Latest / Fire That Gathers / How Do We Spark Connection Toward Shared Action? With David Hodgson

Transcript

How Do We Spark Connection Toward Shared Action? With David Hodgson · Fire That Gathers

• speaker-0: Welcome to Fire That Gathers, fuel for purpose-led leaders forwarding what's next. Leading in a way that meets this moment is a stretch, not just for what must be done, but for how you're called to lead. Fire That Gathers is a movement of leaders choosing to use this moment of breakdown and possibility as a catalyst for the systems you're creating and for who you're becoming. At this hearth, there is fuel for your movement. From the field, real conversations with purpose-led leaders forging what's next. Not the polished case study, the live questions they're walking, where the map runs out. At the edge, breakthrough moments for my coaching rooms and me walking my own developmental edge in real time. I'm gathering too. Come with me. Every episode anchored with an alchemical question, the kind that transforms what you see. Because shifting our paradigm is among the highest leverage points for systems transformation. How we see shapes what's possible. Welcome to Fire the Gathers. Welcome to Fire the Gathers. Today's guest is David Hodgson. If you've done any work in regeneration or sustainability, yes in the Bay Area, but so many places around the world in the last 15 years, you've probably had some touch point with David, a conversation, an introduction, a call he convened. David started as a technologist. He studied computer science at Imperial College, London, and spent about 15 years as a software architect for tech startups. One later acquired by Microsoft, another by Sony. While he was building online video in the early days, right alongside YouTube, he earned several patents on how social media spreads virally across networks. He was studying how human networks move from inside the code. Then at 35, he went and got an MBA in sustainable enterprise and turned all that toward people. Someone told him to go meet as many people as he could, and he's still doing it. When a network gets that big, you start convening it. In 2019, he founded the Global Regeneration Collab, which now weaves together more than 1,200 leaders worldwide. And when the tools to run the network didn't exist, he built one, MyCelial, that uses AI to introduce people across a network and help support the infrastructure. I've been on the receiving end of the introductions this AI has sparked. And love the serendipity and the intention of who shows up. What I love about David is that he's gone deep on both sides, the technology and the human work of holding community. He told me one of his core love languages is making introductions. Today we explore how to spark connection toward shared action, what it takes to create those collisions, what still needs a human to make them happen. speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: So welcome, David. We're going to explore this question about how to spark connection towards shared action. My understanding that's a bit of the work you've been focusing on for a while. Before we dive there, I want to just get a what rewind a little bit. I know you've moved from being a technologist to deeply focused on community and back. Maybe you can share a little bit of that journey and how it's led you to tend this particular fire. With Messalia. speaker-1: Yeah. So I guess, yeah, ⁓ went to university, got a computer science degree. When I was a teenager, I was just fascinated by computers. So ⁓ you know, they were the the hot kind of the hot new thing, I guess. ⁓ so yeah, that's what I studied and then worked in that field for fifteen or so. Years, but even then I was quite obsessed with how humans use computers because you know, I was watching my parents try to use computers, and could see How confused ⁓ even something like Windows could make them. because it wasn't yeah, lots of things weren't particularly intuitive. so that was always in the back of my mind. ⁓ had a mid ish life crisis around the age of 35. so then went and got an MBA in sustainable. business which had a strong emphasis on soft systems work, ⁓ collaboration, you know, how how organizations, how human societies work, how we need to collaborate to achieve the kinds of sustainability focused goals that many of us share. and coming from a technology-ish background where I'd you know ⁓ the the the company I was at at the time I was doing the MBA, you know, it's kind of a an executive MBA type thing. ⁓ we were doing ⁓ online video ⁓ parallel to YouTube. So I ended up getting a bunch of patents that were focused on the viral transmission of social media across networks. So I was doing a lot of thinking about how networks work, human networks work from a technology perspective. ⁓ and so yeah, coming out of that MBA programme, it was like, ⁓ okay, you know. And at the same time there were all of these fascinating, you know, June Holly ⁓ and various other people, Valdis Krebs, all writing about kind of networks ⁓ for social change, for change. So I kind of started going down that pathway. ⁓ and I was also given this advice to just go and meet as many people as possible because I was in this kind of career transition. So I ended up and I'm still so I'm still fifteen years later I'm still meeting lots of people. So I ended up with this very large network of people working in and around sustainability