Disruptive Conversations

In this episode, I talk with Misha Glouberman and I explore the nuance of a conversation. Admittedly, this was not my best interview. There was a moment in the interview where I was so caught up in being understood that Misha and I got in a silly dance where I broke all the rules of successful conversations. The irony of this conversation is that it demonstrates the best and the worst of great conversations.

A few of the key things that stood out for me are:

So often conflict blinds us to how what we are fighting for is actually working against our own goals and objectives.

At the start of the conversation, Misha tells a fascinating story that can be teased apart in many different ways. He tells the story of how a group of neighbours were fighting very hard to close a bar and, in the end, if they got what they wanted, they would have been worse off. In that story, he also highlights that conflict is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it is just a part of life and we can use conversation to improve our experience of conversations.

How much do you caught up in your own story?

So many of us hold on to the story we tell ourselves without question our own conclusions to the story. So often, the stories we tell ourselves prevents us from helping the conversation move forward. Can we take a “yes and” frame for the conversation?

Language and framing are important.

In this episode, we explore different framings of the story he introduces in the beginning. Sometimes when we get into a fight with someone, the truth is, even if we win, we lose. Can we be intentional about how we contribute unproductive conversations?

It is important to acknowledge that a successful conversation is not free of bad or negative feelings.

We spend some time talking about the importance of seeing what are trying to say. In many conversations, we do not actually say what we wanted to say. Some of this is that we try to smooth things over and we put aside the things that are important to us. What is the easy thing for us to say?

How can I get better at having my mind changed?

For most of us, our goal is to change the mind of another person. What if the goal was to get better at changing our own mind? I find this to be a profound provocation and to sit deeply with this question takes a lot of work. Even deeper to try to turn this into a conversational practice is even more difficult but a worthy pursuit.

Very often it is against your interest to make things antagonistic.

For most of us, we get so caught up in what we want. So, we focus on ensuring that the person hears the point we think they are missing. We tell them that thing we have always wanted to tell them. In the end, our approach to the conversation is self-serving and not generative. What if instead you tried to understand what they wanted and worked to ensure what you both get more of what you want. Part of the goal of this podcast is to find ways to improve conversations.

Conversations sit within a social context.

One of the biggest insights from this conversation came for me when Misha reminded me that many of our beliefs are largely influenced by our social context. It is difficult to hold a belief that contradicts the dominant beliefs in that culture. The views we hold can alienate or provide us with belonging. The social context plays into the beliefs we hold.

Change others mind by changing what you do.

A good reminder for me was that, if the goal is to change the mind of another person, then we are both caught in a gridlock. Instead of trying to change their mind, we can manage what we are in control of. Our own behaviour.

How do you get people to do x, do x?

If I want to get people to be more collaborative, I need to be more collaborative. We get people to change by changing the way we do things.

Conclusion

This episode was a rich and deep dive into the nuance of conversation and it was wonderful to be in conversation with Misha.

Learn more about Misha Glouberman by visiting his website: http://www.mishaglouberman.com/

Sille Krukow is a Nudge Behavioral Design expert. She describes her work as using applied behavioral science to work to change behavior in a variety of industries. She stumbled into the field out of a desire to create an impact in the world. In her previous experiences, she found that she did great design and campaign work but she was never really able to create real change.

Her insight was that if we are to impact the world, we need a different set of skills than what we are currently taught in design schools and traditional education.

Her disruptive internal conversation was that she realized something was missing in the way we thinking about behavior change. Providing information or telling people about the importance of change or why they should change was not working and does not work. We need more. Consequently, she has honed her expertise as a Nudge Behavioral Designer.


We need to change the way we think that we change behavior
A good friend and mentor of mine says, we need to change change. For Sille, she draws the insight from Nobel Prize winning work of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. She reminds us that the brain is divided into two basic systems. System one, the fast-reactive portion of the brain. While System two is the slow reflective portion of our brain. Additionally, when we draw on System two it takes a lot of energy and drains our blood sugars. For most of us, we are under the illusion that our behavior is driven by the thoughtful side of our brain. The truth is more likely that most of our behavior is driven by the fast-reactive side of the brain.

