Peripheral Thinking

For community architect Claire Perry-Louise, the often overused and somewhat clichéd word “community” means connecting people through shared experiences, shared values, or shared identity.

Claire doesn’t just advise others how to create community, she hosts her own. She founded Like Hearted Leaders so she and the people she’d met through a Do Lectures course could continue their conversations. Now, more than two years later, people gather for one-on-one conversations, masterclasses, group discussions, and more.

In her chat with Ben, she describes her route from solicitor to author to community builder, discusses the importance of psychological safety, and invites us all to pay it forward.

• Connect with Claire on LinkedIn
• Like Hearted Leaders
• Black Box Thinking: Marginal Gains and the Secrets of High Performance, by Matthew Syed

Carol is a visionary and guiding light, seeding, teaching (although she'd challenge the idea!), pointing to genuinely regenerative thinking in the world. She is an author, activist and entrepreneur who has been living and learning her work for decades. Her questions and perspective will help you think about your work and place in the world in a completely different light.

In her conversation with Ben, Carol outlines her work changing mindsets, thinking about thinking, and the seven guiding principles she learned from her grandfather.

• The Regenerative Business: Redesign Work, Cultivate Human Potential, Achieve Extraordinary Outcomes – Carol’s latest book
• Cathexis
• No More Feedback: Cultivate Consciousness at Work – Carol’s book from 2019
• Episode 5, with Marcus Link

We believe that small is mighty, small is power. Our money, support and energy goes to David over Goliath every time...

And there are few more inspiring David's, so to speak, than Ruth, co-founder of HiSBE, a plucky, fighting, challenger super market in Brighton and Worthing, UK.

Our food system is broken- which includes much of how it's produced and where it's sold. Supermarkets have a crunch on the entire chain.

Inspired by the idea of 'how it should be', Ruth and team have re-imagined what a supermarket should be. And they're gunning for the big boys. With their sling shot.

In this episode, we talk food and supermarkets, imaginging 'how it should be' as a thought experiment / innovation prompt and moving from 'cute to dangerous'. Yes, you could to....

• https://hisbe.co.uk/
• Ruth’s TEDx Brighton talk
• Unreasonable Group
• Ethical Consumer
• Sainsbury’s CEO’s pay triples to £3.8m as firm rejects living wage calls

This podcast is a home for the creative pioneer, the friendly problem child.

Like Dashal Beevers.

Dash left school at 13. Reading and writing not his friends.

Constraint is the mother of all invention, said nobody ever, but maybe should have.

Needing to create his own work and opportunity, Dash's work journey oozes creativity and entrepreneurial wizardry (and chips and dips). As yours can too (maybe less the chips and dips).

In this episode (the first of two), we talk Dash's personal journey and how this shapes who we are and the work we do. This is true for you too: the work you do is a product of who you are.

• Find a local BeSaucy stockist
• Buy BeSaucy online

Who doesn’t want a little peace and calm?

In this episode of Peripheral Thinking, I speak to Martin Alyward. Martin is a long established Buddhist meditation teacher - my teacher, as it happens.

As humans, we create drama - our needy, greedy, crazy, lazy minds need no invitation. We obsess about what we did or didn’t say, did or didn’t do. We wander around dreaming, lost in thought. As if life wasn’t stressful enough: businesses crashing, the systems on which we’ve depended for 50/60(/000 years) crumbling, the very earth wilting.

And we wonder why we struggle to sleep or to find peace and calm. I spoke to Martin about Buddhism, its relevance and usefulness today, given the myriad challenges and worries we face.

Sit back and enjoy and let Martin point you to a journey of ‘waking up’; worry not, caves, robes and renouncing your family not obligatory. Rather, instead, follow your internal signals and worry less about what you’re ‘supposed’ to attain.

• Awake Where You Are: The Art of Embodied Awareness – Martin’s book
• Martin’s website
• Follow @martinaylward on Instagram
• Moulin de Chaves
• Sangha Live

This week on Peripheral Thinking, I speak to George Thompson, film maker, teacher and wise Daoist explorer.

Daoism was born in a time of war: in China’s Warring States period. What role for this ancient philosophy today? Is it a fast track to passively doing nothing or super power lending you strength, resilience and wise perspective?

I know where my toast is buttered. Why not have a listen and let me know yours.

• Journey to the East – George’s film
• The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity's Search for Meaning, by Jeremy Lent
• The Tao of Pooh, by Benjamin Hoff
• George’s YouTube channel
• The Wwayfinders community
• Join George’s Daoism course

Marcus is an entrepreneur, researcher and writer, Chief Operating Officer of New Foundation Farms, a UK agri-food enterprise on a mission to disrupt the entire ‘farm to fork’ journey: yep, that’s breaking and remaking everything that’s wrong and harmful about how you get your food.

In this episode, we talk regenerative business - work which creates life not destroys it - the travails of entrepreneurial life more generally, and embracing the end of your start up or company as a means to renew it….

• New Foundation Farms
• Farming Smarter report
• The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People are Changing the World, by Paul Ray
• Dirt to Soil: One Family's Journey into Regenerative Agriculture, by Gabe Brown
• Changing the World We Create: Beyond climate crises, polarised societies and failed leadership, by Mark Drewell and Björn Larsson
• Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast
• Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation, by Paul Hawken
• James Quilligan
• Savory Institute
• Connect with Marcus on LinkedIn

The decisions we make today are based on the world we think we’ll have tomorrow. But the world is changing so rapidly that the decisions we made even three weeks ago bear little relevance to today.

In his discussion with Ben, Graham Boyd sets out the dangers of running a business in isolation, rather than in concert with others, and how success doesn’t have to be a zero sum game.

• Rebuild: the Economy, Leadership, and You – Graham’s book
• Net Positive, by Paul Polman
• Why Most Things Fail, by Paul Ormerod
• Evolute Six
• Graham’s website
• Peripheral Thinking episode 2, with. Mark Anielski

I enjoyed this conversation.

Professor Sam North is a teacher and writer.

In his words, he’s “developing a cross-disciplinary bite of education that has three components: religious stories as networks of growth and cooperation (Theology and Religion), mycelial (fungal) networks as prosecutors of growth and cooperation (Biology) and social networks as the new 'hearth' of identity and storytelling, fostering both cooperation and division. I'm particularly interested in the corruption of all of the above”.

Curious, I was.

And that was before he shared the course sub title: God. Stories. Facebook. Mushrooms.

I’m in.

To dip your toe into the unlikely connection between these curious strands, do check out the conversation. I hope you enjoy.

• Rudolf Steiner
• Brian Boyd
• Entangled Life, by Merlin Sheldrake

What wisdom can Buddhism provide in today’s world? That’s the subject of Buddhist Economics, by UC Berkeley Professor of Economics, Clair Brown.

Professor Brown’s book opens with three Buddhist teachings: that people are caring, people are interdependent with people and nature, and all life is impermanent. Clair believes that if we take those three basic assumptions, we can turn free market economics on its head which is good for you, me and all our aunties and uncles.

• Buddhist Economics: An Enlightened Approach to the Dismal Science
• Amartya Sen’s capability theory approach
• Jeffrey Sachs
• Barry Commoner
• Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered
• Jamie Dimon
• Larry Fink
• Clair’s articles on Lion’s Roar
• Buddha on the Board ebook
• Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation
• Buddhist Economics – Clair’s website
• Buddhist Economics audiobook
• Episode two, with Mark Anielski