Frederic Laloux with an invitation to reclaim integrity and aliveness

Lisa: Great, so Frederic, thank you so much for agreeing to have this conversation with me for the podcast. I’m so excited to have this conversation. It feels like a bit of a dream come true, so thank you.

Frederic: Yeah, I’m looking forward to it. I listened to quite a few of your episodes, so I’m excited to be on the show this time.

Lisa: Yeah, well, so many guests on the podcast have talked about you and have been inspired by you, so I think this is a really exciting and important conversation to have. And I guess on that note, it’s been really interesting for us to think about what we might want to talk about, and we’ve been having these emails back and forth and trying to figure out what feels important now in 2020 for us to talk about. Because I was reflecting earlier about the fact that your book “Reinventing Organizations” came out in 2014, and six years later, somehow for me at least, the world feels like it’s changed a lot. And I feel like this movement, kind of new ways of working movement I guess you could call it, feels like that’s evolving, maturing, and I feel like I’ve changed a lot since I first read the book. And I’m asking different questions now myself compared to what I was asking then.

So I think let’s start with this question that we arrived at in our email exchange, which is sort of thinking about these three ideas that you wrote about in your book of self-management and wholeness and purpose, and wondering whether these intentions are going to help us have the hard, difficult conversations that we perhaps need to have about the fact that we are participating in contributing to an increasingly destructive and I think you even use the word suicidal economy. Big question - what comes up for you hearing that question again? Where are you with that question?

Frederic: Yeah, it’s a question that is very present for me, has been now for the last two or three years. I feel more and more drawn to having really difficult conversations and not staying in a comfort zone. Like, you know, these ideas were pretty radical six years ago, and they’re slowly, you know, at least in a certain circle, they’ve now become totally acceptable, and they’re like slowly seeping into the mainstream. And so I guess I’ve been pushing my own thinking and just in my own life just facing the fact that so much of what we do is deeply destructive, that the very basis of our economic system is an extractive system that does just irreparable damage to the planet.

One way that I’ve framed it at the beginning of the coronavirus crisis was that the virus seems to kill one percent of the humans that it infects, right? Somewhere around one percent is what the experts seem to say. And I’ve come to realize that we human beings kill one percent - not only of the things that we touch, but really of every living thing on the planet every year. Right? On average, you know, apparently we’ve killed 70 percent of all the insects in the last 30 years. So that’s more like two percent. Right? But we’ve killed 30 percent of all the birds in the last 30 years. It’s like one percent. We’ve killed 60 percent of all the large mammals, of all the mammals in the last 50 years. That’s one percent. We’ve killed more than 90 percent of all the large fish in the ocean. That’s more than one percent. So we, you know, depending on the things - and you could add corals and mangroves and forests and everything we touch - we keep killing one percent year after year. Right?

And this is just a truth that we’re not willing to face. And I think that what’s been important for me in my own life has been, you know, my children, who are growing up - they’re now seven and ten. In the last few years, they’ve just kept asking me questions that made me incredibly uncomfortable, and I just realized how I had accepted a number of things as “that’s just the way things are.”

And it goes from really sort of seemingly benign things to very deep things, but just a trip to the supermarket with them, you know, was a revelatory experience, right? When my son asked me, “Dad, why does the Wegmans family” - because the supermarkets where I live, you know, belong, it’s called Wegmans, it belongs to Wegmans family - “like, why do they put candy at all the cashiers, you know, when they know that that will create fights in all of the families?” And I was like, “Yeah, why do they do that?” You know, they’re rich beyond… why do they do that?

“Dad, why is everything wrapped in plastic, you know, if plastic will take thousands of years to decompose and it’s creating like microplastic pollution everywhere?” Yeah, but you know, how do you answer these questions? And it’s just made me realize - I think this is sort of wholeness on steroids - that we are all dealing with forms of cognitive dissonance simply to be able to function in this world and to function in the kind of organizations that we live in, where we have often learned not to see things that are deeply hurting our integrity because we don’t know what to do with these questions.

So our companies participate in plastic everywhere, right? Or depending on just what is important to you - we know the company might be engaging, like almost all companies, in minimizing the taxes that they pay, you’re paying zero taxes. Are you… are we okay with that? We’ve come to accept it, but are we okay with that deep down?

And I remember a conversation I had with a group of CEOs in Brazil, and we’re having these conversations, and I was asking them like, “Where are you participating in a system where you’re actually out of integrity?” And it’s so interesting because one of them was honest enough to say, “Frederic, I don’t even know what you’re talking about. I don’t understand your question.” Right?

And I just gave them examples like, I knew that he was the CEO of a fashion brand, and I had seen some of their advertising, and it was horribly objectifying. It was basically this semi-naked woman lying down with like six or seven sinister-looking men looking over her. And I was telling him - I just, you know, feel the same emotion coming up now that when I was telling him - I have, you know, a six-year-old daughter, and she has one in four chances of being sexually abused in a lifetime, and your advertising is participating in this. And I know that’s the norm of the industry. I know you’re not doing worse than anybody else. But deep down, are you okay with that? Right?

Another person was doing dairy products, and if you know about the reality of dairy products, it’s, you know, it’s animal suffering in a plastic container. Right? And so there’s all these really hard questions. And, you know, by the time we spoke about that, there was like this deep silence, and suddenly like they could all see examples of where they were out of integrity. And, you know, they paired up and had a conversation, and it was extraordinary for them to reflect on all of the things.

And I’m not meaning to be prescriptive. I’m just asking everybody like, are there things that you are participating in? And there’s no shame or blame in that. That’s the reality of our economic system. We haven’t chosen it. We haven’t designed it. But I think that if we want to be real on wholeness and if we want to be real around serving a real evolutionary purpose, let’s look at these things. Let’s have the courage to look at them.

And I believe that while at first it might be, you know, it might be hard conversations to have, I think they’re hugely liberating. I think there is a real cost that comes with us pushing these questions away all the time. Right? This cognitive dissonance of leaders and organizations whose children are marching in Fridays for Future, but they are continuing in the stuff that they do.

And, you know, more and more I see this now where with their children, the friends of their children will look at, you know, these leaders and say like, “I don’t understand.” Like, you know, can we have open and honest conversations about this?

And I think that the flip side of that conversation is a real right to live a life of integrity. And I think there’s an aliveness that comes when we finally dare to speak these things and not numb ourselves constantly, not push them or push them away. And I certainly seen leaders who had the courage to be honest with themselves, and I’ve really seen that in action. Like there’s an aliveness that comes, there’s something liberating about naming these things and saying like, “I don’t know what the answer is, but this feels important to me.”

Lisa: It’s really powerful, that story you tell. And I was thinking about - I don’t know if you’ve read the book “Willful Blindness” by Margaret Heffernan? I read that a few years ago, and that kind of shocked me. She kind of shares all of these different reasons why we’re so willfully blind a lot of the time, and she gives examples of, you know, the oil spills and even like the Holocaust and how, because of the way our brains are wired, certain things help to keep us in that cognitive dissonance. And power structures and hierarchies is one of the things that keeps that in place clearly.

Yeah, so even like, there’s an example of nurses in an experiment who were given instructions over the phone from a senior doctor that they haven’t met to deliver a lethal dose of an injection to a patient. And a large percentage of them do it. And afterwards, when they’re questioned about it, they don’t even… it’s only afterwards that they realize, “Yeah, why did I do that? I’m trained. I should have known.” But we don’t question because of the power structures.