Behavior design is contextual and specific.
The first challenge in designing behavioral change is understanding the context in which we seek to create change. The second task is getting very specific about what change we seek to create.

This is where Sille looks for missing nudges. After understanding the missing cues, she then works to design nudges that will create the change she seeks to create. Sille and her team draw on a library of behavior change principles. Using these behavioral change principles, they then build culturally specific behavioral cues or nudges that then create the changes they seek to create.

What is a nudge?
A nudge is an intervention in our surroundings that makes the right decisions, the easy ones. The challenge for Sille is in implementing. Especially at broad scale. For example, she and her team explored the perception of the toilet hygiene in a train. People generally perceived the hygiene as fairly poor. One of their solutions was to change the colour of the toilet paper from white to bright blue. And by making this small change, they increased the perception of the hygiene in the toilets by 51 percent. That challenge was the blue toilet paper was more expensive and difficult to implement.

Change lies in the small things.

Sille explains the very novel solution known as the fly in the urinal. The fly in the urinal was used by one architect to improve hygiene in male toilets. He used a technique anthropologist Mary Douglas calls matter out of place. The architect placed a small fly in the urinal. The fly was a matter out of place element of design and bumped men out of System one when they need to pay attention. This small intervention reduced the amount of urine on the floor by 80 percent.

Be a tourist in your own organization.
When Sille talked about this, it reminded me of the Buddhist notion of seeing like a 4-year-old. Seeing things “as if” you are seeing them for the first time. Sille understands change as an “in the world activity”. We need to begin by understanding what people are actually doing within the context we seek to create change and then design nudges that fill-in what is missing.

Important Links from the Episode:

Sille and her team have created open-source COVID19 nudges that you can download here: https://www.krukow.net/covid-19nudges

To learn more about her work visit her website: https://www.krukow.net/

Tonya Surman is the CEO of the Center for Social Innovation. One of the largest purpose driven coworking spaces, likely in the world. In this conversation, we explore a number of lessons that she has learned over the years. A few that stood out for me are:

The goal of the work is to understand how to better support people.

A major theme in this episode was about how do we support people? How do we help communities thrive? We discuss a number of ways in which Tonya’s work has always centred around helping other people thrive in community.

Polarizations are not helpful.

Both Tonya and I are fed up with polarized conversations. They do not give us energy. I would argue they are not even helpful. In fact, they detract from our energy. How do we have conversations that focus on the evidence in front of us and bias us towards solutions?

What goes in a life?

Tonya has a theory around what goes in a life. It starts by understanding we can only control our response to things that happen in the world. We then need three ingredients: joy, belonging, and meaning. So many people struggle to these three things. We are usually missing one of them. I am might be putting words in her mouth by saying that the combination of all three makes for a full life.

The job of the disruptor is to bring order to the messiness.

Tonya described the job of an entrepreneur. I am using the language of the disruptor because this is my podcast. The person who wants to change a sector or system is what I refer to as a disruptor. For Tonya, we need to acknowledge that life is messy. Messiness is the land of opportunity. Tonya uses an amazing metaphor in which she compares the banks of the river with the structure that disruptors provide. The banks give the river structure. It determines where the river flows and directs energy in the system.

I love this metaphor and cannot help but think of what happens at the edges of rivers. How watering holes become congregations of wilder beasts and other animals. There are a lot of things to think about here. The banks of the river carry water, which then fuels other life forces. This is the role of the disruptor the person trying to redefine an existing sector or even create an entirely new sector. Even when you provide that structure, remember, like Quincy Jones said, “leave 20% for the lord to enter the music.”

Social Innovation is about three things.

There are four entry points for social innovation. Policy, Education, Culture, and Market Transformation. We need to work at all three levels and work with each approach instead of trying to compete, it is about developing a Portfolio approach.