focused stuff. Then started bringing them you know, once you have a network you start you tend to start convening it 'cause you're like, ⁓ yeah, these people all need to know one another. speaker-0: That's my sense. That's I feel like that's a history I understand with you and and being in San Francisco is just that you knew anyone who was engaged in a regenerative, sustainable work, you would have some have had some some touch point with, be in conversation with. Yeah. speaker-1: Yeah. And I I discovered that my brain seems to remember conversations. R I have a really good memory for some reason. I do not I do not know how or why. But yeah, so you know, I'll be talking to one person, it's like, ⁓ yeah, this other person I talked to whenever was working on something similar, you should connect to one another because maybe there's an opportunity for you both to advance more quickly in the work that you're doing. So I just kind of fell into being a network weaver in the regenerative space. Then built this virtual community called the Global Regeneration Collab, which has 1,200 people or so, and runs a lot of so we started running a lot of calls with the goal of getting, you know, if we knew there was a bunch of people who are interested in regenerative agriculture. Okay, let's run a weekly call around regenerative agriculture and see who shows up. And what we saw was that. It was less about the the detailed information. It was more about the thematic area. And, you know, you could run calls about whatever and some set of people would show up and then they would meet one another. And what we learned from that was that people would then go and, you know, they they'd see these other people in these group calls, but then they would reach out and start talking one on one. ⁓ to the people who they thought were working on interesting things. So it was really more of a it was less about the content, but it the content was a a mechanism to generate kind of a discovery process so that people could find one another. So it was all about okay, let's create as many opportunities as possible. I think of it as edges ⁓ where people can meet aligned other people. And start collaborating together. Because the thing that was driving me was in all of these conversations I'd been having up until that point in time, it was always, you know, I'd be talking to people and they'd be telling me about all the things they needed. Because whenever you're doing something, right, there's always things that you do not have. But all of those things exist in the network. People just don't know where they are and can't find them. So it was just Okay, how do we get people to where they need to be in the network to access the things they need to be most success successful? speaker-0: What I hear in that is for a while you were the hub and everybody w there were these spokes and you could see the information and resources was a were available in the network, but in order to make it flow, the the connections needed to happen. You needed to be able to spark more connectivity the network. speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah. And I kind of and there's always there's more I and I I got I'm an introvert, right? I would get overwhel you know I ended up in this position and then I would get overwhelmed because so many people were are you know wanted me to help them find other people that I couldn't you know, whilst I could you know, it was just like I I I I could spend all day at that point in time, I could have spent all day every day just sending introduction email introductions between people ⁓ and still not make a real dent in the backlog of requests that I was getting and it was just like ⁓ speaker-0: I might have watched you with your kind of your hands over your head. It's both the like the sense of this can't scale 'cause you can't spend all day doing it. But it was also you just mentioned the introvert, like deeply draining. Like what I hear is that that is not a role that actually felt good to you to play. Yeah. speaker-1: No, but you know, at a certain scale it was kind of okay. But especially because, you know, these are people who are working on really cool val you know, things that I think are valuable for the world, right? And so it's just like, ⁓ I I d I'm we also have some people pleaser tendencies. And so, you know, it's just the guilt of not making the you know, the whole speaker-0: Right. It sounds like the obligation of it felt heavy and hard. speaker-1: Yeah. ⁓ so that's why I set up the GRC because I was like, if I get people into a network and I c just run a bunch of calls, they can find one another and they don't need me in the middle as the intermediary. You know, some people conventionally with network type business models, they like be you know by being the gatekeeper, you know, being the gatekeeper is how they make is how In a network, you make money by being a gatekeeper and controlling that flow. So all the flow has to go through you and you charge people for access. In an impact type situation, you know, I didn't want to I didn't want to charge I wanted people to be able to find the thing that they needed as easily as possible with as few barriers to that as possible, right? Let's get as much flow going and having me in the middle or trying to put a gatekeeping business model around it just wasn't i i wasn't what I was looking to do. So yeah, so you know ⁓ speaker-0: