Simone Cicero

Hello everybody and welcome back to the Boundaryless Conversations Podcast. This podcast explores and discusses the future of business models, organizations, markets, and society in our rapidly changing world. I’m joined today by my usual co-host Shruthi Prakash. Hello Shruthi.

 

Shruthi Prakash 

Hello everybody!

 

Simone Cicero

And we are thrilled to welcome a guest who has profoundly influenced my thinking over the years, I must say. He’s a visionary author, entrepreneur, thought leader who has redefined how we see intersection of business, creativity, and human values, Tim Lebrecht. Hello, Tim.

 

Tim Leberecht 

Hi Simone, hi Shruthi, great to be on the podcast.

 

Simone Cicero

Thank you so much. Tim is the co-founder and co-CEO of the House of Beautiful Business, a global platform that brings together leaders, thinkers, and creators in reimagining the future of business as a force for beauty, humanity, and connection. He is the author of, I would say, groundbreaking book, The Business Romantic, where he explored, I think it was 2015, or something like that, if I’m not wrong. Yeah.

 

He explored how businesses can transcend transactional relationships to essentially foster more meaningful experiences and genuine connections between companies, customers, markets, and society. Before founding the House of Beautiful Business team, among many other things, also served as a Chief Marketing Officer of Frog Design, where he led brand and marketing strategy for one of the most influential design firms in the world. 

 

I’ve been following your work theme for a few years now, as you can imagine, and I’ve quoted you countless times on slides and talks, I would say. Our connection goes way back, probably more than a decade. I was catching up yesterday, but essentially when I had the privilege of having you speak at the OuishareFest, I was coordinating the program. WishFest was looking into this collaborative and sharing economy more than 10 years ago. And I think you were working on the ideas that then led you to The Business Romantic book. 

 

So your work has always challenged conventional narratives about business. You have been emphasizing beauty and meaning, which are words that nobody really fit into business talk. in today’s world where not only efficiency and scale often dominate the narrative, but also in a world where we face converging crisis from climate change to social polarization or wars actually, unfortunately. And simultaneously we’re dealing with kind of technological revolutions with AI. So my question for you, how do you see the role of your work, essentially beauty and humanity in the current situation, which doesn’t really cater to, least, you know, normally one wouldn’t think that it caters to thinking about beauty. So how’s your work fitting into these new realities?

 

Tim Leberecht

Yeah, well, thank you very much. I’m very happy that you referenced that. I’m very humble that you referenced some of my work on your slides, Simone. And I’ve also been a long time admirer of your work. And I remember very fondly our last meeting in Rome. Yeah, so how does beauty, speaking of Rome and the great beauty of it, how does beauty fit into this world that we’re facing today, a world of the poli-crisis and in many ways, the agony of systems that at least I and my generation have really grown up with and have sort of taken for granted for the most part. I would argue that beauty is more important than ever. 

 

So I actually feel very vindicated and reinvigorated by what is happening and kind of confronted with the spirit of like, yes, what I’ve been doing, what I’ve been trying to promote and advocate is more urgent and more important than ever. So it’s almost like from a, I don’t know, intellectual, you know, passion of mine, it’s now become a political project. 

 

And I think that that isn’t kind of uncomfortable a little bit, but also probably the only possible response. Specifically speaking, I actually am also an American citizen and a German citizen, an American citizen. And I was actually in the US in Georgia, in the swing city of Georgia to vote on November 5th in this election. And I woke up like many other Americans, at least, you know, 50%. Just in utter disbelief, you know, that off this in the face of this paradox that on the one hand, we’re developing AI and the advances in engineering and science are just, I mean, incredible. 

 

And at the same time, here we are going back to this nostalgic brand of nationalism, right? That kind of renders any liberal notions of progress obsolete or at least spits them in the face. So that’s one reality. And then I went to Dubai, to the Dubai Future Forum and attended that for the first time, which build us the world’s largest gathering of futurists, you know, at least gave me hope in the fact that there are some people still, professions and practices working on the future and with the belief that we humans can actually actively design the future. And then after that I went to Venice and I attended the Planetary Summit hosted by the Berggruen Institute, a think tank founded by Nicolas Berggruen. First of all, it’s really remarkable to be in the heart of good old Europe and in this absolutely fascinating city of Venice, but then in a way, think about and explore a whole new paradigm for doing business, which goes beyond a human-centered notion of it and embraces more life-centricity and a more than human area that is shaped by artificial intelligence, but also a renaissance or reconnection with nature and biology and maybe even extraterrestrial outer space visions of the future.

