Last half of the Open Business Experience in Scarborough as I seek the co-creation of the world’s first self-financed network within a month. Third week consisted of incredible conversations, hours long in several cases, and two recorded. Genuine meeting of minds, deep in years and wide in social perspective. But in terms of resulting action, nothing to speak of. Of the four who have indicated interest in hosting an Action Cycle, two strongly, neither have secured a date for the final week. The fourth week also included two network meetings, again with phenomenal first engagements, but no follow through.
Learning, Going Forward: Start with the Ending
First, an observation on improving the structure of the Experience.
If invited to a city, the weekly sequence should be:
meeting, through recommendation (1st and into following week),
invitation to Action Cycle (2nd and following week),
Debrief at Open Meeting (3rd and into following week).
Though meeting a friendly face in Scarborough accelerated the meetings as compared to Blackpool, it took two weeks before it led to a meeting with their contacts; the rest I found through my random ant-walk both on the streets and on the internet.
What has become clear is that I place too much dependency on people I meet, something they are not used to. And combined with the level of looseness, abstraction, emptiness, multi-reflexivity, a good engagement does not translate into an invite into a concrete Action Cycle.
The degree of abstraction is too high. This can be made easier by adopting backcasting method: fixing a location and date in the final week for the Open Meeting. This means that whatever the outcome of a conversation, there is an invite to come to that event like an Open Meeting. Anything that happens before this final Open Meeting, is up to the people I meet. So that when results occur, they know it was their response, intention and action which emerged from their receptive response. There is no fooling them with sales talk, getting bums on seats, gathering a skeptical audience who want to be sold to or entertained, and who have to be enticed with follow-up calls throughout a long sales funnel. If Open Business is to possess viral property, then the initial conditions must be carefully handled. Social Validation is based on their active participation. It is not the Action Cycle, its set of rules, but the natural qualities they inherently bring.
So, within the first day, establish the location and date of the final event. Record this and include it in the first post. Invite everyone to this.
Reality Distortion Field Can’t Sustain Itself without Social Validation
I could ask to record conversations, but this may make new contacts wary in our first meeting. I recorded two, and that is because they have come through Quakers who exhibit more trust. Although the frame expands what is normally presented in these posts, the Here & Now practice is core to Open Business Practices, and it lends comparable structural similarities to Quakers. Quakers have given rise to successful family businesses like Cadbury’s, Rowntree, Barclays; their high-trust relations proved a basis for business relations. Something like this is required for Open Business Practices to thrive. Remember, high trust was the basis of my engagement with adolescents, and it needs to be for adults however unaccustomed they may be too it.
More limited in scope, conversations during my ant-walk were localised to Action Cycles or Sqale. Near all appreciate the meta-level of the tools I bring, how I address them, enfold their reality with mine, and refer to problems they experience over the years. There is often little reflection of the wider-scale processes, and a simple acceptance of the ways things are and to work with them. Everyone I speak with has a strong experience of the trials and tribulations in their life, the endless string of institutional compromises to get anything done, and some are willing to admit that their youthful intention was not fulfilled throughout their working lives. Things are harder than they seem. It is to this I present a possible… ‘solution set’. All Open Business tools are by design meta.
The subject of psycho-social dynamics can be held in mind, during the state of reception. That is, while listening. They may not be able to repeat or explain or even fully understand, but this is no fault on their part. It is the nature of the psycho-social I refer to, more aetherial than air. It is not about definitions, externalisations, rules, but about operating together in presence. We prove this in our first meeting, our conversation, our combined psycho-social engagement. We derive Social Validation, an awareness that we have met properly — though I don’t concretise it, label it, and perhaps I should?
Steve Jobs was described as being able to create a reality distortion field by warping what was considered possible. Without the background success of Apple or the ability to pay folks, it is obvious that whatever insight, enthusiasm is momentarily experienced in my presence, the field collapses once people have returned to normality after a day or two, with the way the world works with its economics, lack of trust etc.
The only way I can think this warp reality field can be sustained is through self-determined social validation: there is social evidence through the achievement of something which was considered impossible, or at least ‘beyond-realistic’. And this precisely what the Action Cycle does. The Action Cycle is a method or frame by which the mutual presence of a group can warp reality, more than two people, to become aware of a mutual opportunity (a beyond-realistic result) as well as the courage to trust one another to commit to it. The rules are easy enough to define, but what it enables is not so easily described, nor the skills required; but everyone has them, in greater or lesser degrees.
Random Ant-Walk Conversations
Adrien Robke online. Young but experienced systems thinker, collating over 300 systems thinking tools. Committed to social change. Never heard of anything like Sqale. Will he be able to include it in his compendium or will it just not fit?
Rob Rockman. Created an online currency, time-bank in the 90’s! Resonant, but his efforts are more low key at the moment, and working outside of Scarborough.
Aleks Jakulin online, content-marketer and advertiser, put me in touch with an open-source investor.
Stephen Parker, runs local Biochar business. Instrumental in the beginnings of Circular Economics! Environmentalist through and through, ground up. Very resonant. Was keen to do an Action Cycle, but insufficient time.
Harriet Stainton, council funded North Yorkshire business support Hub, who had a flat tire, couldn’t get her phone working since she’s only newly appointed, and missed appointment. Good engagement online, invited me to Business Ambassador network meeting, but was rather distant when we actually met.
