Podcast appearances and mentions of Matthew Bishop

1- Facebook is back on top as #1 social media outlet in America (In my opinion) 2- What really happened with court clerk in Madison County yesterday? We have the potential answers!! 3- What ever happened to the woman in charge of Bud Light when it FAFO'd and hired Trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney? We let you know!! 4- I'm joined for the entire 2nd hour by Matthew Bishop where we break down the tariff's and why they're a good thing for American over the long haul.

I'm joined for the entire 2nd hour by Matthew Bishop where we break down the tariff's and why they're a good thing for American over the long haul.

Matthew Bishop is a world renowned Author, Speaker, Writer and Journalist. Having served for over 2 decades at The Economist Magazine as both an Editor and NYC Bureau Chief he has his fingers on the pulse of world events. One of his many books “Philanthocapitalism” talks about how giving strategically can save the world. On this show we explore the effect of artificial Intelligence (AI) which could transform our world in so many ways, both good and bad.

My fellow show host here at WYAB (Matthew Bishop, host of "The Full Story" every Monday - Friday 6am - 7am) joined me for the better part of this mornings show to discuss the tragic air collision over Washington D.C. last night where a Military Blackhawk collided with a small commercial jet that left 67 people dead. We also took a deep dive into the RFK JR. confirmation hearings yesterday. 

Matthew Bishop sat in with me for hour #1 to discuss more of the civil war between Democrats about what to do with Joe Biden, we had a really good conversation about the shenanigans going on at the white house with Hunter & Jill Biden being in control of the nuclear codes and much more. Hour #2 was just me and 3-4 of the best listeners call-ins my show has ever had, we really peeled the onion back on what direction we see the Democrats going, Joe Biden having to stay on the ticket, potential Trump VP's and much, much more.

1- Matthew Bishop, host of the Full Story on WYAB 103.9, joins me to break down the Supreme Court's decision on presidential immunity, along with the left's total meltdown and the right's premature celebration. 2- Kingfish from Jackson Jambalaya joins the show to discuss the outright shenanigans involving the lease and lack of rent payments between the management team at Smith-Wills Stadium and the city of Jackson. Is it incompetence or corruption? 3- Stop calling what's happening to Joe Biden "elder abuse." There's zero abuse happening to that evil, old man. He wanted to be president, and that's exactly what he is. Nobody is making him remain the most powerful, pampered man on the planet. 4- I don't want to sound too negative because I think we're winning, but we still need to enjoy every last moment of what resembles what we consider "normal times" here in America. Enjoy this Independence Day with your friends and family, enjoy this upcoming football season, and don't let the left steal your joy as they drive our country off a cliff. 5-In the fallout from the Supreme Court's decision on presidential immunity, Joe Biden's paid campaign surrogates are out here calling for the assassination of Donald Trump and high-level MAGA operatives. Never underestimate the left's ability to be hateful, murderous monsters.

Matthew Bishop, host of the Full Story on WYAB 103.9, joins me to break down the Supreme Court's decision on presidential immunity, along with the left's total meltdown and the right's premature celebration.  

I didn't split today's show up in any stand alone segments because I think the continuity of the show is important for the context of the conversation. I was joined my Matthew Bishop for the first segment and we discussed the Hunter Biden trial taking place in Delaware. Then the rest of the show is a very complex conversation about why people are completely fed up with being called racist by the most violent & perpetually offended group of people in America. We end the show with breaking news about Joe Biden crapping his pants on stage at a D-DAY memorial event in Normandy, France and a town in CT. that refused to fly the thin blue line flag in honor of a fallen police officer, but flew the trans pride flag at half mast instead.

I was running late this morning so our 6am-7am host (Matthew Bishop) filled in for me with Shaun Yurtkuran for the first 20 minutes or of the show. They're both former prosecutors so they really peeled back the details on the Donald Trump / Stormy Daniels hush money trial in New York unlike we've ever done on my show. Once I step in the conversation quickly shifts to Shaun and I discussing all this transgender nonsense and why is the black community is supporting it? Shaun brings up some of the disqualifying conditions to serves in the military that you'd think were much less serious than someone being confused about their gender. This was one of our best shows, lot's of great calls and text from listeners too.

With Bryan Alvarez out doing Bossman things, Filthy Tom Lawlor takes the hot tag and jumps in with Mike Sempervive to get you caught up on everything taking place around the world of professional wrestling. The latest on the sordid Vince McMahon story, including todays report by The Wall Street Journal revealing McMahon is under federal investigation for alleged sexual assault and trafficking allegations, Vice reporting McMahon signed the NDA's on the company's behalf without informing them, Brock Lesnar being pulled from the WWE's 2K games, and more. Plus, we talk to Filthy's opponent for tomorrow's MLW show in Philadelphia - MATTHEW JUSTICE - to talk about his career, the Second Gear Crew, throwing around Matthew Bishop, and more. A fun show as always, so check it out~!

Dan Shapiro, the head of Harvard's International Negotiation program, shares 3 keys to a better argument. Americans are increasingly falling into the “tribal trap,” according to Dan Shapiro, author of “Negotiating the Nonnegotiable: How to Resolve Your Most Emotionally Charged Conflicts.” The tribal trap often centers on politics. Those ensnared in it will do anything they can to shut down the other side in an effort to prove that their side is right, just, and the only way forward. But from abortion to immigration, the problem is often not what we're arguing about, it's how. So, how can we have more productive conversations? In this Big Think interview, Shapiro uses his negotiating expertise to outline several strategies to escape the tribal trap and communicate effectively, including understanding the core values of the other side, listening intently to what they're saying, conveying that you understand what they're saying, and finding common ground. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- About Dan Shapiro: The founder and director of the Harvard International Negotiation Program, Daniel Shapiro teaches a highly evaluated course on negotiation at Harvard College; instructs psychology interns at Harvard Medical School/McLean Hospital; and leads executive education sessions at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, Harvard Kennedy School, and Harvard Medical School/McLean Hospital. He also has served on the faculty at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, and at the Sloan School of Management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is author of Negotiating the Nonnegotiable, which Matthew Bishop of the Economist Group called “quite simply, the best book I have ever read on negotiating in situations of extreme conflict.” He also is coauthor with Roger Fisher of the negotiation classic “Beyond Reason: Using Emotions as You Negotiate.” ------------------------------------------------------------------------ About Big Think | Smarter Faster™ ► Big Think The leading source of expert-driven, educational content. With thousands of videos, featuring experts ranging from Bill Clinton to Bill Nye, Big Think helps you get smarter, faster by exploring the big ideas and core skills that define knowledge in the 21st century. ► Big Think+ Make your business smarter, faster: https://bigthink.com/plus/ --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/bigthink/message Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Journalist and innovator Matthew Bishop joins Justin Blake, Executive Director of the Edelman Trust Institute, for a conversation about the institute's annual publication, “Evolving Trust, Embracing Change,” which focuses on repairing trust in institutions and leaders amid rapid societal transformation. Matthew gives his advice for how leaders can grow trust in tumultuous times: “Be more … Continue reading "Matthew Bishop on ‘Evolving Trust, Embracing Change'"

In this episode, Emily and Matt discuss a special group of small islands: non-independent territories or "sub-national island jurisdictions" (SNIJs). They explain the great diversity that exists amongst these non-sovereign islands in terms of levels of development and depth of integration with metropolitan powers like Britain, France, the Netherlands and the United States. Professor Jack Corbett, RESI Co-Director and Head of the School of Social Sciences at Monash University in Australia, talks about the trade-offs and tensions that typify life as a SNIJ.In "Island Voices", we hear from Dr Genève Phillip, Interim Provost and Vice-President of Academic Affairs at the University College of the Cayman Islands. In "The Big Picture", we have two guests: Benito Wheatley, Special Envoy of the British Virgin Islands (BVI) Government and Professor Peter Clegg, Head of the School of Social Sciences at the University of the West of England. Finally, in No Stupid Questions, Emily and Matt ask 'Why are non-sovereign territories not becoming independent?'.Featuring:Emily Wilkinson (host) | RESI Director and Senior Research Fellow at ODIMatthew Bishop (host) | RESI Director and Senior Lecturer at the University of SheffieldJack Corbett | RESI Co-Director and Head of the School of Social Sciences at Monash University in AustraliaGenève Phillip | Interim Provost and Vice-President of Academic Affairs at the University College of the Cayman IslandsBenito Wheatley | Special Envoy of the British Virgin Islands (BVI) GovernmentProfessor Peter Clegg | Head of the School of Social Sciences at the University of the West of EnglandResources:Programme page | Resilient and Sustainable Islands Initiative (RESI)Peter's report | Global Britain, contested spaces, and the UK Overseas Territories“Small Islands, Big Picture” is a new podcast from the Resilient and Sustainable Islands Initiative (RESI) and ODI which will shine a spotlight on the unique challenges and remarkable resilience of Small Island Developing States (SIDS) around the world. Hosts - and RESI directors – Dr Emily Wilkinson and Dr Matthew Bishop will be joined by expert guests from the Caribbean, Pacific and beyond to discuss the political, economic, social and environmental issues facing SIDS today. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of "Small Islands, Big Picture", Emily and Matthew look at the United Nation's new Multidimensional Vulnerability Index (MVI), how it relates to age-old debates about small-state vulnerability, and why it could lead to a long-overdue shift in the allocation of international aid. In "Island Voices", Theresa Meki speaks about the meaning of vulnerability and George Carter highlights different aspects of SIDS' vulnerability that need to be considered. In "The Big Picture", Fatumanava-o-Upolu III Dr Pa'olelei Luteru reports on how work on the MVI is proceeding. In "No Stupid Questions", Emily and Matt answer "Does thinking of Small Island Developing States through the prism of vulnerability risk infantilising them?".Featuring:Emily Wilkinson (host) | RESI Director and Senior Research Fellow, ODIMatthew Bishop (host) | RESI Director and Senior Lecturer, University of SheffieldGaston Browne | Prime Minister of Antigua-Barbuda and Co-Chair, UN High-Level Panel on the MVIFatumanava-o-Upolu III Dr Pa'olelei Luteru | Permanent Respresentative of Samoa, UN High-Level Panel on the MVITheresa Meki | Department of Pacific Affairs, Australian National UniversityGeorge Carter | RESI Co-director and Department of Pacific Affairs, Australian National UniversityResources:ODI event | Putting the Glasgow Climate Pact into action: accounting for vulnerabilityProgramme page | Resilient and Sustainable Islands Initiative (RESI)Policy brief | A global bargain for resilient prosperity in Small Island Developing StatesUN website | Office of the High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States“Small Islands, Big Picture” is a new podcast from The Resilient and Sustainable Islands Initiative (RESI) and ODI which will shine a spotlight on the unique challenges and remarkable resilience of Small Island Developing States (SIDS) around the world. Hosts - and RESI directors – Dr Emily Wilkinson and Dr Matthew Bishop will be joined by expert guests from the Caribbean, Pacific and beyond to discuss the political, economic, social and environmental issues facing SIDS today. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“Small Islands, Big Picture” is a new podcast from The Resilient and Sustainable Islands Initiative (RESI) and ODI which will shine a spotlight on the unique challenges and remarkable resilience of Small Island Developing States (SIDS) around the world. Hosts and RESI directors Dr Emily Wilkinson and Dr Matthew Bishop will be joined by expert guests from the Caribbean, Pacific and beyond to discuss the political, economic, social and environmental issues facing SIDS today.In this first episode, Emily and Matt explain the ways in which SIDS are some of the most distinctive societies on earth – and why a podcast that helps to amplify SIDS' voices is needed. In "Island Voices", Courtney Lindsay explains why the RESI programme is important. In "The Big Picture", Michai Robertson speaks from behind the scenes at the Bonn Climate Conference. In "No Stupid Questions", Emily and Matt debunk the all-too prevalent myth that many SIDS are not deserving of international aid.Featuring: Emily Wilkinson (host) | RESI Director and Senior Research Fellow at ODIMatthew Bishop (host) | RESI Director and Senior Lecturer at the University of SheffieldCourtney Lindsay | RESI Director and Senior Research Officer and ODIMichai Robertson | Antigua-Barbuda negotiator at the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS)Featured resources:Putting the Glasgow Climate Pact into action: accounting for vulnerabilityResilient and Sustainable Islands Initiative (RESI) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My quest today is Matthew Bishop, a qualified counsellor and a philosopher who combines the two to help people with both their suffering and their striving for a deeper sense of meaning and purpose. Matthew practices philosophical counselling or existential therapy, which is strongly tied to the great Viktor Frankl's Logotherapy. It's about a non-secular search for meaning and value in life and in today's podcast we discuss the philosophical basis for such an approach and explore a range of techniques and questions to help you create a life of greater meaning, value and purpose. And who wouldn't want that! You can find out more about Matthew and perhaps book some sessions with him here on his website.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week we go back in time with former Melbourne and Port Adelaide utility Matthew Bishop. Matthew reminisces about his career, reflects on some of his favourite moments and people in the game. Matthew, who began his AFL journey as a rookie listed player with Melbourne, went on to play 150 games in his nine seasons at the top level. He played 132 games with Port Adelaide, including the 2004 premiership victory over Brisbane. In this chat, Matthew talks about being picked up as a mature age recruit by the Dees, his trade to Port Adelaide, the premiership victory, the showdowns against Adelaide and playing under Mark Williams. A great listen with the fiftieth member of 'The 90's Club Footy Podcast'. This episode has been produced by Set Sounds.

