Leadermorphosis

Margaret Heffernan is an author, speaker, business leader and professor. She has written six books and her TED talks have been seen by more than 12 million people. We talk about the 'status quo trap' in organisations, myths about whistleblowers, her thoughts on self-management and learning to embrace tough questions. Finally, she shares why her main focus now is the climate crisis.

Follow Margaret on Twitter: @M_Heffernan

Resources:

• Margaret's website and more information about her latest book
• Margaret's Medium post 'Three problems of power'
• Margaret's brilliant TED talks

Pasteur Byabeza is the lead link of the Student Care Circle at Davis College, a higher learning institution in Rwanda. He is one of the pioneers who has been driving the college's transition to becoming a self-managed, Holacratic organisation. Though they are early in their journey, taking steps like disbanding the global council and replacing management hierarchies with distributed decision making have already had a huge impact on people's engagement levels. Pasteur shares what he has learned so far with honesty and contagious passion.

Resources:

• The Davis College website
• To learn more about Holacracy, you can listen to Leadermorphosis episodes 31 and 32 with Holacracy pioneer Brian Roberston or visit the Holacracy website
• Other education-related episodes of Leadermorphosis include:
  • Ep. 46 – students from Learnlife talking about a new, self-directed paradigm of learning in the education sector
  • Ep. 16 – Marianne Osorio talking about Sociocracy in schools and more

Bayo Akomolafe is a Nigerian author, professor, chief curator of The Emergence Network and is often known for his poetic and provocative take on big topics such as global crisis and social change. We talk about what he calls 'generative incapacitation' and the kind of leadership that's needed in these times, how the Covid pandemic is disrupting our norms, embracing failure and allowing ourselves to be lost... and I also posed some questions to him about my worries regarding the reinventing work movement. It's a deep conversation so perhaps listen to this out on a walk!

Resources:

• Bayo's website
• A beautiful conversation with Bayo on For The Wild on slowing down for urgent times
• A video of Bayo being interviewed by friend of the Leadermorphosis podcast Skeena Rathor for Extinction Rebellion ideas exchange
• • (And you can listen to my conversation with Skeena here, Leadermorphosis ep. 47)
• The conversation with Miki Kashtan I reference (Leadermorphosis ep. 37)
• The conversation with Margaret Wheatley I reference (Leadermorphosis ep. 33)

"Command authority is a poor basis for life." Jocelyn Davis is an author, speaker and the former head of R&D at global consultancy The Forum Corporation. We talk about how she weaves together the threads of leadership, Eastern philosophy and dramatic literature. Her insights on group development, leadership as influence, and 'climate' in teams are really relevant for those interested in self-managing organisations.

Resources:

• Jocelyn's book The Art of Quiet Influence
• Jocelyn's website
• Jocelyn's article about 8 traps for leaders in the corporate world
• Jocelyn on Twitter: @JocelynRDavis

Sam Conniff and Alex Barker's books 'Be More Pirate' and 'How to Be More Pirate' have sparked a movement of people around the world who want to shake things up, to create new business models and systems that are better for people and planet. The tagline on their website says: "Being more pirate is a shift in your mindset; a willingness to think differently, to challenge and be challenged, and to stop asking for permission to do what you know is right." I wanted to talk to Sam and Alex about what we can learn from the golden age of pirates 300 years ago, and to share some examples of organisations that have been inspired to transform.

Resources:

• Be More Pirate website
• Be More Pirate meetup events (online and in-person)
• Reinventing Organisations website (about Frederic Laloux's work)

How to follow Alex and Sam:

• Twitter: @AlexandraBarke1 and @SamConniff

Topi Jokinen is one of the founders of a small Finnish company in the construction sector called Vertia. Since 2018, Topi has been leading a transformation in the company based on the idea of self-organising cells to help it grow and develop. He is perhaps the first CEO I have met who has done this level of personal and professional development and he shares with heart and humility what his leadership journey has been. We also talk about Vertia's radical structures and practices, such as a transparent and collaborative salary model, as well as what Topi has learned about stepping back and letting go as a co-founder and CEO.

