Beyond Bureaucracy and Ego Organizations

Jose Leal:

And welcome to the Radical World, the podcast. I'm Jose Leal. And today my partner, Matt Perez, is not with us, but we do have a pretty awesome guest, which is Timm Urschinger. And Timm is in Switzerland, correct?

Timm Urschinger:

That's correct. Sitting in Basel, getting dark here.

Jose Leal:

Yeah, quite dark actually. And, and I've been trying to chat with Tim for years, sort of off and on, haven't really made an effort, but always thought like, oh, I'm talking to his colleagues within his former organizations and thinking, oh, this, the STEM guy sounds interesting. I I'd like to meet him too. And here we are, we get an opportunity to to talk. And so I've wanted, the reason I wanted to, to talk to you is because it sounded like you had a very similar perspective to why we need to do change in, in organizational structures, in the way we do work and the future, all of that kind of space. And it, it seems like, at least based on the name of your previous organization, it seems like we have a similar perspective. So that's what I'd love to explore. But before we do that, Tim, why don't you tell us why you kind of got into this space. What's, what was your personal motivation? What was the background?

Timm Urschinger:

Sure. So first of all, pleasure. Thanks. Thanks a lot for the invite. Not so sure about that. This is an interesting guy to talk to thing, but we, we'll figure that out. Maybe

Jose Leal:

We'll know by the end.

Timm Urschinger:

Hopefully, right? And then hopefully you and the rest of the audience is not too disappointed, but yeah, we'll figure that out, I guess. And also what, what got me into the space, I guess, you know, as I said, I'm, I'm in Basel, Switzerland which is quite a big pharma biotech hub here. And you know, when, when I started my career roughly 20 years ago, it was even more so so I, I worked for Big Pharma, then I got myself into consulting something like 15 years or so ago. And you know, I didn't think about any of these topics, to be quite honest, you know, it is not, not on the radar at all. I've done more.

Jose Leal:

When you say consulting, what, what kind of consulting?

Timm Urschinger:

Well, basically around, you know, the typical process efficiency organization kind stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally, totally. Even, even even worse in the beginning it was more project management, even that, but anyway so yeah. And then, and then I guess at 24, 25, I, for some strange reason, ended up becoming a team lead, and I had no clue about leadership. I had no clue about how to lead a team. So, so I, I, you know, just curious. I, and I was actually interested in psychology in the first place. I never studied anything that direction, but I found an interesting topic. So it was just looking around, you know, you got a bit of sponsoring for getting a leadership training, whatever. And, and so then I figured it is actually an interesting space and, and I could learn some things. And then, you know, you move from leading yourself into leading a team, leading an organization, kind of typical journey. But actually what I also figured is that everything I've learned in these trainings and books and podcasts and whatever, we've basically done the opposite in our company. So I was like, that doesn't make a lot of sense, you know, and then I'm just that naive 25-year-old guy, challenging the rest of the management team basically on, you know, this is what I learned and this is what we are doing, guys, that doesn't make, I mean, that doesn't look like it's the same thing. So anyway, I, I've, I've, I guess I've not made too many friends with these guys. But anyway, stayed, stayed on for a while. Got more into change management, got more into psychology, team development, high performing teams, then shown at that time was, was quite a big topic actually. So only these, these, these things. And then the other thing that's true is that back in the, in the days the company was actually quite bureaucratic. You know, it was a typical yeah, if you want financial controller type of setup for a consulting company. And, you know, being a team leader, I, I, I still thought, you know, I, I, I worked with my team and I worked with clients, and then I ended up signing off like a thousand expense sheets every year. I'm like, that's, that's nuts. A is boring, and b, I figured is not much value for the company. Anyway. So I got really frustrated about that stuff together with Frank back in the days, and then myself. We then quit the job, obviously, we created our own company, which was called Life Sciences in 2016. And, and just about that time actually in 2015 we've come across a book that's called Reinventing Organizations, and Frederick Lalu, who, you know, just last week actually celebrated 10 years Reinventing Organizations book. So anyway, I've read that over the summer in 2015 and, and thought, well, that's somewhere between naive exciting, what, what, what he's describing there. And, and, and then at the same, you're like, well, you know, we're about to start our own company, so what better opportunity do you have to just try out some of these concepts? So basically I got, we got hooked into teal and self organizing companies and all that. And since then, you know, nine years from here, basically we, you know, I'm about that stuff holding us back in many ways. I'm, I'm, I'm, I, I'm convinced that organizations struggle with bureaucracy. So yeah, here we are. That's, that's in a nutshell.