 

So just to give you an example of like, this has been my past three weeks in a way. So was in good old Europe, know, an interesting blend between past and a very daring future. was in the UAE in Dubai, where I feel like the vision of the future is somewhat technocratic and linear, right? That very sort of strong belief in like, okay, with the right resources and planning, we can create a very human future. And I was in the US, which in a way is like a future of the past, right? It’s kind of like – this is the future we certainly do not want and the pendulum is so swung back. 

 

And like everybody else, I’m really struggling to make sense of it all. And this paradox of, you know, on the one hand, like a new consciousness and incredible advances in engineering and science and understanding of the world. And on the other hand, these retrograde brands of politics and the social divisions and also this very arcade raw human nature that we now see, you know, in violent conflicts and wars in Europe is so shocking. 

 

And so how does the House of Beautiful Business, how does beauty fit into this? So we’ve always, and we’ve been around for seven years, we’ve always tried to be a bridge between different ideas. We’ve always tried to challenge the notion of sort of mainstream thinking and really simply create space for other ideas. 

 

Other ideas, maybe that often are ridiculed or laughed at by middle of the road business people who say it’s dreamy or it’s too idealistic or it’s romantic and whatnot. But I feel like that there’s a connection between the hardening of our political discourse, the hardening of our societies, the hardening of our workplace culture and at the same time a denial or a neglection of soft skills and a softer debate and tenderness and warmth, and spirituality and not knowing and uncertainty and all these things, right, that are a bit fuzzy. 

 

And I think what we’re trying to do and where maybe our impact can be is to create a counterweight to those who believe they own the truth and think in binaries and think everything is measurable and absolute, you know, and absolute.

 

And I think we are trying to do that through experiences more so than anything else by bringing people into the same room and create experiences that are emotional, that go under their skin. And then, and this is something I was reminded of in Dubai where we hosted a dinner that was called the “Hopeful Dinner”. At the end of the day, the very least we can do with the way we gather and what are thinking is to generate hope, you know, that there is another truth out there, that this is not all there is. That another future is possible. long answer to your question you see/ I’m quite agitated about this because I’m just still in, I think I’m in shock a bit about what I’m seeing.

 

Simone Cicero

Who isn’t? So essentially, think you wrap it up quite efficiently, let’s say the situation we live in, you have, especially, think I was trying to catch some notes and you said, on one side we have unhardening of our work culture, the market society, and on the other side, we are in denial of potentially new skills and new capabilities that we should be picking from. Also, I think because they don’t fit the usual narratives, right? So since these things don’t fit to the usual narrative, we really don’t know how to use them in a business landscape. And I think it’s normal that companies or organizations or institutions or even people kind of refrain from – let’s say picking their emotional side or their beauty or creativity elements because they really don’t speak the language of the expectations that exist for them. 

 

You also said another interesting thing, which is this is a political project. And I think this is very interesting because if you think about organizational culture so far, I think most of us and most of the leading narrative on the market has tried to consider business as something completely unpolitical and completely like, know, can I say, logic. 

 

And so there was no space to think about business in different ways. There was only one business narrative and so on. So, my second question for you, and of course, Shruthi, maybe you can jump in, but I wanted to just ask you.

 

You know, you have been talking to so many brands and organizations. So how do you, you know, besides the initial shock and maybe also enthusiasm for, you know, seeing new possibilities as a business leader, what have you seen in them business leaders embrace in terms of how they have been trying to change their organizations in terms of practices or structures or new relationships. So I don’t want you to go very deep, of course, because we were just at the start of the conversation. But if you can give us like a compass and say, you know, a business and an organization embrace these new paradigms, what are the key spaces of actions and agency that they have in changing the structure or changing their culture or changing their skills or, you know, hiring policies or whatever. So what’s a positive, you know, what they can enact actually on their organizations.

 

Tim Leberecht 

I’m definitely observing this pattern of like two steps forward, one step back, sometimes even three steps back. I think if you work in an organization or if you’ve had a corporate career like I had, and for example, when I was wearing the Chief Marketing Officer hat, so many things repeat themselves, right? So you go through these cycles where you come in with a change mandate, you change the positioning, you bring in different stakeholders, you relaunch the website, you relaunch the brand identity, you relaunch your go-to-market platform, you operationalize differently. You do this for two or three years, you’ve burned through all your political capital, and then basically you leave and they bring in someone else, or you do it again, which is even more frustrating. You go through the same cycle again, you renew everything, maybe incrementally, overall, arguably, the organization will be better positioned in an ever-evolving market and environment, but who knows? 

