Meaning

Meaning Conference is a one-day, existential supercharge.

It’s a conference on the outside but on the inside, it’s a superior download and series of alternative viewpoints on the world. It’s also a big reflection point in the business calendar for people like me, who are drawn to alternative thinking.

About 400 people descend on Brighton from all over the world, business and age spectrum to hear people who have a view on a better way to “do” business.

This is partly a reflection of the day (16 November 2017) partly a reflection on the world stimulated somewhat by the Meaning experience.

One phrase struck me that I’ll start this piece with:

What’s happening to us?

Just 3 years ago there were people I came across who were full of optimism and couldn’t wait to share with me their excitement on what ideas they had to create something different and what they were proposing to work towards. They were part of a collection of people wanting to change the world.

Now those same people seem distant, cold versions of themselves who struggle to acknowledge my presence or the presence of ideas and actions that could create a better world.

It’s like they’ve given up trying to change the world.

And at Meaning Conference, the revered and supremely interesting woman that is Margaret Wheatley has been trying to change the world since 1966. And she (some might say in a rather glum fashion) said that we should stop trying to change the world in “that” way.

I rather struggled with this — changing the world is a challenge I’m up for in whatever way possible.

What Meg was saying though was, we’re seeing the end of things as they are. Which is why there’s so many “WTF?” expressions and incredulous posts on social media.

It was also phrased in a soundbite I saw from Tom Peters no less (author of In Search of Excellence) where he said “Who cares what the big enterprises are doing? They are boring! Just study, visit and write about small and medium-sized businesses. The really interesting stuff is happening there.”

In both cases it appears Meg’s and Tom’s take was this:

We’ve been trying to change the politics game, the education system and big corporate machinery and the wealth inequality issues and it’s not worked.

It is arguably getting worse, despite all those well-intended endeavours.

I guess that’s what people would say. The facts and evidence may bear this out. Higher planetary destruction with little or no consequence for the loss; struggling school systems; mental health and failing well-being on the rise; and now a political landscape that looks more like 1937 than 2017.

Lessons learned appear to have been lost. Tragic, and frankly vulgar, divisive thinking we thought of a bygone era resurface with new energy.

And yet Meg’s take on this wasn’t all about a pointless crusade. Far from it. She says we’re seeing the old dying and new born. We’re seeing the tearing apart of orthodoxy in favour of a new way.

So instead of changing the world we know, maybe we are creating a new version. I’m reminded of one of my favourite Bucky Fuller quotes.

So maybe that’s what Meg’s urging us to do? Don’t fight, just create. Alternatives, better, new, fresh.

So again I come back to this: What’s happening to us?

Where once disruptive innovation was one of our potential saviours, now it’s a castigated model of over-used hyperbole.

After Meaning, I was asked to write a piece for a Slovenian conference I’ll be speaking at. In it I found myself not in despair because of Meg’s words but with a new sense of purpose to distance myself from my past efforts.

I’ve written a book (which I’ve maybe not mentioned before!) and it’s about transformational HR. What I think I’m really saying in this book is that it is time for a new version of HR. Not just an adapted old one, but a new one.

A shift. A quantum leap.

I haven’t ignored what’s needed to make HR work for now, but I’ve had a go at creating a version that will help people derive more from their work through better designed, engineered and even spiritualised HR.

Spiritualised HR? What is such a thing?

I mean the way people in HR who deeply care about their work talk about it. With spirit, linked to a spiritual cause.

To create a new way to work so that people can lead more fulfilling lives whilst doing good for them, a new sense of community, a new version of society, a regenerated world.

So back to Meaning Conference.

In Kate Raworth, we witnessed someone who finally creates the bridge between economics and planetary good. Her book Doughnut Economics has already captured interest. And in her delivery at Meaning it was clear this is someone who’s not jumped on any disruptive bandwagon or life hacking cliche, Kate’s thought deeply about what is as a wide and comprehensible view on the world and its resources, value and consumption.

After reading this piece in the Guardian, I was piqued enough to buy the book. Now I’m proper reading it. It is a real potential to create something new. Not an adapted version but a new way. A transformed way. I’ve been intrigued by new capitalist theories, manifestos and models but this was like the overlay needed to sweep all before it into the “nice try” bucket. This has the potential to be big.

And as if that wasn’t enough, Vinay Gupta gave us a frank, clear and practical view on the Blockchain.

The internet of agreements was one of his more digestible soundbites for those still unaware of the Blockchain’s potential. He talked about the actual slowness of the net. Whislt we may think a few seconds is a quick turnaround, there’s a nano-second mentality that brings the Blockchain into a new realm.

For it isn’t the slowness of broadband per se, it’s the slowness of someone sending to someone who then sends to someone else and the process is stalled by the stuttering interface of human beings.

Peer-to-Peer has a new meaning with the Blockchain and it was humour that brought it to life when Vinay said “With the Blockchain, we appear to be staring at it thinking, ‘what is it…and its true potential?’” and then we just keep staring at it and saying ‘I’m sure I’ll get it soon…’

Because we’re only at the very beginning of the true digitisation and programmable nature of money, and so there will be people who aren’t sure of its impact and its relevance based on today’s methodologies. We will have cryptonatives amongst us right now, and mining for Bitcoins and using smart contracts will be as normal to them as a Google Doc shared is to some of us.

So again, what’s happening to us?