Matthew Bishop (MB): Hello, this is Matthew Bishop with Books Driving Change. And today I'm talking with Sharath Jeevan, who is the author of Intrinsic: A Manifesto to Reignite Our Inner Drive. Sharath is a social entrepreneur who came out of the business world, consulting world, and helped launch STIR Education -- which is an organization that helps teachers improve their performance through their better motivation and sharing of insights -- he can elaborate on that -- in many countries, including India and Indonesia, and some parts of Africa. And now he runs Intrinsic Labs, which we'll talk a bit about as well, I hope. The audience for this show, Sharath, is people who are conscious of this crisis that we've been living through in the pandemic, [and how that] has revealed a need for greater public service to re-engage people with talent and insight and leadership capacity into the public realm of public service. And I wondered if you could say in a sentence for them -- why they should read your book?Sharath Jeevan (SJ): Thanks Matthew, real pleasure to be on the show. And I think it's so important for those of us leading change in public service to know what deeply motivates ourselves as individuals and leaders. And that idea of really trying to find lasting motivation from within for ourselves, really with a view that that can help us motivate the people around us -- our teams, if we've got teams in our work, but also, of course, as citizens. Our work is ultimately geared towards that, and that applies, whether we're public servants, or we're political leaders, or trying to affect change, in the social sector, or nonprofit sector, etc. And these are universal themes the book talks about.MB: In the book, you set out in a powerful way a number of the trends that have caused many people to lose touch with what it is that motivates them from within and to be driven by external factors - as to what you call “extrinsic”. To the extent that you really feel there's a huge crisis in the world of loss of connection with ourselves, and that that's underlying many of the issues that emerge all over the place, in different aspects of life, and is proving dysfunctional in many parts of the world. But could you just spell that out for us? What is the key problem that you think we need to solve at this point and that Intrinsic is setting out to solve as a book?SJ: Yes, I think it's moving our dial, that motivational dial, [away] from extrinsic or external factors. So for example, in the world of work, we would think a lot about pay, about status, how fancy our job title is, how fancy our office is. These are critical things and we're not saying they're not important -- many people in the world don't have them, we need to make sure they do. But for those of us who do have those, they have a diminishing effect over time. That was a ceiling effect. I was talking to a trader in the City of London who got a £21.5 million bonus for the year. And his first reaction when his boss told him the news was, I had to work harder, because I know that someone else down the corridor got more than me. So that idea that there's never enough in some of these things, but we can keep chasing them, [although] that won't give us fulfillment, happiness, and actually won't give us success in the long term either. What we've got to do is move that motivational belt inwards to thinking about how we can really do what we do -- particularly in public service, because it's genuinely fulfilling, motivating, and rewarding. It's a bit like driving an electric car compared to a car driving on heavy diesel -- it should feel enjoyable in its own right. And we know the key pillars of intrinsic motivation are around “purpose” -- that sense of how work helps and serves others -- and “autonomy” -- that sense of us being in control of our destiny, as public policy leaders. And finally, becoming a “master” -- or becoming a better and better leader over time. We never get to perfection, but we're getting and developing and growing. So purpose, autonomy and mastery are key to us really moving that dial inwards. And we know that it's much more likely to lead us to be happy, fulfilled, and successful.MB: One of the things you do very well in the book is marshall a lot of academic research that's supportive of your claim on intrinsic motivation. And I think maybe "purpose" in particular has become one of those buzzwords that I think everyone is talking about -- a lot of company leaders, a lot of political people, saying we need to have purpose, clear and everything. Just what is the evidence that purpose matters and can be a game changer? And, with a slightly cynical hat on, how do we tell real purpose, real change making purpose, from the sort of bullshit PR purpose that a lot of people might be inclined to say [they have], if they're under pressure, in these leadership roles at the moment to try and sign sound appealing to millennials?SJ: I think that you put the nail right on the head. A lot of problems we are having with this purpose discussion is that it has been taken to this PR territory, and thousands of staff are subject to these kinds of corporate workshops, or government workshops, where they're bombarded with purpose statements from the company and so on. What I tried to look at on "purpose" was look at that really simple definition. I was trying to define it from first principles around just how what we do helps and serves others -- take away all the airy fairy language and so on. The challenge, I think, is that actually organizations are getting better and better, to be absolutely fair, on defining organizational purpose -- why that company, or how it helps and serves others. I don't think we've yet cracked the question of how do we, as an individual leader in public service, contribute to that purpose. So what tends to happen is we get hired into a job, let's say a government somewhere, civil service, and I'll be honest, [you] seem like a robot who's there to fulfill the purpose of the government department or division. The challenge though I think is, in today's world, especially with younger workers, we ourselves want to feel a sense of a personal mission statement. And by that, what is our own North Star?Let me just give you mine as an example: I help organizations and leaders to reignite inner drive by writing, coaching, consulting. So I help organizations and leaders to reignite inner drive by writing, coaching, consulting -- just a very, very simple 15-word statement. But it's a really helpful North Star that helps me remember why I'm doing what I do. And if I joined an organization -- I work for myself now, but I do write, consult for one, as you mentioned -- the question I'm asking is how am I contributing to that organization's purpose statement? But also, how are they contributing to mine? How are they helping me achieve mine? And when I think both things are in harmony, we've got a great marriage between an employee and an organization. I think we have a great motivational deal in place. But the temptation is we tend to forget the individual and forget that we all need that for ourselves as much as needed for our organizations.MB: And then you also talk about "autonomy" and "masteries". What's the key issue today with autonomy, and what do you mean by that?SJ: If you look at political life today, I'd argue we're in a really difficult autonomy situation, one where we've got two extremes. I talked about some of the research in the book about political leadership where you can have the extreme. For example in the U.S., perhaps both houses where it's almost like individual lawmakers -- it's Clint Eastwood extreme, or if you like, a Lone Ranger type behavior. But the other extreme where when you're an MPs, often in the U.K., they are often micromanaged. And how do you have the right balance between these two things is important. In enough autonomy you're representing a genuine community of constituencies for your elected office. But also, you also need to make sure that you are adhering to the broad direction of the party that you were being elected to join. How do you find that balancing act? That's a key piece. So it can't be either extreme. It can't be micromanagement, nor can it be a complete free for all. How do you negotiate between is a key idea in the book.MB: But one of the things you generally observe is the people not feeling very much autonomy at work in that sense.SJ: Absolutely. So I was talking, for example, about teachers in the book, and we have record numbers of teachers leaving every month. In the U.S., 30,000, 40,000, 50,000 teachers a month leave the profession. In the U.K. 40% of teachers want to leave. It's not because they don't enjoy teaching anymore. It's because they feel like they are being micromanaged. And their head teachers, their leaders in the school system are asking, What would Ofsted say, rather than what's the right thing to do for my school, my community. So they feel often like a pawn on a very big chessboard and unable to exert their own professional judgment and discretion. That's a really killer, killer blow for motivation.MB: And that's a problem across government do you find in particular?SJ: I think very much. So I spent quite a lot of time talking to lawmakers in a lot of different countries, in the emerging world and the developed world. And that sense of not being able to control their own destiny -- for example, many of them wanted to be in the “for one nation tradition” where they really weren't genuinely supporting the whole country. They feel more and more like they're being held to factions as well. MB: And "mastery" is the third concept. So you have purpose, autonomy, and mastery. Specialization has been a huge theme -- to the extent that we now have lots of books about how dangerous silos are. Because we've all become so specialized, we don't really know how to reach out across silos and think in a joined up way in decision making. But what do you mean by mastery? You mean something very different to that.SJ: I talk in the book about the “10,000 hour rule”, and this idea that a lot of the mastery discussions have been about technical prowess. And there's a lot of evidence that's true in technical domains, but a lot of the future of modern jobs today, they thrive because of the human skills. As a civil servant, for example, you've got to know how to develop policy and legislation. But you've also got to know how to influence ministers, how to work with colleagues, how to work with different kinds of disciplines. I look at the COVID response, for example, those human skills are much harder to subject to simple 10,000 hour rules. It's much more of the broader human aspects of our work. And so how do we codify those -- what I call the "order essentials of mastery" -- and try to make them something [people] actually actively want to work on, and become better and better at? They're often things that are actually not on a public servant's job description, that actually are the magic of the job these days. And how do you make them explicit? How do you codify them? And how do you find a systematic way of improving them, and also find people who can nurture your skills as you progress in your careers?MB: So give us an example of where you've seen a different approach be applied, [one] that's really moved away from that sort of 10,000 hour rule approach, to something more holistic.SJ: Giving examples from my own life with STIR Education. I had a finance director who was fantastic. And she was really, really good at making sure we had good reliable management accounts every month. The challenge is that as we became bigger as an organization, that actually a lot of her role was shifting from that technical aspect she was very comfortable into influencing our staff, or running our program for teachers -- for them to spend money better, to know how to use resources better, to make sure they felt more comfortable in terms of financial literacy, and be able to use the numbers themselves to make intelligent decisions. So we did a lot to try and break barriers down. Simple things, like she where she sat in the office. Often, finance tends to have their own little cubicle or room because they feel that what they've got is confidential information. So I said, Why don't you rotate around the office every day, every week, so you meet different colleagues, you can talk to them, see their reality. She spent many days in the field, with schools, seeing the work on the ground, and seeing a lot of the processes that we had time might be actually hindering progress. So it's trying to break down silos. And back to that personal mission statement, if you think my role at purpose level is to produce management accounts on time and accurately, that's one purpose statement. If it's to help the organization as a whole make better decisions, that's a different one. So how do you try and break some of the traditional ways of thinking down to open up jobs in public service and make them fulfilling and motivated?MB: And you talked about STIR Education, and the book opens with this inspiring story and how you were surprised, in a sense, by the appeal of the message. Can you just talk a bit about what happened and why that's given you hope? And have you seen other examples since?SJ: So, I got into this whole thing by accident. I'm an economist by background at the end. I was very much someone to believe in the hard skills of life around finance, or economics, and so on. I think what happened is, starting off in the slums of Delhi, we were trying to find some great teaching ideas to be shared around the world. That by looking for the ideas in some of the poorest parts of the world, there was not huge pride. In a sense, my teachers, for the first time, their ideas mattered. And they were actually important people in their own right, and they enjoyed meeting each other and sharing ideas. That buzz of energy would, almost by accident, even though we didn't know what these terms meant at the time, but we're unlocking purpose, autonomy and mastery, almost as a byproduct of what we were doing. We realized we had confused the baby in the bathwater. And actually, magic was that ignition of teachers, that reigniting of motivation, and that really shifted my view of the world. I now work for a range of organizations - as an advisor at L'Oreal, to the Kenyan government. But that core idea that actually everyone goes into a job, especially in public service, with a high degree of intrinsic motivation, as had these teachers, but as we work longer and longer, the cultures around us tend to drag it out of us. And then the trick is how to keep ourselves motivated despite that at the individual level. But if we're leaders in public service, how do we create cultures that build on that intrinsic motivation, and make us feel more and more motivated, rather than taking away that energy over time?MB: I think the experience of teachers in many parts of the world is similar. There are people that were idealistic when they went into the profession; and then they've just been worn down really by the engagement with the bureaucracy, particularly as you say that the Ofsted-like factors of just being forced to do more and more testing and feeling you're just a pawn on the chessboard.And I guess, one of the things that sort of motivates us at Driving Change is, that that [also] seems to be an issue with public service -- that people would like to be idealistic about serving the public interest and serving their communities, but government, in particular, is so unappealing because it just feels like in all sorts of different ways that it's not going to be a good, intrinsic, fulfilling experience. As you've tried to help professionals, like teachers, police, as well as other aspects of government, have you found ways to shift the system so that your idealism doesn't get handed in at the door?SJ: A whole chapter in the book is on public service and centric political life, because our leaders are so important -- as we're seeing in Ukraine now – as in the pandemic of the last couple of years. So just reading Tony Blair commenting on how he wouldn't have gone into politics today, given the level of scrutiny, the trolling on social media, all these kinds of crazy pressures. Whether you like him or not, I think generally a lot of people, our brightest people often, as you said, don't think of service first, [as] they should do. And one of the things I think that we could try to do is to create a more motivating environment for would-be politicians.I'm doing some work with apolitical and UCL around this actually, a fascinating little piece of work. And take the purpose piece, this idea of our work as a legislator or a lawmaker, helping and serving others. A lot of people I spoke to in many houses of parliament around the world feel that that idea of a one nation -- that you're there to help the whole country -- that's been lost by factionalism. And one of the ideas I explored in the book is how can we all try to create back a sense of genuine national purpose that is genuinely across divides and across political parties, and focuses on what unites us more than what divides us. I was looking at Kennedy in the book and some of the things he was saying many years ago, about how can we try and find that common ground and resist that temptation to exacerbate differences, [just] because it scores points. That sense of autonomy again -- I was talking to ministers in various governments, including the U.K., where they told me they heard about major policy announcements by what came on the news headlines, often secondhand, and they were the second people to know. And that obviously became ridiculous in the pandemic, where lockdown changes are being leaked to the press before MPs had a chance to even look at them. And that makes a mockery of parliamentary processes and demotivates ministers and MPs more widely. Because of the accountability pressures and the scrutiny, prime ministers, presidents etc. have tended to create kitchen cabinets, where you have five people in a room, and you pretty much decide everything in the country. [But] we have about 100 ministers in the country right now if you take the U.K., all very sensible, talented people. [Figuring out] how do we harness their strengths and place that broader narrative and group there is another part of our autonomy side. And mastery -- in talking to people, for example, in the House of Lords in the U.K., who got in the chamber, they were shown where the toilets were, shown how to get to the despatch box, but not much more to be honest. And, we would never allow doctors or lawyers or accountants to be trained this way. The Institute of Government in the U.K. does some training for ministers and is just fantastic. But it's not compulsory, it's very ad hoc. And this is a real job. I mean, this is a very, very difficult and demanding role. We need to develop more formal mechanisms of mastery that allow for more peer learning, more discussion, more sharing of experiences, as well as more formal training to help develop our elected leaders.MB: And would you apply the same framework to civil servants, and people going in other parts of public service, not as elected officials but as building a career?SJ: I think they're very similar pieces. Now, one of the things that's interesting with “purpose” for civil servants is that I talked to many senior civil servants in the British government, for example, [where] you obviously have to somewhat accept that the party in power may not have the same views that you have as an individual, but your job is to make sure that the direction they were elected on is executed as well as possible. That's an interesting purpose question because there is that interesting tension between personal purpose and what the role may require sometimes. But the civil servants I've talked to really are able to say, Well, whether or not I agree with this, I've been able to really make sure that the needs of my country are put into action. In terms of that piece that's been interesting. I think with the autonomy side, in civil service, there's a lot of scrutiny and it's very easy to lose your job in civil service if you do something wrong. So there tends to be a little bit of guardedness sometimes. And what that concerns me is a bit of a defensive culture. The best civil servants I know, they know how to stick their neck out. But they also know when to be careful. Just knowing when to duck and dive is a key element. There is more on mastery -- there's more formal mechanisms, professional development,  building networks, especially across departments, and across levels. I'm seeing more and more of that, and that's a very, very encouraging sign. Because, again, a lot of the key skills in civil service today are not on the job description formally. How do you actually find that? You do that through learning through peers, and going through experiences, and doing things. Very few policies ever look back on and said, Did that work? What worked well, what didn't go well? [We need to] make sure we create reflective spaces where civil servants can look back at what they've done and try to reflect and then use that as an improvement mechanism as well.MB: I mean, none of this involves paying them more or anything like that to improve in paying conditions. I think he obviously talked about pay bonuses, status, etc, as these hygiene things, the basics, that you need to have in place. As you look at government and civil service, and perhaps you compare it with the sort of growing trend for people who are committed and pumped to public service but want to go and do it in corporations and nonprofits where they might certainly in terms from the corporate side get better deals in terms of those basic hygiene of pay and status -- how much is pay the problem that is discouraging many idealistic people from really taking the path to government? And do you think we have to fix that basic before we can get to the intrinsic, mastery, purpose, and autonomy points that you've talked about?SJ: I think the research is pretty clear that it depends on where we are relative to other professions, so it's about the relative gap. I think most people in public service will always expect some kind of discount to the private sector -- in practice, that's what happens. But just make sure that it is manageable as well. And just that you can keep your family fed, if you have a family, etc. All these things are very important. So we shouldn't neglect that point, we need to constantly keep making sure that people can live sensible and decent lives on whatever their pay is, either elected office or in the civil service. But I think beyond that, looking at India for example, where teacher pay went up and up and the teachers became some of the highest paid in the world relative to per capita GDP, it did nothing for motivation, actually. So we just can't treat pay as a silver bullet. It's good to make sure we get it right and be sensible about it, but really what matters more is intrinsic factors. And most people go into public service because they want to make a difference to the world or the country. We've got to play to that and build cultures that really help them do that. And if you do that, they'll be motivated. And that will lead to better retention of civil servants, [it] will lead to more people wanting to go into the profession in the first place. And you'll create a virtuous cycle and probably the public will be more open to higher salaries for public servants, or MPs, over time. So you kind of create a virtuous cycle if you get on the right intrinsic track.MB:We [should] pick up the teachers' point. What did you see that was most effective as you were working with Indian teachers, and these relatively highly paid people, many of them weren't even turning up for work on a regular basis? How do you turn that round?SJ: Yes, we found it was really simple. For us, we looked at how do we try and inject purpose, autonomy, and mastery into a school system. And we started by running teacher networks -- groups of teachers 20-25 or so who would come together every month and go through a structured process to build their motivation, build a sense of purpose, build a sense of autonomy. They tried new techniques, learned to do things alone, [saw] what's possible, but also “mastery”, they learned how to become better and better. And doing that in a very collective fun engaging experience. We then learned that actually those networks are to grow and grow. They went from one network in Delhi in 2012, to [now] about 8000 a month, involving about 200,000 teachers, across about 35,000 schools. As that happened, we realized that actually what mattered next was the leaders of the system. So the people who manage teachers in systems, they had to buy into this, because if not, they would always be undermined. And so we started training those people to run the network. And we started working with people, very senior people, in governments and in ministries to oversee that, to make sure it was part of that budget, part of their training system. So there was kind of role modeling happening in all levels of a system as well. But it didn't cost very much. I think the cost for the teachers was about $20 U.S. per year, most of that was taken from existing training budgets. It wasn't about the money. It was more, as you're saying, about building that space in and be willing to try new ways of doing things.MB: And what was the evidence for you that that was working?SJ: We saw some pretty strong evidence that absenteeism effort improved quite substantially. Also, the relationships with teachers and children improved a lot -- just teachers knowing kids names, engaging them better, thinking of them as individuals, and nurturing kids more effectively -- was something we all saw from that.MB: Another big area of public service, that's obviously got a lot of questions being asked about the motivation and culture of the moment is -- policing. And you touch on that a bit in the book -- what needs to happen there?SJ: So we sort of heard about William Bratton, and some of these stories in the U.S., and Malcolm Gladwell popularized some of them and so on. There's a lot of truth in them. I think data has improved things. But it has slightly given this kind of culture, or created this kind of misconception, that it's all about seeing an individual policeman as a bit of a pawn on a chessboard, and driving into different things. That sense of autonomy has been really heavily undermined. And I think what we need to do is rethink and remember that policemen are human beings, they've had a lot of challenges -- with everything black lives matter to the vigils last year in the U.K. -- so how do we try and help them see that sense of professionalism again, and bring  that sense of professional dignity and motivation in what they do? Targets? I think what's happened is we've overelied on targets for them. But remember that policing, especially, there's a lot of things that cannot be reduced to a spreadsheet -- it's highly discretionary, you have to have very good judgment. It's what I call in the book “a wicked profession”, as in, there's no easy technical solution to it. We've got to help them create the conditions where they can make the right judgments at the right time. And encourage them to do that and make them feel supported to do that, as well. So I think we need to rethink that approach of sort of policing by numbers a bit.MB: Have you, again, had experiments that have worked in that respect?SJ: We're just starting, we're working with a group of IDFC. I had a chance to talk to a number of senior officers in India, for example, and really, really dynamic leaders in the police force. Now, take India as an example. What they need is the freedom not to drive change and change culture, that's always the hardest thing. But particularly how to help the constables and other frontline who often feel quite demotivated. How do you help them build trust with citizens, so they're not mistrusted? And there's a genuine sense of their being linked to their community. Get that bit right, huge things can happen. And I saw some small examples through some of that early research work, where that was possible. Now, the question is, how do we try to scale that and try and make that more of a norm?MB: We're almost out of time. I just wanted to end by asking you -- What's been the biggest change in your own life as a result of diving into this thinking about intrinsic motivation? What would you advise anyone else that wants to really reconnect with this intrinsic drive to do, beyond reading your book?SJ: So one of the most fun parts for me writing the book was looking at the side of our personal lives -- our lives and relationships, and as parents. And I'm both a husband and father of two young boys. And it really made me question my own assumptions. Take parenting as an example. What kind of parent do I want to be for my kids? How do I help them be motivated? And I, like many middle class parents those days, I was guilty of pushing them from one activity to another. From homework club, to a tennis coaching session, to a piano class ,and all this kind of nonsense. And actually just remembering what matters for them is they loved life, they love learning, and they're good people. And they have high degrees of intrinsic motivation.So I changed my parenting style quite substantially, since writing the book, to hopefully be more nurturing as a parent to help them find what they enjoy doing. Helping them build on that, helping them nurture their purpose, autonomy, and mastery. But what's also been helpful is if I tried to adapt some of these things to my own life, that role modeling effect -- if they see me trying to do these things, that can be just as powerful. So I think the book is not just about our work lives, those are important, but also our lives as real human beings.MB: Well, thank you. And what is one piece of advice to anyone that wants to start down this path of saying, Okay, I've heard what you've got to say, I'll read the book, [but] are there practical steps?SJ: I talked about in the book, a four stage journey you can go on as an individual to think about them. The first thing that it starts with is put down what I call the "cost of inaction". What tends to happen is we don't articulate why the current reality, the lack of D motivation, is hurting us so much. But we forget, we're going to be working the same 90,000 hours in our working lives on average. If we're not motivated, we're going in and feel like we're drudging through the day each day, it exerts a huge emotional, social, even financial cost on us. Just write down what the pain feels like. And that can really inspire us to say, Look, it's worth a try, it's worth taking a little bit of a risk here -- it's worth taking that first small step that I talked about in the book. So I think sometimes we just take things for granted too much. Write down why it hurts so much. And that will give us some motivation to go forward.MB: On that note, thank you very much, Sharath Jeevan. The book is Intrinsic: A Manifesto to Reignite Our Inner Drive. It's a beautifully written book, as well as full of great insights. So I highly recommend it to all our listeners. And thank you for joining Books Driving Change today. SJ: Thanks for having me. NOTE: Intrinsic is currently available in the U.K. It will be published in the U.S. in September 2022.  We hope you are as inspired by these podcasts as we are. If you are, please subscribehere, or wherever you get your podcasts (Amazon Music, Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher), and please rate us and write a review so others can find their inspiration.  This transcript has been lightly edited for context and clarity. 