The Power of Social Capital

Social Capital appears nowhere on your balance sheet, yet it is the most important measure of your success. Tonya makes the point that she has been able to turn social capital into financial capital. She has turned that into several properties that she uses for to create community. She stewards a purpose-driven community and leverages all of the types of capital to help her community thrive. We make big change by fostering relationships. We need to focus on people.

Never underestimate the role of self-interest

The first task is to align everyone’s self-interests. The job of the disruptor is to start with finding the common ground that aligns the self-interests of more people. As entrepreneurs mature and narrow their scope, they begin to be open to partnerships and collaboration. The challenge of being able to hold the space for self-interest.

How much space do I give the next generation?

Today, Tonya is struggling with the question of how much space she gives to the next generation. This is a question that most people who are thinking about succession struggle with. How do we deal with failure? How do we let go? This is such a juicy question.

I hope you enjoy the insights of this episodes. To learn more about Tonya you can follow find her at:

Her website: https://socialinnovation.org/
Twitter: @tonyasurman

In this conversation with Jon Shell, we talk about the a range of topics loosely connected to Impact Investing. Jon, throughout this episode, problematized a lot of the language people use. For example, instead of talking about the Future of Work, he talks about the Present of work. I really enjoyed this conversation and some of the take ways I have got from it were:

Focus your energy on changing one small thing.
I almost missed this insight, but it is the one that stood out the most for me. Jon and his team, at the time of the recording, were focusing on one thing that they change. I think it is such a good insight and reminds me of setting priorities. If you have one priority it is hard to get distracted. It is hard to suffer from mission drift.

One encounter can change the course of your life.
Jon tells the story of how he met Bill Young, the founder of Social Capital Partners. He went to that meeting for one thing and at the end of the meeting Bill offered him a job. That one meeting changed what he was doing from that day forward.

There is no future of work it is already here.
Jon and I talk about how work has been changing for many years. The conversations about the future of work and the role of automation are already happening to people in all parts of the workforce. What Jon is most interested in, at the moment, is getting people to talk about how our systems are designed around permanent work. As a result, people are self-employed have to do things that that other people do not have to do. It should not take a self-employed person three times as long to file taxes. Yet, our system is designed with the assumption that most people are permanent employees. Jon is trying to change that narrative.

We should check our assumptions.
Be smarter than a pigeon. You going to need to listen to the episode to get this one, but so many systems are built on a set of assumptions and the assumptions are never revisited. If you put a pigeon in a cage with two feeders and only put food in one feeder, the bird will periodically check to see if there is food in the second feeder. The pigeon has an ingrained system to check assumption but the systems we build do not.

There are levels of complexity in any system you are trying to change.
Jon highlight three levels of complexity that I reframe as follows:
1.Equality of opportunity.
2.The system usually has successful examples in it.
3.We need to be intentional about the platforms we build and not take the ones that presented to us by the most powerful players in the system.

I hope you enjoy this episode.

You can learn more about Jon and his work at:
http://socialcapitalpartners.ca/

Andrea Reimer is known for her disruptive public policy initiatives. She attributes her knack for disruption to her belief in fairness and justice. When she sees things that are unfair on unjust, she feels like she has to embark on transformative change initiatives. In this episode we explore many of the ideas that inform her knack for starting on disruptive conversations.

Here are a few themes that stood out for me.

Sports can teach you a lot about disruption.

Andrea is an avid soccer player. She attributes some of her best lessons to the game of soccer. For example, you don’t get anything done alone. You need to build your team. You have to learn when to pass the ball and when to keep the ball. You have to know to whom you should pass the bal. Sports teaches you when to strike and when to wait. It also teaches you that slumps are just part of the game and you have to learn how to pull the team together to overcome slumps.

You have to learn how to be wrong with grace.

As an extension of her lessons from soccer, Andrea describes learning to be wrong with grace as a significant lesson that she has taken with her. She started her career by choosing the issues she felt she was right about. She was trying to help people have a voice on those issues. When she got elected, she could no longer choose her issues. Suddenly she needed to have an opinion on a casino proposal, gang shootings or snowstorms. Topics she may not have wanted to speak on in the past. She had to learn how to sit and listen. She had to learn to admit when she was wrong. She had to know when to change her stance and do that with grace.