Finally had somebody designing network with the idea of actually removing friction rather than being the hub. speaker-1: ⁓ huh. just yeah. ⁓ and so you know, I think GRC has been quite successful. It so it was just run as many calls as possible around as, you know, you're working on that project. Okay, let's run a call around it and see who sho shows up. ⁓ there's five people who are all interested in whatever, or you want to talk about this, you know, you want to get a group together to explore this idea. Okay. Let's just send out calendar things. So that people can meet one another. And you know, that works because trying to know what everybody is you can't have omniscience, right? Some small group of people can't know everything that's going on because everybody what everybody's working on is changing and blah blah blah blah blah, right? And trying to really represent that in a digital format is hard, or at least was was harder five years ago. AI changes some of the dynamic of this. Because the AI really, you know, if you're working with AI, the AI knows enough about you that it could reach out to find other people on your behalf. So that's something I'm actually quite interested in. But ⁓ so the first thing was just set up all these sessions, people show up, they meet one another, the right pe you know, it just provides space for synchronicity. And then the thing that I most recently was building was an was an AI system, but you know, it's it's not pulling dynamic information about people, but it knows enough about what you're work you know, based on your public LinkedIn profile or whatever, it knows, you know, what you're working on and based on what you're working on, ⁓ these are likely the kinds of people you need to connect to. So then we use AI to go to make an introduction every week or time frequency of your choosing. So it's like, ⁓ Janine should really this week will introduce Janine to this person and here's the in here's the synergy that would be created by that. And if you filter, you know, you could have an open network where that's happening. And you know, you get a certain whilst people may be technically aligned, there may not be values alignment or whatever else, because there's no boundary as to who's in the network. speaker-0: So feel like you're naming kind of that first criteria of what allows us to spark connection towards shared action. One is a a meaningful filter. Like that's a piece of it. Whether that's a values aligned filter or something else. But how is it, how is the filter actually setting the bar in a way that is effective? So that was one. What else? speaker-1: Yeah, so the values to I guess my brain splits it into three pieces. There's the values alignment piece. There's the ⁓ yeah, you're working on sufficiently intersecting things, you know, having somebody who's working on poverty relief in Tanzania versus someone who's working on forest restoration here in the US. Yeah, the likelihood of, you know, there may be some intersection there, but it's a that's a pretty broad ⁓ thing. So, you know, narrower narrower filters around, ⁓ yeah, everyone here is working on forestry, you know, different aspects of the forest system in the US, let's say, forestry system. You know, those people are much more likely to have intersections. And the values alignment and then the third piece is Free Calat it's a bit vague, but I c I think of it as kind of I guess curiosity. People who aren't like, you know, here's my thing and I'm just interested in my thing, they have to open it's kind of yeah, open, right? Openness. So they're they're actively curious. ⁓ you're working on that. I'm working on this. ⁓ yeah, this is how these two you know, they can find the they can find the places in between. And a lot of that you know when we were talking before, you know, you were saying, you know, and that comes down to at a certain ⁓ level kind of boundary spanning capability, right? speaker-0: I you mentioning the idea of like people who are playing at the edges, right? Who are curious about here's here's mine and I and they have something, but they can they're exploring and curious about what's outside that box. speaker-1: Yeah. And if you if you have those three things, you know, you can connect any two people together with some kind of, you know, sufficient re vaguely sufficient reason that's a good place to start the exploration. But then you throw them together and they're like, ⁓ yeah, you know, they they then go and explore their shared map together and find interesting, you know. interesting things and have a good conversation. And that's for me the start of the collaborative journey, right? Is but it's but and those especially when those are two people who either through geographic proximity or even you know if you're in a professional network for lawyers, right? You're likely to only meet other lawyers doing whatever or for so it's yeah you've got to cross There's not that many places where you can cross some of those kinds of boundaries. ⁓ Yeah. speaker-0: You know, we were talking before you you s said something about like the the kinds of the way to spark it, like that once a week or the the w that was the frequency and the call. Like I was I'm curious about what else you've learned and and the role that technology can play in sparking those conversations and maybe where the where are the limits? Like what what actually requires more human touch than