The Golden Couple by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen Website: https://gobookmart.com Buy Now: https://amzn.to/37qj2vP The next electrifying novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author duo behind The Wife Between Us. "Propulsive and thrilling....A page-turner that will keep you guessing until the very end." --Taylor Jenkins Reid, author of Malibu Rising Wealthy Washington suburbanites Marissa and Matthew Bishop seem to have it all―until Marissa is unfaithful. Beneath their veneer of perfection is a relationship riven by work and a lack of intimacy. She wants to repair things for the sake of their eight-year-old son and because she loves her husband. Enter Avery Chambers. Avery is a therapist who lost her professional license. Still, it doesn't stop her from counseling those in crisis, though they have to adhere to her unorthodox methods. And the Bishops are desperate. When they glide through Avery's door and Marissa reveals her infidelity, all three are set on a collision course. Because the biggest secrets in the room are still hidden, and it's no longer simply a marriage that's in danger. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/gobookmart-review/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/gobookmart-review/support

"The Golden Couple" is the latest thriller from bestselling writing duo Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen. Their latest page-turner focuses on therapist  Avery Chambers' unorthodox 10 session treatment program, and her clients, Marissa and Matthew Bishop. Gorgeous and glamorous, the Bishops' marriage is plagued by secrets and lies that are about to be brought to the surface by Avery. Greer & Sarah talked with Olivia on the podcast about the book, the perks of writing as a team, and share advice for aspiring writers. A Moment With Margaret: Olivia & Margaret discuss other new releases this week that Margaret is interested in, "The Sweet Spot" by Trish Doller, "The Book of Souls" by Kevin Moore, "Smile and Look Pretty" by Amanda Pellegrino, and why we love the TV show "Ghosts."

The people that work in education and that take the responsibility of leading the education system are mainly optimists. If not, you cannot take the job.In the latest episode of Books Driving Change, Agustín Porres and Matthew Bishop talk about Porres' new book, Unfinished Business in Education, in which he interviews 31 previous education secretaries from around the globe. Each of them reflects on their time in office -- what they learned, what they achieved, what they failed to do, and what they would advise people going into that role today. They also talk about why the pandemic may be providing the perfect opportunity to enact sweeping education reforms, because of the crisis it has brought on, the innovation it triggered, and the fact that education is now much more visible in many national debates that it has been for many years. Porres has spent the last couple of decades working on education policy and is currently Latam Regional Director of the Varkey Foundation, which works to build the capacity and status of teachers. It is also the sponsor of the Global Teacher Prize. Before joining Varkey, Porres worked in various government roles.

In this fourth interview of the “17 Rooms'' podcast, Matthew Bishop and Raj Kumar discuss the role of business journalism in accelerating a data and reporting ecosystem to unlock private capital's contribution to the Sustainable Development Goals. Bishop, co-founder of the Social Progress Index, and Kumar, founding president and editor-in-chief at Devex, moderated Room 12 focused on Sustainable Development Goal number 12—on consumption and production—during the 2021 17 Rooms flagship process. “17 Rooms” is a podcast about actions, insights, and community for the Sustainable Development Goals and the people driving them. The podcast is co-hosted by John McArthur—senior fellow and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at The Brookings Institution, and Zia Khan—senior vice president for innovation at The Rockefeller Foundation. Show notes and transcript: https://brook.gs/3shO8hR  "17 Rooms" is part of the Brookings Podcast Network. Subscribe and listen on Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Send feedback to podcasts@brookings.edu, and follow and tweet at @policypodcasts on Twitter.

 In this Breaking Changes tl;dr mini-episode, Postman Chief Evangelist Kin Lane welcomes Matt Bishop, author of Level 3 REST and API Strategist at AdapTech Group to discuss the concepts in Level 3 REST.

Matthew Bishop (MB): Hello, this is Books Driving Change with me, Matthew Bishop. And today I'm talking with François Bonnici, co-author with Cynthia Rayner, of The Systems Work of Social Change: How to Harness Connection, Context, and Power to Cultivate Deep and Enduring Change.Obviously, this is a book that goes right to the heart of the mission of Books Driving Change, where we're looking at how do we build back better in this moment of crisis that the world is facing. And this book, I highly recommend it because it is full of great practical insights and wisdom, and some great case studies that I think many people will not be familiar with. And also, some very big thoughts about the way change happens globally and the way systems change could be brought about going forward. But François, I wanted to start by asking you, as I ask all of our guests, in a sentence - given our audience of people who are either engaged in social change work or considering it - why should they read your book?François Bonnici (FB): Thank you, Matthew, for having me. I'm delighted to be on your podcast, and hello to everyone listening. Probably the same reason that I would want to read the book. Initially, Cynthia and I wrote it, and we thought, well, if we're the only two people who learn from this, then that's almost sufficient. So as both a practitioner and an academic and also working in the foundation space, and really a bit paralyzed by the overwhelming challenges we have, the complexity of it, and the narrative around systems change, that we didn't feel like we necessarily could take that back to working on a day to day basis. And so the book is called “systems work,” to imply and emphasize the day to day work we all need to do, and to emphasize that to achieve some kind of future systems change that we aspire to, whatever that might be, it's about the process of change. And it's about the people who are involved in that process of change that we wanted to emphasize. So we really hope it's a very practical approach, one that is rooted in 200 years of social change making, deep case studies, hundreds of interviews with experts. But coming away with both stories that move, that inspire, and a set of practical tools and lessons at the end of each chapter. So we hope it will be a contribution to the collective journey many of us are on to try and understand what do we mean by, and how do we do, this work towards the deeper systemic change, what we call deep and enduring change. And I'll unpack a bit further with you where we go with it.MB: I want to start just by asking you a bit about how you and Cynthia came to write this book, which obviously came out of your work together at the Bertha Centre in South Africa. But, and I should say before we go further, that you are now currently head of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, which is funded by two of the founders, or the founder and his wife, of the World Economic Forum. [That fact] is in itself quite an interesting focal point of discussions about the role of the system, and how you do systems change, and whether top down organizations can really deliver that. But how did you come to write this book?FB: It's been a long journey. It's been five years. And so it started pre-COVID and got revised and updated during COVID, for reasons I'll explain. But I had started the Bertha Centre at the University of Cape Town as the first center for social innovation in Africa, dedicated to understanding approaches to social change that were innovative, that thought about social enterprise, that looked at what movements were doing. And we very quickly recognized the superficial approaches, or even the kind of service delivery type mindset, was not getting to the deep challenges and structural and systemic barriers that lay in my home country, South Africa, from hundreds of years of history. And that no fantastic solution was going to undo all of that. And that was a great barrier, actually a source of failure, for both myself and projects that Cynthia and I had worked in and organizations we'd worked for. Many organizations we worked with had these deep frustrations. But we also saw amazing organizations overcoming that on a day-to-day basis; overcoming the systemic and structural barriers around stigma, around poverty traps, around lack of opportunities, and turning that into agency.So at the time we started exploring, and researching, and working with global collaborations, like the Rockefeller Social Innovation Fellowship. We did a piece of work commissioned by the Schwab Foundation, when we were at the Bertha Centre, called Beyond Organizational Scale, looking at how social pressures create systemic change. And what we found happening in the global conversation around systems change was quite different to what we were seeing with organizations we were working with, initially in South Africa, and then we were looking and working with organizations in Latin America, and India, and even in the U.S.MB: When I was reading, one of the things that hit me was, there seems to be this real difference of opinion as to what systems change is, and how you do it. In the sense that a lot of people view it as a kind of fixing a system with a top down approach, and you found, fundamentally, a different experience on the ground with people doing the grassroots work.FB: I think that's right. And I think we had quite a frustration with even the term “systems,” because we all do mean very different things. And if you ask someone sitting at the World Economic Forum or if you asked grassroot activists, you're going to get very different answers. And so I grew a little bit allergic to the term, and then ended up writing a book on the topic. And it's not to discount any of them. And I think what we talk about in the book is that these challenges have complexity, they have scale, and they have depth. And what we had seen was that the focus of the conversations were around scale - if we can solve problems, and that everyone is doing it in a particular way, that is systems change. If we can do it in that complexity lens, where we have levers, and we can intervene in a system, and we are able to shift the balance of actors and systems and relationships, that is a form of a complexity view of systems change.But what we felt wasn't part of the conversation was really the steps. And that we felt that both those other dimensions and approaches could represent a perpetuating of the system of actors of power -  if the existing actors, who are architects and gatekeepers of a system, are the ones redesigning it. And so what this book seeks to do is really emphasize a depth component; and more than just say this is an additional component, say it's also the critical necessary one to take all those three lenses on how we are strategic and start to meet the bottom up with a top down.MB: And why do you think we've got to this position where even at a moment like this with COVID, and the World Economic Forum, and the great reset and all that, there's this very top down approach to social change? That, at least in terms of the general discussion, it is about how Biden's going to spend 3.5 trillion on infrastructure, and it's these big numbers, big change, very industrialized approach. And I think everyone that's been on the frontline in some way or another, quickly recognizes the very people who so much as these activities are intended to benefit, are the last ones to get asked what they think should be done or given any power to say that. How have we got to that situation?FB: Chapter one of the book actually covers the industry of social change. And I do think there are some deep historical roots, both in terms of the industrial era, but also the kind of postwar period. We talk about the Green Revolution and how some of these big moments in history of social change reinforced certain practices, approaches, mindsets. But also how funding flows, etc. I think one of the big pieces of all of this is the power concentrated in both public and private sectors and how that is dissipated and fragmented in what remains, the “plural sector.'' I much prefer [the term] to “third sector” or “nonprofit sector,” because of its plurality. But because of its plurality there isn't the collective power for decision making - an authority to really state and influence how social change strategies happen. And they've been recipients of decisions and systems and structures and flows for so long that they've become dependent on it in a way. This is not a new narrative but perhaps looks at it in a new light. So we're somehow at that moment of recognizing that, if we just continue on that pathway, we're not actually going to change any of the rules of the game.But those of us who work in this sector are also complicit in it in a way. So there's also a bit of a self critique in all of this; that actually, the fact that those of us who work somewhere in the sector, often have our livelihoods and careers dependent on the fact that these problems continue to exist. So in a way, the big shift for me was recognizing that the role or purpose of not for profit, social enterprises, social change making organizations is quite far removed now from the delivery of goods and services that can improve people's lives. And really, I quite strongly have seen that the ability to create agency, to empower and equip both people who experience particular problems or are invested in communities - whether they work for an organization or volunteering in a particular community somehow - [is extremely important]. That the purpose of social purpose organizations needs to shift. And I won't go too much into detail now, because I know you will want to unpack a lot of that. I've taken your question, and I've gone a bit further. But we are in a position of a great imbalance of power. And the heart of it lies there. But also not recognizing the real intrinsic value of many of these local organizations - whether they be larger networks, or local and small - in creating social capital, in fostering social cohesion. And that we don't have a good way to value and recognize, during this time of COVID, how critical that's been - [looking at] issues of trusts and social capital and being there for each other. And recognizing and having empathy with one another. And so I think that a lot of the book focuses on ultimately social capital and relational value, and how we build that, and how important that is for these longer term aspirational outcomes we have. MB: That's actually a very helpful framing, because as I read the book, I kept thinking this is really about how do you empower people. Not the vast majority of the population, but the people on the ground, who are the ones that are supposed to be being helped by so much of the activity - whether it be government, or nonprofits, or even business now that it's supposedly finding its social mission. But really, it's about that some of these things that are there in the dialogue, the popular conversations, amongst the elite are around networks, platforms, etc. But here, your book was really about empowering the people, the masses, and really giving them the ability to harness some of those tools and things in a different way. And there's lots of inspiring examples, so maybe just talk to a couple of them. I found the Slum Dwellers International a fascinating example of networking in action, but you'd say it's more than that. And then maybe talk about one other case that you particularly found very, very inspiring.FB: You hit the nail on the head in terms of practically talking about what kinds of discussions are happening at the global level or in actors of powers - the network organization, background organization. And we actually see some of those same practices at the grassroots - using digital platforms, using those kinds of approaches, but with a different set of actors. And we'll talk later about how we might connect the micro and the macro. But Slum Dwellers International, an incredible organization I've been following for years, comes originally out of India, had their global headquarters in Cape Town down the road from us, and we ended up working with them at the Bertha Centre. So we got to know a lot about their work. They have, in many ways, quite a traditional and well-known approach to having a federation - in which its members are actually the representatives and leaders of the organization. And the organization itself is some kind of federation secretariat. And it's federated across the world, because these movements of people who live in informal settlements - slums, favelas - self organize and elect their own leadership. And there's a really important history of Jockin [Arputham] and Sheela [Patel], who actually have been part of the Schwab Foundation, who were founders of that movement, but served as very different kinds of leaders than we generally have held up to be the change making leaders that we've spoken about over the past couple of decades. In the same spirit, I actually would love to talk about Nidan, and more specifically, about one of the other case studies from Bihar in India, that was created in the spirit and traditions of SEWA [Self-Employed Women's Association] - a self-employed women's collective that works with over 1.2 million women across India, through their cooperatives. And in the spirit of that worked with the street vendors, the informal workers and street vendors in India. So as you probably know well, 90% of India's workforce is in the informal economy. All labor law to protect, support, and uphold rights for workers only covers 10% of the workforce. And therefore street vendors were, in particular, at risk from municipalities and cities trying to clean up and impose hygiene standards, or corrupt officials seeking to extort and impose abuses on street vendors.An Nidan has been really interesting in terms of, at the core, what it does is not to try to help solve any of these problems - similar to the example of FII, the Family Independence Initiative in the U.S. What they sought to do was actually help to build the capacity to govern, to self organize, and to execute on issues and needs that they had. So for example, street vendors were collectively saying, well, we don't have time to do anything else in our lives, we barely manage to earn enough livelihood to put food on the table, and if we're trying to also address other issues in our lives, we don't have time to do that. So we actually need to find a way to kind of improve our income, and actually work together and collaborate. And they decided, okay, we'll make and spin off craft cooperatives, or food cooperatives. So they created businesses. They also got together and said, well, we don't have good services for education and health for our children, so let's create non-for-profit organizations that can actually provide preschools and clinics, etc. And so they spun off those organizations. Then they also said, well, we still have a problem in terms of our rights as informal workers, let's create a union and actually advocate for certain rights. And what Nidan was only doing was really helping the self organizing capacity, and the ability to create organizations, manage them, govern them correctly, and actually be able to implement and execute. And so 30 organizations ended up spinning off Nidan.And ultimately, it also helped to build this large movement towards creating the first policy in the world around informal workers. The Street Vendors Act in India became a national movement of street vendors, but also helped to change the mindset. And so working on the deeper elements of change around what actually street vending and street food meant to people in India, and meant as part of the culture, and how to celebrate that rather than seeing it only as a problem. So they worked on all of these dimensions, and gave their constituents, their members, a way to self organize and have self determination. But seeing that in kind of a modern context of a modern organization, where you're spinning off, in fact, some kind of incubator. So that for me has been a really inspiring example. And to see so many using the tools available to us in the modern age of these different kinds of organizations but for different purposes. But really, it was driven by the street vendors and their families and selves.MB: So you mentioned these three elements, which are big themes in the book, the Connection, the Context, and the Power. Connection: different ways you can help people connect is self-evident, to some extent, and you've got some great examples of who's doing that. Power: your message essentially is, empower the people, the primary actors on the ground, the people who you're really supposedly trying to help; the biggest way you help them is by empowering them to find their own solutions. But, talk a bit more about what you mean by Context, and why that's so important at this moment.FB: So just to quickly talk about the other two, because I think they are all interdependent. And so maybe just to go a little bit deeper, so that your listeners can say, well, this is not the same discussions on connection and networks. But actually looking at what's so important with that was also the ways in the practices and the tactics these organizations took to build collective identity. And that then also relates to the power of context. And so I want to just encourage that there's quite a bit under the surface of these three large principles that we talked about, which we felt was underlying all of the organizations, and how they worked.What we also looked at, was this concept of the practices. So under each of these principles there were sets of practices. And so what we were particularly interested in was, how does this stuff happen? So we can talk about context, but what's actually happening? How do organizations do that? And we call that principle: embracing context. And in that space, we were really interested in how critical that is right now. And looking at organizations, even large organizations, that are able to distribute information - and that means data, the ability to make decisions - to their frontline workers, and to the communities and citizens that they're trying to empower. And so context is important because that's where decisions need to be made. Some of our work was also looking very much at the complexity literature, and what was a really interesting insight is that the greatest point of complexity is usually in context. So, if we're talking about schools, it's between a teacher and a child, and a teacher and the family - or [in a hospital] between a healthcare worker and a patient. So the greatest point of complexity also doesn't seem that complex for the people in that position. It's their best place to actually understand well, what needs to be done here? And so what we found over and over again, was that organizations were trying to roll out programs in different areas. This is a common narrative or pattern, where we say, okay, this works really well, in this context, so let's roll it across the country, let's roll it out to other countries. And for a whole bunch of reasons that doesn't work. That's obviously all about context. But what's happening is that, in order for let's say, an employee, or a project manager, or portfolio manager, to roll out a program, they suddenly were doing all of this other work, which was highly relational, to roll out the so called standard operating procedure, the program, the blueprint, that they were supposed to be rolling out. And so not having that recognized, not having that resource, not empowering the frontline workers to be able to do that contextual work, to build the relationships, was part of the reason for failure. But also part of the reason why some of the organizations that we looked at were so successful - whether that be mothers2mothers or Our Labs, or some of the other organizations that we were working with. And what's interesting to say is, that doesn't mean everything needs to be small and local. So the other really interesting example from the book is Buurtzorg, which is headquartered in the Netherlands. A very large organization, in 20 countries in the world, about a 40 million euro turnover company. So this is not a small, micro NGO. But up until recently, they didn't have an HR manager, they didn't have a CFO. But they had very strong technology that enabled them. This is a neighborhood care, nursing care particularly for the elderly, business. So they enabled and empowered the nurses, who were working with elderly and their families, to have all the information, to make resource decisions, to make budget decisions, to make even HR decisions around their local team that was working in a particular neighborhood. And if you look at what happened during COVID, and what happened with particularly homes for the elderly, how there was an inability to be agile, to react, to have to wait for top down decisions, to have to follow protocols. Having worked as a doctor in a system myself, once you're at that level, you just have to follow the system. And so that was really interesting to see that empowering and equipping the problem solvers on the frontlines to be able to make decisions in context actually allowed for much greater engagement, and much more interesting kinds of outcomes. And particularly in breaking some of the traps that we found ourselves in. The last example I will give, which I spoke about earlier, is the Family Independence Initiative [now Up:Together], started by Mauricio Miller, whose book is a couple of years old now, but it's probably worth featuring on your program as well. He was the founder of FII and we talk about in the book, a story where he had to fire a staff member for trying to help a family. And [FII] helps relatively poor families in the U.S., primarily from minority groups. And [he got fired] because he was trying to help [while] his job is not to help. Their job was to provide the data, the information, the list of opportunities, the peer group with other families, the IT infrastructure, so that families could make their own decisions about their future. And that was a really interesting shift for us to see how these organizations were adamant about not trying to solve problems, but really equip people to do that for themselves.MB: You mentioned COVID. Has that made you more optimistic or less optimistic that these lessons can be learned and applied? Because, this is the third or fourth crisis in 20 years, and each time we hear that we mustn't waste a good crisis, that we must build back better and so forth. Are you seeing these lessons being learnt, from your vantage point at the heart of the DevOps community? FB: I'll start first with the organizations we looked at. Because we went back to all of them with a hypothesis that: would the work they had done to build this deep sense of trust, relational value, and distribution of agency, actually put them in a better position to be responsive and to be relevant during COVID? And, by a long way, we feel that hypothesis played out, and feel that these organizations have done incredible work during this period. Has that been learned by others? Have we all learnt how this crisis has shifted things? I think the one thing we've learned, now - which in my South African context is quite an open conversation - about racial bias, about the barriers between classes, about gender, clearly have been exposed at a global level. This is not only a South Africa challenge, this is a global challenge across so many ways. In some way, we've been able to raise the awareness that problems do have these deep structural, systemic barriers in place, and that we are failing to overcome those in our more traditional approaches to social change. On the other hand, and clearly my role is sometimes a bit paradoxical, but that's why the purpose of the foundation is to focus on vulnerable and excluded people and ecosystems, and is to interface with the World Economic Forum, which obviously represents a network of today's leaders. And despite the narratives, it's really hard for today's leaders to actually really work out the radical changes we need, when their mandates and agendas are to stabilize to continue as before. There are obviously great rays of hope, but clearly not fast enough or not radical enough. And so it is perhaps with a mixed answer, I do have optimism, but I also do see us not making the most of the crisis and opportunity. And perhaps it's the mounting crisis at the same time, or the fact that we can't really translate the COVID lessons into long term lessons, and I am deeply worried about that.MB: So last question. The book's primary focus is people who are in leadership of social change organizations, particularly nonprofit ones, but there is a context, which is that big government in much of the world has most of the money. And then you have the philanthropic sector that has done a lot of funding of organizations involved in social change. And then business is, increasingly now, under pressure and starting perhaps to engage more in a stakeholder centric approach that will require it to get more involved in social change, if that's taken seriously enough. What's the message of the book to those different groups? And if I think about our audience of people who are thinking about where they should go, how they should get involved in driving social change, what's the message and advice you'd have for them? FB: I think, first of all it is for all of those in the social sector, not only for leaders. Interestingly, I got a call from Brazil where they want to translate this into Portuguese, because of the work that so many social workers are doing on the ground, which is perhaps not recognized, they feel this book would help to affirm a lot of the work that perhaps people don't value as much. So that was really interesting to hear as feedback. Of course, for social change, leaders, and people who work in these organizations, are grappling and trying to figure these things out themselves. And we hope that this will have some practical insights. I hope it will also enable them to take forward conversations internally and look inside the organization, but also open up the discussions with funders. And so we have been delighted to be invited to a number of donor working groups and with individual philanthropists to engage them in this discussion. Because, there's that internal reflection, and the conversation within philanthropy and how it's evolving. And I do think, what we're emphasizing here are those participatory approaches, but also that we need to start valuing different aspects, and perhaps becoming slightly less attached to what we've been obsessed about - in terms of value for money, social return on investment, clear metrics and outcomes. Not that those things are not important. But in the process of that, we may have lost something that actually leads to this deeper change, that actually we do aspire towards.And then I think for the government and business leaders of the world, interestingly, a lot of these practices actually speak to the moment we're at in time where young people have the power, because of technology, to have a distributed sense of agency. We obviously have tools like blockchain, etc. And how do we maybe harness some of the tools we've got that actually can enable these kinds of practices in a modern era. So I think there's something really interesting, potentially emerging there that we didn't think about that actually, these practices might be relevant and valuable in more purposeful business or even just in business with a new generation. And then, of course, with governments, again, thinking about the value of the sector at a time where the trust in governments are, in many countries at an all time low, - even though some countries seem to be faring reasonably well. But I think there's something there to re-embrace the sector as part of our collective future and not as an afterthought of, well just fill in the gaps of things we don't do as we grow the economy. So I think there are a range of audiences for this, and why we have tried to frame it quite broadly, but then dive deeply into how does this work actually happen.MB: Well, there's certainly a lot of great information, great insight, great inspiration, in the book. The book is The Systems Work of Social Change: How to Harness Connection, Context, and Power to Cultivate Deep and Enduring Change. And it's by Cynthia Rayner, and my guest today, François Bonnici. François, thank you very much for joining.FB: Thank you, Matthew, and lovely to speak to you again.We hope you are as inspired by these podcasts as we are. If you are, please subscribehere, or wherever you get your podcasts (Amazon Music, Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher), and please rate us and write a review so others can find their inspiration.  This transcript has been lightly edited for context and clarity. 