So yeah, it’s interesting because I almost take self-management for a given now. And so I’m really curious, like, even absent any power structure that makes us fearful, you know, how could we engage with these questions? And to me, these are really juicy questions. And I believe that beyond the power structure is some of the things that hold us back. One is the sense that we need to have an answer.

And, you know, when I engage, these 15 CEOs, one of the first thing was like, “It’s okay not to have an answer.” By definition, these are big questions that are deeply woven into the fabric of our economic system. And so of course we’re not going to have any obvious answer. Right? But we’re so trained, certainly as leaders, right, in sort of traditional paradigm, that if you’re a leader, you should have all the answers. Otherwise, you know, why are you a leader? Right? You’re an imposter.

And one of the most beautiful examples for me, the most inspiring examples for me, is the story of Ray Anderson from Interface. Interface, you know, for those who don’t know, is this carpet manufacturer. They were started by this guy, Ray Anderson, just when people were inventing, you know, these little square carpets that you just, you know, lay one next to the other, and then you create, you know, your office carpets. And he was, Ray was a tremendous entrepreneur, and he created Interface that is now the world’s largest carpet manufacturing. And very traditional businessman.

And one day in the middle of the 1990s, the clients asked them about their environmental record, and they had no idea. So he asked a few people to look into it. And when they came back with what they found, it absolutely shocked him. We realized that he was taking - I don’t remember the exact numbers - with like 1.9, you know, million or billion, whatever it was, kilos of raw material from the earth, basically mostly, you know, petrol, that he was turning into billions of kilometers of nylon yarn that would end up, you know, becoming these carpets that people would use for a few years and that would end up on the landfill.

And what I so love about him is that he said like, “I should be in jail. Like, I’m celebrated as a hero, this entrepreneur, but I’m actually plundering the earth.” He was using very simple but very real, harsh words. But it was okay because now that I know, we’re gonna change this. And he started engaging his management team. And the first management team was pretty uncomfortable, and they were making jokes and like, you know, “What are we gonna do? Are we gonna raise sheep now?”

And what I love is that he said, “I have no answer, but I know that this is not what I want to do.” And he set extraordinary ambitious goals, like he said, “The only business that I feel that is worth pursuing is one that doesn’t take anything from the earth that is not quickly renewed by the earth itself. And I don’t want to do anything that harms the biosphere.”

It’s a pretty crazy goal when you’re a carpet manufacturer. And it took them a little more than 20 years, but they’re about to get there. And they did, you know, one after the other, they stumbled upon solution after solution. Right?

The first one, one of the first things they did is they say, “Hey, we’re gonna try not to sell the carpets to our clients but to basically rent it so we still own it. And at the end of its life cycle, that way we’re sure that, you know, we get it back.” And then they invented a way to take the nylon threads, you know, off the backing and, you know, recycle both.

And then, you know, all the plants have solar arrays and so they’re not using any fossil fuels in the process of manufacturing this. And I mean, it’s been an extraordinary journey. And they’re, and they’re almost there now, 25 years later.

And so what I find so beautiful about him is that he could have buried that question like pretty much everybody else because “What am I to do? Like, this is too big. I have no answer.” And it was sort of a joyful adventure like, “I don’t have the answers. Let’s, let’s find out.”

And so I think that’s a critical element - is to stay with whatever question we have. Okay, so I’m a fashion brand and for some reason doing these incredibly sexist ads sells, and I might lose 10 or 20 percent of my revenue if I don’t do them. What do I do? I don’t know. Or maybe it’s something else that is shocking you. You know, maybe it’s the income inequality, like a CEO, you know, makes 20 or maybe 300 times the salary of the lowest-paid person. Am I okay with that? I’m not, no longer okay with it, but that’s our system. I don’t know what the answer is, but can we stay with that question long enough until we stumble on the answers? And I think that is a key component.

Lisa: Yeah, and I’m curious, what is your sense of what’s needed in order for us to be able to sit with that question? Because I agree with you, power structures is only one piece of it. But I think even in self-managing organizations, sometimes I think about like, it seems almost like we need guardrails. Like, you know, when you go bowling with your kids and they have those little things you can put down their gutters so you can guide the bowl. That, you know, things like non-violent communication and practices like this that help us to kind of grow in the direction that we want to be together because it seems like our brains are wired for shortcuts or habits that we’ve been conditioned into.

So I’ve been thinking about, you know, what does it take to awaken people to the possibility of sitting with these questions and for that to feel safe? And I’m so curious about that. And it’s quite striking to me that you were able to have an audience of these CEOs and ask this question. And you have a particular way of being, I think, which is not judgmental or sort of threatening but a fellow human being, you know, vulnerable traveler in this journey together with people. And that helps, I think. But yeah, what will help us to sit with these questions, do you think?

Frederic: I think you said it. I think we need to create spaces that are safe enough and that are spacious enough for us to explore these questions. And I think we need to be vulnerable enough, but it’s leading by example and sharing some of the things that struck us in our lives. Like, there’s so many things that I participate in that I’m not okay with. And I’m just trying to be really gentle and compassionate with myself of like, there’s only so much I can do at a time. And there’s some things I keep participating in because I simply don’t have the bandwidth to examine that particular thing and to extricate myself from it. But I still want to be honest with myself. I think there’s a juiciness in that honesty.

So I think that is a big part. I think that the part of no blame, no shame is super important, of saying, you know, we’ve inherited these systems. You know, I’m disgusted by my trash. I really am. Now I’ve come to the stage, you know, I haven’t had the time or bandwidth to go into the zero waste kind of lifestyle that, you know, you might know about or other people might know about. And it’s been two years I’ve been disgusted by this now, and I’ve just been - other things that I’ve been working on in my life, and I’m just being okay and compassionate with that. Like, you know, that’s, and maybe in six months or a year, I’ll be ready for this.

And so I think leading with examples and sharing where the stuff that we are struggling with. Right? I remember when the book came out and it became so successful, and people offered me speaking fees that were for 15, 20 minutes, where more than probably half the population makes in Belgium. How F’d up is that? Right? And should I accept it? Should I not accept it? Am I participating in a system that’s usually extracted, that pays way too many people way too little, that extracts all of that wealth to the top, and then I as a speaker, I come sort of as a parasite and take some of that, you know? Am I okay with that or not? Like, I’ve been struggling with this. Right?

And I’ve accepted one or two of these paying gigs simply to see like, how do I feel about this? Do I feel terrible about this? And I think it’s this thing of being honest and engaging around some of these, some of these questions and being okay that we don’t have the answer.

I think it’s, for me at least, it’s super important to not sit with these questions but to talk with somebody about them. You know, if it’s just my wife, or if it’s a friend, or some colleagues, but there’s something that’s just usually liberating around talking about this and then realizing like, we’re all sitting with these questions. Of course we are. Like, if we’re not, it means that we’re still sort of repressing them.

Lisa: Yeah, definitely. And I think that for me, like a question that I’ve been bringing up with peers and colleagues and that feels uncomfortable for me and kind of came to mind when you were talking about the speaking fee discomfort, is about privilege. And just the other day, actually, I was having a conversation with some friends of my parents, and I was talking about this podcast I’d listened to about the value of having some kind of retreat space or some kind of initiation ritual. You know, we used to do this in more sort of ancient cultures, and we’ve sort of lost it in a sense, but something where you take yourself away from the world and you reflect and you go through some kind of transition, and then you come back.