We’re trying to comprehend things using existing orthodoxies and mindsets when we should be taking Meg and Bucky’s mantra of putting our energy into new and decoupling from old. Just as the system is appearing to do now all around us.

Nation states, law, organisations — all fictions (as Yuval Noah Harari so elegantly posed in his book Sapiens). And if they are all fictions, we can and will — and in fact are — creating new fictions.

Witness Carne Ross’s study of anarchic societies. We’re seeing people take control in a way that appears to chaotic because it doesn’t look, sound or feel like the things we’re used to. Yet is some places, it’s working better than anyone could ever have imagined. Not chaos, natural sense of order.

And that’s what Meaning Conference does. It doesn’t just take existing orthodoxies and pivot on them. It presents totally new elements.

Humanitas was represented at this conference by Jurrien Mentink and through the vibrant, personal and touching stories told of students living rent free with older people in a care home situation.

It’s humbling that this group of young people starting their study journeys into life, are sharing it with people - many of whom - will pass away during their stay. A profound sense of what humanity is all about. Caring for each other and improving how we feel about ourselves and our lives.

Jurrien shared with us the importance of learning about celebrating life and the taking care of each other because we want to help each other.

Jurrien said his octogenerian friends helped him to slow down. In an ever-faster world, this is sanity in the face of increased insane velocity. He is no longer studying urban and social engineering but instead, how business can improve elderly healthcare.

He’s being a good neighbour and sharing his youthfulness with others.

Again, what’s happening to us?

We’re discovering that (as Meg Wheatley said) “it’s just our turn.”

Our turn to create new. Start things. Be defined by what we do not just what we think or adapt to.

Meg talked about living systems that have order without control. Back to Carne Ross and his anarchy.

Meg said though, “that as we do our work, our heart is cut open and releases compassion for others”. Profound thinking about what our contribution to others can be defined as. Jurrien Mentink had has his heart cut open with his Humanitas experience. How long will it take others to take up this new form of social living? Dare they cut their heart open to release compassion?

What’s happening to us?

People are taking matters into their own hands. Kyra Maya Phillips has studied pirates, hackers and what she calls the Misfit Economy. Somali Pirates — the most famous of modern day pirates — started life as people protecting their fishing stocks and is now a multi-million dollar ransom ‘enterprise’.

Their original message was one of protection and hope — now that is beyond this and the meaning of the pirates activities still appears to be of that ilk but is more desperados performing highly dangerous and illegal acts of piracy. Yet those who are pirates, believe they are doing something with a higher sense of meaning to them. “On message even if it’s not a true message”. Sound familiar to the rise of alt-right followers?

Duane Jackson was ejected from the school system at 15 and got into drug trafficking. He was arrested and imprisoned. Already familiar with coding (through being given a Sinclair ZX Spectrum) he set about coding inside his jail using paper and pen and teaching other inmates. When he was eventually released, he found himself a freelance web developer as a drug-trafficking record meant many forms of traditional employ were closed off to him.

Confused by accounting software to help his new business, he coded and launched Kashflow. With grants from the Prince’s Trust and investment from a former trade secretary to Mrs Thatcher, he became a very rich man indeed.

A misfit. An entrepreneur. A self-taught person with a keen sense of observation.

“There are lots of parallels between some forms of criminality and entrepreneurship… calculated risks, buying in volume and selling in smaller quantities at a higher price, dealing with competition, paying workers, strategic alliances,” he said.

The road to rehabilitation being to teach offenders business? Now that’s a new paradigm.

What’s happening to us?

New designs for life.

Back to Kate Raworth. Regenerative by design is her key to the doughnut economy model. Not just recycling things within their own loop.

My sketch note of this model talks to it better than my typed words could.

It’s that latter 20th Century (how much can we extract?) -v- the 21st Century (How many benefits can we generate in the way we design this?) that screams at me.

And so it could or should be for all things we do. Not just extract but design to generate benefits.

What’s happening to us?

Maybe we’re seeing the dawn of a new consciousness with this as our signature.

Kate Beecroft from Enspiral gave us a sense of what co-operative entrepreneurship means in a collective of people who have designed their own eco-system to realise as many benefits as they can and not just extract value. Peer-to-peer business support (stewardship) is Enspiral’s calling card. Where livelihood pods form a collaborative approach to financing ventures; building products and serving client needs.

Kate quoted this “he who loves community, destroys community. He who loves people, creates community” which struck me as a way of describing where some leaders/founders go wrong. They love their “thing” so much they disregard the very people that make it (and make it larger, stronger, more viable).

What’s happening to us?

Chocolate is happening to us.

Just look up the story of Tony’s Chocolonely if you thought chocolatiers won’t ever change our world

So what IS happening to us?

Well new meaning is happening to us.

• Meaning, the conference is a one-off festival of new thinking.
• Meaning the thing (and as Kyra Maya Phillips said) is extraordinarily elusive.
• Meaning appears to be what we need and is becoming a newness that we are creating as we’re living it.

As Mark Stephenson (that optimist of the future) opened up with “the future cannot be predicted but it can be invented.”

“We’re here <at Meaning Conference> to make the future better” he said.

What’s happening to us is that some of us are making the future, inventing a new future, in everything we say and do.

Is this what’s happening to you?

Meaning 2018 is taking super early bird bookings. I’ve got mine, so I might see you there to invent more of the future together?

With special thanks to Louise Ash for bringing together Meaning Conference each year and to all those who support it and create it.