 

And I think this sort of micro view of a profession or my 10-year experience is also reflected in the broader trajectory of organizations. I feel like having observed this now for two decades or so, there’s always this change impetus and there’s times when change is welcome and there are a lot of new paradigms forcing change or inspiring change.

 

But then there’s a moment of crisis when real political kicks back in and pragmatism prevails over any form of sort of visionary thinking or the kind of thinking that really aims at changes meant to, yeah, really, I think, create a new reality long-term. And I think that’s the frustration, I think, and also the challenge that so many organizations face, right? So they have different leaders. The leaders change.

 

of going in circles, right? They’re changing, then they’re changing back, they’re stepping back, they’re going back to the status under quo, they’re changing again. So overall it often feels like a sort of zero-sum game and I feel like that’s pretty evident right now because the biggest changes since you’ve asked me about like what are some of the areas that I’ve seen probably like many other people as well are I’d say mostly in the

 

Tim Leberecht

Before we even talk about AI and technology, but I think I’m mostly in the cultural realm. So I think we’ve seen a lot of social norms change over the past decade. You know, let’s summarize them as I think change on sort of mainly, I would say identity, gender, right? And equity and inclusion. But we’re also seeing now this huge backlash against wokeness, quote unquote, DEI programs being cut, slashed, or not even mentioned anymore, right? It’s kind of like people are really pulling back from that, at least many organizations are. 

 

And I think what I’m seeing right now is also because you said organizations or businesses are trying very hard, or maybe many of them don’t see themselves as political actors. I mean, that’s far from true. Obviously, I know, I think is there anything more political than a definition of what is valuable for us and how we create it? I mean, that is per se a political act. So any organization, any business, any value creation, any production, any distribution and organization of labor is of course inherently political. It reflects a certain worldview. It creates new politics.

 

You know, it’s all about relationships between powers and how you design powers. So to ignore that and pretend that this is an agnostic neutral space, I think that’s just not true. And I’m actually quite appalled by also many of the progressive business leaders that I know, even people in our own community who, you know, are now sort of saying, well, after the Trump election in particular, you know, this was a democratic vote. Arguably it was.

 

But suddenly saying, well, we’re a business, right? So five years ago, it was very hip to take a stance against structural racism and be woke and connect on values with a younger generation and in fact, many consumers. But now everybody is so timid and so afraid. And a lot of organizations, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and others have already kissed the ring, right? At Mar-a-Lago. 

 

And I think overall you see mainstream business being very, very, very reluctant to enact any form of political stewardship.

 

So all that being said, I think the changes that organizations are open to right now. I mean, I think right now it’s such a fork in the road moment. You alluded to that earlier, Simone. I think, and this is the paradox, right? On the one hand, this is such an opportunity to shape a new paradigm, to really kind of rock the boat and really challenge the system of value, creation and production and how we organize labor and what work actually is. And I think there’s so many interesting initiatives on that, whether that is participatory design and co-ops and some of the work, of course, that you’ve been involved with, if you will, the heirs of the witness, the sharing economy, the grandchildren of the sharing economy. 

 

There’s so many interesting new models in terms of life center, regenerative production and leadership and all of that. And I think they’re making their way into business mainstream. At the same time, I also see a strong sense of pragmatism, you know, back to the basics, know, brass tacks, it’s all about efficiency, it’s all about surviving the next quarter, right? And I don’t blame these businesses, these are really tough times in many economies. So of course, people are not necessarily in the mood for dreaming up and envisioning completely alternative versions of business. But I think it’s this tension that’s interesting and maybe in that very tension there is a path forward that hopefully with our work, with your work I suppose as well, can design.

 

Shruthi Prakash 

I’ve been listening. I’m such a big believer of this topic that I’m super passionate as well. I think one of the points that stood out from what you said is that it requires active designing and participation, right? It’s not a passive, it’s happening by my side. Okay. I’m merely a participant in the background. It’s not that it’s sort of in the forefront. 

 

So you spoke about some methods – that is, let’s say, participatory design, co-op and things like that. have there been any, let’s say, success points in sort of operationalizing these in organizations where organizations have actively participated in this process? I also know you spoke about resonance as a topic closely when it came to, let’s say, roles in terms of storytelling rituals that organizations can imbibe and so on so maybe to touch upon that a little bit would help. Simone you can add on as well.