And this friend of my parents was saying, “Well, that’s all well and good for you to say that, you know. You can take yourself off to a yoga retreat or whatever. But you know, what about people who can’t afford to do that or can’t take the time off? Or, you know, that’s just not even a consideration. That’s just, you know, reserved for people with complete privilege.” And it was really kind of confronting.

And I think about that often, that, you know, I deliver workshops or talks or trainings to predominantly white middle-class audiences. And sometimes I wonder, you know, is this making a difference? Is this impactful, this work, or are we all kind of kidding ourselves here and sitting around patting ourselves on the back? And, you know, so I sometimes think about these things. And I don’t - yeah, like you said, I don’t know what the answer is. And I also try not to beat myself up about it, but I try to stay with the question as well at the same time and not shy away from that too much.

Frederic: Yeah, I mean, there’s this beautiful Rilke quote, right, that talks about staying with a question, about sitting with a question long enough, you know, until the answer emerges, until you live yourself into an answer. And I think that’s the best way we can do it. I mean, we are in a system that is so much larger than ourselves. But how juicy is it to ask these questions? And so I don’t know how you react when that person told you this, but I generally get really excited, like, “Now I see something that I didn’t see before!” Right? And so what people see as uncomfortable questions, I think they’re really, really juicy questions.

One other thing that was so interesting that came up with these CEOs once they had named these things was that they felt incredibly powerless around them. And it was an incredibly uncomfortable feeling. So these were pretty traditional organizations, not self-managing organizations. These are very, you know, some of the most powerful CEOs in Brazil. And they realized that they were powerful within a very limited domain of sort of acceptable decisions. But all the questions they were asking were questions that, if they act decisively upon them, would feel really risky to them. The system might eject them quite quickly.

And so it was really interesting because we realized that they see themselves as being very powerful, and their identity is attached to being very powerful. And they suddenly realize like, “Actually, we’re very powerful on stuff that doesn’t really matter. And on the stuff that really matters to my integrity, I feel really powerless.” And that was a really hard feeling for them.

And again, can we just sit with that? Can we be okay with that and not make it go away and be in that conversation? And it brought up a fascinating conversation where I asked them about their Plan B. And I’ve since had this conversation with quite a few people and leaders when we talk about stuff that really matters, but they don’t have an answer for.

And I think it’s such an important conversation, such a liberating conversation. I asked him, “So let’s imagine you are really passionate about changing this thing where you feel out of integrity, and you’re taking real risks. Right? And the risks might pay off, and it might not pay off. You know, maybe the system will actually eject you. Maybe the system, you know, you’re ahead of your time, the system can’t deal with what you’re doing. Maybe it will hurt your bottom line. It will hurt your top line. What is your Plan B? What else would you do in your life that would be equally interesting and fulfilling?”

And the interesting thing is that none of the 15 had had a good Plan B, had a real Plan B in their life. They just hadn’t thought about it. Right? But what it could be like, maybe there’s another organization that would be actually more fun to work for, or maybe, you know, you’ll start something up with your sister or your brother-in-law, or maybe some of them have enough money anyway. Right?

And what we realized is that all of the fears were ego fears. Right? It was that they would be seen as a failure in their circles of CEOs. They wouldn’t be invited to whatever CEO retreats and think tanks. But there was, I mean, you know, we usually privileged people. Like, there was no real danger to their lives in any way. It was just an ego fear. But it’s a real fear. And I, you know, I wanted to honor that.

And what we realized is if, if you don’t have a Plan B, if I don’t have a Plan B, I am by definition powerless. By definition, I will not take big risks. I will play it safe. But if I have a Plan B, suddenly I become powerful. Right? Suddenly I’m, I’m free. I’m free to do something I’m really excited about.

And I think that the fears that we have actually never come to pass. And I have a good friend in France, Nicolas Noh, was a young leader of a fashion brand. And he did amazing things, like he pushed them towards self-management, huge push for wholeness, very deep listening. I mean, and EBIT just, you know, I mean, went through the roof in like an industry that’s pretty shattered. Like they were doing extraordinarily well, like the employees were incredibly happy. There was, you know, they were talking about the hard stuff around how destructive this industry is. And they were equally eco-designing their products. And I mean, it was, you know, it’s amazing.

But he went so far that the board got cold feet, even though the results were spectacular. And they basically, I lost to them and asked him to leave. But the fascinating thing is, what happened then was that he got 1,500 messages from his employees, from spouses, from children of his employees, that thanked him, that, like, I mean, just the most beautiful messages you could imagine. And like before the end of the week, you know, he had four job offers that were amazing, and he could just, he could pick. And like his next stage is actually more aligned with what he really wants to do. Right?

And so I think that our fears, you know, actually never come to pass. Like if we really act on these things that are important, we create such a chamber of resonance with so many other people that even if the system ejects us, it most likely will eject us to something better. Right? But yeah, you know, while we’re, while we’re dealing with those fears, you know, that seems like a distant prospect. Right? But I think this question of what is your Plan B is an important question, even though you might never need your Plan B because something even better comes up.

Lisa: Yeah, it makes me think about how powerful choice is, that when we act out of habit or default - and usually we don’t know that we’re doing that, but it’s only when we have a new awareness of something that, you know, that there are choices, then we’re more powerful in relation to everything, really.

Frederic: Plus it makes our purpose so much bigger and so much more interesting. Right? Like, so many organizations, let’s be honest, don’t have a super exciting purpose. Right? Like you’re making this car component. You know, yeah, you’re ultimately - your product helps mobility and helps people to see their friends and families and loved ones or go to work. So, you know, it’s a good purpose, certainly if it’s hopefully a non-polluting car. It’s an electric car, and it’s a car that can be recycled at the end of the life. But ultimately, yeah, you’re making this one component. Right? How exciting is that?

But if there is a quest, like the quest from, you know, that Ray Anderson had for the last 20 years of his life, like that transformed his life. His life became so much more interesting, like he met so many more interesting people through that. Right? Let’s imagine that your thing is like income inequality. Like, I, you know, the fact that we outsource work and that some people have to work two jobs, three jobs to make ends meet. Right? While I can take a yoga retreat. Like, I don’t know how to solve that, but like, wow, like this is - this is juicy! Right? This is interesting.

Lisa: Do you think - I remember one of the first people I met that where we really shared a passion having just read your book - a friend of mine, Dunia, who I just had on the podcast actually, because she’s now working with K2K and their transformations. And so she’s really excited. But she had this great frustration after reading your book that it seems like, you know, for this to really work, you need to wait for the top leader to become enlightened and to be open to these ideas. And she was really frustrated by that and felt like, “If we wait for that to happen, I know it’s going to take forever.”

Frederic: People tell me this a lot. Yeah.

Lisa: Yeah. And, you know, again, thinking about that group of CEOs, like presumably, you know, they hadn’t invited you there, or there was, you know, a willingness to have an audience with you because of some, you know, something in your book that felt okay for them. But yeah, there’s so many people who are, yeah, don’t perhaps don’t even dare go there, you know. And I wonder, yeah, what you’ve - what do you say when people bring this question to you then?