Resources:

• The Vertia case study produced by Amara Collaboration
• Vertia's website
• A page about the Advice Process and collaborative decision making from the Reinventing Organisations wiki

How to follow Topi:

• Twitter: @TopiJokinen

Filmmakers Anna Thomson and David Baksh talk to me about Yoghurt Utopia, their documentary about a yoghurt company whose mission is to provide work and accommodation for people living with mental illness in the Catalonia region in Spain. Having spent several years with some of the workers of La Fageda and its inimitable founder, Cristobal Colon, they share what they have learned about this remarkable workplace and what lessons we can learn in terms of diversity, inclusion, and meaning at work.

Resources:

• Link to watch the Yoghurt Utopia documentary (NB: you need to create a free account with Waterbear to access)
• The trailer for the Yoghurt Utopia documentary
• The Yoghurt Utopia Facebook page, where you can follow updates about what film festivals it's featured in, where you can see it etc.
• Anna Thomson's article for The Huffington Post about the film
• 'Cultivating a worker's paradise', article in The Guardian

The La Fageda website (in Catalan)

Yuji Yamada is the founder of EnFlow and is interested in exploring the differences between approaching organisational transformation from a 'Western lens' and a Japanese lens. We talk about teal organisations from Frederic Laloux's book 'Reinventing Organisations' (which has sold 100,000 copies in Japan) and Yuji's homegrown concept of 'Jinen management'. Could East Asian organisations be at an advantage in developing new ways of working by drawing on their ancient wisdom and inherent cultural paradigms of interconnectedness?

How to follow Yuji:

• Twitter: @yujiyamada0522

Resources:

• Yuji's Medium post, 'The trends of Teal organization in Japan'
• The book 'The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently' by Richard E. Nisbett

Related Leadermorphosis episodes:

• Ep. 55 with Frederic Laloux, author of Reinventing Organisations
• Ep. 5 with Tom Nixon, founder of Maptio
• Ep. 49 with Peter Koenig about sourcework

Rich and Nati are the founders of collaboration consultancy The Hum and part of the Enspiral network. Between them, they have a background in activism, engineering, community organising and entrepreneurship and are well-respected thought leaders when it comes to decentralised organisations, self-managing teams and collaborative culture. We talk about personal shifts, 'trojan horse' radical practices, and ideas for moving from a domination society to a partnership society.

How to follow Rich and Nati:

• Twitter: @RichDecibels and @LombardoNati

Resources:

• The Hum's online course (next guided programme starts on the 11th of March 2021)
• Learn more about Riane Eisler, who Rich mentions at the start
• The microsolidarity programme Nati mentioned
• The Enspiral website
• Loomio's website

Nand Kishore Chaudhary is the remarkable founder of Jaipur Rugs, a company employing 40,000 weavers in 600 villages selling beautiful carpets in 40 countries. The artisans – most of them women in India's "untouchable" class – are the "heroes of the business", and self-managed principles like distributed decision making have long been a hallmark of the company. We talk about how N. K. Chaudhary has created a "business ashram", where people find their clarity of purpose and gain higher consciousness, as well as his thoughts on humble leadership and how Jaipur Rugs will evolve self-management further.

Resources:

• Jaipur Living website and N. K. Chaudhary's website
• Doug Kirkpatrick's blog, 'Jaipur Rugs: Self-managed art that you can walk on'
• A Forbes article about the book The Healing Organisation, which features Jaipur Rugs as one of its examples
• An extract from the book 'The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits'
• The book 'The Healing Organisation: Awakening the Conscience of Business to Help Save the World' by Raj Sisodia and Michael J. Gelb

Related Leadermorphosis episodes:

• Ep. 14 with Doug Kirkpatrick
• Ep. 42 with Ved Krishna from Yash Pakka