In conversation with Graham Boyd as we discuss FairShares Commons Business Model for the new emerging economic paradigm:
“If we’re going to actually make progress with all of the things that we’re working on, and all the superb initiatives out there, like values based leadership, etc, etc. we have to also reinvent how we incorporate. That was a big step forwards and what we now call the FairShares Commons Business Model is to recognize that in today’s world the problem we’re wrestling with today, the scarcest capital, we have is human capital, in particular human attention, and human relationships, and trust. And in particular, the capacity for people to come together and innovate across highly complex global problems, which requires very, very high levels of trust.
That led me to think that it may well be a good idea to think of the company, no longer as property. No longer it’s something that separates most stakeholders from the company, but as a commons, a commons of the productive capacity in the innovative capacity of the company. And for that to work, that means that all of the different stakeholders need to be engaged in the governance of the company, they need to have a fair share of the wealth generated by the company.
This then opens up a whole swathe of completely new ways of solving the problems that the world is facing.”
There’s something really interesting about the the concept I think, that you’re describing here, which is very much around co creation of everything. I’m hearing this this phrase co creation from a whole variety of different sources. And I think it’s really becoming almost like the emerging way that some strategy is being evolved and developed not only in larger organizations, but certainly in startups and entrepreneurial ventures as well. We’re seeing this kind of co-creation and collaboration being at the heart of, very fast moving in sort of organizations that are very fleet of foot. Did you see this as being almost like the new innovation, not only in terms of how people work together, but how organizations, beyond nonprofits and NGOs, commercial organizations, can really adapt to these these flourishing and changing times. It feels like it’s a very opportune moment.
“Yes, I believe it is. If you look at the challenges that we’re facing in the world, they are all global scale. They have deeply, deeply lying
interconnectedness in such a way that it’s, it’s impossible to do the old style of this is the problem. Let’s solve it. We’re now in a world where to address our global challenges. We need to do lots of little attempts and work our way through. How can we transform something that is inherently nebulous, that cannot be pinned down and analyzed in a finite amount of time? Because there are just too many variables changing way too quickly, and that are interconnected in ways that we cannot know about until long after the fact.
And to address something like that. You can’t do the kind of centralized approach where a one or more brilliant people understood the problem and then solve it. It has to be done in a deeply collaborative way across everybody who has any contact with the problem that we’re solving. And it is simultaneously bottom up and top down.”
And it is that is that dynamic, isn’t it? That’s really, really interesting because what I’m seeing certainly with my work with the Mindful Collective and some of the partners and organizations that we’re talking to, that one of the core concepts at the heart of that is to try and establish if it doesn’t already exist, or if it does exist, to rebuild upon it. The idea of having a common purpose. And actually everything in terms of decision making strategy, day to day stuff, always feeding back to a common purpose. And I think what you’re describing is something that has purpose and sort of joint motivation inspiration and drive collaboratively. There’s a real consistency there, isn’t there? Because just the very nature of your model is it is driven by a shared purpose.
“Yes, it’s very much the combination of absolutely a shared purpose and I actually think even more behind purpose is always some context and a need within that context. And so it’s a shared understanding of where this purpose is coming from, what is the context of need, so that as that purpose changes, you’re mindful in the present of the changing context and need and so your purpose becomes dynamic rather than static. It’s always in context. And link to that your purpose connects with results through action. And the action that delivers results comes at the end of the day, no matter how
much it you have, etc. It always comes from human energy.
And so the connection between purpose and results is everything that enables human beings to convert their energy into useful results. And at the very heart of that is how effectively we ourselves are able to deal with our own energy.
The foundation at level one is how do we work with our own individual inner tensions? That robs us of our energy. And the more we can develop ourselves in that space, the more of our internal energy we have available to put into useful work rather than internal wrestling matches between our individual angels and devils. The next level is tension between us as human beings. And the better that we have agreed ways of talking to each other when things are getting really tense and filled with friction. So that we’re not depending on our own capacity to hold that tension in dialogue. But we have already agreed dialogue scaffolding that We both trust and that holds us up in those situations, the more we can convert the energy we have together as a team into useful productive energy. And then you have the tension between our roles and our tasks. And again, the more we use modern approaches like socio cracy, or Hall accuracy, to harness those tensions and convert them into organization integrity, the more energy we have, and the more efficiently we convert her human energy into results.
And the FairShares Commons Business Model sits up there. That’s about harnessing the tension between different stakeholder groups so that all of their energy is maximally in most efficiently converted into results for the business, rather than dissipating through lawyers and lots of money. Courts into antagonism between the different stakeholders. Let’s bring them into the tent working together, rather than, as one of the US presidents once said, when asked, Why on earth did you bring him into your cabinet? And the reply was, well, I would rather have him inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in. And this is part of what is holding us back. In today’s world. We have tensions at all four strata here that are, at best, most of the time, very poorly managed, let alone harnessed as the resource they are for business growth, and productivity.
And so my point is that by harnessing all of these, you can convert far more energy into results. That’s what we need to be able to create local regenerative ecosystems and ecosystems or regenerative ecosystems.”
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