Frederic: I mean, I think this question of the Plan B is relevant at every level of the organization. Right? So I’m a middle manager or somewhere - like, if I’m afraid that if I get fired, you know, it’s the end of my world, then by definition, you know, I won’t take many risks. Right? And some people, you know, already in a situation where they’re happy to have that one particular job that they have because they have no other options. And I understand that. But for a lot of people, and certainly a lot of people who are listening to this podcast, that is actually not true. Right? Lose this job, and you’ll find something else. Like, you won’t, you know, you won’t starve.

But the fear is in our - the fears in our head. And I can completely understand it. I mean, I remember working for a number of years as a consultant at McKinsey. And at the time, I had no Plan B. I didn’t know what else. I wasn’t really passionate about the corporate world. Like, I didn’t feel like I would run to work there. Like, I knew that consulting wasn’t really the ultimate thing I wanted to do with my life. But I had no idea what else. And so I felt really trapped. And it wasn’t until I figured out what else I wanted to in my life, that what else could be interesting or at least equally interesting, that suddenly I gained a lot of freedom.

And so I think this question is just very, very relevant because then suddenly you’re incredibly free. Now you can start to talk with colleagues about stuff that really matters to you. See, does it resonate with some colleagues? You might start doing things. And there’s some amazing examples. I mean, one of the companies I think is really interesting to watch right now among the like really big ones is Decathlon, you know, this sports good company. And so they have a top management that’s sympathetic to a lot of things, you know, with self-management. But there’s been, there’s been people like at the bottom and the middle of the pyramid have really been pushing the envelope without asking for permission. And I find that just hugely inspiring.

Like they’re, you know, my most inspiring story for me was this young woman, 23-year-old, sort of her first job, Lauretta. And she worked in one of these sports stores, you know, and she was at a customer service desk and getting a lot of the return products that, you know, people within, you know, seven or 14 days can return their products. And she realized how many of these products were directly thrown away. Right? Because it’s the sneaker, and you know, the white soul, there was just a little gray, you know, dog dash or, you know, mark that, you know, wouldn’t go away, or because the packaging wasn’t impeccable.

And she was so shocked by that. Like, “How can we throw away perfectly good products?” And she, in her own store, without asking, you know, for permission from hierarchy, you know, got people to agree to, you know, “Let’s have return items and just, you know, sell them at 20 percent discount.” And, you know, other people from other stores looked at this, and now it’s spreading. And she just had to sort of convince her store manager, but no one beyond that. And that was, that was it.

And so here’s this 23-year-old that was willing to say, you know, “I’m not okay with this. Like, I’m not continuing to work here if I’m throwing away stuff.” Right? Or another person, like a product designer, you see, who I thought was just amazing. Like, for her brands, like a trekking brand of Decathlon, she just decided when the Paris Agreements came out, and she just said, “Our brand is gonna do the Paris Agreement.” Like, Decathlon didn’t have a target. And “I’m not gonna wait for them. Like, just for my brand, I’m gonna like, you know, let’s reduce by 40 percent, you know, in so many years, you know, the CO2 play footprint of my thing.” Like, like, how bold is that to say like, you know, “I’m not gonna wait for my top management. You know, I’m just gonna set this target. And, you know, screw it if you don’t like it. Like, worst case, fire me.” Right? Like, I mean, you know, she played it a little bit more cleverly, but that was, that was ultimately it.

But I think degrees of freedom that we have are much, much larger than what we think.

Lisa: I think one of the things that gives me hope is sharing stories. I mean, it’s a big reason why I started the podcast. And I think why, why your book has resonated with people and, and your videos, these stories that you share. I think help, help to embolden people to realize, you know, those examples like, “I don’t have to wait for permission,” or, you know, “What am I prepared to risk in order to try something that feels more important or meaningful?”

Because I think sometimes I get a bit stuck in a rabbit hole of kind of adult development, like, you know, “Are we evolving as a species? Are we getting better? Or is there a critical mass coming of enough of us becoming, you know, more able to hold multiple perspectives?” And, you know, all of this kind of stuff. Or is human nature human nature? And have we always kind of fallen into this pattern? And is this, you know, are we seeing the beginning of the collapse of a civilization? Or, you know, so I can go a bit down that rabbit hole sometimes.

And sitting here now, perhaps I think maybe that doesn’t matter so much. And maybe it’s just - I mean, in strange ways, I’m really hopeful, among the very, very hard reality of, you know, how close we are from environmental and climate collapse. I feel that the soil is much more ready than we realize.

And, you know, I now live in the US, and, you know, we’ve had these major sort of awakening after the murder of George Floyd. And it was interesting. I mean, it had been other things had been filmed before and almost equally horrific. But suddenly something there was ready. And I feel that for a lot of these questions of, you know, we could put into a category of integrity around inequality, around the damage that we do to the planet. And I think the soil is - it’s much richer, much more ready than we think, and things could suddenly erupt.

Give you just a fun fact that for me just blew my mind. In France, you have this app, meditation app that you have in your iPhone or Android iPhone, called, you know, Bamboo. It’s a subscription-based app, and I think you pay something like five euros a month. And this app has five million subscribers. Five million subscribers! When you have in Europe, you know, the French-speaking population is something like 70 million. Five million subscribers, paid subscribers, for a meditation app out of 70 million! For this one meditation app, like next to all of the other, you know, hundreds of meditation modalities! Right? I mean, that - that just blew my mind! Right?

So I think there’s a lot more ground that has been prepared. There’s a lot more people who are getting to the end of tolerating this cognitive dissonance, and they’re just waiting for the social permission to start talking about it, just like we’ve had the social permission now around race in the United States. And as soon, I think, as we have something, a fuse, a little detonator, people are going to want to talk about this. And people are going to want to say like, “Yeah, I’ve never actually been really okay with this thing in my company, and I really want to participate in changing this.”

One of the things that I found was so inspiring in how this friend, Nicolas Noh, was going about, so their wholesale environmental reinvention, the way Decathlon is doing it, is that it’s not sort of a top-down sustainability program, but that they were just encouraging everyone in the organization to go and do an experiment. And so they’re really bold and really honest with, you know, “We’re part of the problem, and let’s just everybody do whatever you can and experiment and play and change.”

And suddenly there’s a vibrancy and empowerment of like, “Wow, these people are doing that, and we’re copying this. And this story is doing this. And, you know, we’ve - I’ve had this amazing eco-design training. Now I want everybody in the organization to have it.” And there’s just amazing things that start to happen.

I think a lot of it starts with truth-telling. And there are interesting things. I mean, a few months ago, I spoke with the CEO of the Home Care Division, sort of cleaning products of Unilever. And he is brutally honest about his business, you know, internally and externally. Like, he’s talking this way to investors. But internally, like, he’s saying, you know, the exact things like, he’s saying, “Like just our business with the Home Care product within Unilever, right. We have the same CO2 footprint as Hungary. We have the same water consumption as the UK, you know, every year. The plastic that we use is the weight of the Eiffel Tower.” Right? And he’s, you know, and that’s, I think, the level of honesty and truth-telling and then saying, “And this cannot continue, and we will invent our way out of this.” Right? And then throw that like red meat as a challenge to the organization, like, “Help us solve this because, you know, we at the top in traditional organizations can’t solve this.”