 

Simone Cicero 

Yeah, I mean, if I can add just a little nuance to this, I was talking to Shruti, know, essentially, she’s asking for, you know, to understand through examples. But what I can add also is I was wondering myself why beauty is so political. So why shouldn’t all businesses seek for these type of transformations? So that’s to you.

 

Tim Leberecht

I’m not sure beauty is political, or you could argue what is political is who is to define what it is, right? I think, but I think beauty is something that’s universally accepted and I think we all want it. It means many different things for different people. And when I speak about beauty or with the House of Beautiful Business, we don’t refer to this as a simply a statical phenomenon or cosmetics or decoration, right? Or something that’s just harmonious.

 

I think it’s much more about something true. I think what is beautiful is what feels true and authentic and what reveals something universally true about humans. Where we feel like, this is a moment, this is an experience, this is a relationship that reminds me of the best that we’re capable of. And business and the workplace is an incredible force to uncover that because that’s where we spend the majority of our waking hours, that’s where we still have relationships with people we probably cannot hand curate, right, and hand pick. So if we’re forced into social settings to some degree even within those bubbles. So I think that’s what I mean by beauty. It is controversial or maybe not so easy to implement for businesses because it is often considered an afterthought.

 

It’s not seen as something that’s integral to the bottom line, right? It’s something that we can afford in this sort of very narrow reductionist understanding of it – once we are profitable or once our business is thriving, then we can invest in culture and a more intimate culture and playfulness and joy. 

 

But beauty, I think it goes much deeper, beauty means that your organization is aligned, that its values are aligned with the world around you, that you have the capability to leave a real lasting positive impact, a legacy of sorts, and that you touch people and that you add value, moments, experience, product, services to this world that other people experience as something that reminds them of the best of what humanity is capable of. 

 

Okay, this was a really long definition. So you were asking about examples, Shruthi, of some of the things that have sunk into mainstream or that have been successful transformations. So often they’re invisible because by the moment they’ve become mainstream, have, they feel old or we have forgotten about them. One example that I was close to when I was still working at Frog Design is Design Thinking. Now everybody’s laughing about it and clearly has jumped the shark. People are saying, well, it was not good enough. It was great and lofty. And also most of the design firms that were touting it are now bought by Capgemini, McKinsey, and other big consulting juggernauts. But the influence it has had, reminding us of empathy and how important that is, really understanding not just functional consumer customer needs, but emotional, spiritual needs. 

 

Thinking of design and in that sense, also beauty as a real core ingredient of what people perceive as valuable. I think all those are accomplishments of design thinking. So I’m kind of the unlikely defendant of design thinking, even though I also at the time was very critical of this buzzword. But I think it has really changed the culture of organizations. I think the other big transformation that we’ve seen is that, and this goes in, I believe, in sort of pendulums maybe, but it’s sort of the return of spirituality maybe, you know, so the fact that airlines now, for example, ask some pilots to undergo yoga training, right, or that mindfulness has been established at organizations at scale, SAP, at least is the last I know used to have a head of mindfulness. 

 

And, you know, it’s not laughed at. 15, 20 years ago, it would have been considered completely esoteric, completely voodoo. We’re now seeing conversations about energy. Energy as a current of interaction as something that you need to actively manage as a leader in an organization that is very hard to grasp and to quantify, but that’s very, very important. Aura. We see CEOs and business leaders go to retreats where they foster their own mental well-being in order to be able to serve that of others. So those are all accomplishments and insights, I think, that would have been unimaginable maybe 15, 20 years ago. 

 

And I think they’ve slowly sunken in and some of them will probably be spit out again by the system as we’re seeing now with DEI and others. But I think at the end of the day though, the core of all these, of these progressions will remain, you know, and I think that’s also important sometimes to remember because we tend to be so cynical and then think, you know, this, this has jumped the shark. This is now over. That’s a new thing. 

 

But I would still remind us of the fact that movements like design thinking that they have had tremendous impact on the business culture and it will remain even after the buzzword is gone.

 

Shruthi Prakash

I’m a Design Thinking, I guess, practitioner myself and like one of our earlier podcasts, right? Like they were speaking about how AI is being integrated even within the practice of, let’s say, design, market research, customer research becoming, let’s say, using synthetic users, things like that. 

 

So, when the starting point within an organization is leveraged by tech or like enabled through tech and let’s say AI models in itself are very homogenized understanding of our world. How do you, let’s say, create diversity in that human experience when your starting point is homogenized? So that’s something that I’m always curious about. like you said, right, like there are so many, like it’s operating not in binaries anymore. So I’m just curious what you think about it in these regards.

