Jorge Silva on horizontal structures and participatory culture at 10Pines

Lisa: Okay so Jorge, thank you for coming on the podcast first of all. I thought we could start by—you shared with me when we spoke before, you have quite a fun way of describing when you speak at events how 10Pines is a little bit different and why you’re organized that way. So maybe you could share that with listeners to start with.

Jorge: Well, first of all I want to thank you for having me here. I’m a really big fan of Leadermorphosis, so it’s an honor to be here and thank you for introducing me.

So I like to start talking with a game when I talk about 10Pines and how we see business and the culture and the company. The game is about some fight, you know, the fight with your thumb. It’s a really popular game where when you are a kid—and the idea is that it is a game that I saw for the first time in a talk here in a TEDx event. So it’s an idea from Mariano, and the idea is that you fight with another person and the target or the objective is to make as many points as you can in one minute. This is the only rule, and you have to fight with the other one with your thumbs closed and you can talk.

So it’s a really interesting game and what happens—and you play both two times, right? So the first time what happens is that everyone started fighting with each other to make at least one point, and most of the time people do like two or three points most. And when you do this the second time, what is happening is that you remark again the target, the objective, and you remember then that they don’t have to win against each other, they just have to make as many points as they can. So the people start to understand the game, and what happens there is that they start collaborating with each other and they let the other win one time and then go back, going back, and then when that happens, when that click happens, the points start to raise like—I don’t know—20 points or 30 points each one.

So the idea here is that this has like two main insights or learning points. The first one is that collaboration is better than competing sometimes. Collaboration is better than competing, and this is far away from a romantic view of collaboration because empirically or in fact you can see that when you collaborate with the other you have more points. And the other interesting insight is what is called like a serious game fallacy, that is—the idea of the fallacy is that when you are talking about zero-sum games, the best strategy is to compete, and this is a fact. A zero-sum game is like—I don’t know—a basketball game, a chess game, a football game, and in those cases of games you have to compete. But there is not only zero-sum games in real life. You have a lot of other type of games when you talk about game theory, right?

So there is another game that is non-zero-sum games, and in those cases the best strategy is to collaborate. There is a really common or popular game in this kind of game—there is the prisoner’s dilemma, and in those kinds of cases of games you have to collaborate to have a better performance. So the idea—and so the fallacy is that most of the time when you don’t know this kind of new situation in real life, what is happening is that you tend to compete because you think that it’s a zero-sum game.

So the idea here is to try to understand or to figure out which new situations in real life are zero-sum games and which ones are not in order to get a better performance. Because if you are competing in a non-zero-sum game, you are going to have a bad performance. So what happens here is that this is a really interesting philosophy in economics because it is interesting to think if economy in the world is a zero-sum game or not, and if we have to compete or not, or collaborate, and if we collaborate we are going to have a better performance or not.

But the idea is to see what happens in a company—if a company is a zero-sum game or not, and if it’s better to compete or collaborate. So our premise is that a company is a non-zero-sum game. So collaboration is better for having a better performance in all of the aspects. So we create this company with this idea, with the idea of collaboration because, away from that we think is the best way to do things and it’s the proper way to do things, it’s a better way of having a better performance in this kind of scenarios. So this is the idea and the analogy and the introduction to why we do the things we do.

Lisa: It’s so true. I think so many examples of companies, like outdated ways of thinking about organizations, is like this zero-sum game, like you know that there are winners and losers. Even like—I mean I think about recruitment situations and competing, and someone once described it as like two people sitting across a table lying to each other in order to get a job.

Jorge: Yeah, yeah. The analogy, the obvious analogy is if you have to fight for a piece of pie, or we can get the pie bigger and have a smaller piece of pie, right? So this is like an analogy for this kind of thing. You can compete for having a small slice of pie, or you can collaborate to get a bigger pie and have a smaller amount but in comparison with the other one is bigger.

So this is what we think in terms of also the profit of the company, right? Because we have like a policy of sharing and other stuff, and we think in that way. We think of making the pie bigger, and maybe as a founder, as a shareholder, I’m going to have in percentage a little bit less than if I have the whole share of the company, but we are going to have a better performance. So this is kind of the idea.

Lisa: Maybe could you tell us about some of the practices that you’ve developed over the years? Because I know that you started about 10 years ago when you were around four people, and now you’ve grown to about 80 plus people, I think.

Jorge: 85 right now, yeah. A lot of people.