than actual tech. speaker-1: So you know, I have Friends who run ⁓ networks who are you know, when I first said I was building this, they ⁓ they were very hesitant. You know, a lot of what they or some of what they do within the networks that they run is that they build n network weaving capacity within the network itself, right? So people are trained to or taught, trained. To look for opportunities to make introductions. So that as a member of this network, you're talking to this person, you remember another conversation you had, and you're like, ⁓ I should close that triangle, right? That triangle closing thing. And I think that's really valid. And especially once you're part of that network, you've met a bunch of the people, you start to, you know, you you you've you've put trust in that network, and especially if it starts then. You know, you get these other introductions, you know, that's a real from individuals within that network, you know, that's kind of a sense of care caring is what it ⁓ you know. I guess my love language is making introductions but ⁓ speaker-0: I love that. That might be the most the most honest sense of like, ⁓ now I get your love your a love language. Your love language. speaker-1: not my only love language, but it definitely is one. I'm just like, ⁓ yeah, I really care about you. And, you know, here's a thing that I think will make you might be really useful for you, right? ⁓ beautiful. And you know, people do that to a certain degree, but they're but but so I'm not trying to use the technology to replace that or substitute for it. And I think it's still really valuable for that behaviour pattern to Try to be cultivated within a network because that is part of what turns that from a network into something much more than the word network might imply. But ⁓ you know, for instance, in GRC, twelve hundred members, you know, people so ⁓ networks have different degrees of. Kind of coherence to them is how I think of it, right? So some of them are much more loose affiliations. Some are much stronger affiliations. You know, it's like, ⁓ here's the California, here's the Northern California regenerative ag network, right? That's all people who are working on really similar things who are trying to move a shared agenda forward. They have much more. skin in the shared game, right? Versus something like GRC, large network, pretty disparate. Lots of people don't know each other. So very you know, if if if introductions are being made there by an automated system because there's far less ongoing commitment needed to participate, it is something that just keeps the energy flowing, gets people to know one another, then they see one of the people they've been connected to as running a call. So then they're like, ⁓ yeah, I'll go and show up for that conversation 'cause I had a you know, that conversation I had with this person before was great. So it y you know, it's a different And and I think the automated thing, you know, is just generally a useful nudge for people that removes certain bits of bureaucracy, especially from the you know, so it's a it's a good value add for the people who are trying to run that network, ⁓ where there is this ambient thing going on that's helping weave together the fabric. ⁓ and the people in the the networks that I've been using this with. are having a great time meeting one another. ⁓ so it's definitely creating value. Yeah, so, you know, there's So I think there's there's something about the You know, get getting into certain rhythmic patterns within networks where there is this expectation of, ⁓ yeah, today I will get an introduction to some new person or I know that there's a call happening, you know, once a month about this thing where I can show you know, those kinds of things provide ⁓ a sense of dynamism and a sense of ⁓ yeah, that you know. A network is the patterns that it embodies, right? ⁓ otherwise it's just a collection of individuals in a database somewhere. speaker-0: Right. The net the network actually is defining the flows, right? The flow of information, the flow of connection, the flow of resource. That's what I hear. You know, you said when we last spoke that people don't want to talk to each other in text boxes. So but there's something about how much engagement you give or how often you give it that actually like draws people in. What have you learned from experimenting? That is actually like the the right, the bite size, the right size to of both engagement and what I heard is you're also not pairing people with people that are just like them. So you're like there's there's there's some level of overlap and there's some level of difference that you're also tracking for. speaker-1: Yeah. ⁓ ⁓ so one of the things I learnt was People can So when we set up GRC, it was just before COVID kicked in, but it really started picking up steam in the early period of COVID, because you know, people were at home and it was like, ⁓ I can go and talk to people, okay. ⁓ without ⁓ leaving the house. so you know, I don't know how much of that then influences what ⁓ I'm about to say, but ⁓ Yeah, I mean the the primary discovery was, ⁓ yeah, we can run even when we just had a network of two hundred people, I could run three or four calls a week and I would get twenty to thirty people showing up every time. so there was a you know, so again it was a specific time, but there was definitely a hunger there. ⁓ and especially in