Assume other people are reasonable.

This is a tough lesson that many of the guests on this podcast have spoken about. It is better to assume that that people are reasonable. They often have reasons for their beliefs. Although it is challenging to give people the benefit of the doubt, it is important to remember that people usually have the opinions they do for a reason. Having a stance that people are generally reasonable can often lead to a better outcome.

The stories we tell can cripple us.

A point that stood out for me was the idea that we need a common story to rally around. We all tell ourselves stories and these stories can be limiting, or they can be enabling. When we try to mobilize people, we have to remember that the public is not monolithic. We all have our own stories. The challenge is getting people to coalesce around a common story.

Be patiently relentless.

My favorite phrase is being patiently urgent. It is a term I learned from Ric Young, a friend and mentor. Andrea describes herself as being patiently relentless. I love these two phrases, and I think there is power in being patiently urgent and patiently relentless. Patiently relentless implies that we are doggedly persistent and are willing to keep trying until it works. Patiently urgent implies that although we need some things to change faster than they are happening, we are willing to be patient in waiting for the right time. We are willing to wait for the window of opportunity.

Changing sectors and systems involves gameplay.

Gameplay has become one of my favorite ways to understand how people disrupt sectors and systems. For example, in a game, the field is not always level. People enter the game with different skill levels and fitness. People have different specialities and are better suited to some positions than others. Disruption can often be understood through the analogy of a game. Rules often govern games and sometimes you are trying to change the rules, other times you are trying to use the rules to help you achieve an outcome. Finally, in most games, you have to go back to go forward. It is not uncommon for teams to move backwards, regroup, and then try to another line of attack. In the game of disruption, you are making moves. Some of them may work and some of them may not. Each move you make is similar to the moves you make is an attempt to move something forward and sometimes you have to move back to go forward.

Sometimes the disruption is in killing the market.

Status quo solutions are not the domain of disruptors. For Andrea, when it comes to climate change, you have to change the entire system. Our entire system is causing climate change, and when she put a motion forward to make Vancouver 100% renewable dependent, not only was she using a pebble to start a wave, she was interested in killing the market for nonrenewable energy. She put forward a 300-word motion that got Vancouver to commit to being 100% dependent on renewable energy. Since then, 200 cities and towns have followed this path and Vancouver is now 3.9 tons per thousand people which is the lowest in the Americas.

It is about next practices, not best practices.

Andrea made the point that humans tend to bell curve things. We are relativists. We usually derive best practices from the right of the bell curve but next practices are the practices we will need to be successful in a new paradigm. This is an idea that is transformational, and very important for people working to disrupt a sector or a system.

I really enjoyed this episode. One of Andrea’s favorite quotes is from Charles Darwin, “it is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.” Ask yourself, how are you are adapting to the future?

Keita Demming • Disruptive Conversations • Cameron Norman.mp3
Cameron Norman is a psychologist and designer who brings together the science of systems, program evaluation, and design to help people create impact and innovation. In this conversation, he and I explore a number of themes related to change and innovation. Here I highlight some of themes that stood out for me.

Pay attention to what is front of us.
So often we are so busy trying to make a difference we forget to pay attention to what is in front of us. We forget to pause. We forget to breath. Cameron talked about how he uses mindfulness in his work and how he has found it very effective in getting people to pay attention to what is in front of them. It stood out for me because in today’s social media world where our gadgets hijack our attention and so few of us are listening to the other side. I really apricated Cameron highlighting the skills of paying attention and listening.

What are we not paying attention to?
In this episode, I was talking about how I love the question, “what are we not paying attention to?” Where Cameron took the conversation surprised me. I mentioned that I first learned about that concept in a photography class and the teacher reminded us that what is most important is what is out of focus or what is not in the frame. Cameron picked up on the theme of “the frame”. For him the frame is important. He reminded us that frames are of their time. We all frame ourselves in a positive light. We see ourselves as being on the side of the angles and ignore the things we fear the most. The truth is we have motivations that are self-serving, we are attracted to things we like, and we avoid things we do not like. Sometimes the biggest insights can come from rethinking the frame.