Lisa: Yeah, I think that’s the shift that’s so kind of exciting to me and, and liberating, I imagine, for, for leaders, as you say, to that you don’t have to have the answers to these questions. But actually, it’s - you’ll be so amazed and surprised if you’re really transparent with people. If you’re like, “Look, this is the deal. This is what’s going on. I have no idea what to do about this, but I don’t feel good about it.”

Frederic: I think so many - “I need your help!” Yeah, exactly. Right? People love you for that. Like, yeah. You know, as Nicolas experienced with 1,500, you know, messages when he left.

Lisa: Yeah. I’m wondering if you’d like to share something with people listening to the podcast about your, your latest passion project about The Week?

Frederic: Yeah, I mean, it’s a bit too early to talk in depth about it. But, but yeah, I, for some reason, I like hard conversations. And a year ago, some of last year, there was a Belgian couple that we didn’t know, but there were friends of friends who came to visit us. They had read a book around sort of the looming collapse, environmental, climate collapse. And they were so shocked by that book that they decided like, “Yeah, we want to change our lives. Like, you know, making money in Silicon Valley is no longer interesting to us.” And so they came to spend some time with us in our eco-village. And so, you know, fellow Belgians, you know, who are trying to fight, invent a bit of a different life.

And we had fascinated conversations. And I realized that they had courage that I hadn’t had yet, but there was still part of me that didn’t want to know. There was still part of me that was protecting myself from this reality, even though I live - I moved from Belgium to a freaking eco-village, you know, to live lightly on the Earth! Right?

And so I do all the good things that, you know, that you can do if you have a certain amount of privilege. Like, I recycle, and I compost, and most of my vegetables come from the farm here, and I drive an electric car and all these things. But, but still, like, every time there was a hard article that was coming by, I would read the headlines and maybe the first few lines and go like, you know, “I can’t, can’t deal with this. Like, too much.”

But they had, they had the courage to look. They had children our age, and they just wanted to know. And I was so impressed by their courage that my wife and I decided, “Okay, let’s do the same thing, and let’s see.” It’s almost sort of a spiritual experience and accept whatever emotional journey that comes with it.

And sure enough, you know, there was a lot of a lot of sadness, a lot of, you know, moments of despair, of real grief, of powerlessness. But the interesting thing is, you don’t, you know, you don’t get stuck there. And, and you come out of it. And at least we came out of it, and this is, story works, and so many people have been through this before, but actually much more clarity around what is important in your life.

It’s like, you know, when you have a loved one, a dear friend that is really sick, like suddenly a number of things become much more important. A lot of things become much less important. Like, you know, you stop, you know, your life is just actually much, feels much freer in some ways because it’s like all of this little that you used to worry and complain about, like, you know, now you’re focusing on, you know, what matters.

And that’s what it felt like for us. And there’s a sense of aliveness and of meaning that came with that for us. And we realized comes with a lot of, you know, for a lot of people who go through the same sort of emotional journey. And that’s where this idea for this project came up.

You know, for now we call it The Week. And it’s, it’s based in a lot of - in some readings I’ve done years ago, I talked about the fact that the way we tend to address crisis doesn’t work. Right? The typical model is “give people a fact that they will wake up, and they will act.” The trouble is, it doesn’t work. It’s never really worked. It hasn’t worked against smoking. It hasn’t worked against AIDS. It hasn’t worked against teen pregnancy. You know, it just doesn’t work. And yet that is the dominant model, right, that has been used in the climate movement forever. Right? That has been used by, you know, by Al Gore, that has been used by the IPCC, the red body that’s releasing these amazing reports.

And so I’ve been really interested in like, “So what works then?” And, you know, what is a better playbook? And looking at what works in past movements, like, you know, how did the suffragettes or the civil rights movements or the color revolutions, you know, get through fear and apathy? There - I mean, the fear was very real. Right? It’s like you go out in the streets, and, you know, you can be beaten up, and you can die. Right? Like, and yet they’ve managed to break through that fear and apathy. And their playbook was very different. It wasn’t “give people the fact that they would wake up and act.” And there’s a lot of recent, really interesting social science.

And so if you crook it all together, and you say like, “Okay, now let’s apply this to the climate change.” You know, that that’s sort of the, this grand project that that we’re trying to do. Will it work? I don’t know, but it feels like this is, this is worth a shot. And so I think this is gonna keep me busy for the next two or three years.

Lisa: Yeah, that’s really exciting. It’s, it kind of circles back in a way to what we started talking about at the top of the conversation about different kinds of dialogues and conversations and, and sitting with the discomfort and being okay with there not being an answer and trusting that some, some kind of clarity, something will come out, some aliveness, some purpose of integrity on the other side.

Frederic: Yeah, totally. How does this all resonate with you? I’m, I’m curious. Like, where is there, is there a place, room for this in your life right now for these kind of questions?

Lisa: Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think when, when we first started our email exchange and we were talking about what we could discuss on the podcast, you know, I shared with you that I felt immediately like this question about integrity. I started thinking about, and I think that the pandemic made that clear for me as well, like how much I was flying, for example. So immediately I felt this like, you know, this knot of guilt, like, “Oh, you know, how am I participating? Like, oh, I’ve been flying around the world a lot,” and, um, and all kinds of things. And so that’s, that definitely has resonated with me.

And also, I think it’s, you know, your point before about when, when my parents’ friend confronted me about that, I, like you, I get excited by that. So I do like to lean into difficult questions. And when something challenges my worldview, I get excited about that, like, “Oh, that feels uncomfortable, and that’s, that totally throws out the window that other thing that I was kind of holding on to quite dearly.”

So I think it definitely resonates. And I think I’m, I’m realizing that I’m more and more interested in the kinds of things that we’re talking about now, like what are the sort of human things that we need to do? Because I think I’m, I’ve been experiencing that, you know, just talking about self-management and implementing some kind of structure or some kind of process or some kind of framework, or, you know, that people can get stuck on an ambition like, “Hey, let’s go teal,” or whatever.

And that actually seems to me that what makes the difference between, you know, actually really shifting something is different kinds of conversations and, and sitting in this, you know, sitting in the fire.

Frederic: Yeah, I really, I know you watched them, so I think it’s probably the, the second of the video, video in my, you know, video series, “Insights from the Journey” was specifically that. Like, when people come to me and say like, “I want to turn my company into a teal organization.” And I go like, “No, you don’t want that.” Or at least like, I don’t get excited about this. Like, you know, who wants to become a concept? Right? Like, that’s not very exciting.

Yeah, but what is really exciting for me is to have that conversation around what is actually behind that yearning. Like, what is it that, that you’re no longer okay with? What is it that you’re really longing for and yearning for? And bringing that out into the light.

And often it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s a juicy but also a conversation that takes time. Like, often we’re not very clear about our motivations. Right? And then we say like, “Yeah, I just want, you know, people to self-manage.” Okay, that sounds like a noble goal, but why do you want that? Right? And then, and then really understanding.

And, you know, often it goes back to something very deep and very personal, often to, you know, sometimes their own childhood, or just like, you know, moments in their own life that have been pivotal points, stuff that they’ve experienced, moments where they felt powerless, that they’ve hated it, or they’ve seen their father and their mother being deeply unhappy at work or crushed by hierarchy, and just never want this to happen again. Or, you know, just some of these very personal motivations.