 Matthew Bishop (MB): Hello, this is Matthew Bishop with Books Driving Change. And today I'm talking with Peter Coleman of Columbia University, one of the co-founders of the Difficult Conversations Lab, which explores what do we do about toxic conversations, a subject that hopefully won't refer to the conversation we're having together now -- which will hopefully be a very positive conversation. But, obviously, we are at a time of increasing polarization in the world. And a lot of conversations seem to end up being more counterproductive than productive. Peter has written a book called The Way Out: How to Overcome Toxic Polarization, which is something that anyone listening to this podcast will want to know the answer to. So Peter, can I just start by asking you in one sentence, given the audience that this podcast has of people engaged in trying to bring about positive change -- why should they read the book?Peter Coleman (PC): Well, thank you, Matthew, for having me. So the reason I wrote the book is that I feel that there is significant misunderstanding of the nature of the problem of what I call “toxic polarization”, which is unlike typical forms of polarization -- it's more extreme, it's more entrenched, it's more long term. And so what I offer in the book, and I think is relevant to your listening audience, is a different theory of change. Typically, how we think about addressing things like political polarization is that we go after key pieces of the problem. But we don't understand how the problem works as a whole, as a system, as a series of forces that kind of align and feed each other in complicated ways. And this book offers an alternative theory of change, it contrasts our typical kind of scientific approach of looking for the essence of a problem, and says this problem of toxic polarization has many essences. And more importantly, these essences align and feed each other in complex ways that really make it, as a cultural phenomenon, highly resistant to change. And so it's important that we understand how problems like these, wicked problems, actually do change, and what to do about them based on science. And so that's why I wrote this book -- to offer this alternative theory of change.MB: And it is an optimistic book, fundamentally, which is interesting because you start talking about how everyone's feeling so miserable now, and this is actually a reason for optimism. Why do you make that point?PC: Well, because one of the things we've learned from the study of deeply divided societies that actually do come out of this time and pivot into a more constructive direction, is that there are a couple of basic conditions that often are associated with that kind of change. One is that there is a sufficient level of misery within the political middle -- what in ripeness theory they call a “mutually hurting stalemate”, where you are sort of exhausted and fed up and really don't want to continue to engage in the same way, and you want to do something different. And certainly in America, but in many places in the U.K. and around the world, there is a growing, exhausted, middle majority that's fed up with the political vitriol that we see, the dysfunction that we see, and really seeking an alternative. So in that way, the ground is ripe for a movement that offers people a vision for how to change. But in addition to being miserable, they need to have some clear sense of what to do. What is the alternative? What are the steps? And that's why I wrote this book.MB: I'm very struck by how you are coming at this -- as someone who, as you talked about in the beginning of the book, grew up in a very difficult situation. You weren't in a well-to-do family, your father was being pursued by violent men, I think you say for gambling issues, you ended up getting your Ph.D. after a long and difficult process and welfare support, and all sorts of things in a single-parent home. And you know many people. You identify as much with Trump supporters in some ways as you do with his critics. About halfway through the book, you say, “Dear reader, I hope half of you are Trump supporters and half of you aren't”, or words to that effect. This is such an unusual voice at the moment, given the politics that we're seeing in America, and as you also say, around the world. How do you feel we can get beyond this pro-Trump/anti-Trump mindset and get to some of these underlying systemic changes that we need?PC: My journey to some degree is unique, because I was born in a place and at a time with folks that were disenfranchised, and I was as a young person I kind of worked my way out of that. And now I live this Columbia University professor on the Upper West Side of Manhattan [life], which is a very progressive arena. So I've experienced both worlds, and have empathy for both worlds. And ultimately, I think that's the question -- is how do we create some kind of trusted process or system where people can rediscover the empathy that we have for one another, and rediscover some sense of unity and connectedness? And again, what I propose, or what I argue, is that this is hard. We are, in some ways, in a mass addiction. I see toxic polarization as a bio/psycho/social/structural process like addiction. It's something that's within us, it's, in some ways, [something] we've embodied in our neurological structures -- how we see the world, what we react to emotionally. So there's a kind of basic internal component of this, but then there are psychological components. And it's embedded in our relationships -- who we speak with, who we don't speak with. It's embedded in the media that we do and do not consume, in the internet spaces that we do and do not travel to, and even physically where we go in our life. So there are many levels and layers to this trap that we're in. And it's not going to be something easy to escape from. It's not just that we decide, Okay, I've had enough of this, I'm moving on. We definitely need to have that. But we really need to recognize that this is going to be hard work. And some of the folks that have read the book have suggested, Wow, this is hard work. And the answer is yes. John Paul Lederach, a colleague of mine who does a lot of peace building around the world, once in Northern Ireland said to a Northern Irish audience, “It's probably going to take you as long to get out of this conflict as it did to get into it.” And he said, he almost got thrown out of the room. Because people don't want to hear that, they want to hear that there are simple solutions. What I lay out is a sequence of processes, strategies, steps, that can move us in a much more positive direction. But they're not simple answers to this complex problem that we're embedded in.MB: One of my takeaways from the book is, and you also refer to it in various points in the book, this notion of “complicate things” as a way to to help. Because there is a tendency to think quite simplistically about this. Those of us that are saying, “Let's try and heal the divide, or let's try and put a Trump voter in a room with a progressive and the hope that they'll figure things out.” And it's all quite naive. Where do people tend to go wrong when they try to take that approach?PC: So that approach is based on something called “contact theory'', which Gordon Allport developed in the ‘40s and ‘50s, to break down racism in this country. And it is the basic idea that if you have groups of people that have no contact with each other, no connection to each other, that sometimes just bringing them together and having them realize that each one is a human with kids and interests, and they like music, and they like to dance, and they start to rehumanize members of the other group. And that can have a transformative effect. And that's a very powerful theory and model that's often used in intergroup disputes. But when you have groups of people that are deeply passionate, deeply ideological, and living in parallel opposing media echo systems, then just saying, Go off and have a cup of coffee in the same room and chat with one another, can easily backfire. And in fact, if you push some of the people that encourage such interventions these days, they'll tell you those stories of these well-intentioned, well-designed interventions that blow up and that backfire. And in fact, there is Pew Research suggesting that when people get together across political divisions these days, the vast majority of us leave those conversations more frustrated, more alienated from the other side. So it doesn't help, typically, under these conditions, to just bring people together. And so what I argue is that we need to know what the science tells us. Contact theory has been studied over 500 times for decades. And what we know is that there are certain conditions where that works. And there's certain conditions where it doesn't work. And when you're dealing with true believers, it doesn't work, it's insufficient.MB: And you illustrate this at the start of the book with this discussion, or description, of an effort around the anti-abortion/pro-choice debate in Boston, where a number of leaders on both sides were brought together, and they met together over over a period of time, and it seemed to make a difference. Can you just explain what was the magic sauce in that approach? PC: I think tenacity, courage, and perseverance. So there was an incident that happened. Boston in the ‘80s and ‘90s was a very divided place. It's highly Catholic, 36% Catholic population. And the abortion debate was very hostile and intense in that community and becoming increasingly so. And then in 1994, there was a horrific shooting that took place in a couple of women's clinics -- women were shot dead, harmed, injured, and it was a rupture. And it really kind of destabilized the status quo. And so the Archdiocese and the Governor and the Mayor were all calling for sort of talks. And how do you change a culture of vitriol and hate through talks? It seems to be an almost impossible thing to do. So there was a group called the Public Conversations Project. And I tell this story in the beginning of the book, because I think it's a great parable for our time. We too, in the pro-Trump/anti-Trump world or pro-Brexit/anti-Brexit world, we are true believers in some ways.MB: The abortion issue is coming back up on the agenda in America in a big way, in that true believer way, is it not?PC: Absolutely yes, it's being triggered in multiple states simultaneously. So, it is a parable of our time. But what happened was, this group called the Public Conversations Project had been doing dialogue processes with pro-life/pro-choice groups, bringing them together before the shooting. And so they had a network there. And what they did is they reached out to three prominent pro-life leaders and three prominent pro-choice leaders, and they said to them, “Would you consider just coming together for a couple of weeks, and have some conversations in order to prevent further violence and kind of bring the temperature down?” And all of these women were afraid of the other side, literally. The pro-life women met in a Friendly's restaurant and prayed to God that they would be forgiven for sitting down with these evil murderers. And the other side was very afraid of their reputation and their physical safety, especially in the wake of this violence. But they agreed to come together, they talked for about a month, and albeit difficult, it went well enough that they decided to go to the one year anniversary of the shooting. And the conversations continued. And they actually had in-secret dialogues, clandestine dialogues, between these six people and the facilitators that their families and communities did not know anything about for five and a half years. And then in January of 2001, they came out publicly in the Boston Globe, they co-published an article called Talking With the Enemy -- which I'd recommend that your readers or your listeners read. And they talk about this experience and how it changed them and their relationships and their understanding of the issues. And ironically, and I think, importantly, they all to a person became further apart on the issue of abortion. Their attitudes on the issues became even more crystallized, so that they still fundamentally differed on the issue. But their relationships and care and respect for one another, and care for their community, and the rhetoric they used in their activism, all changed fundamentally. And that interaction with those six women and two facilitators had first and second and third order effects in the Boston community in how activism around these issues were taken up and what the rhetoric was. And ultimately, they think even sort of affected the movement more broadly in terms of bringing down the temperature of hate and vilification of the other side.MB: That goes to one of your points about, Let's get away from the actual point of dispute in these situations and think more about the context, the broader context, that things are operating in, and find common ground in the context, which you can build on. PC: They were able to recognize that they all cared for women -- young, pregnant, teen pregnancy. That they had common interests about violence and keeping violence at bay in the community and protecting one another from that. They could actually write grants together. And ironically, this was 25 years ago, and today, they're still friends. It's still a group of people that celebrate births and deaths and come together when they need support. So they grew very fond of one another. And they fundamentally differed on this issue. And that is the essence here. It is when policy becomes personal and becomes ideological. [For example when we] take things like “Let's build the wall” or “Not build a wall” as the slogans for immigration, we lose a sense of the immense complexity of immigration policies and over simplify the issue that positions them. And then we're nowhere, that's when we get stuck.MB: So what would you draw as lessons from that for today and how the abortion debate might play out less harmfully, then some people feel it will do now, in America?PC: What I do in the book is try to use the evidence-based science that has been done by our group and by other groups, and pull out five basic principles of what helps to basically navigate the way out of these toxic times. And I use this case as a parable, because I think it illustrates all of the principles in many ways. And, so that's why I use it as a story to begin. And then what the book moves into is what are the areas of research that have shed some light on this? One of the things that happened in Boston, that led to [the conversations], was this shock of the shooting, this destabilization. And you could say that, certainly in the U.S., the political vitriol and the January 6 attack on our nation's Capitol was such a destabilizing moment. In addition [we have] the racial injustice that's happening, and COVID shutdowns, and the Delta variant, and the exhaustion from all of that, so this nation is a nation that's destabilized. I imagine you're seeing similar things in the U.K. these days, with the consequences of Brexit, and COVID. But that kind of instability, as I suggested earlier, is good, if we take advantage of it as an opportunity to reset, and to really start to question some of the basic assumptions on which we make our decisions. What kind of future do we want to have? How do we move forward? Do we take advantage of this time as a time of reflection? So again, to go back to addiction metaphor -- what we find with addicts is that A) they need to bottom out, and then B) they need to have the kind of support that allows them to start to do a searing inventory of their life and their choices and how they want to move forward in their life. So similarly, I think that's what this time, this kind of extraordinary time, provides us. But it does require that we all do that work. But what I argue is that's hard to do. In fact, I just wrote an editorial that I submitted to Politico last night, which is calling for a national movement, like AA in America, that takes advantage of the fact that this is an extraordinary time, but people need help. They need help in knowing what to do. They need support, knowing how to do it. And in the U.S., there's a website called the Bridging Divides Initiative, which is out of Princeton University, a woman named Nealin Parker has developed it; and it has an interactive map of the U.S. you can go to it, click on it, and it tells you where the bridge building groups in your community are physically located. And so what she's identified is that there are at least 7,000 or more of these bridge building groups across the nation that are doing this work of bringing red and blues together in a safe space that's facilitated, that's careful and secure, to encourage people to get to know one another and to work through these issues. But what the challenge is for us as a movement is that most of these groups work independently. Some of them are connected to other groups, but largely, these are independent movements that spring up in communities. And so there is no sense of a movement. There are “1000 Points of Light” as George H.W. Bush used to like to say, which are community-based groups, or sector-based groups, working in journalism, or government, or education, that are trying to bring people together. MB: Do you think we need a movement?PC: I think we need a movement. I think we need a movement, because otherwise the challenge with this, the availability of these places, it's most people don't know about them. And there's a good reason that they don't know about them, because the sensitive nature of the work that bridge builders do across political divides in heated times can be a magnet or attractor for negative attention, violence, or protest. And so people generally like to keep low key. But what happens then is that Americans, or Brits, or others, are unaware of these things. And there's also no kind of standardization, there's no sense of what is the best practice that we should be following, what is the evidence base. And there's no capacity for this community of 7,000 plus organizations to come together politically, and really go after some of the structures that are driving this in the business models of the major tech platforms, or the entertainment-isation of news media. These are part of the industrial outrage organizations that are driving so much of this vitriol. So a movement is something that I'm calling for, is something that I'm envisioning the value of, but we're a long way from there. We have a lot of good work being done in communities. And helping people recognize that and find them is a start, because these are very hard change processes to go through alone.MB: You talk in the book about how something called the “bombshell effect'' can be very important in terms of breaking out of a status quo and creating the possibility of change. And you actually refer to the Trump election as being potentially one of those bombshell effects. And I would imagine that you see COVID in similar lights, although those obviously mostly happened post you writing the book. And I just wonder, in both of those cases, what do you see already happening that makes you feel optimistic that those two particular bombshells might cause significant progress out of some of the toxicity that we're seeing?PC: Well, because there's some evidence that there is actually work that's being done to address this. So the bombshell effect comes from something called “punctuated equilibrium theory”, it's a theory and a model that came out of biology originally as a sort of challenge to some degree to evolutionary theory. And it argued that oftentimes there is some kind of major shock that takes place that allows communities to change - what we have mentioned on a few occasions already. Paul Diehl and Gary Goertz have studied the conditions where international relations are heated for decades, contentious, where you have active war or cold war, and then the change of those relationships are usually preceded by these shocks, these bombshells. It might be a coup attempt, it might be the end of the Soviet Union, 9/11. These kinds of major political shocks can really destabilize. But the effects take time. And these shocks don't guarantee change. They just create the conditions where changes are possible.And so this is all part of this alternative theory of change that I mentioned at the onset -- which is that we typically think that in a problem like polarization we can go in, and if you [for example] fix gerrymandering, or if you get rid of Trump, or if there is the kind of single sovereign thing that we need to do, and that will affect change. And what this science suggests is No, when you have deeply embedded cultural patterns, it takes a different kind of shock to destabilize it enough. And then people need to take advantage of that time, in order to make these shifts.The other insight from this research that I point to is what we call the “butterfly effect”. And what that suggests is that after an upheaval, our next choices, the things we do to begin to connect across the divide -- how we do that, what our intentions are -- these first next steps are very critical, because they'll set us off on another trajectory.And ironically, I provided some guidance and advice to the Biden transition team, as they were coming in, they had reached out and asked for me to write some briefs on the science. And Joe Biden was talking about healing the soul of the nation and uniting the nation in his campaign. And I said, that's all well and good, but it's premature. Because you don't go into war zones and talk about reconciliation, or you get shot.[We need to recognize] that this state of polarization is toxic for us, in terms of our own mental health, in terms of our physical health, in terms of relations in our families, or divisions in families, communities, it's a highly toxic time. And recognizing that that is a common enemy, we can kind of come together in service of that. But you asked for some evidence of how the shocks are working. And let me just give you one example. There is a group in Congress called the Select Committee for the Modernization of Congress. And it's a mechanism that our Congress has when things are broken to at least put together a temporary committee to work on it. So about a year ago, they were put to the task of trying to work on depolarizing Congress. And it is a bipartisan committee. There's Republican and Democratic co-chairs -- they split the budget, they have consensus decision making. And their objective is to look critically at the structures of Congress, how Congress does its work, and make recommendations for how to bring the temperature down and reintroduce more decency into the legislative process. They offered Nancy Pelosi 98 recommendations at their one year mark. And then most of the Congress wrote policy and said, Extend this group, we need this. And so they will have a mandate now to work for another two years, trying to take a hard critical look at the incentive structure of Congress and what needs to change and shift in order to affect the vitriol that is there in the belly of the beast.Let me give you one specific example: Freshmen Congress people that come to D.C. on their first day, typically show up and are put on separate buses -- a red bus and a blue bus -- and they drive off in different directions and they start the war council, they start the strategy about how to defeat the other side. And that's the first thing they do on the first day. And so their first recommendation was don't do that. Bring them together in service as citizens of this country, as servants of this country, and have them meet each other and build some kind of rapport and shared vision before you move into political camps. And so that's what they're systematically trying to do. And that has come from January 6th, and come from the vitriol that we see in Congress, and the dysfunction of Congress. And so when there are these kinds of extreme shocks, there can be reactions like this that can ultimately over time have positive effects.MB: Because I suppose on the surface you look at Congress at the moment, and it seems to be more fiercely partisan than it's ever been. It's interesting that there is enough recognition within the Congress that they need to do something about that, that this committee has been given extra lifespan on it.PC: Absolutely. And they recognize that most of what we see of Congress is the things that happen in front of the camera. So one of the recommendations is that they create more spaces for congress people to get together that are away from the cameras so that they can speak candidly and openly and have some kind of contact, and build some kind of rapport. And they're not constantly positioning for their public audiences. So yes, we all get a sense that it's as bad as ever. It's not good. But the good news is that there is a cohort of them that recognizes that and are actively working to try to change the structures in order to change the climate.MB: So throughout the book, you draw on evidence from your Difficult Conversations Lab, and I just love the name of the lab - besides anything else, it just really gets immediately to the point. But I wonder if you would back the clock to when that lab was founded, and what's been the biggest positive surprise, and what's been the biggest negative surprise for you over the years?PC: So we built this lab -- we got funding about 15 years ago from a foundation. A group of us [got funding] from the James S. MacDonald Foundation, who tend to fund people that have kind of wild ideas but aren't ready for NSF funding. So sort of crazy but possible ideas. And we put this team together of complexity scientists and anthropologists and psychologists and this eclectic group of mathematicians. We had an astrophysicist, a modeler, and we were tasked with trying to think about long term stuck conflicts, things that go on for 10, 20, 30, 50, 100 years. And political polarization in the U.S. currently has about a 60 year trajectory of increasing vitriol. And so this is one of these more intractable kinds of problems. So we came together to study this, to make sense of it, to try to bring lenses in from complexity, science, physics, and biology that help us think about when do communities or family systems get stuck. And what are the conditions under which they change? And so we were studying this and we wrote a bunch of papers and mostly theoretical pieces. But we needed data. We needed to be able to collect data in real time to see if our half baked notions were valid. So one of the things we did is we built these Difficult Conversation Labs, one at Columbia, in my space, and then a former student, who's a colleague now, Katharina Kugler, built one in Munich, Germany, as well. She was very central to the development of this. And it really was just a space, that is what we call a “capture lab”, which allows us to bring people in who differ on a moral issue or have different political views, and then study the conditions under which conversations over divisive issues, go well or go poorly. And I have to repeat that, because what this Difficult Conversations Lab is, it's a laboratory, it's a place where we study the phenomenon. And so we've tried different kinds of interventions, to see what helps the conversations, shepherds them into more constructive directions, versus where are the places where people just shut down and get frustrated and angry and it devolves into a shouting match. That's what we study. And the challenge I found is I've had journalists approach me and say, Oh, okay, well, I want to bring a team of people there that are having a dispute, and we want you to solve it. And I'll say No, we're a research lab, we study conditions where things go better or worse. I can tell you what our evidence suggests. And you can apply that in your situation. But that's not what we offer. You know, people come into our lab and don't solve the abortion debate. They don't solve the Trump debate, but they can have conversations that they're willing to continue, and they feel like they've learned, and they feel sufficiently positive about themselves and their understanding and the other party that they'll continue the conversation. Much like the women in Boston did around the divorce abortion debate. So what we try to do is study specifically those conditions and the main take home that we've identified is really the difference I guess, between what I would call dialogue and debate in how people communicate in this country, and in the U.K. as well and elsewhere. So many of us in Western society are trained for debate. I was trained in high school as a debater; we see it in our Congress, we see it in political campaigns, we see it on television. It's how we assume people talk about politics. And debate is a very particular form of communication. It's basically a game that you're trying to win. In a debate, I have a position, I'm trying to sell it to you, I'm listening to you in order to identify flaws in your assumptions that I can weaponize in order to show you that I'm right and win the game. And that's a very specific form of cognitive process, it's a much more closed and focused process. Dialogue is fundamentally the opposite. Dialogue is a process of learning and discovery, where we communicate with each other in a way that [means] I may learn things about my positions -- why I hold them, where they came from -- that I wasn't even really conscious of. I'll learn things about the nuance or complexity of the issues that we're talking about, and learn things about you and where you've come from and what your take is. So it's a fundamentally different process of learning and discovery that is much more nuanced, and much more complex in people's understanding of the issues, and the other, and of their emotional experiences, and ultimately, how they treat each other. And so that's the main distinction that we found is that when we set people up for a debate -- so for example, we'll take an issue like pro-life/pro-choice and we'll present people with both sides of an issue -- and then they begin. And what happens when you present people with that kind of information in that manner, is that they pay a lot of attention to the facts that support their position, and they ignore the other side. This is something called “selective perception''. And then they come into these conversations armed for war, and battle, and they go into debate and it escalates and they get stuck. And ultimately, they want out. Alternatively, if you take the same information -- the pro-life/pro-choice set of facts -- and say, Abortion is a highly complicated set of linked issues -- there are moral issues or religious issues, there are family issues, physical health issues, physiological issues, it's a complex constellation of things -- here's that information, have a conversation about it, and try to reach some kind of consensus in your understanding. And if you frame a conversation like that -- which many dialogue groups will do, they'll say, No, they're not two sides to this, there are five sides to this -- those types of conversations tend to be more nuanced, and less certain, and less vitriolic. And people move into very different kinds of experiences of themselves, the other, and the issues. Which can be very transformative, and encourage them to at least continue the conversation. And that's the primary learning that we've walked away with -- that these conversations don't have to go poorly. But typically, for example, in our media, what we do is we present two sides, right? There's a pro-Trump side and the anti-Trump side, and we pit them against each other and have them go. And it is the business model of much of the media because people are drawn to conflict, and they like provocation. And so they enjoy it. It's like a reality show. But they learn about their own side, they don't learn about the other side. And the understanding that they walk away with is over simplified.MB: Is there an alternative media model to that? That could be about dialogue?PC: Yeah, there is. So a colleague of mine, Amanda Ripley, wrote an important piece for a group called Solutions Journalism, which is an organization that supports journalism. And she did a study of conflict resolution and mediation processes; she came and participated in our lab. And she wrote a piece called “Complicating the Narrative”. And it really is a challenge to journalists that they reflect critically on basically the business model behind how they do their reporting, and how they in fact contribute to polarization, and how they might actually begin to mitigate it by using different strategies. So, she lays out a series of steps for journalists to consider. Solutions Journalism then went with that piece and ran with it and now have a program where they train journalists to think differently about how they do their work in a way that introduces sufficient nuance and complexity in the context and is still compelling. So they recognize that there is a need to have an audience that will engage. But they also recognize the either intended or unintended consequences of oversimplification of these complex issues. So there is a movement in journalism to mitigate that, to affect that, to change that. But it is going against a huge business model that is all about provocation in order to gain attention. MB: Well, this has been a very rich conversation. And, we're almost out of time, so I wanted to end by asking you a question as we think about our audience of people who feel they want to get involved in being change leaders in today's world, they maybe want to be those bridging leaders. Obviously, your book has got lots and lots of ideas and tips and laws and rules and all sorts of things in it. But is there one overall overriding piece of advice you would have for someone who wants to get involved in that form of public service? PC: Sure. Well first of all, I would strongly recommend that they read the book. And that they reach out and engage with me -- I'm more than happy to have continued conversations about it. But one of the wondrous benefits of these hard times is that there are more and more groups and organizations -- there's a group called Starts With Us, there's a group called FixUS, there are many different constellations of either thought leaders or change leaders -- who are taking this time seriously trying to understand what to do and how to do it, and trying to learn the science. So there are many groups and organizations to engage with. Again, one place to go, if you're in the U.S., is the Bridging Divides Initiative and you can see where the local community-based places are. But there's the Bridge Alliance as well, which is a constellation of significant organizations like Search for Common Ground, that have made a pivot to the U.S. and are now focusing locally in the U.S., or Generations for Peace, which is a youth-based organization that is also now pivoted to the U.S. and is shifting focus from international peacebuilding to domestic peace building in the U.S. So there is a lot of energy and movement in the nonprofit world to work in constructive ways, in different sectors, and at the community level. So there is a lot of opportunity to do that. But I would begin by taking a look at the book and getting back to me with your questions and challenges, and insights.MB: And the book is The Way Out. Peter Coleman, thank you very much for writing it, and thank you for talking with me today with Books Driving Change. Thank you very much.PC: Matthew, my pleasure. Thank you for having me.We hope you are as inspired by these podcasts as we are. If you are, please subscribehere, or wherever you get your podcasts (Amazon Music, Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher), and please rate us and write a review so others can find their inspiration.  This transcript has been lightly edited for context and clarity.