Too many people pick the low diving board.
This is a theme that has come up in other episodes, but so often people do not do those things that are most daring. We play it safe. As a result, sometimes we end up doing the wrong things righter. I loved this insight because do think so many times we choose to do 10 things on the low diving board because if we fail on the high board, the consequences could be so big. To me really disruptive things live on the high diving board. The question is are we ready to jump

Do you really want this?
This is perhaps my favorite part of this episode. Cameron explained that he was working with an organization that said we want to be client centered, but when you look at everything they did, they were self-serving. This is where I see the most opportunity for disruption. If organizations just looked in the mirror and asked, are we doing what we set out do? If the answer is no, then we need t change. The challenge is that if often requires substantial change and not many people are ready or willing to do that. What often happens is that people know what is expected of them socially, so they say and perform to those social norms. For example, an organization might say we are working towards being more client centered. They know, politically, this is what they need to say, so they perform to the social expectations. The do not want to change. The do not really want this because it would mean too much change. I loved this insight. It is a recurring them and many organizations.

I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I did.

In this conversation, Ashley Proctor and I we talk about the difference between the coworking industry and the coworking movement. There are a number of things that stood out for me in this episode.

Build something for community larger than you. Build something for people.
Ashley points out that she is driven to build things for people. Essentially, that is the difference between coworking the industry and coworking the movement. The industry focuses on the Real Estate play while the movement focus on the people. For the movement, it is not about the space, it about the people. What drives Ashley is building something bigger than herself and building something for people. Building something for a larger community.

Work towards dismantling loneliness, accelerating serendipity, and making meaningful human connections.
For Ashley, Coworking firstly a verb. It is a shared office space for people who work independently or remotely. It is about having the freedom to choose where and when you working. Ashley gets a lot of meaning from her work because its not about subdividing space, it is about people. Focus on the mission or purpose of what you are doing, and it will help you build great things. She things of building spaces like planting a flag where people can meet connect and build the future.

Surround yourself with people who care about you have your success in mind.
At the heart of building coworking spaces is building a community where you surround yourself with people want you do well, people want you to be the best, they want you to be strong.

Instead of saying no, show people what you are building.
I asked Ashley about how they say no, when curating communities. Ashley pointed out that sometimes you do not need to say no. Let people self-select. Show them the space, explain what you are trying to build and if it works for them, they will opt-in.

You build big things one tiny step at a time.
When you are trying to build something that people think is impossible you do it one step at time. Focus on putting one tiny piece after another and rally more people together. Bring people together to build the future with you.

When bad things happen to you separate what happened from your identity.
An event or misfortune does not thing does not define you.
I found this to be a very profound reminder and I have seen many people struggle to not let bad things define them. It is a very privileged things to say but it is important that we not let misfortune consume us and define who we are.

You can reach Ashley and learn more about all of her projects (including COHIP and GCUC Canada) by visiting her website www.CreativeBlueprint.ca
You can learn more about the 312 Main project by visiting www.312Main.ca

Start your career where you can grow.



Sarah decided to take the road less traveled and instead of taking a job
with a major company she opted to take a job at Startup. In the basement of a house.
She was interested in where could she learn the most and where could she learn
the fastest?



Keep making
changes to your life until it’s the life you want or the life you deserve.



The above quote is Sarah’s favorite. When I heard this quote, it made me
think that it predisposes her to have what I call disruptive internal
conversations. Although she attributes it to her friend, Drew Dudley. This quote,
“Keep making changes to your life until it’s the life you want or the life you
deserve” primes the person who is thinking about it to make continuous course
adjustments. Using inner conversation self access if your life is the one you
want or the one you deserve, and if it is not change it.



Learn to see the person and not the stereotype.



