I am.
And this is choosing leadership.
A podcast for high performers, with big dreams at work and life.
This is a podcast for people who know deep inside that there is more.
Have you achieved a great deal of success?
But on the inside, you still feel empty and like an imposter.
Do other people see you as a strong leader?
And you wonder why it still feels so lonely and suffocating.
The aim of this podcast is not to provide you more content, but instead shift
the context under which you operate.
I dare to speak to the tremendous power, which you already have
rather than what you believe.
Are your strengths and limitations.
This podcast is called choosing leadership because that is
what leadership is a choice.
And this is the leadership journey, CDs.
I am interviewing leaders with an interesting story to learn how
they got where they are today.
We all have a lot to learn from each other's stories.
Of Viet.
We started very veer now.
And over successes and struggles on the V.
With this series of interviews, my attempt.
Is to give leaders an opportunity to share their stories and for all of us
to learn from their genders sharing John feather B is the founder of short
Mount and award-winning consenting form, which helps organizations be more
human, purposeful, and adaptable for the challenges of the 21st century.
He is also an ambassador at B lab and part of the B Corp movement, which
is the world's leading business as a force for good movement redefining
the role of business in society.
In the interview, John talks about how can we make work a place where people can seek
and find dignity, uncover who they are and find joy in everything that they do.
In addition to just making a living, he opens up about his faith, about our tricky
relationship with money and iShares.
What he does today is the reason why he is here.
He also talks about the importance of having people to lean back.
And also the importance of celebration in the context of leadership.
Hi, John.
Good afternoon.
. Welcome to the choosing leadership podcast.
We are very happy to be here summit.
I'm glad to have you here and for our listeners.
Can you share a little bit about who you are before we start and what do you do?
Yeah, sure.
Who am I?
What a complex question.
Good one.
Start with so yeah, my John Jones.
I have the good fortune to, in my case, be married.
I have four children eight to 14.
Brings its own beauty and its challenges.
I live in a kind of rural part of England, just north of London.
So out in the countryside, that's why I I love just love spending time outdoors.
So it's good for me out here and really for for my whole life.
I've been connected to conversations about business as a force for
good, but I've been focused on it, full-time professionally.
I don't know, 10, 10 to 15 years.
Wonderful.
So can you share how you, how came to be doing what you're doing today, or
is there any particular event or events which happened, which shaped you or shaped
your views around work and business?
Yeah, for me, yeah.
Some people have singular events for me.
I grew up around it.
So my parents, my father was a corporate lawyer.
But in his sort of free time, my parents led by the sort of Christian.
Both felt very strongly about the fact that work or money business had lost its
way a bit and that how you made money really mattered and what businesses
role in society really mattered.
So during the sort of nineties and early noughties they would travel
around the country to talk about these things and I'd follow them or
more particularly at home, we would have a lot of discussions around the.
Supper table about the importance of money and but more, particularly less about
money, more just about the concept of work and enterprise and what businesses
could, should, or shouldn't do.
So by the time I left home, I didn't really realize it, but I'd been
soaked in this philosophy about a better way of thinking about business
than the status quo was before.
And then watch them, kickstart some of the things we're seeing
now, like impact investing.
And my parents were the first social impact bond investors in the UK.
And that that I just realized then when I was in my mid twenties,
that this is why I wanted to give my time and life to as well.
This question about how do we kind of rescue the company in a way and provide
a place where people can seek and find dignity and who they are and joy and what
they do, and as well as making a living.
Yeah, it's and then obviously during that, during the time I had.
It's been something I've wanted to go after every now and again, you have these
experiences that kind of really hit home.
Oh, this is why I do this.
This is why I get up and do this is why despite the pain I keep
going or, whatever it might be.
But that's the kind of big picture, of why I did it.
Why.
Yeah.
. And you used a very interesting word rescue.
You shared a little bit about that.
What is it?
What's the new philosophy or the different philosophy that you have brought on.
And also since you mentioned about a long time ago, like when, in the
time of your parents, how has worked changed or how is work evolving, let's
say in the last few decades and where is it going in the next few decades?
What are your thoughts about that?
Yeah, sure.
I guess going back in time and then even further back beyond my parents,
I saw some of the things we're talking about in terms of how an organization
should now be run and the values and the culture that companies should instill.