Lisa: And that I guess that also brings challenges with it in terms of, you know, as you grow and so on. But what are the—you know, for listeners, if they came to visit 10Pines, I guess pre-pandemic, what would we notice? What would feel different?

Jorge: Well, in order to have an idea of how we work, we have—or I feel proud of—I think three practices that summarize all the culture and how we see the management of the company.

The first one is we make decisions in a collaborative way and we use consent, like in sociocracy. The idea is that when you propose something, you look for objections, and an objection is someone that strongly disagrees with the idea. And what we try to do is to integrate that objection to the proposal. So the first one will be consent, and this is a powerful tool for us because what we try to do is that everyone is—how do you say—not agree, but they don’t disagree with the proposal. And this is important.

And we also use sometimes like the advice process, like in Laloux’s book, and we also use majority voting for the minor decisions and the more operative decisions. And this is the first practice that is important for us.

The second one will be—in order for you to make good decisions, to take good decisions, you need information. So we have an aggressive open book management where everybody—yeah, everyone knows all the numbers of the company, all the financial numbers of the company in terms of income and how much money we pay, I don’t know, for the office, and even how much we spend on the salaries. So everyone knows the salary of everyone.

And this is interesting too because when you first think about that, most of the time you think that this will be a mess and everyone is going to fight each other, but it’s quite the opposite. And we even have a case where we were proposing a person to have a raise in the salary, they reject it because when he saw how it was going to be in the scale of different salaries, he wasn’t comfortable with that. So he preferred to postpone the decision to when he felt more comfortable with that. So it’s an interesting side effect that you never expect to happen, but with the proper context I think it’s one of the magic things of this kind of organization.

And the last one I think that is the practice that closes this kind of circle is the profit sharing policy that we have. We share 50% of our earnings in the year with everyone. We have different criteria to share that profit. We have like a formula to distribute that because we always try to do some kind of fair sharing and not an equalitarian sharing. So this is something that we try to have clear.

When you’re working in a horizontal way or in a flat structure, we don’t want to treat everyone the same because we understand that we are not the same, but we have to try to have fair policies and fair treatment for everyone. So this is the idea behind that. So I think that the three most important practices for us are going to be those three, and they are related to each other and they support each other and they are necessary for each other to work.

Lisa: Definitely. That’s interesting. Is there like a panel of people that have decided the criteria for the profit sharing, for example, and like a group that also make decisions about salaries? Is that how that works?

Jorge: Well, actually it works like a kind of sociocratic model. It’s interesting that because when we start the company and several years later we never heard about sociocracy, but we end up with a similar model of sociocracy. We have like circles—we call them work groups, and we have a work group or a circle for practically everything. And every time we have to share the profit of the year, we create a circle, and anyone that wants can join to the circle and discuss the formula and how we are going to distribute that.

So yes, every single circle is like open for everyone to join, and if you are interested in that, you can join. The idea here or the critical issue here is to balance all of your time in different circles because sometimes you are so excited to start working in different circles and you end up in several circles, too many circles, and it’s too much work and you are not working in an effective way.

Lisa: I guess on that note, I’m curious as well. So you mentioned three kind of key practices that make up your culture and the way that you’re organized. I’m wondering what you’re learning in terms of not so much in terms of structures and processes, but in terms of the skills or the mindset that’s needed in order to work in this more self-managed way.

Jorge: Well, I think that we were thinking a lot about that. I think that—well, one skill that you need in order to work here—well, one important thing to mention before is that not everyone can join or work in that way, right? And this is something that we have to accept, and it’s okay. But if you think that you can work this way or you want to work this way, I think that one of the skills that you need is to be proactive, and the other one is to be accountable.

Proactive because it’s a company that is moving because the people do the things, and there is no way to complain and to criticize because you are part of the solution. So here we have like a culture that we don’t allow to complain in terms of “Well, I don’t like that, I don’t like that,” because if you don’t like something and if you see a problem or if you are uncomfortable with something, you have all the tools to modify that and to solve that. You can ask for a budget, you can ask for, I don’t know, opinions. You can make decisions, so you have all the tools. So you have to be proactive. The only thing that you have to do is to solve it.

So proactive is one of the skills that is necessary. And accountable is because this only works if you take responsibility for your action, right? If you fail, you have to be humble, otherwise you will not learn and people will not trust you. So accountable is really important because we have a culture that—in the bottom of the line—we have to be based on trust. So we work really hard on trust and to create trust and to take care of trust, because it’s like—you know Amy Edmondson? I saw you have a podcast with her—so the psychological safety environment, I think is one of the important things that you have to create and to take care of, and it’s really hard to create that kind of context and it’s really easy to lose it. So one of the other aspects that is important in this kind of culture and in this kind of company is to take care of trust. It’s really important for us.