And then I go like, “Okay, now, you know, now we’re talking. You know, now we know.” And this is real energy. And so I, I couldn’t agree more with you. I mean, I am a bit of a systems geek, right? And I love to think about these systems, like, you know, how could these self-managing systems work? But, but ultimately, this is all just in service to some deep learning that we have or some clarity around like, “I will no longer do this. Like, I’m no longer okay doing this, this whole thing.”

So it’s, it’s, it’s a juicy conversation I’m having with leaders. It’s like, “What are you no longer okay with? And what are you really, what are you really yearning for?”

Lisa: Yeah, I think those are two rich questions. And I, I think I, I think at times I, I think I’m getting better at it. But, but when I first started on this journey, I, I was a bit - I think I could have been much more provocative and challenging with people about their motivations. And, and I think, and I’m realizing, you know, in terms of my integrity, that I’m no longer interested in working with people who, yeah, who are doing this for a superficial reason or are not really invested in, because I also know what it takes, that for it to, for it to actually happen and to be meaningful, and for people to really be touched by it, it’s hard. Like, that’s another thing that I hear constantly and have experienced myself, like it’s tough. And you’re asking people to, you know, go through what you, what you call in one of your videos, growth pain. Yeah, and for us to create spaces where that’s okay.

Frederic: Yeah, and I realized, like, I’m in this easy position because, because of the success of the book, like, the people who come talk to me allow me to go to places, you know, where they might otherwise say like, “Hey, shut up. Like, I didn’t allow you to ask me these deep questions.” But for some reason, they, they allow me to do it.

But I, I think that, that being said, I think these are really the real conversations we need to have with, we have with everyone. And I, I heard you say this, I listened to your podcast, you know, the 50’s episode, I enjoyed it. And, you know, you, we talked quite a bit about that, about, you know, how hard this journey is.

And I’m curious, like, I don’t know if you listen to this particular video, there’s one video where I talk about two ways of holding this journey. And one way is like, “Wow, this is, this is gonna be hard. This is like, you know, unprecedented. Like, you know, we’re going against 5,000 years of human conditioning in terms of self-management and real growth pains.” And another way to hold it is like, “This is going to be the adventure of a lifetime, and, and this is going to be fun. And deep down, we all want this.” Right?

And, and I was one day, I was really struck because you just mentioned, you know, K2K in the Basque country. So for people who don’t know, K2K in the Basque country is this, this group of people who’ve helped a few years ago with 60 companies, maybe probably might be, or 80 or 100 companies, you know, had to be smaller companies, 100 people on average, move to self-management. And they have an amazing track record of making that happen.

And the, the founding father, the leading figure is Koldo. You know, years ago, transformed a much larger company towards self-management, hugely successful. And it was just so interesting talking to him and then talking to his colleagues. And a lot of his colleagues were all saying like, “Yeah, this is incredibly hard. And you’re in the Basque country and in a culture like people aren’t ready for this and wrong, it’s a slog.” And then you, I talked to Koldo about the same thing, the same claims. And he says like, “No, this is fun. This is easy.” Right? And I like, “So what is it, hard or easy?” Right?

And I realized that a lot of it was in the eye of, you know, Koldo was just accepting that this was hard, and he was enjoying these conversations where people came and said like, “This is hard,” and, “Did growth pain?” Like, he would like, “Yeah, now we’re talking. Like, this is, this is cool. These are good conversations.” And, and some of his colleagues, I think, were holding it as like, “Ugh, now we need to lift these people up again, and like, you know, this is hard,” and they were sort of taking this, that weight on their own shoulders.

So, yeah, I’m curious. Does that resonate with you, or is Koldo, am I just, you know, completely, you know?

Lisa: No, I mean, yeah, it does resonate with me. And I, I think my colleagues and I, at tough, we call it like a productive or an unproductive mindset in relation to what you want.

And I, I think it’s also my experience that - I mean, I think about this amazing company in Sweden, Bjorn Linden and his publishing company. And he was this amazing character who is the way he is, not by design, not because he’s read any books about self-management or anything, but because he knows no other way to be. But why wouldn’t he involve people’s decisions and so on? And so to him, similarly to Koldo, it’s easy, it’s obvious, it’s fun, it’s exciting.

And I think often those, those sort of visionaries don’t - they have no sense of how they do what they do or what or why they’re, you know, special. So that’s one thing that comes to mind.

And the second, I think, is that it’s kind of a paradox to me, I think, because on the one hand, I think people, myself included, go on this journey because it is exciting, and it does feel energizing, and, and right. And the further you go in this direction, the more wrong or intolerable the previous state of affairs feels.

And at the same time, I noticed that a lot of people feel like, you know, as part of this - I was at this discussion the other week where there was Aaron Dignan and, and Susan Basterfield and a few people who’ve written books about, you know, new ways of working. And someone shared with me afterwards that it was really reassuring to hear that, to hear you all say that, that this is challenging and that you struggle and that you don’t have answers necessarily, to feel like, “Oh, even the pros, so to speak, find this stuff.”

So I also noticed that somehow it gives people permission when I say that. And I, and I often talk about this, that video about growth pain, for example, you know, that, that it’s, that there’s gonna be, it’s natural to experience some kind of loss in a way, like to let go of, for example, especially if you’re a manager, you know, those status symbols and, and that’s okay.

And so it’s this kind of both end thing for me then. You know, I’m, I’m sort of - I’m holding in my mind now people listening to this and, and people who typically ask me questions. And I’m, I know that people always want to know something practical and feel this kind of desperate need of, you know, “I’ve - yes, I’m bought into this. This all sounds great.”

And I know we’ve talked about some examples of, you know, conversations you can hold or questions you can ask. But is there anything that you feel called to share with, with people listening to this podcast now in terms of some, you know, something that might help them on their journey, a step they could take, or something, some wisdom that you’ve learned since, you know, since the book’s been published that you think might be of value?

Frederic: And there’s two different questions in one there, I think. I mean, in terms of, of the practical thing, I mean, I, I think people could go very different directions. I mean, for one, there is so much practical stuff out there now. Right? You know, so people can look at some of the stuff in my book, they can look at a lot of things in your book and, you know, Susan’s book, and they, you know, Liberating Structures. And so, you know, so there’s actually lots of stuff that you can start with. And there is no right or wrong. Right? And the other thing is also, you can also just simply trust yourself and go with like, “What is bothering me, and what is it that I want to change?” And not actually look at any of those things, at least for a while. Right? And go like, you know, a lot of the founders and, you know, that we’ve met, you know, I hadn’t read any books. Right? And just point out like, “Hey, this budget process isn’t working for me.” Like, “Okay, how do I do a budget process differently?” Right? “And let me think about it, and maybe I’ll look how other people did.” Right? And so that’s part of it.

And it’s just go out and do it. Like, the stuff that bothers you, you’re not gonna - have you always wanted to try something? How to do it, and, and try it. Right?

I think there’s something weird in our culture around the level of permission-seeking that has to do with the fact that from the youngest age, you know, we’ve had to ask permission to leave the dinner table. And then we’ve asked, had to ask for 12 years in school to ask for permission to go to a bathroom. I mean, seriously, like, for 12 years, you know, I mean, and I think it’s just so deeply ingrained in us that there’s a part of like, “Okay, so I want to start in practice, but now what?” And I’m still sort of waiting for permission. And maybe if I read it in Fred’s books or, you know, Lisa’s books or, that is a form of permission, and now I can do it. Right?

