Intro from Jon — Here’s to telling a new story…
Hey 👋🏼
Jon here. Your virtual pal 🤣
This is weird for me, because I know of you more than I know you. But I have been lucky to meet (and even work with) some of you and to have Jim involve me in your process. And the thing is that for somebody like me, spending most of my professional time helping big organisations to change, hearing the stories from the Academy has been a huge part of my year and a huge source of energy. Because I feel a sense of movement and momentum from you guys that I don’t always get from the rest of my work.
Because, I am constantly hungry to counter the common narrative and assumptions many of us hold towards sacred cows such as work, education and democracy.
I am constantly hungry to show people that there is an alternative to prison schooling systems, to battery farm workplaces, to greedy growth obsession.
I am constantly hungry to counter the concept that ‘this is the way things are around here’. Because that’s just bullshit basically 💩
People say the world is broken. The world isn’t broken, it’s better than ever! Fewer people than ever die from violence, poverty, hunger, sickness; the ozone layer is repairing itself, old ‘extinct’ species are being rediscovered. If you’d looked at these facts just 100 years ago, this would seem absurd. We are living heaven on earth!
But if we are to take that even further and not regress, we need new stories. We need to hear that companies run by employees are more profitable and stable, that countries run by people have way fewer wars, that schools run by children lead to smarter and wiser adults. But the thing is… this isn’t the common narrative and if I’m totally honest with you, if you believe this narrative, you are the minority. Because this story isn’t taught in classrooms, discussed in boardrooms or debated in parliament. This story may be the truth but it is also the alternative and for it to become mainstream, for it to become a popular worldview and thus shape society for the better, it needs you guys.
Because I’ve spent hours in boardrooms, hours walking in the park with CEOs, hours on stage trying to convince 100s of executives, and every time I share this story, I’m shocked that they’re shocked.
This Academy, even from a distance, has given me energy this year because for once, Jim, Emily, Andy, Tess & I aren’t going against the grain. We’ve not been swimming up stream. We’ve been working with the kind of people who have the energy, talent, smarts, creativity to popularise a new story which will make future generations look back in shock. They’ll look back in shock at the way we ran companies just like we’re shocked by the idea that there just 50 years ago there were more dictatorships than democracies, that women couldn’t vote and gay people couldn’t get married.
So my biggest tip is to write your own story and to live by it. To make it self-fulfilling. To ignore the obsolete stories you’ve inherited and to dance to your own beat. It’s kind of as simple as that. Write your story, keep telling it, watch it happen and stay determined. You’ll start to see your story gain a momentum of its own and it’ll feel oh so sweet.
Make the most of this last week together and stay in touch with each other, because together, you’re writing a new story.
Have conviction and be well 🙏🏼
Jon
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