And the other, the last thing that I think people—or I look for in people—is to share some values, to share transparency, to share trust, and I don’t know, excellence in the technical point of view, and all the set of values that we share, because you can’t work with another people that doesn’t share your values. It’s really hard.

Lisa: And I guess a key part of those qualities or those characteristics is recruitment, and I know that you’re quite proud of the way that you do recruitment. It’s quite a thorough process. Maybe you could share with listeners how you hire people.

Jorge: Well, actually our recruitment process was inspired by Semco. Semco was one of our inspirations in the beginning of the time. So we have like a really intense recruitment process. It has like three stages. The first one—we try to get candidates from people that we already know, so we have like the first filter. We have a first meeting, we understand their needs, we understand their expectations, we tell them how we work, how our culture works, all the important things. And after that, if we are okay with that, we send them like an exercise, a technical exercise. They go to his or her house to work on that exercise, and they have to solve it alone. And we trust them that they are going to work with that alone.

And then they come back to the company and we have like a discussion about the exercise, and we try to criticize it, to propose some changes, and try to understand how they think. And after that, if everything goes—after that we have like a group interview where everybody, everyone in the company is allowed to come, and sometimes you have like a 40-people interview with the candidate.

And it’s interesting because we use consent too there in that interview, and the question is “Are you willing to work with that person in the future?” And if you are agree with that, if you don’t have any problem—at least what you see in this interview—we hire him. And what happens sometimes is that it is not the problem of one—when someone sees something that they’re not comfortable with, it’s most of the time, I don’t know, two or three people that say “Well, I don’t feel comfortable because of that. I see that this person has this type of reaction” or whatever.

But it’s an interesting way of involving people in hiring, and it’s important that you have the chance to choose your teammates, right? I think this is the most important thing. One of the things that happens when I was working in other companies is that I never chose my teammates and sometimes they choose for me, and they don’t choose the best ones. So this is a really big problem in the other companies, and I think it’s at least an interesting approach. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than the other.

Lisa: Definitely. What have been some of the challenges? Like, have you found people—you know, even though you have a thorough recruitment process, have you found that some people join and find it challenging to adapt to this way of working? You know, high accountability, high responsibility.

Jorge: Well, yeah. Sometimes what happens in our company is that we work with a lot of people where it’s their first or one of the first jobs, and we work with a lot of young people like myself. And what happens is that it’s everything new for them sometimes. So it’s interesting that they are like not—how do you say—intoxicated, correct?

So it’s like—I have a friend that used this analogy that—like you are like intoxicated or, I don’t remember the name—but sometimes when you start working a lot of time in a company that is, I don’t know, toxic, you get intoxicated. And sometimes this process is rollbackable, and sometimes it is not. So if you are working like, I don’t know, two or three years, it’s rollbackable. You can roll back that effect on you. But if you are working like, I don’t know, 10, 15, 20 years in that kind of company, it’s going to be really hard because you are like infected, and it’s really hard to get away with that kind of behavior.

So, we don’t have this kind of people most of the time. We have like people where it’s their first job or is one of the first, so they are really fresh in terms of how they should behave or work in a company, and it’s really easy in that kind of aspect for people to work. But we have had some cases, and most of the time you take like, I don’t know, six months or a year to start understanding the culture—that they don’t have to look for validation from, I don’t know, the boss. And but at the end I think they understand the idea and the culture.

And it’s interesting how people can change their behavior when you change the context, right? And this is one of the best ideas that we can see here. Sometimes people tend to behave that way because of the context, not because they are that way. So if you change the context, they are going to behave in a different way, and it’s really powerful.

Lisa: I’ve heard that before, that if you get people who haven’t had experience of a traditional—they haven’t been corrupted by a traditional top-down organization, it’s in some ways easier for them to integrate and they don’t have so much to unlearn.

Jorge: Yeah, yeah, right. Right now we are working with companies to help them to work in a similar way like us. So we are working on that right now and trying to see what happens and to validate if they can change or how much they can change and how much they don’t. So it’s a really interesting experiment for me to see how this goes. So I will tell you in the future.

Lisa: Right. So you’re trying to kind of teach this way of working that you’ve developed to other companies?