Matthew Bishop's definition of success is simple and constant. "I'm able to financially take care of my family and have the time I need to spend with them. That's pretty much it in a nutshell," he says.While Matt isn't afraid of six-day work weeks and twelve-hour work days, he enjoys the flexibility of owning his own business.Matt started the Matthew Bishop Insurance Agency 12 years ago. At the time, he was working as a district manager for RadioShack while selling life insurance on the side to generate some extra income.After speaking to a fellow insurance agent, Matt decided to fully invest in his own business and interview with American Family Insurance."I was able to keep my licenses and work toward owning my agency and hopefully gaining the financial freedom that I desired," he says. The training was intensive, six weeks full-time with another week spent across the country learning how to run his own business."They told me they didn't want someone who could just sell insurance," Matt says. "They wanted a business owner who could sell insurance, someone who would understand the ins and outs of running a business as well so that I didn't fall on my face."That training was soon put to good use during his first few months in business."At first, I thought that all my friends and relatives if they just heard I was doing insurance would just call me up and the phone would just ring off the hook," Matt says, adding with a laugh, "and that just does not happen. You have to learn not to be shy and to go after the business."In addition to getting his company up and running, Matt had to learn how to handle rejection, set monthly goals, and be tenacious. "You've got to put in the effort and you've got to fuel that funnel," he says.From joining his local chamber of commerce to marketing at major sporting events and conventions, Matt didn't let marketing opportunities pass him by."Putting in the hours and the work was not something that I was scared of. The only thing I was scared of was not making it," Matt says. "The harder you work, the more money you make. I liked that how much money I make is up to me, not someone else."As Matt has continued to put in the hours and grow his business each year, he has noticed how his level of service helps him stand out from the competition, even if that requires him to take calls in the middle of the night.But as Matt has invested time into the business, he has noticed how he has been able to receive time and flexibility in return. "It's my time. I get to do what I want with it," he says.For Matt, that means visiting his four children and twelve grandchildren as often as he can. In fact, Matt has obtained licenses in every state his children live in so he can visit them often. About these trips, Matt adds, "Family and family time is very important to me. That's success."Learn more about the Matthew Bishop Agency by visiting their site or connecting with Matt on social media.