something like people who are working on regeneration or working on whatever subject, right? In their day-to-day, they're not necessarily connecting to lots of other people working or hanging around with lots of other people who are working on similar things. So having these Shared spaces where you didn't have to explain yourself or you know try to educate people on what the hell it is that you're you know you're working on was really valuable. People could just drop in and talk to one another, and you know, there were few barriers to that. ⁓ so it was that because you know, I see lots of networks of a certain kind of professional network where you know it's like. ⁓ yeah, we have a monthly call, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, that's great, but you know, you won't end up with a very dynamic network, and actually you can push it in the other direction and just do lots of calls. And even people who are working in corporate jobs, you know, they see these things showing up on their calendar and they're like, ⁓ yeah, I've got a time slot then. That looks really interesting. I'll show up to it. and we were also trying to make as many of those much more interact you know, my goal was for those to be much more interactive than they were here's somebody talking about a thing for an hour, right? So it's show up and you can contribute your expertise, knowledge, wisdom, whatever into to support this person who is trying to achieve this thing in the world. ⁓ yeah, so speaker-0: It's interesting because it seems almost counter intuitive the idea that you're almost like not flooding it with calls, but certainly way more, right? The once a month because people aren't gonna show up. So we're just gonna do it targeted versus many. So that there are many options by time of day, by availability, by topic, so that the people that do show up are available. It sounds like there's a level of trust that there's a desire that people are gonna find their way there. And that what they want is a more curated conversation where they can step in at a higher level more quickly with folks with similar interests. Is that that capture that? Yeah. speaker-1: Yeah, you know, and I guess I was inspired by open very much by open space, right? Whoever shows up are the right people. and at least for that group, for that yeah, for that network, it it just w it worked really well. And you know, there's a bunch of people who show up to lots of things and there's some people who never show up and there's some people who show up maybe once a year, but you know. Again, that's fine. Goal isn't everybody shows up to everything. It's no, there's this dynamism that keeps the thing that keeps stuff flowing through it, right? Connections, value of varying kinds. Yeah. ⁓ Yeah, and it was, you know, also from that, I guess, yes, of ⁓ the other point about looking for the synergy, I dil you know, when I started inviting people along to GRC, you know, I had a bit of a systems map in the background. So it was ⁓ for different parts of my network. So it's like, ⁓ yeah, let you we We want to get some investors, people who are investing in regenerative stuff in here. We want to get some practitioners who are working on the ground. ⁓ yeah, getting some people working on legal contracts would be great. ⁓ so we were looking explicitly for a lot of different diversity because of you know, it's like in in ⁓ ecology, right? They talk about ⁓ ecotones, which is the space between different biomes, and those are the most biologically productive areas because you get these different things rubbing up against one another and it generates novelty. so that was always been the key. So when I was designing the AI algorithm, it was very much, no, okay, the real value isn't in connecting a lawyer to a lawyer. It's in connecting the person running a project to the lawyer who may have written some contracts that are relevant to that or in you know and this is why I like thinking about ecosystems rather than and food webs rather than networks. Networks to me are quite a technology metaphor. It's just, you know, here's this thing, there's information flowing between them, but all the nodes are kind of similar. Whereas in an ecosystem as a metaphor, you know, it is, ⁓ we have the Jaguar, we've got the monkey, we've got the ants, we've got the hummingbird, everything fills its own and you know, and they all interact in different ways. So let's look for those. Let's try to generate cross species interaction because that's where inter that's where the real value lies. speaker-0: Absolutely. I feel like that's one of the core themes of our network leadership series too, is that the most kind of the what's needed is the ability to bridge and to build trust and to build relationship across areas where there's differences in perspective and resource. Right. and that that's that's what is the most generative, but it also requires some some bridging and but I hear like the building towards collaboration. But what I hear you speaking to is the very first step is how do we actually create the opportunities for collision, for the synergy to even get sparked. speaker-1: Yeah. And then To have those initial conversations so that I get to understand, and this is where the curiosity thing becomes really important, right? Because if that curiosity isn't there on one side, you know, I can get an understanding of what it is that you're doing. But if the