 

Tim Leberecht

Yeah, that’s such a good question. That is the question, isn’t it? And I think here too, we’re seeing this tension. Businesses will always incentivize to standardize. I think by design, they lead towards homogeneity and standardization. And there’s a real fear, of course, that both in terms of language, ideas, research, that AI tools, and there’s been research that showed that large scale language models LLMs that they’re becoming more and more homogenous, that they’re actually converging in the reality that they’re creating.

 

So there’s a real fear now also with what is called generative inbreeding: basically AI systems feeding themselves with content that is synthetically produced for the first time, not by humans and digitized on the web. So it’s this sort of insularity now of systems. I think that’s very concerning that might inevitably lead to a more homogenous world and a very monochromatic society. So it’s hard to see how that will not happen.

 

But I think what we can do is to maybe rein it in or least sort of ring-fence it and delegate that kind of homogeneity to those aspects of business that are purely focused on optimization and efficiency and then draw a big line around it in the best possible way and protect those spaces in business and in life where human ingenuity and imagination and where in fact heterogeneous thinking and diverse thinking are still crucial. 

 

Even though you could challenge that, because when it comes to art, when it comes to writing, it’s actually quite astonishing. You probably know better than I do what AI systems are already capable of. And I also feel that it’s a bit of a hubris, isn’t it, to think that we humans, I mean, it’s a very human-centered and biased view to think that we are sort of at the apex of diverse thinking and creativity, right? 

 

What we’re seeing is a new digital species, right? And there are those who say, well, this is a product of human thinking, it’s a computation, right? Something we created, we can control it. It’s essentially just mathematics. So there’s nothing mysterious about it. I’m not one of them. I don’t take this engineering approach. I think I’m more with the other camp where philosophers and engineers much more inclined to say there is a new form of intelligence, perhaps consciousness, sentience that is emerging and we have long lost the ability to understand it, at least outside of the tools that we have available. 

 

So I think it could go either way, right? We could actually, we’re facing maybe a more than human future that is incredibly diverse, just not in a way that we’re able to grasp with our instruments and our thinking.

 

And it might not have a great place for us humans, you know, but maybe that’s also very nostalgic to think of that as some future that’s desirable. I mean, of course, we humans want a very human centered future, but we’ve not been around for a long time in the grand scheme of things. So maybe it’s also a moment of humility where, you know, we are designing a new world that is transcending us. And maybe that’s also okay. And I think at the very least, what’s exciting is and my recent attendance at the Planetary Summit in Venice reminded me of that, that we are witnessing this, right? We’re living in a time of this change where a new reality, a new world is being born, is given birth right in front of our eyes. And how much agency we have, I don’t know, but it’s exciting to be part of this, to live in this era. I take comfort in that.

 

Simone Cicero

Thank you. think I had an interesting bit where you said, let’s use technology and let’s optimize and let’s think in traditional business terms, efficiencies and so on. For whatever we have to scale and homogenize and standardize in the organization, which sounds to me very in line with our current organizational thinking that basically advises for creating shared services and shared infrastructures and then enabling massive entrepreneurship on top. 

 

So for example, now we’re preaching for organizations to create these shared systems and then have micro entrepreneurial units that develop their own go-to-market and value propositions and so on. I feel like this to some extent, it’s a way to, how can I explain, but essentially, when you create these spaces for entrepreneurship, you transcend traditional conversations around maybe care or how can I say? 

 

So basically you mix creating the space for someone to flourish also with some aspects of accountability and deeper liabilities. So essentially you can create your own space, your future, your position, your piece of the organization, but you have to be accountable to that. You have to be liable to some extent. So you have to manage your own liabilities, which I think for me, it’s really about understanding the organization as a complex thing. So something that doesn’t win automatically in the market. 

 

It’s not something you just go and then perform into a you know, well structured plan that always works. It doesn’t work like that. And especially now organization no more work like that because we’re no more into the, you know, last century where, you can, you kind of had much more planned economies. so, essentially, you know, wrapping this up, I think it’s very interesting to, if you look at the organization as a complex thing, if you look at the organization as something that needs to flourish in diversity and beyond binaries.

 

And actually, I think it’s also a very feminist way of looking at organizations, right? Because feminism has always been about complexity and also entrepreneurship, actually, right? Do you see this also part of the message around beauty? So beauty comes with more autonomy, more entrepreneurship, more accountability, more liability. 