Matthew Bishop (MB): Hello, welcome to Books Driving Change. I'm Matthew Bishop, and today we're talking with Paul Shoemaker, who is the author of Taking Charge of Change: How Rebuilders Solve Hard Problems. Paul is a podcaster, activist, philanthropist, founder of Social Venture Partners International, which is a network of philanthropists, and has been really involved and an activist in change for many years. Paul, our audience is really people who are feeling a calling to get involved, in trying to build back better, trying to make the world a better place. In a sentence, what's your elevator pitch to them? Why should they read this book?Paul Shoemaker (PS): Because I'm identifying the leaders and the leadership traits that we will need to meet the complexities and reverse the inequities in America for the decade ahead.MB: The book was written before COVID, but clearly anticipated many of the topics that we've been talking about in terms of building back better. And what I really like about it is you have five leadership characteristics that you identify, and you put people to each of those characteristics, people who are actually doing change on the ground. And I like the fact that your five things are not obvious in some ways. You do have authenticity as your first one, and I kind of inwardly cringed as everyone is in favor of authenticity at the moment. And I think it is a bit like what Groucho Marx said about sincerity -- it is the key to success in public life, you can fake that you've got it made -- and you wonder whether authenticity is the same. But then you go into the things like complexity, having a complexity mindset, and being able to deal with cross sectoral complexity, to be very data centric, things that aren't so obvious to people who were just sort of picking the five characteristics. And I wonder how you came to those five, what made you pick those? And the other thing you do, which I love as well, is that you have a downside to each of those five as well. So many leadership books just talk about the virtues and they don't say well actually some people who are data obsessed are quite a pain to deal with or these cross sectoral people may not really get it in depth enough or whatever. So how did you pick those five?PS: In 2018 while working on a project about poverty in America, I was studying different aspects of inequities that affect poverty, race, health, economics, social, etc. In the middle of that project, what slapped me in the face was, while I certainly understand we have inequities in America, I did not know the pace and the downward path of economic, social, and health inequities over the last 25 years in America. And I think people think 2020 was this year of inequity, but this has been building for a generation. And so that's what I finally recognized. And that follows 50 years in America where we were slowly, haltingly, unevenly making progress. And we've sort of gone back down the other direction. So that was my original sort of motivation. Then I said, okay, how do I think about how we're going to reverse these inequities? What kind of leaders are we going to need? So I took the next six months, and I did three things. One, I talked to nearly 100 of the best leaders I've worked with over the last 30 years, and several traits and characteristics started to sort of fall out of that. Number two, I was also looking for evidence of programs and organizations where there was also true social impact. The ones that were starting to reverse that 25 year trend going the wrong direction. And then number three, was understanding the complexities that are coming in the decade ahead. This is the most insanely complex, not just inequitable, but complex decade, I think America has faced in at least 75, maybe 100 years. And so if you think of those as three overlapping circles -- leaders, impact, context of complexity -- the intersection of those three things, yielded those five traits for me. So it was a very well thought out, subjective, qualitative process that has a prospective point of view that I feel very passionately about, and think that these five traits are going to make a huge difference in the decade ahead -- 24/7 authenticity, generosity mindset, data conviction, capacity for complexity, and cross sector fluency. And the last thing, in terms of downsides, a good example of 24/7 authenticity, which is in bleak short supply, these days in America -- I have several examples in the book where standing up with integrity and honesty, and particularly with personal accountability, will cost you in the short term, and it may cost you a lot career wise, by making some enemies, etc. But in the long term, I think it's an enormously important leadership trait.MB: A lot of people have been forced to confront the inequities that you've written about, and that you and I have both been working on to different degrees over the years to address, but have been forced by COVID to address them, and are now thinking, how do I get involved, I'd like to get involved in in some kind of public service trying to make the world better. And yet they find it a kind of intimidating world. A lot of people who have been in the business world may be thinking, it looks like unrewarding difficult terrain and so forth. What do you say to them?PS: It is absolutely difficult terrain, as you well know. At times, it will be deeply frustrating. And it will be occasionally, hopefully, enormously rewarding. The challenges we've got -- whether you want to think on a local or global level -- climate, geopolitical, cybersecurity, rural urban divide, go on and on and on. These are generational kinds of challenges, and they are at real inflection points. So for someone to feel daunted is honest and correct. What I hope people don't feel is hopeless. Because you can make a difference. The book is full of 38 people who have found ways to make a difference -- some of them on a local level, some of them on a national level, some of them at the top of an organization, some of them in a medium part of the organization, or on the street in a community. So part of the reason to write the book was not just to have a point of view, but also to tell 38 stories of people who are making a positive impact, and how they're doing it, and how that positive impact reflects those five qualities that I think are so important.MB: And there are some great stories in there. The person that you start with is Rosanne Haggerty, who I know as well, and has this extraordinary record of actually figuring out how to get to zero homelessness in a number of cities around America. When you see what she's done, what can we learn from that in terms of how we could achieve real, dramatic change? Because I think homelessness has been an issue that no one really ever believed you could solve.PS: Particularly on the West Coast. I'm sure it's true on the East Coast, but on the West Coast it's just absorbing us.MB: And you were quite honest that you were involved in Seattle in trying to solve homelessness and couldn't do it.PS: I will say my case study was of Seattle, I wasn't directly involved in it. That's not letting myself off the hook. I'm trying to find an entry point in Seattle about how to be involved, because we do have a new housing authority that's trying to go after it. So what do you learn from someone like Rosanne? I would say a couple things. One, the people in this book, every one of them, sort of exemplifies one of these particular traits. And I think all of us, we have to be multifaceted. But there's also something about us picking a particular principle, or a particular strength, that's going to guide our work. And it needs to represent who we are. So in Rosanne's case, what she exemplifies is what I call the generosity mindset. And it's because she told me that phrase. She has to walk into so many communities and deal with some of the most complex, contentious issues there are. And I just said to her, how the hell do you have a chance? She says, I have to have a generosity mindset. And we went on to have a whole conversation about what that is and what that means. But she has a grounding in that approach and that strategy. So she doesn't randomly walk into a community to do this. She doesn't just say, I'm gonna do my best. Generosity mindset is a strategy. It is a hard-edged strategy. So I say, the first thing is, as a leader, we need to have an approach. We need to have a mindset. We need to have a particular leadership strategy that we're going to lead with that represents who we are and what our strengths are. The second thing to learn from her story is that literally from the day she got out of college this is what she's worked on. Now, I'm not saying everybody has to commit their whole life to it. But there's definitely the story of when people hop around to different causes and different issues, you're just staying shallow. If you want to make a difference, you have to pick at some point -- a place, or an issue, or a cause to go deep on, and stick with it, and go hard, and go deep. That is the one where you have a chance, that's the second thing I think you learn. And the third thing you learn from her example, and it's reflective in the trade of cross sector fluency, is everybody from every sector has a role to play in this. So if you're in the private sector, and you feel like homelessness is hard to solve, believe me, we need you. If you're in the public sector, and you feel like nobody cares about homelessness enough to really do something about it, that's not true. What her stories exemplify also is that we need all three sectors to converge on these problems. We do not have a chance to solve these huge problems one or two sectors at a time. We need all three of them. So have a strategy, stick with it over the long term, and understand that we need all three sectors.MB: This is a very challenging point, though. Firstly, near the end of the book you use a quote from McKinsey, which is obviously a firm that is very much associated with public private partnerships, but also currently is in the news for not being brilliantly ethical in this respect. And yet, there is this general thing that we all kind of know in principle, that we need public private partnerships to work at scale, if we're really going to move a lot of change fast. But yet, there are very few examples of public private partnerships that have really seemed to work. And there is this imbalance that I think is there between what you get paid if you're working in the private sector, and what you get paid in government. And the worry that many of the people who end up in government are not the best, that many of the most talented people go into the private sector. And that actually, where you want more of the talented people to go is into the public sector. And they don't, because it's not an attractive career, in many ways. How do we get beyond saying we need the public private partnerships to work to actually setting up the conditions where they can work? Obviously, there are many talented people in government, but how do we solve that problem?PS: I would say in the last three to five years, the most hopeful part of that equation is the private sector, not because they're the best, or whatever. I mean, all three of those sectors genuinely contribute a part of the equation. If you take one part of the equation away you do not have what you need. But in the last three to five years, you can look at the statement on stakeholder capitalism in September 2019, Larry Fink at BlackRock making the statements he's making, the way that CEOs had to step up in 2020. I think we've reached a convergence point where it's great if the CEO wants to be socially conscious, because they care about it or they have a good moral ethic. That's nice. That's great. It is even better if it's truly woven into the business, and it's truly going to affect the bottom line. Somewhere in the last three to five years, I believe we crossed over that. And in 2020, we absolutely moved past that point where it isn't just a nice thing to do, to varying degrees for companies, it's something they have to do. And so I think we have this place where profit and purpose are now not this incongruent, or forced together, equation. They genuinely can live together. So that's a really hopeful part of it. And what is also true is, there has been for a while there, this sort of a pedantic relationship between the private and the public/nonprofit sectors. And I would say in particular in 2020, a lot of private sector companies realized, man, I better have at least a nonprofit partner or a public sector partner, or both, that actually understands what's going on the ground, because I need to navigate this for my business, for my company. And I can't do this if I just sit over here in my private sector silo. So I would say the most hopeful thing, while it's still complex and it will always be, but the most hopeful thing is there is more alignment of natural incentives than I have seen in a long, long time and I think that gives me hope.MB: I agree with you, that business has definitely changed his tune. I think what remains to be seen is what the reality is underneath that. But I do find that the public sector part of it is the one that I find hardest to solve. Because there are so many aspects of working in the public sector that you really have to feel incredibly called to do. You have to be willing to put up with a lot of obstacles, and often feeling that things are moving at a very slow moving pace, that you are not well paid. And lots of risks in terms of politicians, particularly, who are very much subject of 24/7 scrutiny and in this current moment, can easily find themselves suddenly out of office for something that might have been seen as relatively minor in the past. What do we do? I mean, you have some examples, this Chief Performance Officer that you quoted, who is very impressive. How do we make it more palatable to go into government, into the public sector?PS: That's a hard equation to solve for. What I'll suggest is, at the national level, it can feel enormously discouraging. I don't know that I would tell anybody to try to run for one of those 535 spots in Congress, or anything at that level. So I'm gonna sort of bag off of that. But at a local and a state level -- and there's plenty of complexity there, too -- there's a lot of local and state issues, where I do think there is a chance to make change. You know, we talk a lot about mayors. I have one example of a mayor in the book, Mayor Nutter of Philadelphia who was there a few years ago. I think mayors, sometimes governors, sometimes local city council, they absolutely can have an impact. And what I do find inspiring is, I think that there are still enough people that care about that civic ethic, and that want to commit to their community. And I actually think that the Gen Zs have this, even more than you or my generation did, so I think there's a little more supply coming at it. And the last thing I would say, based on several of the examples in the book, is that cities, some states, some counties, they're never going to be okay with the private sector coming in, that it's just not gonna happen. But what they can do is hopefully create a working environment and a sense of purpose that is strong enough, and clear enough, that enough talented people will want to continue to want to work in the public sector. So absolutely a hard challenge. I see enough hope at the state, county, local levels, where there are enough people that have that sense of civic service, and enough of those entities that I think create a working environment where people do want to be a part of it, and that they can contribute something to public private partnerships.MB: One of the things that your book does, that is one reason I would recommend it to people, is you tell these 38 stories of people who really are making a difference. People who in some ways should be household names, but most of them aren't. And they could be. One of the things that we need to do better as a media is to shine light on some of these stories of people who are builders, who are taking charge of change. And, not in a naive way. And one of the things I like about the book is that you are willing to concede when people have not have not been perfect. What makes you optimistic as we come out of this pandemic?PS: So the simple answer, which is also true, is it's partly the people that I profile in the book and other folks that I talked to that are not in the book. So that is true. And I guess I would also sort of suggest that that's the easy answer. So I would say the less obvious answer is in doing the research on those people, and understanding those five traits, I had to come across organizations that were doing things that I didn't know they were doing, and I didn't expect. I came across a lot of private sector organizations that are not just in this stuff because they think it's a nice thing to do, because they have to do it. I see a lot more talented CEOs that are now willing to apply themselves to this wholeheartedly. I am probably as inspired by the public sector examples. The city of Cincinnati, Nicolette [Stanton], the head of waste management, the city of Phoenix, Philippe Marino, there are genuine examples of not just good people, but good work getting done. And, like you said, we are not telling those stories well enough. And in the midst of all the noise, and the division, and the silos, and the lack of facts we can agree on, which man they could win the day, I think there's enough good work, solid work that's going on. And these kinds of leaders, that gives me hope. It's a real race, where it's like, the good and the evil are both racing to the tipping point for America. And I know that's a little dramatic. And I think people like to always say you're at an inflection point. But, at least to me, America truly does feel like over the next five to ten years here, we're gonna make up our minds about an awful lot of things. And if we get it right, I think we will be going in the right direction. Again, if we get it wrong, then it's going to be a bitch.MB: So just to wrap up, do you have one challenge for listeners of Books Driving Change? And do you have one piece of advice for anyone who does feel that they want to take up the opportunity to take charge of change?PS: Sure, on the latter one, if you literally can't find somewhere my email is: shoe@paulshoemaker.org. And I've helped people many, many times to find that point of entry. The latter part I would say to folks is: start. We can get intimidated by, overwhelmed by, the size of the challenge, the complexity of the challenge. Where do I have an entry point in the community? Pick somewhere. You can find it -- there's volunteer match, there's your local nonprofit directory, there's your local city, etc, etc. So find a place and start. And then what I would say to folks about advice on a personal level -- in addition to getting the book -- is don't underestimate that everybody's got a skill or skills, a trait or traits, that actually have significant value. And I don't know that everybody realizes it, and doesn't necessarily sort of see where they have a pathway to: I have an expertise in finance, [but] what the hell does that have to do with this social problem or that one? Your skills and traits, they always have applicability. And it may take a little bit of a journey to find it. But part of the reason I wrote about these five traits is that every one of them can make a difference. So find a way to start. If you can't find a way to start, contact me. And look in your own skill set, and your own strength, and your own assets, and realize there are ways that they can be applied into a community beyond what you probably know, you'd probably expect, and beyond your checkbook and your wallet.MB: Great. Well, that's a great note to end on. Thank you very much. I've been talking with Paul Shoemaker, the author of Taking Charge of Change. It's a great book. Read it and get started. Thank you.

Port Adelaide 2004 Premiership defender Matthew Bishop joined Damian Watson to reflect on his footy career.

