed, and it is a way forward for how we create the future and you know, life lifelong after we're gone, you know, in a way that the future next generations can be also thriving. It's it's really um, you know, on a very deep level, it's so moving. And I, you know, and I wanted to um just say really, I wanted to say thank you for giving your us your time and um sharing with the world again. You know, you're just continually steadfastly been sharing this message with anybody who'll listen. And I hope um, much like what I what happened with me when I first came across these principles, it it really changed it, it kind of felt like I took, is it the red pill, the blue pill? I can never remember from the matrix, but it's like once you see, but once you see, you can't unsee. And once you know, you can't unknow it. And I really hope um, you know, somebody who's listening to this in the future will say, I need to be a part of this. And just encouraging one life and one heart at a time, that um, you know, not to be hopeless, right? That we're and and what and I want to wrap it up with just some of the things that you've just so many gems of life words that you spoke, that we're we're working from a place of love. We're protecting the things we love. We are working from an abundance mindset and not a um scarcity mindset that we're harmonizing and everybody's getting more than what they want. All of these principles are so huge and they f they can fill us up to overflowing that none of us have to be living and operating from this fear of lack, right? And protectionism. And um I just am so so grateful that you were able to join us today. And truly show us some pictures of how we can be crafting a much more human world. And thank you so much, Bill.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:10

Well, thank you, Sharon. It's an honor to be with you. I uh I appreciate it. I appreciate your receptivity to these things and our relationship over the years. So keep on going.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:22

Well, thank you. Thank you so much, Bill. I appreciate you and your time.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:27

Sure. See you later.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:29

Thanks for listening. If this episode spoke to you, I'd love for you to join our creative tribe. Follow, like, and subscribe to help this community grow. Your support helps me to tell the stories of the creatives who bring soul to our world and create meaningful experiences. Thank you for being here and keeping the circle of creativity alive and connected. I'm so grateful to each and every one of you.