They're not all necessarily new.
I think it's more that we lost our way and we forgot, what was important
or we separated what we felt was important from what we actually did.
It's very common to come across people who almost live two lives.
They have their personal values and the way they think life should be run
and what they do, but they behave in or taking decisions in a very different way.
When you put them in a big, shiny corporate.
And I, so I think how has it changed?
I think it's particularly the last few years, it's the
momentum has changed enormously.
If you wanted to talk about discussions about ethics of business in the
nineties, where, not just seen as relevant, they were re pushed up.
And people had got into a rhythm of doing things.
It was post the eighties when, the capital markets expanded a lot.
And I think I just, it wasn't just business as well.
That had a problem with it.
As, NGOs and B large charities had their place in the world
and, small businesses, the enemy.
The church and other, other, I think other faiths, there was
this problem, money was flawed or.
Weren't interested in your job, job was something that happens separately to that
part of that spiritual side of your life.
And I think there was just a sort of few people saying hang
on a second, we all actually have something positive to share here.
That sort of almost in the middle of that Venn diagram.
And most of us spend most of our life at work.
So it is a question that should matter.
So I think the work that I've been involved in terms of seeing.
A lot of it has been connecting individuals into groups or whatever, to
have discussions about what you know, who you ask at the beginning, who you
really know what really matters to you.
Are you really fulfilled?
Do you think the people that you're running an organization, do you think
that people who work for you are fully alive, are they flourishing
or is this something they do?
And then.
They go home and they recover over the weekend to go back to Monday to Friday.
I think I'd say, we've seen some step changes, but obviously I think
the pandemic has accelerated this question around that people wants to
do meaningful things with their time.
And so I think that the company of the future is going to be quite
different, but for a number of different reasons, not just meaningful work,
The family structure has changed.
People who goes to work has changed and digital, the
digital landscape has changed.
The regulatory landscape is changing.
Almost everything has changed except for the structure of a company.
And so that is increasingly intentioned and with the way that the pace at
which the world moves, what people are seeking the need to reintegrate.
Companies with their various stakeholders.
So there's an awakening going on.
Around how interdependent organizations and people are.
And, a very rampant individualism has made people feel like I
can force my will on the world.
And the companies have felt the same, but I think are increasingly finding
that it's not quite as forward.
And you're not quite as in control as you thought.
So it's, it's hard to know where it will end up, but I think it's quite
exciting time for well sighted people like me to be involved in, because it
feels like we're starting to bear fruit.
Yeah.
And you spoke about money and also about the church.
Can you share a little bit about some of those ideas, maybe, which we have
outgrown about money or about capitalism
yeah, I think historically, sometimes there was a view that kind of certainly
in some spiritual communities that money was fundamentally evil or, there
was something fundamentally wrong with money and it was always going to
tarnish that the people who had it as opposed to the idea that it's not the
money itself, that's often a problem.
It's a question of the heart, . Is it what you're in pursuit of and your,
what your organization is trying to do?
So my company, our sort of tagline, as a purpose is to restore joy, meaning
and freedom to every workplace.
And, we constantly in pursuit of that or are we trying to make lots of money?
And sometimes, the two are in conflict.
What are you going to do?
So I think it's starting to see money as a tool, as opposed to something
that you have rather than it has you.
I think, and then you start to get into conversations about
how do we choose to invest?
How do we use money more wisely?
How can we redirect its energy and power in a positive direction as opposed to
just being captured by it all the time.
And obviously money also has this sort of knock-on effect about who am
I being a question of the materialism.
I might have things I own the brands I wear, all that.
And sometimes that some of it is craftsmanship and, you pay good
money because of how it's made.
And sometimes it's just inflated value because of what you think
it gives you in terms of identity.
So I think that's taking some unraveling as well.
So there's I don't think when I started moving out of capitalism I think
trade has always been part of the human experience and it always will
be, but I think we are perhaps moving beyond the sort of obsession with
consumerism and material identification, and that will have an impact on the
economy, but it could shift into.
Yeah.
And as you do this work in companies, in organizations what is it that you
find most challenging, especially when you bump up against these old ideas,
which are still very entrenched and many times on a subconscious level.
Yeah.
The most challenging thing is always the people.