 

Also the other piece of, you know, the picture, you know, to really go beyond the traditional narratives of diversity and inclusion and wokeness, as you said, that are really kind of showing their limits, I think, at the moment, as the world switches to much broader complexity.

 

Tim Leberecht

Very interesting that you say this with feminism. I agree with that.

 

Simone Cicero

I mean, for me, feminism has always been about complex thinking, complexity. People think about feminism as something that relates with humans, but with the feminine. But it actually is much more about the complexity mindset, for me at least.

 

Tim Leberecht

I’m totally with you. I think it’s a philosophical domain and a philosophical movement, right? I believe that that first of all has a built-in resistance to any form of patriarchal systems, any systems of violence, and I think force, inflicted force.

 

And let’s face it, management is a system of violence. It is a system of violence because it’s trying to essentially brutalize and make manageable and controllable something that is absolutely not – nature, resources, biology, you know, and I find that so interesting about feminist thinking that it actually invites us in a business context as well to operate at the pace of life, to be much more in tune with seasonality, you know, sort of biological value creation with ambiguity, know, I mean, some of the things that you mentioned that are really anathema or really counter to this narrow mindset of a very masculine, often very masculine, and I don’t mean man only, but masculine in a sense of qualities, form of management. And yeah, I think that’s very interesting to think about.

 

I mean, decolonization and creating spaces for a different kind of relationship to nature and to each other is a very feminist way of thinking. And it’s true that organizations that reposition themselves that way and create cultures that are more complex in that way, I hope, are in a better position to thrive in the coming era, know, not more diverse, not more innovative.

 

Simone Cicero 

Have you seen, Tim, have you seen these companies accepting also the liabilities and entrepreneurial side? So do you see this convergence between looking at different futures together with taking your own responsibility to build it essentially?

 

Tim Leberecht 

You mean at the organizational level or?

 

Simone Cicero 

At the organizational level, so when you push these narratives of beauty and complexity and diversity and post-binary thinking, do you see companies also ready to accept the, let’s say, the difficult side of this picture so that you have to be a more actively protagonist of building these futures?

 

Tim Leberecht

No, I haven’t. I haven’t. No, I mean, that’s the truth. I mean, I think there’s some interesting startups. There’s there’s always very pioneering thinkers, I think.

 

I mean, from what Emmanuel Faber tried at Danone many years ago to cooperatives in the Basque region, there’s lots of interesting sparks. And there’s the work of John Fullerton with the Capital Institute and Regenerative Economics. 

 

There’s a lot of interesting thinking on degrowth and how that can be ironically institutionalized. But I haven’t seen really a business, small or medium size or a large corporation fully embrace it. I think everybody’s the toes into the water. But I haven’t seen the willingness to really radically rethink the system because most organizations, of course, let’s face it, are still accountable for quarterly earnings. They’re legally liable, and accountable towards their shareholders. 

 

And I think in a time of really immense economic pressure, many are very reluctant right now to even think about any of these alternative things. But, you know ironically, what is then also again interesting is to see that there’s almost like this shadow governance of the crypto economy, of course, which I’m really not very knowledgeable about, but just from the few talks and conversations that I had, I mean, it’s interesting that every year, right? 

 

It’s like, crypto is over, and it was a huge fan, but it is a community there. And there are some really interesting structures in terms of governance that are transnational, that are far beyond traditional management thinking, and that are inclusive, transparent, accountable in many different ways. 

 

I think the problem I have with that paradigm is that in a strange way, it is almost like the pinnacle of transactionalization, right? It’s like this, it’s sort of like making everyone, everything a transaction, which is also maybe then depriving our work and our relationships of any romantic mystery that I would insist on. 

 

But it’s interesting to see that there is another world of value creation and of collaboration forming, right? So maybe that’s the best example I can give you, or the most sort of forward thinking or the most radical anti a counterpoint to more conventional business at this point.

 

Simone Cicero

But I think it’s meaningful because to some extent the crypto side of the conversation on organizing is rooted on some ideas that are, I believe, central also to your thinking. So for example, the idea of scarcity, the idea of limits, the idea of going beyond narratives of positive games that actually do not exist. 

 

So I think from the conversation we had so far, I captured that thinking about beauty in business and thinking about the future of thinking organizations and businesses as again, non-binary, post-managerial, post-industrial, needs to go beyond the traditional narrative of inclusion and again, making things. just easy for people.

 

It’s really about actually on the other side, it’s about decentralizing power to people. It’s about making them responsible and accountable and supporting them in the process. But it’s really about thinking about organizations in a new way that implies that we cannot control, we cannot plan, we should be really engaging with reality in a much more continuous and decentralized and open way.