person on the other side isn't trying to bridge to me, then it's just like, yeah, that's not nothing's gonna you know, that's just a blank becomes a blank wall. Where there are these different mental models at play. You know, and I've seen this between even different types of investors, right? People who do venture investing versus people who are do real estate investing. Just the mindset between how you think about return and how you think about risk is really different. And, you know, I was at a dinner one time with these different folks, and they, you know, at one level, they can talk about investing in the abstract, but once they then, you know, had a thing a more concrete thing they were talking about, they just couldn't come to agreement because their and their mental models for what they w thought a good investment looked like were really different. And it was but they somehow couldn't you know, they were just arguing with one another rather than just going, ⁓ yeah, you're looking at this differently to me. They couldn't speaker-0: But it reminds me, right, when we look at like Daniel Motto's idea that our highest leverage in systems change is our paradigm flexibility. It's ability to be able to take on and take off the lens, to notice that we have one. And so what I here's hear you speaking to is it requires to make those collisions of synergy possible, there has to be the curiosity and the willingness to say, like, okay, here's how I see it and what might be different over there. I think that's why the kind of the the cross-sector work is so important. It's exactly why I've structured collective counsel to actually be cross-sector to begin experiencing or these these opportunities to put people in a room that might not otherwise the funder and the founder and the executive that that often aren't in the same conversation. So we can talk about leadership, we can talk about risk, we can talk about delegation, we can talk about vision, but ⁓ but actually get a chance to have a deeper understanding of what those different perspectives bring. And ⁓ and to practice that piece around being curious enough that we can take off our own, our our lens and try on somebody else's. ⁓ how do you screen for that? How do you, right? It sounds like the curiosity is the piece that how do you in your networks and your work notice or invite? Like how how do you screen for that? speaker-1: ⁓ Yeah, I've not always done a perfect job of it, but And I found that there are some people I can have pretty ⁓ so you know, enter ⁓ interviewing Interviewing people on the white again, this input filter into things I find really valuable. and you know, a lot of that does come down to some kind of personal interview thing. And I'm not saying I'm I've definitely let people into networks who then prove to be more disruptive energies than they were ⁓ generative energies. And you know, there's there can't be value in disrup disruption is a useful thing in certain phases of whatever, but there are some people who just are it's like the bono's thinking hats, right? Sometimes it's you know, it's good to put on your disruptive devil's advocate hat, but sometimes it's good to put on a different hat. And some people get really stuck in specific modalities. at least in group interactions, I've noticed, you know, they they built their identity around, ⁓ yeah, I'm the person who just calls out all the bullshit or whatever it is. And it's like, yeah, it can be useful, but you know. ⁓ but one thing that I've fo you know, so I've I've found that people who have Who who've had to code s who have cross cultural backgrounds. ⁓ one pattern that I've noticed is people with cross cultural backgrounds are naturally really good at taking on different perspectiv it's part of what you know. speaker-0: ⁓ code switched. I heard you about to say that. Is that yeah, that's what you meant. Yeah. speaker-1: You know, and w whatever that might you know, there's all sort there's all sorts of variants of that. And you know, cross even people who've been cross sector leaders, right? They've been inside for profits, non profits, startups, whatever. And I mean I've I've had people inside from large corporates who seem to think that large corporates are the same thing as startups. And you know, those are two really radically different mindsets. So there's all of the you know, so people who've had to inhabit or have inhabited different cultural settings, you know, their brains just end up wired differently. So they can sw you know, they're fluent at switching between different things. And, you know, I'm a I'm ⁓ I'm li I guess I'm, you know, I'm one of those people. ⁓ speaker-0: Yeah, where did that come from for you? That that capacity. What helped train or develop or bring you aware of that capacity for yourself? speaker-1: I mean I think moving to the I mean I there was some kind of innate earlier childhood thing that I'm not entirely sure of. But moving to the US is the thing that probably really kicked it up a gear. I move I came to the US when I was twenty-seven. And it was just like, ⁓ yeah. Things are a bit different. Yeah. And I was in Washington, I was in ⁓ Seattle. And then moving down to California. was also like, ⁓ and things are really different down here. ⁓ but I'd always been somebody who in my corporate jobs was really fluent at, ⁓ I can go and talk to the CFO or I can go and talk to the VP of product or I can go and talk to the