This, in a sense that a lot of this is much more personal than
people want to realize or accept.
It's very easy to go into a company and sell the idea of change in the context of
let's change the management structure or let's rewrite the performance management
system or appraisals or whatever it might be, write new policies, all that stuff.
It whilst it often needs doing is the easy thing to do because
it's outlet, it's not me.
It's a structural thing that we can fiddle with.
But ultimately the real problem is in people it's in their heart and souls
and that spirit, why do I do this?
What matters to me?
How am I going to treat people?
What level of courage do I have?
How much sacrifice could I cope with?
The real work is the hard work and we're so used to the problem.
Over there.
They actually getting particularly leadership sometimes to stop to stop
trying to control and manage and be in average, it'd be in every decision and
actually do some work on themselves and make room to think and to stop.
Sometimes that can be quite frightening for people because they don't like they
don't want to stop because they know.
If I stop and start thinking about myself, where I'm at, I'd rather not,
so the hard part is always the mindset is the heart and the mind cause you
could walk into a company and give them data on why this is good all day long.
That does not mean a board is going to do it because ultimately people
are making choices on well, they're used to a certain way and their heart
and mind is set on a certain thing.
So that's always the difference.
But the difficult bit is as always, of course, always a bit worth doing.
It's like going to the gym, it's not fun sometimes it's horrible, but
that's, that it's the bit that matters.
So yeah that that's the hardest part.
Yeah.
. And the gym example is quite quite good because I think that's
a wonderful analogy also to.
We're building strength in an area where you are usually
weak and that it takes time.
It doesn't happen like all night.
. Yeah.
So just quickly on that metaphor, we sometimes use is a bit like going to
the doctor, if you're, if you imagine an organization being a sick patient and
it goes to see a doctor or a consultant.
Typically a lot of consultants are very happy to give the organization
pills sort of short-term fixes that makes it feel good and masks the pain.
But it's not really solving underlying.
Whereas actually, if you are not well and you go and see a doctor and they
turn around and say, you need to sleep properly, you'd get more exercise.
You need up, change your diets, et cetera, et cetera.
That's actually what the person needs to do, but it's a lot more work.
The doctor can't do it for you.
It's going to take time.
It's going to require commitment and it's not the same.
You don't need to pills to, you might need some painkillers, but long term,
if you really want to change, you're going to have to put in the effort.
And that that's one of the challenges we have at the moment is everybody
is rushing to change, but not really stopping to think about.
How are we going to do that well, and how are we going to make that last?
Yeah.
And how do you navigate that challenge for yourself personally, as you're working
with multiple companies, multiple people, and you see some of them like succeeding
or making use of this and some of them struggling or not wanting to change.
So how do you navigate that challenge personally for you?
It
can be difficult, it brings out the person of worse than you, I have a few people
that I meet with regularly to process what I'm doing to hold me accountable
to my thinking to, I have a wife that's very good at encourage you to make sure
I get exercise and I go to bed on time.
Cause you, you need to be willing to have people in your life that will
speak into what you're doing and say, summit, John sort yourself out, stop,
put that down and go over there.
I'm also quite intentional about taking time outs.
Obviously I live in the countryside.
Going and doing things that are different every now and ago, every now and again,
I go somewhere else for a few days by myself and just get away from my
everyday context, family or work or whatever, and spend some time thinking.
I have a faith myself I do lean on that and have my kind of rituals or
prayer or whatever that helps me feel.
Grounded and connected, to a bigger story that I feel I can be part of.
So I, but ultimately I feel really passionate about what I do, so that
helps me get through when it can be difficult, because I feel what I'm
doing with my time is why I'm here.
And I think we're all here for a reason.
And I, I think, I've found mine.
And so I just, I'm working on.
But it's not it's not always easy.
And it can be very frustrating when it's mostly frustrating with
people who are implementing changes and they're excited about it,
but they're going about it wrong.
But you can't reach them because they think they understand what they do.
, but they can't see what they're doing is just putting on plasters.
They're not really investing in the thinking they need to be doing that.
That's probably the most difficult situation rather than people who, as
often more difficult than people who don't want to do it because at least, where
they live, they know where they stand.
And so do you,
yeah.
Two things, which you mentioned here, which is very relevant for
any leader is one, is that sense of meaning, like you said, you're playing
a role in that in a larger story.