If you change your mind because you're telling people what they want to hear, and you're trying to curry favor or get the approval of your constituents, you're doing that for purely political reasons. And you are flip flopping, and we should be critical of that. But what if you change because you've encountered stronger evidence or sharper logic? That's not flip flopping, that's called learning. And I think we ought to separate the two and start to recognize that some leaders when they change their position, it's because they've actually evolved their thinking, and they have better ideas than they did when they developed their earlier stance. – Adam Grant Matthew Bishop (MB): Hello, this is Matthew Bishop with Books Driving Change. Today, I'm talking with Adam Grant, the author of Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know. Adam is an organizational psychologist at the Wharton School and the author of a number of bestselling books, including Originals and Give and Take. In this book, he addresses one of the big themes of today, which is that we seem to be in a world where our leaders feel they have to be right about everything. They don't seem to think again. They seem to double down on bad ideas when those ideas don't work. People are becoming more entrenched in their opinions. There seems to be less concern about facts and learning and more sort of just sticking to your guns come what may. And this book is really a challenge to that mindset and, actually drawing on a lot of science, about how do we create an open mind, both as individuals and also in society? So, Adam, I wanted to start by asking you this question: our audience is made up of people who are feeling some kind of call in this pandemic to public service to building back better. I'd like you to tell us in one sentence, why should they read your book?Adam Grant (AG): I think they should read my book, because 2020 forced us to do a lot of rethinking and my hope for 2021 is that we do our rethinking more deliberately, and more proactively. And this book is about the science of how we can question a lot of the assumptions and opinions and even outdated knowledge and beliefs that are holding us back. MB: So, in the book, you talk a lot about how to create a learning mindset, to be open to being wrong, and so forth. What are the practical tips that you would highlight for leaders as they try and move us in this world of entrenched opinions back to that more open-minded approach to leadership?AG: As far as practical tips, I think the first thing I would say is, when you make a plan, make a list of the conditions that would change your mind. It's so common for leaders to roll out a plan, and then find out that maybe it was the wrong choice. And get stuck in this trap of escalation, of commitment to a losing course of action, where they double down, they invest more time, more energy, and more resources. And then the cost of failure just gets higher and higher. One of the major reasons that escalation of commitment happens is people are too motivated to rationalize their behavior. They want to convince themselves and everyone else that they made the right call. And that means they actually stay wrong longer. As opposed to recognizing that the faster I admit I was wrong, the faster I can move toward getting it right, which last time I checked is where they want to land. I think the danger of committing publicly to a plan is that it becomes attached to you and you become attached to it. It becomes your baby. If you can separate your ideas from your identity, and say, "Okay, this is a plan I'm going to test. And right up front here are the things that might happen. Here are the early signals that would lead me to course correct or maybe pause to rethink it. “If I identify those upfront, then I can keep myself honest.MB: It's interesting that I think social media and, in fact, many of the forces that are shaping the world we live in at the moment, seem to play well to the kind of leader that is the opposite to the sort that you talk about in the book. The sort of person that is really about simple opinions, polarizing opinions, never being wrong, sticking to their guns. Seems like we live in a world where it's incredibly hard for our leaders to be humble. To admit that they are fallible human beings. That they can get things wrong.AG: I think that we put so much of a premium on conviction, confidence, and certainty; when what we should be elevating in leadership is the confidence to be humble. I think it takes an extraordinary amount of security to admit what you don't know. You have to be fairly confident in your strengths to acknowledge your weaknesses out loud. I think that we've had too many leaders, especially over the past 15 months, who have felt tremendous pressure to say I have all the answers, as opposed to taking what I would say Jacinda Ardern modelled much more effectively, which is to open with, we don't have the answers. We're not sure what it's going to take to stop COVID. And because of that, we're going to take some pretty drastic measures. As the science evolves, as we learn, this may change.MB: One of the forces that you talk about very persuasively in the book is this human tendency to what you call the escalation of commitment? Can you tell us a bit about that?AG: Well, a lot of people think that escalation of commitment is driven by sunk costs, right? You put your name, your reputation, your money, your time behind a course of action and then it seems like it's not going to pan out. You think, well, if only I try a little harder, especially in this world that worships at the altar of hustle and praises to the high priest of grit. If only I just persist a little bit longer, I can turn this thing around. And, yeah, the economic factors do matter. But the biggest drivers of escalation are not economic, they're emotional. It's about ego and image. I don't want to admit to myself that I made a stupid decision, or I might be an idiot. And I don't want anybody else to think I am either. So, it's easier to try to convince myself and everybody else that, you know, I'm not throwing good money after bad. I am heroically persevering.MB: And in that moment when you are faced with a choice of admitting you were wrong or the error is more complex than you think, why is it that today so many of our leaders are choosing to sort of double down on being wrong?AG: That's a great question. I mean, there's been a lot of social science trying to dig into that in the last few years. And I think one of the most compelling answers is that we've made the mistake of equating consistency with integrity. That when somebody changes their mind, we call them a flip flopper or a hypocrite. And I think we need to be more nuanced about that. If you change your mind because you're telling people what they want to hear. And you're trying to curry favor or get the approval of your constituents. You're doing that for purely political reasons. You are flip flopping, and we should be critical of that. But what if you change because you've encountered stronger evidence or sharper logic? That's not flip flopping, that's called learning. I think we ought to separate the two and start to recognize that some leaders when they change their position, it's because they've actually evolved their thinking, and they have better ideas than they did when they developed their earlier stance.MB: You quote the case of Andrew Cuomo, the Governor of New York, who has had quite an interesting year or so where he's been flavor of the month and quite hated by the public, and the media response to him quite early in the pandemic, saying we don't know what to do, so we're going to do something and see how it works. You quote approvingly that the New York Times was very critical at the time. I wonder about the role of the media. You know I spent all my career in the media, even in one of the more nuanced publications like The Economist, but the media is always wanting to reduce complexity to simple narratives of this person versus that person, this tribe versus that tribe, this country versus that country. I mean, how do we change the way the media helps society be more open to thinking again, and to dealing with doubts and complexity and experimentation?AG: Oh, good question. Well, first of all, I disapprove of Andrew Cuomo's leadership. And, in fact, that anecdote was a little bit of a head fake, and the real source of the quote and the story is Franklin Delano Roosevelt. So, there's a little bit of a twist in there. But I think the fundamental question of how we can get the media to help is something that I rethought while I was writing Think Again. I believed going in that the solution to all this polarization was for people to see the other side. And the data convinced me that, in fact, seeing the other side is not a solution, it's actually part of the polarization problem. The biggest mistake that the media consistently makes is they amplify two extremes. What does that do? Let's say, for example, you're on one side of the abortion debate or the gun debate or the climate change issue. If you see only the opposite extreme, those people sound stupid and wrong and crazy. You might even think they're evil. So, what are you going to do? You're going to become even more extreme and more entrenched in your own camp. What we need to see is the complexity of the issue. We need to see the nuances, the shades of grey. And so, whenever somebody in the media says, "Well, here's one side and here's the other side," what I want to know is, what's the third angle? What's the fourth perspective that's missing here? There's some research by Peter Coleman and his colleagues in Difficult Conversations Lab at Columbia, where they show that just presenting the same issue, not as two sides of a coin, but instead as if you're looking through many lenses of a prism, is enough to get people to rethink some of their extreme convictions and become a little bit more open minded and more nuanced in their thinking. I think the climate issue is a great example of this. Because if you look at the data, the media has actually paid more attention to and done more amplification of climate deniers, then they have of climate scientists. And if you look at where people's stances actually are in most developed countries, the vast majority of people are not in a denial camp. If they're skeptical, they might be uncertain about how severe climate change is. Or what exactly is causing it. Or what all the different solutions might be. What we need to do is raise up those voices and say, you know what, there are a lot of people who recognize that climate change is happening, that there are human decisions that are contributing to it, and there are things we can do about it.MB: I suppose the simple response that a media executive would give to me if I made that pitch to them would be, actually simple conflict sells and some black and white messages. Things that reinforce people's existing positions will play into deeper psychological biases and trends that are in there, than complexity and nuance. How do you make complexity and nuance engaging to an audience that is willing to pay for it?AG: Well, I would say to that media executive, that's your job to be creative about telling the truth in all of its complexity and shades of grey. And, I think obviously, it's very hard to make nuance go viral. But I don't think it always takes that much to signal complexity and to add a little bit more of it into the conversation. For example, there's some research, this is a little bit meta, but the evidence tells us that just saying “more research needs to be done” is enough to trigger people's awareness. Okay, you know, we haven't fully understood this problem yet. Or we don't have all the answers yet, right. That's a helpful step for journalists to take. Another example would be just to cue the complexity of the problem or the solution. So, you know, one of my favorite headlines reads, "Scientists say that planning a trillion trees is probably not going to fix climate change." Right? And immediately, what does that do? That activates for you an awareness that, okay, this is a really thorny issue. And we can't just fix it by planting a bunch of trees. I wonder what else would work. And that ignites my curiosity. Makes me more skeptical of a silver bullet that somebody might be trying to shoot at the problem. That seems to be good for the conversation. It doesn't stop people from clicking and engaging, right? In fact, it makes me want to know, it creates a curiosity gap. I want to know, well, what's wrong with planting a trillion trees? What else might be helpful here?MB: I did wonder whether a late-night politics show called 50 Shades of Grey might sort of attract an interesting audience, maybe the wrong way audience. But another area that you touch on in the book is vaccination denial and how to address that problem, not actually in the context of the COVID virus, but obviously with massive resonance for that issue. You talk a lot about persuasive listening as a way to change minds. Can you just talk a little bit about that, specifically, in terms of maybe what we should be doing now with the vaccine refusers and COVID?AG: Yeah, I think one of the systematic mistakes that we're making is we're doing way too much preaching and prosecuting, right. So preaching is “vaccines are safe and effective, and everyone should get one.” Prosecuting is “you're wrong if you're not getting one. Why don't you believe the science? Why are you endangering yourself and, you know, your community?” What seems to be much more effective is showing humility and curiosity. Approaching the conversation by saying, "You know what? I don't know what's motivating somebody to be resistant, and I'm awfully eager to find out." The research on this has been spearheaded by a vaccine whisperer named Arnaud Gagneur. He applies a technique called motivational interviewing, where you say instead of forcing somebody to change their mind, what if you try to help them uncover their own motivation to change. So, Matthew, I'll give you an example of this. I have a friend who is very resistant to the idea of any vaccination. I swore a few years ago that I was never going to talk to him about the topic again. Because, you know, I saw him as stubborn and pigheaded, and he saw me the same way. It was not good for our friendship. Then COVID happened. I'd written this whole chapter about persuasive listening and I thought it was an opportunity to figure out whether I could practice what I teach, and have a thoughtful, open-minded discussion with somebody who I knew did not share my views. I approached it really differently. Instead of going into logic bully mode and trying to win a debate with him. I started asking questions to learn. The pivotal question that I asked was, "How likely do you think you are to get a COVID vaccine?" And he said, "Well, not very. Like, the odds are pretty low." And I was stunned. I said, "Why didn't you say zero? I was sure you were going to say I will never get one of these." He started listing all these reasons why. He said, "Well, you know, maybe if I'm 85 years old, I'm not concerned about the long-term risks. And, you know, if the contagion rate is really high, and the mortality rate is extremely high, then I probably roll the dice and take my chances." All of a sudden, I saw all this complexity and ambivalence that I had never heard from him before. What those kinds of questions do, is they allow people to recognize all of the uncertainty in their own attitudes. To say, yeah, I have some reasons for staying the course and not getting vaccinated. But there are also some forces that would lead me to consider getting vaccinated. Then you can try to encourage them to reflect on what would have to happen for them to say yes. Ultimately, it's not your place to change their mind, right? What you want to do is get them reflecting on what might lead them to opt in.MB: That's very helpful. And you talked about preaching and prosecution, and you also have politician. You have these three Ps, these types of personalities we get into when we do get into this sort of unthinking mode. I wonder a lot, and going throughout the book, you have great moments of humor throughout, whether you thought about offering up the comedian as the sort of figure that actually is the one figure in society at the moment who can speak these truths about uncertainty and experimentation and not being black and white about things. Because, you have this great example of Melinda Gates reading feedback from her staff at the Gates Foundation about some things where she actually ends up reading a tweet that has a swear word in it, and how that completely changed the dynamics in the room between her and her team. I do wonder, is humor going to be the way that we navigate to a better place as a society? Is that what leaders should be trying to figure out how they can deploy? Self-deprecating humor, I mean, more often than attacking humor.AG: I think it could be helpful. This is such an interesting idea to consider because my first reaction was no. If you look at the data on The Colbert Report, for example. Yeah, liberals found him hilarious and brilliant in pointing out what they saw as all of the fallacies and contradictions and flaws in conservative thinking. And conservatives took him as sort of making fun of a liberal's caricature of a conservative and said, yeah, the joke's on the liberals. Right? And so, it didn't get through to the people that he was trying to persuade. But then when you shift this into self-deprecation, I find myself thinking again and saying, yes. I think one of the hallmarks of humility is being willing and able to laugh at yourself. To say, I take my work seriously, but I don't take myself too seriously. If you can't laugh at yourself, every time you make a mistake, you're going to feel pressure to cover it up, to hide it, to rationalize it, to explain it away. Instead of saying, I was a little bit dumber yesterday than I am today, and here's what I've learned from that experience. And yeah, I think comedians are a great model for self-deprecation. I will say that, unfortunately, the research on gender stereotypes that's been published recently suggests that men can get away with self-deprecation, whereas women tend to be vilified for it. When men make fun of themselves, they're judged as more competent. Wow, he's really confident in his strengths. He's willing to laugh at his weaknesses. When women do it, they are judged as incompetent. It's seen as a signal of insecurity and that is obviously ridiculous. Right? This is the 21st century. We should stop judging people when they self-deprecate based on their gender, and we should start recognizing well, you know what, she has the integrity and the humility to be willing to poke a little bit of fun at herself. That's probably something that's good for our culture.MB: So, one final question. You've written this book now, because obviously you feel this is a moment in time where we really need to be thinking again and open to experimentation and self-doubt, and all those things. For our audience of people trying to get involved in building a better world and wondering if it's possible, what words of encouragement do you have for them that reading your book and taking onboard some of your insights, of which there are very many, is a good idea and that can succeed in this moment?AG: Well, I'm not here to sell anyone on buying my book. I think you should be the judge of whether the insights I bring as an organizational psychologist are going to make you think again, and whether that's helpful in your life. I think the reason I was persuaded to write the book is I have had too many moments of sticking with the comfort of conviction over the discomfort of doubt. I've had too many moments of stubbornness, where I refuse to change my mind for too long and I've regretted it. I wanted to try to spare other people those regrets. My goal is not to get you to believe everything that I think. What I want to do is challenge some of the things that you think and invite you to rethink. I think that's something most of us could benefit from doing more of, but I think that you know that's something that everyone has to judge in their own lives. I think there are people who do too much rethinking, and they get stuck in analysis paralysis. My read of the data and my experience is that most of us are too far to the opposite end of that curve. We're a little bit too hesitant when we should be eager to think again. And, I guess, my hope in writing the book was to say, next time you discover yourself caught in one of these dilemmas of should I say, “I don't know”, or “I was wrong”, that instead of being threatened by that, you could look at that and say, “Oh, this is an opportunity to think again”, which means I might actually evolve and learn something.MB: Are you optimistic that as a society, we can become more of that kind of society?AG: I am cautiously optimistic. I think as a social scientist, I'm impressed by the range of techniques for opening our own minds and for opening other people's minds that I wasn't aware of before writing this book, despite the fact that my job is to make me think again, and I've been doing research on this topic in one flavor or another for two decades. And just the sheer amount of knowledge I gained from the evidence made me think there's a big gap between the expertise that's available on how to build a culture of lifelong learners, and what most of us do every day, and I think we could probably make progress toward closing that gap.MB: Well, on that cautiously optimistic note, we will end. Thank you very much, Adam Grant for talking with Books Driving Change. It's been a pleasure. Though you aren't selling the book, I would certainly recommend the book to everyone that's listening. I say, personally, I've learned a lot from reading it and will make changes in my own life that I think will open my mind a bit more. So, thank you very much for writing it, Adam.AG: Well, thank you, Matthew, I'm honored that you read it, I hope you don't rethink that. And yeah, there are some things we should never rethink. MB: I think that's a sunk cost at this point. AG: Exactly, escalation of commitment, here we are. But I do think that, you know, the idea that books can drive change is something that I was resistant to early on. I thought I'm really writing to share some of the things that I've learned and hope I have accumulated some evidence and some experience that might teach someone something else. I think I was resistant to the idea because I was afraid that my books wouldn't drive change. I felt handicapped a little bit and said, “No, no, no, this book is really just about helping you think differently about a topic and maybe even rethink it.” But the way we think shapes the way we act. It shapes the world we create. And I don't know if the pen is actually mightier than the sword, I do know that it's in class longer. And so, I think the work you're doing here is extremely important.MB: Thank you very much, Adam. Best wishes for the rest of your work in this area and your next project. AG: Right back at you. Thank you, Matthew.  We hope you are as inspired by these podcasts as we are. If you are, please subscribehere, or wherever you get your podcasts (Amazon Music, Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher), and please rate us and write a review so others can find their inspiration.  This transcript has been lightly edited for context and clarity. 

This episode with Matthew Bishop—author of Philanthrocapitalism, visiting senior fellow of the Brookings Institution and a founder of the Social Progress Initiative—discusses how we can begin to rethink, and reform, capitalism and better value all workers’ contributions. As we plan to emerge from a period of extreme disruption, our economic framework needs to be reconfigured and the human capital of America assessed as to whether it’s well-suited for the Future of Work.   KEY TAKEAWAYS   [04:00] The pandemic highlighted existing fault lines and intensified and accelerated disruptions that were already underway.   [05:37] Why does capitalism need to be reformed?    [06:55] After the crash of 2008, it became clear that we have a system of two halves – with almost all benefits going to the half with financial capital.   [07:45] COVID caused economic justice to rise to the top of the political agenda because of its impact on the average worker who already felt insecure about work.   [08:48] Capitalism wasn’t delivering for the average family and COVID accelerated the need to address this.   [08:57] The significance of the Business Roundtable announcement about all stakeholders, not just shareholders, benefiting.   [09:56] Why it makes sense to separate workers out from the rest of ‘social’ in the ‘S’ of ESG.   [10:43] There are a lot of conversations right now on how to be a better employer--but a big challenge is to figure out how to find broad agreement.   [11:49] WorkMoney is a new organization lobbying for working family rights in Washington—including the delineation between employees and independent contractors.   [12:50] What can be reconfigured to reform capitalism—setting an enabling context?   [13:33] Next steps--vocal companies talking about long-term stakeholder strategy.   [14:23] Measuring how companies are performing against UN Sustainable Development Goal targets.   [15:20] Is it time to reformulate GDP since it has never adequately measured progress?   [16:33] Matthew co-founded the Social Progress Index—a series of measures of the good society to use alongside GDP.   [17:22] COVID highlighted places with poor social performance as more vulnerable to deaths.   [18:39] What ‘normality’ may look like with the release of pent-up demand!   [20:28] Companies will be judged on how they responded during the crisis.   [22:00] CEOs know they have to change, but will their investors punish them if they do?   [23:40] The younger generation has seen nothing but chaos and catastrophe which likely results in jadedness and low trust levels.    [24:31] Without long-term career prospects, employees are happy to share opinions about their companies publicly especially credentials about social issues.   [26:40] Google has a large percentage of contract workers who are treated differently to employees.   [27:57] A bifurcated workforce can exist where high-paid employees are not focused on the social contract as regular employees are.    [29:47] Gender bias in management may improve after men have been more exposed in home-based chores and challenges during the pandemic.   [30:51] Matthew believes the ability to work from home will be an option for almost every job going forward.   [31:17] African American billionaire Robert Smith has proposed the 2% Solution to the Business Roundtable to address structural social challenges.    [33:17] COVID has highlighted deep social and structural problems in the economy and how difficult it is to get ahead.     [34:35] There will be a need for a massive re-skilling.   [35:19] The average American family needs to be equipped for the new world of work.   [36:02] A new initiative to create a national human capital strategy for America.    [37:03] The private sector needs to collaborate with universities and colleges and discuss future skills’ needs and what degrees will prepare future employees best.   [38:44] Employers, educators, and the government ought to get together and talk about what the future of work looks like even though you can’t predict how technology is going to evolve.    [39:51] The pandemic has shaken up the traditional four-year in-person degree.   [41:14] Where is ‘Philanthrocapitalism’ headed in the upcoming years?    [44:02] We have the opportunity to have a more constructive dialog between business and society.   [45:56] IMMEDIATE ACTION TIP: Big picture - demand a national Human Capital Strategy and be willing to participate. Within your own company - Talk with your own team and find out what they really want, what their expectations are and what good practice looks like.     RESOURCES   Matthew Bishop on LinkedIn    Matthew Bishop on Twitter — @Mattbish   Philanthrocapitalism.net   WorkMoney.org   Socialprogress.org   Worldbenchmarkingalliance.org   AACU.org   Robert Smith’s 2% Solution   Businessroundtable.org     QUOTES   “There was already a recognition that capitalism wasn’t delivering for the average family.”   “You look at the last year and the richest people in the world, they’ve done fantastically well, and the average worker with no benefits, their life has gotten much harder.”   “I do think a lot of CEOs get it, they get the need to change, but they are concerned that investors are ultimately going to punish them for doing that rather than reward them.”   “There is a need to look seriously, not just at economic growth, but about how the money is spent in terms of really investing in a healthy society.”   “The average working family needs to be equipped for the new world of work. What’s striking to me is that we don’t have a lot of ideas about what to do beyond going to college.”   “Nobody really knows what the human capital of America is and whether it’s well-suited to the work of the future.”   “Employers, educators, and the government ought to get together and talk about what the future of work looks like.”   “We have the opportunity to have a more constructive dialog between business and society.”    

