Disruptive Conversations

If you own technology, you produce data, and that data is very valuable. OWN is working to help you take control of that data. Mitzi László and her colleagues are working to help you own your data. This conversation is particularly relevant in a week where Cambridge Analytica and Facebook have been dominating our news cycle. Cambridge Analytica was able to hack and manipulate Facebooks data, and its algorithm, to build digital personas and then send targeted marketing messages to those personas. This capacity is valuable to many people. In addition to the kind of money that is thrown around after these digital personas, we are learning that with enough data, people can manipulate entire populations.

Most of us do not think about the data we produce, but as we walk the world with our phones in our pockets, we are leaving behind a trail of data. This data is an asset. It is valuable and we need to have a conversation about who owns that data and how can they use? In this episode of Disruptive Conversation with Mitzi László, we unpack why owning your data is so important. I argue that data and data rights will be one of the most Disruptive Conversations we will have in the upcoming years. Mitzi and her colleagues are building technology to make owning your data as easy possible. You can check out her white paper at: www.personaldatatrading.com.

You can support her ongoing Indiegogo campaign at this link: https://igg.me/at/ownit/x/17652744.

You can also visit her website: https://www.ownyourdata.xyz/

When most people think of the word disruption, they think about software. Some of the most of interesting innovations are what I refer to as analog innovations. These are innovations that are not connected to software but have to do with process and people. These offline innovations are perhaps the most interesting innovations to come. Shannon Downey is disrupting patriarchy through embroidery.

In a past life, Shannon ran a digital marketing agency. She found that she was always connected, always online. Through a series of events, she found that the source of her creativity came from offline or analog experiences. Embroidery became a source of creativity and generation for Shannon and since then she has been building a movement centred around politically engaged embroidery.

One of the most interesting insights in this episode is that Shannon as a 20/80 rule. For her 20% is good enough. What I took away from Shannon was that she values progress over perfection. For her perfection can be paralyzing.

Currently, Shannon is very interested in understanding how we build networks and community. She acknowledges that you can’t do anything by yourself and the stronger the network, the greater your chances of success. Her advice is for people to get into the world and just do it. Do great things. Put your half-baked ideas into the world. Make the most of the time you have on this planet. For now, Shannon is working to disrupt the patriarchy and for her, that means being able to buy a car without experience sexism. One of the big questions for me in this episodes is what are the experiences that make you rethink everything you thought you knew.

Related links mentioned in this episode:

https://www.badassherstory.com/

https://projectfirechi.com/

In this episode of Disruptive Conversations, I interview Kishau Rogers, founder of Big Think and many other software related companies. In this episode, Kishau and I geek out on systems thinking and find many overlaps in our own work. As a listener you will enjoy the many nuances she presents on thinking and problem-solving. Her general premise is that people need to think before they act. Kishau helps people find solutions through software. For her, too often people have not thought about the problem enough before they decide to develop code. She wants to disrupt the idea that we can just throw code at a problem. 

For her, the why is more important than the what. She encourages her clients to ask why because often the first solution we come up with is likely not the best we can do. Asking why helps us develop clarity around the problem we are trying to address. She argues, that too many times, we hide behind technology. When we attack problems with code, we might be building our existing problems into new software. Simply taking an analog problem and making it a digital problem.

Kishau, like me, is a fan of structured thinking. She is an advocate of using tools and frameworks to help us think about how we are going to address the problems we face. This episode is a really a clarion call for better-thinking tools. Hope you enjoy this episode of Disruptive Conversations. 

Related links mentioned in the episode:
http://bigthinking.io/
http://www.bstudioproject.com/
http://thesidelab.com/

Sun Drews is a Funeral Director who is rethinking that way we approach end of life care. Although she is at the start of her journey, her experience as a Funeral Director has convinced her that we need a cultural shift around death and dying. For many people, the experience of a loved one's death can be a disjointed and confusing time. Sun’s observation is that people get passed through a disjointed system with little guidance or warning of what they might expect, or how decisions they make early on in that path may affect their later choices.

At each stage in the journey, people are forced to retell their story to service providers who have never spoken to each other or have not worked together. This places many challenges on the people going through the experience. Her goal is to ensure people have a better idea of what to expect as they navigate this challenging time. Death is a natural part of our lives, yet so few of us talk about it. Few of us plan for death or know what to expect or what we might do if a loved one were to pass away.

In our conversation, Sun and I flirted with the idea of death doula’s but she pointed out that we tend to create professionals or experts for roles that previously existed within communities or within families. It is an important observation to consider, and it made me think about the possibility that many of the solutions to our problems may lie in how we think about and construct community living or family life. With the rise of isolation, there is a drive to revisit communities and spaces like churches. We have distanced ourselves from these types of communities and in the process, we  have alienated ourselves from common experiences like death and birth. What if we spent some time familiarizing ourselves with these common activities? What if we were more open about death, dying and grieving?