architect. You know, all of I could bridge different you know, I tend I'm just interested in a very broad range of things. So my You know, I care I I can talk to almost anybody. And it's in so going back to the filtering thing, it's I find that when I'm having conversations with people, the ones that I find particularly fun are the ones where, you know, we go all we roam over a very large map and come up with some interesting insights. And those are the people where I'm like, ⁓ yeah, you know, they're not limited by their specific professional agenda. They're they're they're intellectually curious. And so those are, you know, ⁓ that was the pattern that I found myself spotting and then going, ⁓ yeah, I ⁓ you know, I'd have another conversation with you. I'll add you to this ⁓ thing with all of those other layers, you know, ⁓ fill speaker-0: It's interesting because it feels like then the human the human sensing that was so important was the was around values and it was around the capacit the like the genuine curiosity, the capacity to hold multiple perspectives, to not be defined by a role in a way that it was a box, but to see somebody who was expert or had resources in their box but was more curious about the edges, right? Like that's what I hear. And then where the technology seems like it was most useful is is once that filter was made to do the to help to help with some of the matchmaking, to scale the matchmaking beyond what you wanted or could or should have to hold. speaker-1: Yeah, yeah, no, exactly. ⁓ yeah, so I'm not sure it can I don't know that the technology can replace the you know, and I've noticed that, you know, di different people have different you know, we we set up a referral mechanism where anyone could, you know, refer anyone else into the network and we weren't necessarily interviewing everybody who was coming in and Yeah. ⁓ you know, different people make different judgments around who belongs in a thing. It changes the qualit it changes the quality of the thing. And you know, it can still work, but ⁓ but yeah, you know, it's it's just a And it's good to be able to have a broad yeah. Left to my own devices, I would have a very curated filter bubble, right? And that's not necessarily and you know, that's good for certain things. It's reinforcing of whatever. and it's not and it also has limitations to it. speaker-0: I believe that the work that we're doing is here to not just cause it's needed, but if it's got your attention, has you excited, it's growing us in some way. How is the work you're doing right now actually causing you to grow? speaker-1: Good question. ⁓ speaker-0: Yeah, what would you say? Like what's the what's the edge for you that has this work feel ⁓ alive? speaker-1: Very good question. ⁓ Yeah, and it's I mean I I guess I'm I mean there's I do I always try to ⁓ you know to learn to learn something new every day. so the And you know, I I have over this last six months, I guess, shifted into a ⁓ i i it's less about the well, there's one aspect that's you know kind of about the mechanics, and the other aspect is domain, I guess. And ⁓ there's a domain I wanted to Like about two years ago, I did get to a point where I was just like, I'm just doing the same thing over and over again. I need to shift my life in some way. And so which always amounts to, you know, you're gonna be on your you know, some kind of learning edge. Yeah. So both between the technology piece and the using AI and understand it, you know, and that's constantly evolving and understanding the ethics of that and how best to use it and the value of it and so forth. And there is there's an aspect there which, you know, is just enjoyable, then you know, a shift into a different domain and a different set of relationships. ⁓ and thus working with you know working with a new set of people, I guess, on different challenges than I have been focused on. You know, the the shift from the more working directly with community to the ⁓ building tools for people who are trying to run networks and so forth. ⁓ And then, you know, I think the other edge is Who to Yeah, you know, finding finding other people to work with on a regul is I is I guess the the management, you know, developing my own capacities to r have a team, you know, work with a team of people. ⁓ I think I'm getting you know, I've I've been moderately solo ish for a while, you know. Around people but solo and now it does feel like there's you know, in g becoming part of engaging more as a team so that I can so deleg that's a long way to say. I think my learning edge is delegation. speaker-0: I mean it's interesting 'cause you've been fascinated by community. You went deep into doing it you're doing the technology for it, but to actually like activate it personally. speaker-1: Yeah. But you know, but and my problem has been Because I maybe because I've been in a learning mode, is that I'm just like, ⁓ you know, I will it's that classic ⁓ leader burning themselves out because they're trying to do everything, right? Yeah. Versus being able to kind of go, no, I understand that now. I don't need to do it myself. I can trust, I can find somebody else and I can trust them to do it. ⁓ so yeah, my l my learning edge is ⁓ trust. Yeah. speaker-0: You and so many others, right? Like that's a that is I mean it's interesting 'cause I I hear you though is ⁓ it's easier to let to do that with AI than it is with humans. speaker-1: Ha