 

You said something very interesting. In the current market, what we see increasingly is that managers maybe have promised results, the stakeholders or shareholders, I should say, they’re not getting them. And as a knee-jerk reaction, are reenacting top-down managerial practices. And that’s not going to well. And so I think your conversation around building business – it needs to engage with this issue. I would say honestly, am I right?

 

Tim Leberecht 

I think that’s really beautiful what you said. And it’s, yeah, it’s a reminder, I think, that we need to build beautiful organizations. I just had a conversation just before recording this with a friend who heralded the difference between power and force and said, maybe this is a good starting point for us, that also beautiful systems, they are powerful because they tap into a power that in a way is shared and is greater than themselves, that’s transcendent, where so much of the traditional management and traditional business systems are still based on force. 

 

So they’re forcing us to do certain things, right. I mean, incentives or penalties, right? Or some form of accountability, but it’s not necessarily through intrinsic motivation or the belief of belonging to something bigger. I also really, I’m thinking about what you said about making it easier for people versus making it harder for people.

 

And it’s funny that I can already see the corporate middle manager scolding me for saying, my god, how can you recommend making things harder for our people? The world is hard enough, the economy is hard, it’s hard enough to make enough money to pay the bills and paychecks.

 

But as something so true about what you said that, especially when times are hard and the reality is changing so fast, and in fact, we don’t even know anymore what reality is because it’s being fabricated for us in so many ways, to really engage with that and go to where it hurts and do the hard things and have the hard conversations rather than I think this tendency of organizations, any, in fact, any community, probably our own, the House of Beautiful Business as well, to then just kind of shut off, right? 

 

And retreat and say, okay, we know what we believe in. We know what’s true. We know what works. Let’s just stick with that rather than risking doubt or really challenging yourself and challenging others in harder conversations. So yeah, it’s just so hard to do it because it’s just I think not really human nature you know.

 

Shruthi Prakash

I’m a big believer of looking beyond binaries and so on. But especially now, like you said, right? Like, let’s say there is a thought about feminism and then that itself has progressed so much over the years. And what was once accepted isn’t anymore. 

 

And so when these kind of, let’s say, whatever is considered humane in itself is constantly changing, how do you deal with that complexity? And I know you mentioned, you wrote about like poly-opportunity as a topic to tackle the poly-crisis. So what does the future look like? What does being humane mean? And how does all of this sort of tie back into an organization where opinions are also hyper dynamic and the implementation cycle itself might be shorter.

 

Tim Leberecht

Hmm. Yeah, we have the it’s the I think it’s a House Of Beautiful business because we are centered on beauty. have the great advantage that beauty is not necessarily human made. It doesn’t have to be humane even. It can also be something that is awe inspiring and shocking, but it’s not necessarily created by humans, which is something interesting to ponder, right? And I believe we obviously have like we’re nearing the end of or have already left the Anthropocene.

 

We are all, I believe, realizing now that humans are not at the center of the universe, that we need to coexist and live with other forms of intelligence, including artificial intelligence. That’s what we mean by the life-centered economy, which is the container or the story that we believe in and that we believe is a good container for exploring various other new forms of business. 

 

The poly-opportunity is something that we created in response to the poly-crisis. It was an event in New York and the premise there was that to say, if there are mutually compounding crises, climate, mental health, loneliness, social division, geopolitical instability and so forth, what if we flip that, described and we looked at some of the positive trends. Let’s look at feminism and inclusive growth and blockchain and emotional diversity and so forth and study the connections between them and whether there are ways to actually then amplify the relationships or the mutual benefits between these powers. 

 

That was the the premise of the poly opportunity. did one event in New York that was very exploratory and very inspiring, more so actually than we had anticipated. And we are now in the process of, we are launching a new initiative that is called the poly opportunity. The tagline is, how everything is interrelated for the better and what it means for you. 

 

So we’re really trying to study the plurality of realities, I call it the poly reality. So the fact there’s not one objective truth. There are many truths. How can we hold that diversity of life coexisting with artificial intelligence, co-designing with nature. Those are regenerative leaderships. These are all some tropes that I think we’re going to explore and we have identified five opportunity areas: regenerative economics, open curation, planetary citizenship and extended consciousness. 

 

And we have then, in a way, intersected them with 10, what we call powers, they’re essentially meta skills for this new economy. And they go from humility, we touched upon that earlier, to time, laughter, resilience, and some of them are maybe a bit more expected, others are less. And we’re trying to now, over the course of four months, gather, to explore this notion and practice it actually with a community of participants and maybe create a new framework, new models, new templates to then take action. 