Jorge: Yeah, yeah. What has happened is that there is a lot of people interested in our way, and we were creating a community here in South America and Argentina, and some companies start to say “Hey, I want to do that. I want to do the same as you. I’m interested in that.” So we were thinking that maybe we should start doing some kind of work to help others have a healthy environment and healthy work and a healthy job. And in order to do that, I think that this is aligning to our purpose too. So I think we have like a year working on that and it’s really soon yet, but it’s interesting to help others to have a better environment at work.

Lisa: I’m curious to know, like what have you as a co-founder learned in terms of being a leader in a company with no bosses? What have you found challenging? What have you found surprising?

Jorge: Well, it’s an interesting question. Well, what I think is—I can’t imagine working in a company or leading a company or leading a team in another way than what has happened right now. I really believe in the power of the crowd or the wisdom of the crowd, and I think I really believe in that. And sometimes I think that I can’t do this alone. I need to validate my ideas and to validate with others and to have a better approach or a complementary view of the problem. So as a leader, I think that it’s really important to be a great leader to have the opinions and the involvement of others. So I think that this is one of the things that I learned over the time. I was intellectually sure of that, but seeing that in practice is really nice and it’s really comfortable.

I think this is one of the ideas that I have. And the other thing is that sometimes it could be like really hard because you have to—when you start thinking that way and thinking in a flat structure, I really have to—we—I have to propose everything that I have in my mind. I can do nothing because I’m the co-founder, right? So I have to think about how to present things, how to propose things, and everything that I want to do I have to propose it. And I think it’s interesting because it forces me to think about the things that I want to do and how to convince people that this is a nice idea. And I have to be humble enough to understand that maybe I’m wrong. And I think that this kind of approach made me stronger. So I think that is interesting, but it’s not easy. It’s not easy because you have to deal with yourself, right?

Lisa: Yeah, I guess it can be kind of confronting sometimes, realizing “Wow, before I would have just leaned on the fact that I’m the co-founder and we’re doing this because I say so.”

Jorge: Yeah, yeah. So I think this is one of the learning points that I have, and it’s really interesting when I tell to other co-founders from other companies that they are like hierarchical, and they don’t understand how you can go and say “Do something”—they don’t understand how you can do that. And they can’t see how to do it in another way. So it’s very interesting.

Lisa: I’m wondering, like, do you have any sense of—I know that you’re trying to gather other companies in South America that are organized in a similar way, and I know you’ve found a few but you’re hoping to find more. Do you think this way of working comes naturally or easily in terms of like, you know, the culture in Argentina, for example?

Jorge: Well, I think that it’s going to be the way of work in the future. So I think it’s going to be natural in the future, in the near future, or right now in some industries and some companies. And definitely I think it’s going to be not more natural than today, because it’s more aligned with the way of new generations are going to see life, to see how to move in the world. So I definitely think it’s going to be a natural way of working.

And in terms of Argentina and South America, yeah, we are trying to create community here. We have, I don’t know if a lot of companies, but a lot of interesting people or people that are interested in this kind of companies. And I think that we are working on creating this kind of culture here and this kind of organizations in the companies here, at least in the IT industry, which is the industry that we’re part of. And yeah, we have a lot of companies in Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico.

Well, I was talking with Matt Perez—you introduced me to Matt Perez—and we were talking a lot, and I think the more important thing to solve here is to visualize that we exist and there are companies in South America that are working that way, because we have a lot of bibliography and books and articles that come from the US and Europe, and sometimes you tend to think that this is only happening in the US, this only happened in Europe, and we have a lot of examples here in South America. And we need, for the companies, for other companies and for people to know that they exist in order to inspire them. So this is one of the drivers for the community.

And the second one is to generate content or create content, because what happens when we create the company was that we didn’t get or we didn’t find books or other ways to manage a company but the traditional way. So it’s really—sometimes you see or you can feel that this is not the proper way to do that, but you can’t find another way, so you go to the classical.

So if you start to see that there are a lot of other ways to do this—sociocracy, holacracy, whatever—and we start creating content. Right now we have a lot of books, but if you go to school or to university, it’s really hard that you see this kind of content, right? So I think that we have to push more on that, and we are doing this in Argentina and in South America. So I hope it’s going well.

Lisa: Yeah, that’s why I’m so happy that you reached out to me because I’m also always looking for stories that are beyond, you know, the usual that we hear from the US and Europe. And so I’m really happy that you’re taking that on as your mission to share stories and to spread the word and to teach people, you know, what you’re learning so that they can be inspired and try things too.

Jorge: Yeah, sure.