Jim Taylor. This was the one conversation which was very rocky. Jim insisted on understanding, on modelling the psycho-social dynamics. Despite the maths, as a self-described autist, he could not ‘understand’ why people would share forward.
Kelly Dunn who runs her own recruitment company with four staff. Deep resonance with “it’s all about relationships” and knowing local situation, but no follow through with email.
Lucy Brown, head of communications at the £47m hospital build. Her and the charity team headed up my Maya Liversidge (with whom I had a great phone conversation), are dealing with what Maya called a ‘web’ of relations. They are trying to raise another £220k from locals across all community networks, education, and business. I described the possibility of seeing everyone on a graph, and because of how Sqale worked, see who was active. Great conversations, but email back saying they are sticking with traditional social media.
Steve Wintercroft who designs masks for international events, an artist and successful business person as well as a committed to social impact. Great resonance, and potential application of Sqale to an event this April, and perhaps for Grue which runs annually; here’s 2021 and 2022.
After a luke-warm email engagement with Neil Street-Bailey and Sarah Corrie, attended WIN Network. Good engagement with Sarah, planned to meet but left Scarborough early. They are creating a boutique network for property development, from local building contractors and location managers, to insurance and mortgage brokers, to investors and investor brokers all in the same room. I asked about digital nomads, which sparked interest, since it is an obvious win for Scarborough as an international destination: the natural location, the Victorian heritage buildings, should be a hot spot for digital nomads.
Jo Thompson who is chair of Scarborough Business Ambassadors. Jo was behind the Hospital fund raise meet, the majority of participants from the Ambassador network. As a hugely successful business person with Spectrum, Jo talked enthusiastically of the many more areas that she and the Ambassadors are involved in, business, environment, education. Jo lit up when I asked if she felt she was being of service. With experienced folk like Jo, courageously facing systemic disorders and equipped with the right tools, major social change is feasible.
A Quaker Way
I had the good fortune of walking back with Dilys from my first Quaker Meeting in Scarborough. It was only a few minutes walk, but the echoes of good character reverberated those of Robert who I have gotten to know over the last four years while walking all over the hills of the Peak District. Here was another weighty Quaker. Better than that, a person steeped in moral action and selfless service. She agreed to a conversation, despite or because she found me challenging. Courage is a strong Quaker quality. She introduced me to David Malone too. I recorded both conversations which I shall describe in more detail in another post; from the depth and range of our three hours engagements, the following will have to suffice for now for its direct pertinence to the Social Experience.
David Malone observed that Sqale’s credits or vector-money is an indicator of responsibility. When I was rather heavy handedly presenting the moral responsibility upon hearing about Sqale in general, something I so rarely do and which I need practice with, David later translated this into the moral responsibility of receiving a gift, and specifically that the number of credits, what is considered money in traditional economics, is a moral weight. To receive £100-equivalent credits is a moral weight; it says you are expected to share this forward because it is valuable. This is a penetrating insight, and new to me which is rare. This indicates that David got independent line of sight to its systemic property. The value of this is… immeasurable. However, it’s real value is in consequential action.
Dilys made the insightful observation that everything is a moral action. This might be a glib statement, but only those who live it know what it means, and Dilys is such a person. The value of her life in service, locally, personally, is remarkable. Reminds me of the good Quakers at Sheffield. Remarkable, and yet quite normal and day-to-day. It is a challenge for Dilys to consider completely different mechanisms and tools, but I believe equipped with such tools a younger generation of morally sound characters like Dilys can change — transform — the world. Not the tools, not the talkers, but those of moral character which is self-evident as the pulse of their blood.
Both engagements I recorded and we explored the entire range from personal moments of awakening in childhood and wider observations of the current global condition. Incredible. At some point I shall review them, extract elements. I also met up with Paul, a Quaker attender like myself, and our conversation which lasted seven hours took us into the western woodlands around Scarborough. Incredible.
Why This Level of Detail? The Kids Get It…
By sharing how I am doing this before it is successful, anyone attempting to host their own Open Business Experience in their own city, may come to realise that the procedures are less important than the actual, live psycho-social dynamic which operates between us. Done in the right way, the initial social group will realise it is because of their action, issuing from their receptive state, not because of some external expert. And certainly not after Open Business is established and if they just copy what others have done, so they too will become successful.
I may be belabouring the point, but it is essential. Kids get pushed knowledge of maths from an early age, and few grew up comfortable and able to perform algebra. But done in the right way, in a single lesson, when the kids know they are in control of their minds, the joy is akin to learning to ride a bicycle. It stays for life, both the joy and the skills. This is what is needed for ‘life-long learning’, and especially for the degree of social change that Open Business Practices open up for us globally.
Kids get this naturally, because they know so little. But adults, because they think they know, who demand to ‘understand’ in relation to what they already know… We forget, as adults, the joy of play. Of exploring the unknown. I forget… It looks like I am pushing Open Business, Sqale, any number of things, but it is because I don’t know, they are on the whole little-tested, something adults appear not to like, not in a business context. Whereas, it is the juice of life, or rejuvenation, what we will learn about ourselves, our incredible capacity to trust, to love… and to discover a world we are capable of living. A socially healthy one.