The most disruptive thing with Sun’s work is just using the word death and being able to call it death instead of using euphemisms. She often finds herself correcting people when they say, “if I die”. She is often reminding people that it is about when you die. We will all die, and Sun is asking us to have an honest conversation about something that is normal, natural and common. Her quest to have these honest conversations about death and dying will hopefully impact our norms, practices and habits.

Sun’s favourite quote: What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.

Find Sun on Twitter: @sunoutloud

Mark Zekulin is disrupting what used to be an illicit market and is now a regulated market. He is the president of the largest cannabis company in the world, Canopy Growth Company. It is valued on the Toronto Stock Exchange at about three and a half billion dollars. In this episode, we talk about his journey as an entrepreneur who moved from a safe comfortable job as a lawyer to someone who fumbled with the question what do you do. In the early days, sometimes he would answer I work in pharmaceuticals and other times he would say he sold marijuana.

His story is yet another example of disruptors seeing opportunity where others see risk. His bet to buy an old chocolate factory and tell the world that they were growing marijuana has paid off. Along his journey, he has had many disruptive conversations and continues to have them. Contrary to what I thought, it is not the big regulatory changes that will have an impact on his business, but it is the small ones. In this episode, we explore how small regulatory changes can have an impact on his business model.

Mark welcomes the day when you can order your wine and your marijuana beverage on your way home from work. In this new and untested market, there are many opportunities and uncertainties. As perceptions and policy around marijuana change, it opens Mark and his company up to learn their way into many unknowns. As they have in the past they will continue to play the long game by focusing on infrastructure and building out a stronger customer base. For Mark, “there is never a dull day in the cannabis business”. Hope you enjoy listening to this episode.

Links mentioned in the podcast: 

Canopy Growth: https://www.canopygrowth.com/ 

Tweed: https://www.tweedmainstreet.com/

In this episode, I speak with Adam Kahane, author of the book, Collaborating with the Enemy: How to Work with People You Don't Agree with or Like or Trust.

Adam is a full-time disruptor, he spends his time completely dedicated to helping people address their most important and intractable challenges. Adam is a pioneer in the in the lab space and has written several books related to systems change. He argues that we spend a lot of time focusing on what other people should or ought to be doing. For him, this kind of thinking is a complete waste of time.

In this episode, Adam and I discuss martial arts and dialogue. You would need to listen to the episode to understand how these two concepts connect. One of the powerful moments in our conversation came when we talked about power, self-development and love. In the episode, he references Martin Luther King and makes that point that in our society we place so much emphasis on love and unity, that we “risk being sentimental and anaemic actually sentimental and anaemic at best and at worst cynically reproducing of the status quo.”

I truly enjoyed my conversation with Adam and it was a pleasure to talk to someone who has spent so much time thinking about who we disrupt sectors and systems. The final point I leave you with is that he reminds us that so often we are quick to blame or tell other people what to do, how things should be done or we conclude that they need to change. Drawing on the work of Edgar Schein and is the notion of humble inquiry is a lot more powerful or transformative approach to start from a place of asking questions. I hope you enjoy this episode of Disruptive Conversations.

Charles (Chuck) Mahron of the Strong Towns interviews me on this episode of Disruptive Conversations. In this episode, I open myself up to the audience for the first time thanks to some comments from listeners. A few listeners emailed and asked me to get someone to interview me. I asked Chuck Mahron from to interview me in this episode. In this episode, I turn the microphone on myself and share my own perspective on disruptive conversations.

In this episode, I share for the first time, why I started the podcast and the concept behind Disruptive Conversations. In brief, Disruptive Conversations refer to conversations that change the narrative within an organization. The dominant understanding of organizations within the management literature draws on scientific thinking. Disruptive conversations as a concept, draws on complexity thinking and assumes that organizations are conversations. If we are going to transform organizations, we need to transform things we say and do on a daily basis. By disrupting the conversations within the organization we transform the way we work.

Organizations are social arrangements and we need to think of them like that. In this episode, I share some of my own insights on how we generate organizational change. Hope you enjoy.

This is part 2 of my conversation with Letizia Reato.

Letizia Reato or Zia trains wild or feral horses. In this conversation, she demonstrates the complexity of addressing the problem of feral horses in the United States. As much as she loves horses, she understands that the solutions to these problems are full of paradoxes. She has come to understand that to save these horses she must take their freedom. Although she loves horses, she thinks that part of the solution could be that some horses would need to be euthanized while others can be put to work in practical ways.