Lisa: I guess like on that note, what kinds of things are you sharing with these people who come to you interested in experimenting with this way of working? Like, what to you are the essential pieces? Like, if you’re not comfortable with this, then don’t bother.

Jorge: You mean like, what do I think is necessary to work this way?

Lisa: Yeah, like what are the—for example, you said that a lot of co-founders you speak to are kind of shocked by the idea of like, “Well, you know, what do you mean you can’t just tell them what to do?” So what—if someone comes to you and says “I’m interested in this way of working” and you say, “Okay, then you need to do this thing,” and they say, “Oh, I don’t know if I want to do that,” and then you think “This is not going to work.” What are the deal breakers, the things that you need to do? Otherwise this way of working is not gonna last.

Jorge: Well, I think sometimes when they come to us and they start talking about resources and people as resources, I say, “Yeah, this is not the way.” But I think that the most important thing is that you have to trust in people, and you have to trust in your co-workers or employees. I think this is one of the main aspects of this transformation. You have to think that people are not dumb and you don’t have to control them and to tell them what to do. You have to treat them like adults.

So I think one of the basic aspects of this is that you have to trust people. You have to have faith in people, and not in a romantic way, but in a way that they know something—they know things that you don’t know, and you have to understand your position. And not because you are a boss or you have money or you have whatever, you are in a position of knowing everything and knowing what the other have to do. And I think that you have to trust and be humble in that aspect.

So I think that this is one of the basic aspects that you have to solve in order to start thinking, “Well, how can we transform that?” Because trust, I think, is the basis for every other transformation in this matter. So actually, we say in 10Pines that we are based on trust, and every policy and everything is built from that.

For example, one time we had a really big discussion about the insurance, the medical insurance that we have to hire, because sometimes it was good for, I don’t know, for all the people, and other insurance was good for younger people or for people that had kids. And we couldn’t find one insurance for everyone. And the solution was to let everyone choose their own insurance, and we leave the decision for the people to choose. So you can trust that they are going to choose the best suitable medical insurance for them and they are not going to abuse that decision. And it was the best decision because people start to save money and to be really critical on what medical insurance to hire.

So when you invert the control to the people and you give the responsibility to them, I think it’s the best scenario. So I think that this is one of the basic and powerful ideas.

Lisa: I really like that, and it’s so simple, and it takes such a weight off. You know, in a traditional company, you’d have some person in HR, I guess, trying to administrate that, spending hours trying to find, you know, the policy, and then getting all these complaints and requests and stuff. And if you decentralize it and you have this like your principle of trust, it’s so much easier for everyone.

Jorge: Well, actually we don’t have like a staff—the support staff members. We don’t have HR people, we don’t have financial people, we don’t have, I don’t know, sellers. We don’t have all of that. We do that by ourselves. And I think it’s one of the great decisions that we made in the beginning, because everyone understands and everyone has the responsibility to take care of the human resources. And I think if you are going to work in a company, you have to take care of that. You can make decisions not thinking in several aspects of the decision.

So I think it’s healthy to not have this kind of support roles. I know it’s like a controversial statement, but in this kind of company where, I don’t know, we’re like 80, 85, 100 people, I think it’s possible to do it that way, or at least think or be critical on that.

Lisa: I like the idea of distributing those responsibilities. I remember now also that you—that it’s also possible for people in addition to their kind of day job, you know, their normal role, that people can also choose to be coaches and coach other colleagues. How does that work?

Jorge: Well, since we are like Pines—because of 10Pines, everyone is a pine—we have like a gardener. We call it the gardener, and it’s a person that is like a coach for you, a person that helps you to get feedback from your teammates and help you with your future and how to evolve in the company, and helps you in terms of how to see the culture and how to understand the culture, what can you do or what you should do. And it’s like a personal coach.

And as soon as you get in the company, you choose your gardener, and it’s going to help you in different aspects of the company. It is a really big or mainly important aspect in terms of the salaries, because we don’t have like a policy that your boss has to choose you for a raise in salary, because we don’t have bosses. But instead of that, we invert the control again, and you have to propose if you are ready for a raise in salary. And in order to do that, you have to talk and discuss with your gardener. And what he or she is going to do is to ask you questions so you can see and understand if you are ready for the raise. So if you think you are ready, you have to propose it, and that’s it.

So it’s a main aspect to be a gardener in this, because it’s like your personal coach that is helping you. And this is a really big challenge for everyone because everyone potentially can be a gardener, and it’s a challenge for us to train and to give the tools to the gardeners to understand their role and what they can do and what they have to do. So one of the big challenges right now is to find tools and to give them tools to get a better job in terms of gardening.