So if that’s helpful by any means, do it. But maybe the most important thing is like, nobody’s giving you permission. Like, you know, take the permission. Like, we could give you permission right now. Right? Like, you can, you know, place pause on the podcast, and you can repeat sort of after me, “I give myself permission now.” I don’t ask you for permission to go to the bathroom.

Lisa: So, yeah, that feels - well, like, yeah, I notice even that, even that when people are given permission, so to speak. You know, when someone declares, “Hey, I’m interested in moving in this direction and working in this kind of way. And I want everyone now to be involved in making decisions,” and so on. But even then, a common complaint I hear from leaders is like, you know, “I gave them permission. Why is no one stepping in? You know, why is no one taking initiative or making decisions? Do people just need to be told what to do?” So it’s, so it’s so fascinating to me how we have to constantly give ourselves permission and give ourselves permission and get permission. It’s like there’s so much conditioning that it, it takes more than just once for it to be undone, you know.

Frederic: Yeah, you know, the kind of example that you just gave is where I often turn to Ken Wilber’s model of the four quadrants. You nod, and, you know, other people might be familiar with it or not. And I actually mentioned it at some point in, in my book. It’s, it’s a really powerful way. It’s sort of a two-by-two matrix that says that every problem that you have, you can look at it from four different sides. And all of them are there, all of them are relevant, all of them are part of reality. And if you’re only looking at from one side, right, then you’re missing the other three. Right?

And so the four sides - two-by-two is basically everything has an inner and an outer component. Like, the inner component is just our thoughts and feeling and what happens within. The outer component is the actual tangible, measurable things. Right? And everything has an individual and a collective component. Right? And if you do this - and so then, two-by-two.

But basically, one way of saying it is everything has sort of an internal, individual component - my beliefs, my mindsets. Right? Everything has an individual external component - my actions, my behaviors that you can actually see and measure. An inner collective component - our culture. Right? This thing that we all share in our heads. And an external collective component, which is all the structures and systems.

And so when you just tell me, and I’ve had these conversations with leaders like, “I told people, now, okay, go and do it. Advice process, just do it.” And then nothing happens. Right? And so, “Maybe people are just aren’t ready. Like, maybe people aren’t just mature enough.” Right? Right. And that might be, might be a reason. Right? And but it’s just one quadrant. It’s like this inner, what is in their heads. Right?

But maybe there’s something else holding them back. So, for instance, one of the projects, I would look at is a systems quadrant and say, “Yeah, but most likely, there is still a manager there, somebody who will fall back.” And so people are clever. They know this. So “Yeah, I’ve been given permission, but yeah, I still know that the manager is there anyway. So if things, you know, he or she will deal with it.”

So something shifts when we suddenly shift that system, and the team is on its own. Right? And, and there is no more manager to fall back on. And right, and there they feel they immediately see if they do a good or bad job, you know, because their client is happy and happy. Trust me, they will start making decisions. Right? But if the system isn’t set up in that way, if they still have a manager, and if they don’t see whether that, whatever they do, it makes other people happy and happy because they’re shielded from that reality, then yeah, most likely, they won’t think they need make any decisions.

So, so it’s, it’s interesting. You know, we can, and you can talk about the corporate culture and train people for skills. But often, I do default to looking at some of the structures where people tend to default to, to, “Oh, yeah, but, you know, we should - we train people, or we should sort of have, you know, deep program to change people’s mindsets.”

Give you another example that comes up often is like, “Yeah, people shy away from difficult conversations.” Right? So self-managing is working, but people, you know, don’t give each other the hard feedback that is needed for self-management to work. Right? And so the default answer there is often, “Okay, we train everybody in giving feedback.” Right? So in Wilber’s quadrant, it’s sort of a behavioral thing. Let’s just train people behavioral. Right? That’s the upper right quadrant. And that might be, might be, you know, a good way to do it.

But I’ve heard from quite a few organizations where, we can train people a lot in giving feedback, people often still shy away from it. Right? Because we all are some degrees conflict avoidance. Right? But if you set up the system in a way where the team is directly exposed to whether they do a good or bad job. Right? If the team’s directly in touch with the clients that is happy are happy and happy, or with your internal client, or the person in, you know, inside the company for whom you’re doing the job, and if there’s no fallback, like people hate that the drama they do is bad, like people hate an unsatisfied client. Trust me, if that happens, people will start giving each other bad, you know, feedback. Like, right?

And if they haven’t been given any training, it might be really clumsy feedback. It might be sometimes maybe hurtful feedback. So by any means, let’s train people. But training is not enough. And so I, I think that looking at these different quadrants is really interesting.

Lisa: Yeah, I think that’s really useful. And I’m reminded of one of your other videos as well, where you, I think it was the example of a leader of a hospital who was noticing one team having a lot of extra capacity, another team being overworked. And I think our tendency is often, especially for leaders, to notice, “Okay, this isn’t happening,” or, “Here’s a problem,” and to try to fix it, to try to help, you know, well-intentioned. And often there’s a totally different root cause. So I think also just to be curious, like, “Okay, people aren’t stepping in. What’s that about?” Yeah, let’s go, let’s go and find out what’s really in the way.

Frederic: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And, and indeed, not stepping in to fix the problem. So one, I think, of the big differences for leaders in self-managing system is when people come to you with a problem, rather than fix it, you try to see like, “What is the actual tension here? And how could the system resolve it by itself?” Right? And so, “What is the intervention needed? What is the conversation that needs to happen, you know, for that system to to self-correct?” Right?

And this example that you were giving, like, there was a team of nurses that was obviously overstaffed. Right? And there was some, right, to activity had gone down. So they had too many nurses. And all the teams were crying for, you know, support. They needed more nurses. And when this leader asked the team that was over staff and said to them like, “What, you know, you’re obviously overstaffed, so, you know, please come up with a plan.” And then after a while, the team came back and said, “No, no, we’re not overstaffed.” And she was furious. And she said like, you know, “Yeah, maybe people aren’t mature enough for self-management. Right? This is working.”

And we just look at like, “Yeah, but you were still trying to solve that problem. You were still having a role in this. But let’s actually look like the tension wasn’t with you, the CEO. The tension was between the teams that are over-staffed and teams that are understaffed. So a possible intervention is, get representatives from these teams to talk with each other because, you know, the overstaffed team can you as a leader, but they can’t the other teams.” Right? Like, “The other teams will, you know, say like, ‘No, you are almost off, and we’re in pain, you know, we need help now!’” Right?

And so in this case, that was all that was needed, you know. And so it’s a, it’s a big shift for leaders, I think, to go from “me solving to the problem” to “me orchestrating, you know, the architecture for the problem to solve itself.”

Lisa: Yeah, I think, I think about - I think it was Margaret Wheatley who used the analogy of like a spider web. And, you know, connecting the system to more of itself, and that’s the way to solve the problem rather than trying to add something.

Frederic: Maybe I, I should just use this for a shameless plug for these videos. Like, I’ve been really bad at marketing these videos because I’m just generally bad in marketing. A lot of people who, you know, who love the book and have been, you know, inspired by it don’t know that this video series exists. So that, you know, there’s a video series of 130 videos that I created after the book came out with sort of a different question.