Sarah and I had a beautiful conversation about learning when to compete
and when to collaborate. She learned, “if you compete against other people
you're never going to learn, and you're never going to be a true part of a team
or get anything legitimate accomplished.” There were times in her career when
she felt like she was being asked to educate her future boss. Today, she thinks
her life would have been easier had she been more generous. She had to learn to
see the person and not the stereotype. She admits she is still learning to meet
people where they are at, but it is a good reminder to see the human in people.
See their fallibility.  



Team versus
Family.



One thing I learned from Sarah was that although you should not think of
you work team like family, they are like family in one particular way, you do not
always get to choose who is on your team. I do however think that it is the
same on teams. The coach decides who is playing and who is not. The important thing
to remember from our conversation is that teams, always have the best players
on the field. Some people may not be on the team, but they can still be part of
the family.



There is no
such thing as hacking growth.



Sarah reminds us that there are no silver bullets. That growth is as she
put it, an exercise in being
stubborn and resilient and trying things until they work”. It is not this cool
thing you see in the movies it is hard and sometime difficult work



Imposter Syndrome is common.



We had a great conversation
about how some of the most impressive people have Imposter Syndrome and we need
to recognize that doubt is part of us focusing on relentless improvement.



I hope you enjoy my conversation with Sarah because there are lots of nuggets in this episode.

This interview with Kofi Hope was thought-provoking on many levels. In this episode, we explored his work as an activist and an academic. Hope you enjoy the many insights we uncover in this episode. Here are some of the things that stood out for me.

The most important journey we can go on is to find the fearless honestly within ourselves.

Kofi reminds us that we do not control much in the world. One of the most important journeys we embark on is that of understanding who we are. Understanding who you are your own personal history. The journey of understand is unfinished work, it is difficult work, and is the most important work you will do. The fearless honestly with ourselves and avoiding our projections of self. but time well spent.

We have to embrace detached action.

This is a nuanced point. It refers to recognizing that we are all part of something bigger than ourselves. Something that we cannot control. The notion that we control the outcome of events and that the world is ours to be manage is a strong dominant narrative in society. Kofi reminds us to release ourselves from the that we have control over the ultimate outcome. Nothing is preordained. What we can control, the intention, integrity, and the value we put into the work we do. Lack of control can be mitigated by being mindful in the way we approach our work. We have inherited a legacy from those who have come before us. All that can expected, is that we do our best and do not get too caught up with the results.

Cause and effect are not always closely coupled.

In response to Kofi’s comments, I draw on complexity theory to describe that idea that systems often have a delay in them. We live in a world that overvalues quantitative short-term data. We undervalue long-term qualitative data or thick data. When we measure prematurely, we stifle innovation. Most approaches to measuring assume a linear predictable world. One that we can forecast, and things unfold as we forecasted. Kofi and I both challenge this notion.

We coexist in mutual struggle and collective responsibility.

Kofi is challenging the idea that people in privileged positions get to reach down and tell those who are marginalized, here are some crumbs to redefine your future. We have to ask larger questions. Why are people poor? Why are those folks in prison? He is asking that we see ourselves in a mutual struggle instead of those people are struggling. My interpretation is that he is asking, if I am benefiting from a system, and they are not, how can we work to change it? He sums his point by saying, “that if you want to even the playing field if you want to bring in people on the margins and let them have a place at the table…it takes investment, it takes time, and it takes intentionality”. Investment in people means investing a the system in a way that changes the patterns of that system.

We need to avoid flavor of the month funding.

Kofi makes that point that funding priorities change and resources begin to follow in the direction of the new priorities. For example, “Youth-Lead” programming. What happens is while this flavor his hot we build up organizations that support a “Youth-Lead” model. When the cracks show up and the is no longer appealing, funding priorities change and you now have all this infrastructure that needs to change. Too many of our third sector organizations are chronically under resourced.

I worked hard for all that I have, is a myth.

Kofi reminds us that a dominant troupe of our society is that hard work gets your riches and spoils. If you work hard enough you can have it all. Kofi is challenging the idea that people get to where they are because of hard work. I would concede that people do get to where they are because of hard work, but they also get there because of privilege. The challenge is that when they tell their story, it focuses on the hard work side and pretty much ignores the privilege that increased your chances that hard work would pay off. No one does it alone. We all get help along the way.