 

So it’s a way of creating hope. It’s a way of doing something tangible that might go, might lead to some completely different insights and places, but it’s a good starting point. It feel it’s a good story. It’s a good call for action, if you will.

 

Simone Cicero 

Thank you. So I wanted to make a quick recap and then ask you for your break. So I think it’s worth that we underline some of the topics that emerge from this conversation, which really, you know, helped us to clarify what does it mean to embrace a new narrative around organizations and businesses. It comes with the full picture. 

 

You cannot just take the good sides, you also have to take the, let’s say the bad sides. And I think this is very different from how the conversation about transforming organizations has been marginalized in the last couple of decades. Marginalized into something that doesn’t count like CSR or maybe, let’s do this diversity training and we’re done. That’s not the point. 

 

The point is really to embracing complexity fully, deeply, presence, opening up to new possibilities for real, not to just play this kayfabe of ‘we’re different’. I think that’s very interesting. And I really encourage people to check the website of the House of Business. I know that there is a festival coming up in May next year. So really, people check it out and see how you want to join and engage in this conversation that Tim is hosting. 

 

I think that’s very important. Tim, before we close, would like to ask you if you want to share a couple of breadcrumbs for our listeners and maybe if you want to announce anything that it may be interesting and important on your side.

 

Tim Leberecht

Yeah, well, as you already said, I would love for you all to join the Poly opportunity. And it’s going to be four in-person events on four continents, Berlin, New York, Tangier, Morocco, and Istanbul, an online program and smaller events as well. And there are many ways to take part. And it would be amazing to see a lot of people take part in this. In terms of breadcrumbs, I’m always so afraid of this question because I haven’t had time to prepare. And I admire people who are just like, these six books and I can maybe share what I’m reading right now. 

 

And I have actually been reading more, now I’m afraid that you asked me for specific poems, which I don’t remember, but I’ve reading more poetry lately, love poems, not particularly like one poet or one book, but I’ve just been a little bit more drawn, I share poems, you know, and that’s interesting. 

 

I think poetry in a way because our times are so ambiguous has so much to say and maybe has the better language. I just went to the Venice Art Biennale on the very last day in Venice and saw only three or four pavilions and I was reminded of the fact that art is so powerful and that it, you know, it’s so hopeful to see art and what artists make of this world. That was interesting. 

 

So I think it’s a great time I’ve been to more exhibitions this past year than many years before. It’s a great time to see art and to read poetry and train that part of our brain and our mind and of our understanding. I’m also just reading Yuval Noah Harari’s Nexus, which I really was reluctant to read, probably because there’s this built-in bias against a best-selling author and one of these big ideas people, but it’s damn good.

 

You know, and I think it has a lot of provocations and it’s well written and about information networks and our understanding of truth and truth seeking and it’s it’s a really I think brilliant sharp book that I highly recommend. 

 

And the last thing I would say is what I recommend is. Yeah, it’s travel. It’s travel. I think that’s really, it’s so important. I think that we stay open and that we have novel experiences. So I love this experience of actually flying to Athens tomorrow where I haven’t been ever just for a day. I really don’t know. And there’s nothing more exciting for me than going to a place that’s completely new, where I’m actually not prepared and I’m a bit lost.

 

So this reminds me of one of the principles of the House of Beautiful Business, get lost without losing. I think that’s important that we learn that or that we don’t neglect that. So those are my breadcrumbs.

 

Simone Cicero 

That’s great. It may be also an opportunity to travel for one of your events this year, because if I’m not wrong, you mentioned New York, Venice, Istanbul, and Tangier, which are good spots for people to travel and maybe they can mix traveling with participating to one of your meetings. also, funny, you said beauty is truth and then you ask people for enjoying more poetry. yesterday I was looking at a quote that said, “poetry is like truth because people hate both”. That’s, I think, a good note to close the conversation. Thank you so much, Tim. I hope you enjoyed the conversation with us.

 

Tim Leberecht 

Thank you so much.

 

Simone Cicero

Shruthi, thank you for your questions as always.

 

Shruthi Prakash 

Thank you. Thank you, Tim. Thanks, Simone.

 

Simone Cicero 

And for our listeners, remember you go to www.boundaryless.io/resources/podcast. 

 

You will find things, transcripts, all the links to the breadcrumbs and everything else about the podcast and Boundaryless. Until we speak again, remember to think Boundaryless.