Throughout this conversation, Zia explains the complex problem of feral horses in the United States. Her work sits at the intersection of these polarized groups. From her account, there approximately 49000 feral horses that are held holding pens. Some people want to manage the horse numbers by killing them, while animal lovers want to save all the horses. Zia thinks that both these approaches are part of the solution. She would love to save all the horses but thinks there are too many. One of the ideas she puts forward in our conversation is to rethink the ways in which these horses can be used throughout the United States. In her work, she trains horses so they can be used in a variety of ways. For example, feral horses could be used by police and other government agencies. Not only is her argument that we need to rethink what type of horses we use throughout the United States.

Zia hopes to reduce the number of horses in holding facilitates and my conversation with her was very informative. She is passionate about what she does and has an admirable passion for a unique problem in the world. Hope you enjoy this episode of Disruptive Conversation with Zia.

Zia’s website: http://www.speak-horse.com/

Healing with horses in Trinidad and Tobago: http://www.healing-with-horses.org/

Letizia Reato or Zia trains wild or feral horses. In this conversation, she demonstrates the complexity of addressing the problem of feral horses in the United States. As much as she loves horses, she understands that the solutions to these problems are full of paradoxes. She has come to understand that to save these horses she must take their freedom. Although she loves horses, she things that part of the solution could be that some horses would need to be euthanize while others can be put to work in practical ways.

Throughout this conversation, Zia explains the complex problem of feral horses in the United States. Her work sits at the intersection of these polarized groups. From her account, there approximately 49000 feral horses that are held holding pens. Some people want to manage the horse numbers by killing them, while animal lovers want to save all the horses. Zia thinks that both these approaches are part of the solution. She would love to save all the horses, but thinks there are too many. One of the ideas she puts forward in our conversation is to rethink the ways in which these horses can be used throughout the United States. In her work, she trains horses so they can be used in a variety of ways. For example, feral horses could be used by police and other government agencies. Not only is her argument that we need to rethink what type of horses we use throughout the United States.

Zia hopes to reduce the number of horses in holding facilitates and my conversation with her was very informative. She is passionate about what she does and has an admirable passion for a unique problem in the world. Hope you enjoy this episode of Disruptive Conversation with Zia.


Zia’s website: http://www.speak-horse.com/
Healing with horses in Trinidad and Tobago: http://www.healing-with-horses.org/

Courtney Martin is an author, cultural critic and storyteller. She describes her publications as books she felt like she needed to read. Her articles for the Onbeing publication are also a breath of insight and fresh air. Within the context of disruption and disruptive conversations, her most recent book challenges the notion of the American Dream.

In our disruptive conversation, we covered a variety of topics. The most salient conversations revolved around Courtney’s most recent book, The New Better Off: Reinventing the American Dream. The theme that most stood out for me in our conversation, is also the premise of her book. The American Dream is changing and as it changes people of all ages, races, and social classes experience a sense of discomfort and disruption. As should be expected when any longstanding, deeply held cultural norm begins to unravel we begin to redefine yesterdays normal. The American Dream is evolving into a new norm.

In our conversation, we both shared some of the struggles around finding space for intentional living. Courtney shared some of her strategies for trying to use her power as a way of creating power for others. A way of open doors for other people. I shared my own struggles with filtering out distractions in an increasingly connected world.

My powerful moment in our conversation was when Courtney said, “sometimes the most powerful thing white people can do is shut up.” The key word there is sometimes. My own interpretation of the point she was trying to make was that the first step in our journey to liberation should be learning to listen and then thinking about how we act. At a deeper level, it reminded me that we all need to learn from the those embedded in the context while simultaneously being genuinely open to disrupting our own preconceived notions of how things are, or how we think things are.

At the end of our conversation, I concluded that we were both struggling to live our truths in a complex world. There were many powerful moments in this episode, and I felt like our conversation could continue for a lifetime.

Before you listen here are my moments of insights:

Courtney’s favourite quote: “there isn’t anyone you couldn’t love. Once you heard their story. (Minute 45:07)
That moment when Courtney was very candid that her biggest struggle is being a working mother. (Minute 28:41)
When I learned that we both liked the same quote by Oliver Wendell Holmes – “I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.” (minute 43:32) Sign up for my newsletter or email me to learn more about the chasm of complexity. I am working on a piece explaining the chasm of complexity.
The bigger the team, the greater the chance you have of making a difference. (minute 40:03).
With complex problems, you can never really pick a winner, but you can make everyone smarter about the choices, they think are working and identifying where is not working. (minute 34:54)
For writers listening and reading this podcast, write what you know. Get out there and write.

Links mentioned in the podcast:

http://www.courtneyemartin.com/
https://www.solutionsjournalism.org/
http://www.freshspeakers.com/
http://www.valentimartin.com/