Adrian Crook is an entrepreneur and housing activist. He is probably best known for his blog 5 Kids 1 Condo. Additionally, Adrian runs a successful game design company. Somehow, with five kids and as a fulltime entrepreneur, he manages to find time to write and speak about sustainable housing. Adrian is challenging the way we thinking about homes and hosing.
There are few ideas that stood out for me in this conversation:
Single-family homes are the least sustainable form of using. Adrian makes the point that for the last 50-70 years, the single-family house in the suburb has been the most popular form of housing. He argues that we are going to need to give up on the dream of white picket fences, with a yard, and two cars. It is the most expensive way to live. This approach to living, also called sprawl, is inefficient for municipalities and residents. We need to focus more on density.
Housing and transportation and inextricably linked. From his own experience, he has seen that changing the size of your home has cost implications. Driving to and from the suburbs makes for poor quality of life and expensive travel costs. Time spent in your car, time spent on gas, and maintenance of your car all add up. It does not help in providing a good quality of life.
A lower standard of life does not have to mean a lower quality of life. Adrian made the point that the way trends are moving, successive generations are likely to have lower standards of living than their parents. For him, this does not then have to translate into a lower quality of life. If you make the right decision, you can live in an urban environment and not sacrifice quality of life.
The life you live is determined by the intentions and data you bring to it. Adrian made an intentional decision to raise five kids in a condo. He asked himself, why was he is doing what he is doing? Why was he living the way he was living? For him, he asked why and came to the conclusion that it made more sense to live in an urban environment than it did to live in the suburbs. The intention to live in an urban environment has shaped his everyday life and he has chosen to have a high quality of life above everything else.
The life of a rebel is actually mundane. Despite having a popular blog and being someone who deeply challenges existing beliefs around how we should all live, Adrian reminds us that his life is still relatively mundane. He takes his children to school, cleans his house, and then he writes or does the things he is passionate about. To him it is nothing too exciting, most of what he is doing is the everyday stuff of life.
People make irrational decisions in the face of fear and an unchallenged status quo. Adrian had an experience where someone reported that his children were on the bus unsupervised. He had taken the time to teach them how to take the bus. His children were all accompanied by their older siblings, yet someone complained that he was being an irresponsible parent. The Child Protective Services determined that he did everything reasonably expected and his children would be safe. Yah! He was a responsible parent. Somehow they still decided that his children under 10 could not ride bus unaccompanied by an adult. They suggested he move or drop his children to school. You would need to listen to the episode to follow how silly the whole thing was. His argument was the statistically, buses are the safest form of transport but it was still decided that his children could not ride the bus unaccompanied.
Look for stuff in the margins. Look for different ways of doing things that would make you happy instead of assuming that what makes other people happy will also work for you. Adrian found that when he is able to sit back and question the status quo, it brings out the best in him. He had fallen for the dream of a family and house in the suburbs. He learnt that he was happiest when he is able to question what he was doing, question what other people were doing or what society was telling him to do. Taking the time to step back and question the taken for granted, helped him think about the small mundane decisions that really drive larger decisions and his quality of life. Adrian has found that his best thinking is slow thinking.
Disruption is not always positive. Often the people who lose are the people who are already disenfranchised. For example, UBER’s algorithms work to drive wages down and the price up in favour or the company. Airbnb is taking away housing from the rental market and driving the rental prices up. What this often means, is that those who are already disenfranchised are the ones who might be losing the most.
Some decisions should be expert based while others should be crowd-based. This was really my point, but the idea that we should vote on decisions that are better done by experts is one that has irked me recently. For example, Brexit is a trade decision and is probably best left to people who understand the implications of trade. Transportation is a nuanced field and experts know that wide roads cause more traffic but the average person would likely vote for wider roads. There are just some decisions that are better left to experts and we should be clear on those.
I really enjoyed my conversation with Adrian. There is a lot to learn from this episode. Hope you enjoy the episode.