Lisa: Can you share one or two examples of the kinds of tools or training that you’re giving to gardeners?

Jorge: Well, right now we are doing like solving conflict training, giving feedback, non-violent conversation. I think these are some of the biggest trainings that we are doing right now. We are also working a lot in the onboarding process so they can understand what to expect from a gardener. I think this is one of the biggest challenges we are working on right now.

Lisa: What are some of the other big challenges or big questions that you’re asking at the moment, you know, particularly as you continue to grow? What are some things where you’re thinking, “Okay, that’s something we need to develop or explore”?

Jorge: Well, one of the typical problems that these flat organizations have is how people grow in a flat organization, right? Because you can’t grow in terms of hierarchy. Sometimes it’s like—most of the people understand growing in terms of scaling positions in a hierarchy. So one of the challenges to work around that and how to deal with that—and I’m starting to think to move to a purpose-driven company where you try to help the people to find their purpose and to achieve that purpose, and help them in the company to get that purpose.

And sometimes it’s going to be to grow—whatever that means—and sometimes it will be to, I don’t know, to be a great developer and a great father or a mother, and sometimes it would be to, I don’t know, make a social impact somewhere. But I think that we have to understand is that not everybody wants to grow in terms of hierarchically, and it’s okay. And we have to find a way to make them happy at work, right?

So maybe happy is—it sounds like too hippy, I don’t know, but I think that instead of talking about happiness, I like to talk about purpose and to find their purpose and to achieve that purpose. And I think this is the way that people are going to stay in the company and feel part of that.

Lisa: What is your hope for 10Pines in the future?

Jorge: One of my hopes or ambitions is—it’s not the best word right now because of the pandemic crisis—but to spread the virus of the flat structure and the self-management team. I think we are doing this with a lot of companies. We have a lot of companies that are creating right now and they say, “I want to work that way.” So I think that this is really nice to inspire others to do the same.

Sometimes we think that it is not necessary for us to grow, but to have a lot of companies that copy our model. And I prefer that instead of growing. And I think that if we start—if we have more companies working that way, more in a more human way, and in a more human approach, I think the world is going to be better because they are going to have a more complete vision. They are going to perform better. So if we can achieve that—more companies working that way—it’s going to be great. So this is one of my hopes—that more companies copy that kind of model.

And the other, I think, is—my hope is that we can find ways for people in the company to multiply this model, and if they want to create another company and to make a spin-off, they can do it. This is one of the ideas that we are working on and trying to figure out. We don’t know how to do it, but we are trying to figure it out because we want to go to an organic way of growing instead of getting bigger and bigger and bigger with people, but to try to do like an ecosystem or network kind of growing. I think this is an interesting way of growing or expanding. So I think this is one of my hopes.

Lisa: I really like that vision. So in starting to wrap up our conversation, I guess I’m thinking about, you know, it’s a strange time. We’re in the midst of this pandemic. I’m wondering if you could share some final thoughts with listeners that might offer some ray of hope in terms of, you know, how this way of working has served you and your colleagues in this time of crisis, or what people can take with them.

Jorge: Well, I was thinking about that. Well, one thing is I think that this kind of crisis is forcing us to collaborate, and I think that this is an interesting idea because right now you depend on others. You really depend on others to stay healthy and to stay safe. And this is interesting because you have to trust—you have to trust that the other one don’t go around, don’t go away, and they keep at home. And you have to collaborate with others or with other people to make groceries, and I think you have to share your new discoveries on the vaccine.

And I think that this is a really good example of how collaboration works better than competing, because in order to make the world go back to normality, we need everyone to collaborate. And if we don’t go that way, it is really hard to go away with this virus. So I think one of the learning points here is that collaboration really is a game where you perform better.

And the other thing is, sometimes when we talk about this kind of ideas and this kind of crazy policies and all that stuff, people tend to think that this is overwhelming or to think “This is really impossible for me” or “My job—we can’t do that, it’s impossible.” And the message here is that you have to start with little things, with small things, with a small experiment, learn, try again, and so on. And I think this is the magic of evolving, right? You have to at least try to do something small enough and then continue.

And I really like a quote from an Uruguayan writer, that is Eduardo Galeano, that says “Many small people in small places doing small things can change the world.” And I think that this is the idea—doing small changes. If we all do small changes, we are going to change the world. And this is the thought that I want to share, that you don’t have to do big things. If you do small things, you are going to change the world. So that’s it.

Lisa: Thank you, Jorge.