The book’s question was, “So is it possible to run in structural organizations based on a whole different worldview?” And, you know, to me, obviously, the answer to that is yes. And so the next question that came up was, “Okay, but so you’re now a large or medium or small traditional organization, and you want to go in that direction. What does that journey look like, and what, what are some insights that I’ve gained since the book came out?” And so, these episodes, 130 videos, and they’re freely accessible like on the website. So I, I think there’s, you know, there’s good stuff in there, and I, we, you know, actually talked about two or three of those.

Lisa: Yeah, yeah, so often people ask me questions that you’ve more or less answered exactly. So I say, “Well, have a look at this video, and then come back, and let’s talk about it.”

Frederic: That was one of the reasons I did it as a video series rather than a book because I felt like it would be so much more immediate, like if people have a question or get stuck in one particular thing. You can actually just watch a ten-minute video rather than, you know, buying a book and then finding the paragraph. And you can just share it with colleagues rather than photocopying or scanning, you know, pages. Right?

Lisa: I mean, you, since the original book, there was then the illustrated introduction and this video series. And, you know, having these conversations now with CEOs about, you know, how are they out of integrity? What is your sort of hope for this, you know, word of mouth phenomenon that you’ve created? Where do you hope it might go next in terms of the impact that it has or how it touches people around the world?

Frederic: I mean, I don’t - or what? I don’t know. I’ve never known. Right? Like, you know, this thing has having its own life, and, and I’ve been actually really okay with letting it happen through life and letting go.

I mean, the big change that I see since the book came out for me is that when the book came out, I think there was a real sense with a lot of people that our current system is broken. Right? It wasn’t working. But there wasn’t necessarily a lot of conversation about what else is possible. I think what is really shifted is like, for people who are interested in this, who feel that the system is broken, like it doesn’t take them long to stumble upon, like, something entirely different is possible. Right? Whether it’s my book or your book or other books, I mean, it’s just like this whole conversation of like, you know, there’s something else that’s possible. I think that’s a, you shift that has happened.

I think that I, I’m just looking forward to the day where there’s a tipping point, and people, rather than looking at these things as like still outliers and pretty radical and, and pretty new, go like, “Oh, so - oh, you still have managers and managers? Okay - okay, so you still do that? Okay.” Right? Where suddenly that becomes outdated. And, and we never know how these norms flip, but we know that that social norms flip. Right? That narrative slip. Right?

I’m fascinated, you know, how quickly the narrative around smoking flipped. Right? Like within two years, at least in Belgium, where I used to live at the time, we went from me feeling really bad in a restaurant to go ask a neighbor like, “Could you please try to get the smoke in a different direction because, you know, it’s bothering me?” I would feel shy about doing this, like would be uncool, to people apologizing for smoking. Right? And stepping out on your balcony when they come to your place. And it’s a trivial example, but it just shows how quickly deep social norms can, can flip. And I’m looking forward to the day where that happens with, with management.

And I feel that COVID is an interesting accelerator. And we, you know, who knows how it’s going to play out? But I think on all of the three breakthroughs, right, that, that we talked about, it’s been an accelerator. Right? On self-management, right, we suddenly realize like people can work from home, and we don’t know how many hours they work, and we can sort of trust them. I mean, we have no choice but trust them. And, you know, productivity seems to be there or even higher.

And then I think the next question that a lot of organizations aren’t asking it, but it’s going to come, is then, “But then what are we paying the managers to do exactly?” Right? Like, and, you know, they might come at it from the wrong angle, which is cost-cutting and like, “We’re paying all these managers, and…” But, but this question is going to come up. So I think this is going to be a big accelerator when people are just going to wonder like, “What is the role of managerism in that distributed, you know, socially distanced world?”

I think the piece of wholeness, I, I find it quite fascinating where people see each other’s interiors and homes. Right? And people talk about the Zoom shirt. Right? Where they have this, this one Zoom shirt, and they quickly put it on before a Zoom meeting. And, you know, up to here, like, you know, it’s okay. People don’t see what you have below. And you take that shirt off, and you feel really silly doing it. Yeah. Right? It’s sort of a break in transparency. Like when you went to a different place, and you, okay, you dressed up for work, and, you know, it was a different place. But here, suddenly, like, it’s sort of even more jarring that you have to put up this thing. And people increasingly feel like they shouldn’t. Right?

Lisa: There’s children too, as well. Yeah. Yeah, totally.

Frederic: Yeah, where we now get comfortable with this. Right? And on the purpose side, I, one of the things that I find interesting is hearing stories of, you know, often you’re not in a space necessarily by yourself, and you have, you know, a spouse or a roommate or somebody who’s overhearing some of your conversations. And suddenly you hear about these boring meetings and like the senseless stuff that you’re involved in good part of the day. And you can no longer hide it from your spouse and from your roommates. Rightly? And they’re like - and what difference does that make when suddenly we see in the eyes of our spouse or our roommates that, you know, so much of the stuff that we do is isn’t that productive, isn’t that meaningful, isn’t that well?

So I, I think we, I’ve only scratched the surface of what, you know, what COVID really means in terms of, you know, the acceleration of some of these trends. And, you know, I’ve had a lot of journalists who reached out. Right? And they wanted to know what, you know, the impact is this going to be. And when I shared some of these insights like it, they were like, “Oh, well, we’ve never thought about this. This goes much further than what we typically talk about, like, you know, where people come back to the office and when people miss the office.”

Lisa: Yeah, yeah, people have asked me that question too. And I, I really like the way, I hadn’t thought about it in terms of those three breakthroughs, but I recognize all of those shifts having sat on a lot of Zoom calls and meetings and online trainings and stuff myself.

So well, maybe that’s a good place to, to draw the conversation to a close, kind of looking into the future and seeing what, what this big shift that we’re all in the moment is going to bring. And yeah, I’m just so grateful that we got the chance to have this conversation, and it’s, it’s been really challenging for me in a kind of good way. And I, I really enjoyed sitting with some of these tricky questions. So thank you so much, and thank you for, for your contribution in general. You know, you’ve been a huge inspiration to me and many of the people who listen to this program. So thank you.

Frederic: Yeah, thank you. It’s been a, you know, just a gift of a lifetime, sort of, you know, to have a piece of work that I’ve done suddenly resonate with so many people. And I can get all of these, these beautiful messages. I, my wife and I have this practice, you know, she’s also written some books that have touched people deeply and written some books together on all different topics. And, and, you know, when we get one of these emails where people tell us about how deeply they’ve been touched and how it’s, you know, has changed their lives or have changed their organization, we have this thing where we look at each other and say, you know, “What, we’re good. We can stop working now.” Right? Like, we this is just this one email. Right? “That’s enough,” you know, that’s… And of course, you know, don’t get me wrong, we need to work, and money needs to come in some ways. But, but, you know, in terms of, you know, this is all been much more than I ever anticipated. And, and just, you know, one of these stories is, is enough. So I, I feel very blessed. I feel that everything I do is, is just a bonus. But I in some ways, I’ve done my thing.

Lisa: Yeah, I like that practice. I think it’s, it’s really nice to just let that, like, let those messages in, isn’t it? To sort of - yeah, drink it in. Cheers.

Frederic: Thank you so much.

Lisa: Thank you for everything you’re doing and all the inspiration you’re bringing people with this podcast.

Frederic: Thank you for inviting me.