And I think having something larger than yourself is like the key to sustain
yourself during those tough times.
And also keep you.
Passionate and energetic during the good times as well.
Yeah.
And the second thing you mentioned is having a support structure,
like having a set of people.
And this iPhone, very ironic because a lot of leaders I see
that they try to do it all alone.
What would I did they try to take a lot of weight on this?
And not involve the people who are already around them, by
definition, leadership is a job which requires people to be around you.
But how ironic is that?
That even despite that it feels a very lonely to most leaders.
Yeah.
It's, it is very lonely place.
I'm, I'm not I'm not running a big organization or anything,
but the more, the bigger that responsibility gets the lonelier.
And with, it comes often comes more wealth and in the world's eyes, more
power, but it can be extremely isolating.
And unfortunately, because you have more wealth and more power, often the cases
that people are less sympathetic because they think, oh you look at your life.
You've got that.
You're either.
The enemy or you've got like lives good for you.
So I'm not in, I'm not going to care about you.
So I often find people in senior positions in those
organizations, they really struggle.
One thing I didn't say, which you said, which I should have done is
also the importance of celebration, it is really important to.
Even with the small things, to take time out, to feast and celebrate
and find gratitude and joy and what you're doing a way you've got to, even
if the big picture can be difficult celebrating, just being alive.
And even if it's not material progress, but the big thing.
. Yes.
I think you spoke about you also and then celebration and gratitude and focusing
on the positive are like some of the rituals, which I think are often missed
because our brains are designed, to focus on the negative or what is not working.
And then there's huge potential.
If we just focus on and celebrate what is already.
Yeah.
Yeah, no, absolutely.
Yeah.
Said.
Yeah.
And just to shift gears, right?
What is it that people misunderstand about you the most?
What people on the standard?
That's a good question.
I guess that's the question that I'd love to know the answer to?
I quite like challenging the stereotype of who I am, I come from a particular
background and, sometimes that means in some situations, people make assumptions
about how you're going to see the world.
And I enjoy sometimes disrupting those and then being surprised at
what my perspective on something might be or what I might say.
Yeah, I think that probably, I don't know, maybe that's changing as I get older too.
What people misunderstand about me, but what a good question.
I don't know.
Maybe I don't want some, maybe I don't want to know the answers that
. Yeah.
We all have those spots.
I think we would rather avoid what can also be very like
enlightening places to, to learn and
grow.
Maybe I should ask my kind of I guess I was going to say, ask about the
group of people I meet with regularly.
If they have assumptions about me that are wrong, then they might
not know that they're wrong.
That's the difficulty of asking the question, but yeah.
Good one too.
Yes.
Yeah.
And I, the way I see questions, I think the best questions have no answers and
discussions like continue to be questions, even if you find an answer to them.
And I think that's what often is missing, like in organizations
as well, that we are too.
Rush to find the answer and then implement.
And sometimes we miss a lot because of that rush.
Yeah.
Can you share a time when somebody had a big influence on how you see
the world of work or leadership?
And if there is anything specific, which they said always they did.
Yeah.
I have a.
I guess I have a number of mentors some who are real in
the sense that they're people.
I know.
S I also think we can be mental, but people we don't know, through reading the
ag material or following what they say.
I, yeah, I think undeniably my parents, their choices
had quite a big impact on me.
I didn't necessarily realize it at the time, but they were.
They were exceptionally sacrificially generous.
They w they very fortunate by anybody's standards, but, didn't
take that for granted and did a lot more than the average person
would be anywhere willing to do.
And I, that certainly left its mark in terms of, the importance of being willing
to take those risks for other people.
And obviously my choices have emerged from some of those things.
It's yeah.
It's, there's no kind of necessarily, individuals that have shaped me in
a big way, but I'm lucky to have a lot of people around me who, in lots
of ways have helped guide me over the years and obviously my family
. I always try and see the people that when we're working with a company
trying to see in the employees that work there, that they're not just the kind
of, they're not a number, so I guess I would, in terms of how I do things and
feeling inspired, be married a long time.
Madly in love with her and have four wonderful children.
And I project that, into the work, that's somebody else's son
or daughter or somebody's wife or husband, and they have friends and
family and how would they feel?