We often hear about the importance of collaboration. We know what it means and how to do it. But, collaboration doesn't come easily to us. In fact, it has taken a global pandemic to jolt us out of our individualistic bubble, and pivot the world towards a new paradigm and way of thinking. In this episode, Matthew Bishop, author of the best selling book, Philanthrocapitalism, will be speaking with key practitioners who have been leveraging powerful partnerships to create systems change. Tim Hanstad, CEO of Chandler Foundation, Vishnu Swaminathan, Vice President of Ashoka, Debbie Aung Din, Co-Founder of Proximity Designs, and Neelam Chhiber, Co-Founder of Industree Crafts Foundation are an inspiring group of leaders building a more sustainable tomorrow for this region we call home.

Giving Tuesday was launched in 2012 on the Tuesday after American Thanksgiving, as an annual celebration of generosity in all its forms. It has grown rapidly into a global grass roots movement, drawing together people around the world who share a love of serving their fellow humans with their time, expertise and money. Asha Curran has been involved in Giving Tuesday from the start, helping her then boss, Henry Timms, launch the idea. Now she is the CEO. For Driving Change, Matthew Bishop – another member of the launch team – asked Asha to reflect on what lessons have been learned over the past 8 years, including about how to engage people in working for a better world.

In this episode of This Green Earth , Matthew Bishop , an attorney with the Western Environmental Law Center talks about the Trump Administration's decision last week to not provide protection to wolverines under the Endangered Species Act. Once numbering in the thousands, there are now fewer than 300 wolverines remaining in the contiguous U.S. He'll explain why his group is filing a lawsuit against the administration's decision.

The ugliness of police brutality aimed at Black Americans cannot be ignored – and cannot be papered over with meagre policy changes. We have to recognize the ugly fact that Racism is at the core of this country – is the ground from which arises white rage against dark skin. Rebecca and I feel it is important that we develop conversations about the enormous issue of white privilege and the near impossibility of white citizens to see the true nature of this country as racist.For this BCR 101 episode, we had a respectful and confessional talk with two young Black Americans, working in IT -- Kendra Claiborne and Matthew Bishop -- about racism in this country. Contact: barcrawlradio@gmail.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

With the N.C. General Assembly wrapping up work for the year, now is a good time to review some of the year’s victories for the freedom movement. Becki Gray, John Locke Foundation senior vice president, focuses on advances in taxes, spending, regulation, education choice, and criminal law reform. She also places this year’s events in the broader context of changes seen since Republicans took over the legislature at the beginning of the decade. Medicine continues to make major advances. But most of those advances involve new treatments for diseases. We’ve seen very few cures in recent years. Rep. Jim Butler, speaker pro tem of the Ohio House of Representatives, is pushing a multistate Cure Bill that would incentivize medical innovators to find new cures. Butler is seeking support for his proposal in North Carolina. A decade has passed since Matthew Bishop co-wrote the book Philanthrocapitalism. During a recent speech at Duke, Bishop highlighted the concept’s continuing significance in the world of charitable giving. As state lawmakers recently redrew North Carolina’s congressional election map, they took public input from supporters and opponents of major changes in the election redistricting process itself. You’ll hear highlights from that public hearing. Mental health issues have played a prominent role in recent years among experts and pundits pushing for health care reforms. Jordan Roberts, John Locke Foundation health care policy analyst, assesses key mental health concerns. He explains how market-based reforms could help address those concerns.

In this episode our hosts Matthew Bishop and Robin Wallar celebrate what God is doing through our Church Family, and lead us in a conversation about being radically generous with our talents.

In this episode our hosts Matthew Bishop and Robin Wallar celebrate what God is doing through our Church Family, and lead us in a conversation about being radically generous with our talents.

Matthew Bishop | Matthew 18:21-35 Sunday Morning The post Legacy Sunday appeared first on Heucks Retreat.

We Can Do Hard Things: Relationship Resiliency Whether its something you're afraid to bring up, or you've had this fight 1000 times before, sometimes it feels easier and safer to just give up, check out, or settle for less. At this...

Message from Matthew Bishop on June 2, 2019

Message from Matthew Bishop on Jun 2, 2019

This week’s episode is an interview with Matt Bishop, music teacher at the Dunecrest American School in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. A year ago Matt was an early twenties suburban middle school choir teacher, having only ever lived in North Carolina and did not even own a passport. What led him to pursue such a drastic change and why? What hurdles did he jump personally and professionally to learn, apply, and accept this position? What is teaching at an international school like, especially a school in the Middle East? How has he grown as a person and musician in the past year? If you’ve ever wanted to know what the process for international teaching is, Matt walks us through his experience. Or, if you’ve ever felt trapped and unhappy in your current situation, Matt humbly shares his own struggles and how he took control of his life. You will be inspired by Matt’s story and come away with yet another example of how choir can change your life.  ----------------------------------------------------------------- Matthew Bishop is a lyric tenor, conductor, and teacher.  A native of North Carolina, he holds a Bachelor’s of Music in Music Education from University of North Carolina School at Greensboro.  While at UNCG, he performed as a soloist and chorister with the Schola Cantorum, University Chorale, and Chamber Singers.  He was also the first undergraduate student at UNCG to assemble a choir and program for an undergraduate conducting recital, An Evening of Choral Classics.   Upon graduation, Mr. Bishop became the Choral Director at Holly Grove Middle School in Holly Springs, North Carolina.  His students received honors such as selection for North Carolina Middle School Honors Chorus, All State and All County choirs.  Bishop was also an active member of his Professional Learning Team and served as the All County Chorus Festival Coordinator. He also served as musical director for productions such as How the Grinch Stole Christmas  and Annie Jr.  Mr. Bishop’s professional memberships include National Association of Music Education, and American Choral Director’s Association. In August 2018, Mr. Bishop relocated to Dubai, United Arab Emirates to build the Performing Arts programs at Dunecrest American School.  He currently directs Grades 5-10 Choir and Theatre ensembles, as well as an after school Piano Lab. Mr. Bishop is excited to join The Voice Studio at American School of Dubai. Choir Baton Host: Beth Philemon @bethphilemon | www.bethphilemon.com Visit Choir Baton Online: @choirbaton | www.choirbaton.com Choir Baton Theme Song by Scott Holmes

Message from Matthew Bishop on February 17, 2019

Message from Matthew Bishop on Feb 17, 2019

Tyler and George welcome rock photographer Matthew Bishop. Bishop has photographed some of the best including Garth Brooks, Marilyn Manson, Keith Urban, David Duchovny, and many more. We talk about his experiences and touch on the spotted lanternfly as well because, why not? Learn and see more at The Rock Revival and Matthew Bishop Photography. ——– The Lehigh Valley with Love Podcast is currently available on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, and Pocket Casts. As always, you can listen to the podcast directly on our website and insert it into your favorite player via our podcast feed. This episode features the Song “Goodbye Syndrome” by Sunsets North. (www.sunsetsnorth.com)

0:00:00 Introduction Richard Saunders   0:05:40 Oh My Stars! Interview with Dr Pamela Gay Dr Pamela Gay is an American astronomer, educator, podcaster, and writer, best known for her work in astronomical podcasting and citizen science astronomy projects. She is the Director of Technology and Citizen Science for the Astronomical Society of the Pacific and a long time friend of The Skeptic Zone. Pamela interviews Richard Saunders on Twitch https://www.twitch.tv/videos/260004763 “New views of Jupiter” showcases swirling clouds on giant planet http://www.europlanet-eu.org/new-views-of-jupiter-showcases-swirling-clouds-on-giant-planet/   0:24:50 The Raw Skeptic Report.... with Heidi Robertson This week Heidi takes a look at the claims made by a self-proclaimed natural healer. Do they stack up?   0:40:35 Skeptic Zone Listeners come to the aid of Science Dr Ken Harvey and Mal Vickers would like to offer there sincere thanks to the following people. Stephen Edmonds, Mark Dawson, Dane Lewis, Stephen Gun and Matthew Bishop for their help in capturing web pages for science.   0:43:20 The Blind Seer Richard Saunders looks into a famous case of the disappearance of young children, and Australia’s baptism into the world of psychic detectives. The Blind Seer - report in 'The Skeptic'. (pdf) https://tinyurl.com/yd7zy6k2   Also... Australian Skeptics National Convention 2018 https://convention.skeptics.com.au SkeptiCal 2018 http://www.skepticalcon.com CSIcon 2018 http://www.skeptiCalCon.com      

Webber and Jonah are back to analyse EVERY team's chances in this season's Dafabet WPL. Plus we hear from Andy Legg, Matthew Bishop plus players & managers and fans from all teams. And the Newtown kitman picks a song and tells us who's got the smelliest kit in Dugout Island Discs.

Matthew Bishop speaks to the Dafabet Welsh Premier League podcast about his new team, his time at Hereford and doing their business quietly.

 On this week’s Past Present podcast, Nicole Hemmer, Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, and Neil Young discuss Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan’s philanthropic gift, the history of baby names, and “prayer shaming.” Here are some links and references mentioned during this week’s show:Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan announced they would donate 99 percent of their Facebook shares to charity, totaling some $45 billion. Some observers have been critical of the couple's decision. Niki pointed to Napster founder Sean Parker’s manifesto, “Philanthropy for Hackers” as a precursor to this debate. Natalia mentioned that books like Matthew Bishop’s Philanthrocapitalism have applauded the way billionaires are devoting themselves more to charitable giving and thereby reshaping the world. We recommend reading the history of philanthropy blog, HistPhil, for more. As a starting point, check out Benjamin Soskis’s essay on the Ford Foundation and the Gospel of Wealth.The most popular baby names of 2015 have been released, and gender-neutral options and names inspired by Instagram filters have made the list. Natalia reminded us that the bestseller Freakonomics has a chapter devoted to the economic consequences of what parents name their children. Niki shared the baby name generator that allows you to see what your name would be if you had been born at different points in history.In the wake of the San Bernardino shooting, the New York Daily News devoted its cover page to attacking Republican politicians who offered “thoughts and prayers” instead of political solutions to the nation’s gun crisis. Conservatives lashed back, decrying the rise of liberal “prayer shaming.” But Neil argued against the false dichotomy of a religious right and secular left in this debate, pointing out many liberals had offered their prayers while several Christian conservatives had criticized the thoughtless habit of extending “thoughts and prayers” on social media. In our regular closing feature, What’s Making History:Natalia discussed Witness Against Torture’s viral video, Thanksgiving at Guantanamo.Neil recommended the hit BBC television show, The Great British Bake Off. Niki shared Mason B. Williams’s essay in the Atlantic, “The Crumbling Monuments of the Age of Marble.”  

Matthew Bishop and Corby Kummer are speakers here.

As Comet ISON draws near to its close approach with the Sun in November, much uncertainty remains over how brilliant it will be. Dominic Ford speaks to Matthew Bishop at the Lowell Observatory to find out more. He also talks to Apostolos Christou from the Armagh Observatory about a group of asteroids which closely follow the orbit and Mars, and appear to fragments of a much larger pair of asteroids which collided. Tamela Maciel from the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge reports on the lonely exoplanet which doesn't seem to have a parent star, and Kirsten Gottschalk from the International... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

As Comet ISON draws near to its close approach with the Sun in November, much uncertainty remains over how brilliant it will be. Dominic Ford speaks to Matthew Bishop at the Lowell Observatory to find out more. He also talks to Apostolos Christou from the Armagh Observatory about a group of asteroids which closely follow the orbit and Mars, and appear to fragments of a much larger pair of asteroids which collided. Tamela Maciel from the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge reports on the lonely exoplanet which doesn't seem to have a parent star, and Kirsten Gottschalk from the International... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Dominic Frisby talks to Michael Green and Matthew Bishop, authors of a new book about the future of money - In Gold We Trust? The Future Of Money In An Age Of Uncertainty.Buy this book on Amazon.Matthew Bishop is the US Business Editor and New York Bureau Chief of The Economist. Mr. Bishop was previously the magazine's London-based Business Editor.Michael Green is an independent economist and writer, who previously co-authored Philanthrocapitalism: How Giving Can Save The World with Matthew Bishop. He is currently working on a report for the US Committee of Concerned Journalists on how the media needs to change in response to the financial crisis. Previously he was a senior official at the Department for International Development, and taught economics at Warsaw University in Poland.This podcast can also be heard at the Goldmoney Foundation, an independent organisation established by GoldMoney - the best way to buy gold and silver. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit frisby.substack.com/subscribe

Dominic Frisby talks to Michael Green and Matthew Bishop, authors of a new book about the future of money - In Gold We Trust? The Future Of Money In An Age Of Uncertainty. Buy this book on Amazon. Matthew Bishop is the US Business Editor and New York Bureau Chief of The Economist. Mr. Bishop was previously the magazine’s London-based Business Editor. Michael Green is an independent economist and writer... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Ancient man worshipped it. Governments stockpile it. Warren Buffett disdains it. And Mr. T loves it. For millennia gold has long been one of the most valuable commodities on earth, and until 1971 served as the basis of our own U.S. dollar. As its price continues to skyrocket in the face of an uncertain global economy and unstable currencies, what is the future of gold as a commodity and, even possibly, money? In his new e-book IN GOLD WE TRUST? The Future of Money in an Age of Uncertainty (The Economist / Amazon Kindle Singles, March 2012 – co-written with The Economist's Matthew Bishop), economist Michael Green uses the surge in the price of gold in recent years as a lens to explore the future of money. Green was formerly a senior official in the British government where he worked in aid and development. Prior to that he worked in Poland, teaching economics at Warsaw University and as a freelance journalist. A graduate of St Peter's College, University of Oxford, he lives in London.

Ancient man worshipped it. Governments stockpile it. Warren Buffett disdains it. And Mr. T loves it. For millennia gold has long been one of the most valuable commodities on earth, and until 1971 served as the basis of our own U.S. dollar. As its price continues to skyrocket in the face of an uncertain global economy and unstable currencies, what is the future of gold as a commodity and, even possibly, money? In his new e-book IN GOLD WE TRUST? The Future of Money in an Age of Uncertainty (The Economist / Amazon Kindle Singles, March 2012 – co-written with The Economist's Matthew Bishop), economist Michael Green uses the surge in the price of gold in recent years as a lens to explore the future of money. Green was formerly a senior official in the British government where he worked in aid and development. Prior to that he worked in Poland, teaching economics at Warsaw University and as a freelance journalist. A graduate of St Peter's College, University of Oxford, he lives in London.

Matthew Bishop, University of the West Indies, St Augustine The Legacy of Eric Williams and Contemporary Trinidadian Politics ROUND TABLE followed by open discussion: Reflections on the Williams Era Including: - Colin Palmer, Schomburg Centre, New Y...

Matthew Bishop, University of the West Indies, St Augustine The Legacy of Eric Williams and Contemporary Trinidadian Politics ROUND TABLE followed by open discussion: Reflections on the Williams Era Including: - Colin Palmer, Schomburg Centre, New Y...

Bishop and Green led a discussion based on their recent book, "The Road From Ruin: A New Capitalism for a Big Society". Together, they will take a look at what set us on the road to the recent financial crisis, whilst also highlighting the signs to guide us back to prosperity. Matthew Bishop is US Business Editor and New York Bureau Chief of The Economist. Michael Green is a leading independent economist and writer.

Matthew Bishop and Mike Green talk about their book, Philanthrocapitalism: How the Rich Can Save the World and Why We Should Let Them Running time 1 hour 5 minutes; size 33.8 Mb. Download transcript (pdf)

Matthew Bishop and Mike Green talk about their book, Philanthrocapitalism: How the Rich Can Save the World and Why We Should Let Them Running time 1 hour 5 minutes; size 33.8 Mb. Download transcript (pdf)

In a climate resistant to government spending on social causes, the focused donations of billionaire philanthropists may be the greatest force for societal change in our world. So says journalist Matthew Bishop in this Stanford Center for Social Innovation sponsored talk. Discussing his recent book, Philanthrocapitalism, Bishop shares anecdotes, analysis, and profiles of a small group of people who are influencing the lives of many by bringing their success in capitalism to giving, rather than to making money. https://ssir.org/podcasts/entry/matthew_bishop_-_philanthrocapitalism

After building two Fortune 500 companies from the ground up, Eli Broad is devoting his full time and attention to philanthropy that uses entrepreneurship to advance the public good in education, science and the arts. In his book, Philanthrocapitalism, Matthew Bishop and co-author Michael Green examine how social investors, such as Broad, are using business acumen to reshape the way charitable giving is taking place.

Dr. Matthew Bishop of UC Davis and Dr. David Wagner of UC Berkeley discuss the vulnerability of California's recently decertified electronic voting machines

Dr. Matthew Bishop of UC Davis and Dr. David Wagner of UC Berkeley discuss the vulnerability of California's recently decertified electronic voting machines