ha. Yeah. Yeah. I trust what the AI, you know and it's it's the same process. I would give it small things and it would give me stuff back and I'd look at it and I'd be like, ⁓ that's pretty that's good. And then you know, I'd I'd gradually give it longer and lo you know, more complex, longer things to the point where I just like, ⁓ yeah, I know that if I to ask it to do something, what I get back will be gr you know good and either good or really good or it will provide me with it you know tell me what it is how it is that I need to ask it to modify things or you know see where what I told it led it down the wrong pathway. So it's it is very like managing a person only, you know, there's none of the You know, back to back to the thing about where I you know, I'm I'm always looking I don't like the this I don't like the discomfort of ten you know, the tension from and telling somebody that what they've done, you know, I I don't want to hurt people. speaker-0: It it's it's easy to tell AI that it it's Claude, you screwed up. That's not what I needed. Try again. It was a lot easier. ⁓ and yet maybe that's that's a fun edge to play with is how do you how do you bring the same ease to helping s a human grow and do better? speaker-1: Yeah. ⁓ no ex exactly, but ⁓ yeah, so it's you know it's a bunch of that. I think I'm yeah I I need to try out what I've learnt from working with Claude ⁓ on humans. speaker-0: That's a I mean, that feels like a really fun game to imagine that you could the same process of of escalating how big the ask is and how bold the delegation is and then watching and testing and learning as though just like with humans, we don't we don't get it. Like Cloud isn't gonna get it right all the time, neither will we, but there is more feelings. speaker-1: Yeah. And yeah, that's ⁓ you know Yeah, when when Yeah, g giving other people sufficient context. ⁓ you know, other there are things that I just know and you know the things that you know just because you've be like being in the legal world and blah blah blah blah blah, right? It's just there are things you understand and you know, you you bring somebody in and you ask them to do something and they ⁓ they don't have that same context. So through no I mean, just because you know, humans all have different contexts, right? And ⁓ yeah, it's just you know, ⁓ how much level how do you set the ground you know, how do you set the ground and the context sufficiently for that person to be successful? Like if I think that's what I've up yeah. I can I can be too judgmental to Or, you know, I c I catch myself being judgmental and then I'm like, ⁓ but yeah, it's because they've th they don't have that you know, how ⁓ my expectations are unreasonable. speaker-0: It's funny because I feel like I get much more judgy of of AI. I'm like, why are you supposed to just work? Clearly it wasn't what I did. Whereas with a human, I'm much more likely to be like, ⁓ there's a human there. They should understand. I need to take more time. I didn't didn't do my job quite right to set it up. But with the technology, I'm like, so it's fun to it's fun to hear you say that. ⁓ and to play with my own assumption of right, that means I just didn't load it with sufficient context and ask the question quite right. speaker-1: Ha ha. speaker-0: I think I expect more magic. speaker-1: I like cre you know, I like understanding the goal and I like building the thing, I don't really want to run a software company. ⁓ 'cause you know, in the classic model you identify, you know, you build identify a problem, build a thing, and then you're in a machine that you know, you know, you've got a background, right? You're cranking that machine to make that thing as successful as possible. Yeah. and that seems that's really boring. That's really boring. speaker-0: To you, what I love is like for somebody else, the part that you do would be the like the absolute stretch. And so there there's an operator somewhere for whom that is like their joy. That is not your joy. speaker-1: Yeah. No, exact I'm not an oper I'm not an operator like that. I'm a I'm a zero to one create the thing, let it loose into the world, somebody else can operate it. speaker-0: David named something I see in every network I work with. The real value lives in the edges, the ecotones, where different kinds of people rub up against each other and something new becomes possible. Technology can create more of those collisions. What happens after that collision is leadership. In our last network leadership series cohort, almost every participant named the same thing as both the fuel for their network and its greatest challenge. Building trust across difference. So that's where we put our attention. How you hold a sense of shared purpose while inviting the differences that make a network generative. How to make a quality invitation with a specific ask, a clear time frame tied to what people actually care about. How to use the five C's as a GPS for where to put your attention now. And David's Green Edge, learning to trust and hand the work to others. Is one so many network leaders are walking with us. The fall cohort runs from October 14th through December 9th. That's eight live sessions with practitioners, coordinating networks, coalitions, and collective action. Applications are open through October 13th with a sliding scale and scholarships available. The link is in the show notes. Join us. speaker-1: Mm.