And so that keeps me focused on tries to keep me focused on what I think matters.
Yeah.
And as you spoke about the children, so how do you see the workplace will
be different for the next generation?
Or how would you like it to be.
Yeah.
I think that we're just starting to shape it.
I think I actually happened to be a governor of a school.
So this is really topical question for me.
How do we design education to support children becoming adults for jobs that are
not only very different from the average professional of my age, but potentially
not just companies that aren't there, but whole sectors that might show up.
In the next kind of 10 to 15 years, I think the trend where on will continue.
I think we're at the kind of bottom of a sort of exponential curve.
I think it's quite difficult to predict where it will end up.
I think some things will always be the same new people are
people, and there are some things which have been constant for us.
And I think that's one of the things that corporate sort of underestimate
with, when particularly big companies, when they start talking about questions
of purpose and meaning and work, those are such deep human questions that I
think is a mistake for them to imagine that they can control those in a very
kind of manufactured corporate world.
Just for the company's benefit, actually you potentially open up a
whole series of questions that you weren't prepared for, that people, all
discussions that people want to have.
So yeah I think there'll becoming increasingly the boundaries of companies
will become increasingly porous.
I think, you'll get a lot more partnership, a lot more collaboration.
Yeah.
I You might, we might have situations where.
10 15 years where, a company lasts 10 minutes and there's a million
people doing one thing, and that they solve a problem together.
Who knows?
I don't know.
It's a it's exciting question, which is why I do it because it's
enjoying, it's like watching the story be written as you do the work.
Yeah.
And if there is somebody who wants to do something ambitious and
wants to start a company, Yeah.
What advice would you give them?
Because if they go out and seek advice or if they start operating, I think
they will still bump up against those old paradigms, . So how would you
recommend them to, to start something?
I'm part of a movement called B-Corp which is a kind of movement and a
certification for companies that see themselves as trying to have an
increasingly positive impact on the world, socially environmentally for the word.
Et cetera.
And so there's four and a half thousand of us now globally.
And we have a kind of free online public resource, which is a framework
that effectively helps companies.
It's not an exam.
It's our long list of ideas for a company to build some scaffolding around which
they can pursue some of these ideas.
So a really good place, really good practical resources to go.
B Corp, you Google it.
You'll find it anywhere and look, and just look through the resources, the questions,
the ideas, they all start to give you.
Something to work with rather than a blank piece of paper
and a third party assessment.
We liken it to a bit like your skeleton.
So it's something that holds together.
Lots of disconnected.
But just like a person needs to flesh in the soul to be a sort
of whole thriving human beings.
The same thing with something like Vico, the framework has helped will help you
have a strong and healthy skeleton.
There's always going to be things outside of a third party assessment
that need considering but that's, that's, a good place to be.
And has a lot of credibility.
It's seen as a sort of gold standard at the moment for the
business as a force for good.
It's not perfect, but it's it's very.
Yeah, thank you.
Thank you, John, for your time in answering these questions.
And I'm sure there's a lot of value and a lot of wisdom in the ideas that you
have and that you take to companies.
So for anybody, anybody who is listening in, just before we wrap up, is somebody
who wants to know more about the kind of work you do and the kind of
philosophies and ideas that you have, where can they find out more about that?
And how can they reach out to you if there's.
Yeah, but I always welcome people to reach out on LinkedIn
is a good way of reaching me.
I guess you've seen my name on the podcast, John feather, big goal.
Now find me someone invite I have gladly accepted.
My company's is shore mounts.com and B Corp as a organization is worth
looking to, and you can con can connect with me through any of the.
But LinkedIn is probably the best place to start.
Thank you.
Thank you, John, for sharing your ideas.
It was wonderful talking to you today.
Absolutely pleasure.
That's it for this episode of choosing leadership with summit.
I choose leadership every time I record this podcast and I
invite you to do the same.
I invite you to design a life of joy, meaning pride and satisfaction.
Not just for yourself, but also for those around you.
This is what I do most naturally to lovingly and gently provoke you.
To help you see your own light to help you see what you are already capable of.
I say what might be uncomfortable for me to say, or for you to hear.
To show you that all of our dreams which have been on hold are within our grasp.
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Until next time, keep choosing leadership.