Jose Leal:

Yeah. I was gonna mention the 10th anniversary because you know, it's pretty cool that we're talking about it just as it's kind of being celebrated around the community. How, how much of an impact did it make on you? Like, I mean, you, you kind of changed the way you were gonna do your organization because of it, or were you already gonna do it differently? And that kind of helped frame it a little differently.

Timm Urschinger:

That was really, I mean, I that sounds a bit romantic maybe, but I, I think it was life, life changing in many ways, right? And, and, you know, one is we look at organizations and the only thing I knew, and Frank and I knew both, I think at that time was we knew what we didn't want. We had no clue how how different could look like, so, so Frederick and book actually had shaped a bit of an idea, I guess, and, and, you know, helped us kick it off, try out things and whatnot. But I mean, fra obviously focused on the organizational consciousness part, but then if you, if you dive into some of these concepts, if you look at wholeness and also the tension based management and these kind of things, then, then obviously, you know, if, if, if I look at my personal development journey and, and some of these, you know, more uncomfortable insights that I gained over the last 10 years or so, and that, that's been obviously life changing as well. So I do look at the world differently. I'm, I'm, I'm quite sure.

Jose Leal:

So you chose to talk about beyond bureaucracy and ego organizations. What, what does that mean to you, eagle organizations? We'll, we'll go, we'll start at the back and go move forward or move towards the front.

Timm Urschinger:

Fair enough. And first of all, you know, there's, there's, there's probably a more philosophical discussion around are we all as human beings driven by some kind of egoistic ideas? Even if you are, you know, altruistic from an outside perspective, do you do that to, you know, feed your own ego in a sense of, I am needed, I feel like I'm needed kind of stuff. So this is, this is a bit of a fundamental belief that I have is like, we all do things from egoistic ideas. And that doesn't hurt as long as it's coming from a mindset of abundance, from a growth mindset and these kind of things. I think now the, the other observation, and as I said, I, I'm, I'm coming from the big pharma world, but you know, any big corporation really the bigger the corporation gets, the more ego and politics comes into the game. And, and even in our small consulting company, you know whatever, 10, 15 years ago, only a hundred people. So it's not tremendous organization, but many of the things were driven by, let's just say individual belief sets, like individual career status, whatever might have been, right? Right. And, and what I, what I figured is that's not necessarily always the, or actually rarely is, is is it the best for the, for the organization, for the, for the broader good. Now that, that's even just looking at an organizational lens, if you look at the last few years, then we are discussing more and more the societal lens as well, you know? Right. The multi-stakeholder kind of set up, or even just triple bottom line and, and these kind of conversations. So if I do think, you know, if you look at, at the world around us, then it is obviously driven by consumerism and by by ego and, you know, bigger, faster, that kind of stuff.

Jose Leal:

So one, one of the things that well that's, that leads me to a whole bunch of different questions and comments and thoughts. But the first thing that, that, and maybe we're jumping into the pool here in our conversation, but do we need conversation? Do we need, pardon me, organizations anymore, really, like in the form of something that is independent from us? And I'm not saying about changing the status quo in the world of business. 'cause Obviously the status quo is the status quo, and it will continue for a while, but as we start new things that will serve life, serve our communities, serve the people that that need to be served, which is all of humanity and, and life itself, how do you, how do you see organizations moving forward when we kind of place organizations as a human being in our laws, in our systems of, of organizing, and then we then serve the organization rather than serving those things I've just mentioned, because now the organization needs to stay alive. The organization is what we're all trying to make profitable and make better, and so on and so forth.

Timm Urschinger:

Yeah. And I guess it's, it's probably depend a bit on what's the definition of what an organization is, and do we, do we need that thing it or, or not? You know, there's, there's, there's things that we've seen the last decade around the gig economy, a lot more decentralized and democratized setups, blockchain obviously DAOs. These kind of things. And, and I do think there's a, there's a human need for belonging and for community. Absolutely. And, you know, now, now the Dao colleagues would probably say, Tim, you didn't get the concept, but I would say, I'm not sure if ours get us that, for example. Right.

Jose Leal:

Totally agree with that.

Timm Urschinger:

So, you know, and, and I'm sure we can have proper conversation on that, but, but that's, that's, that's my personal belief. So having said that, I, I do think there's a need for some kind of, you know, thing that we community call an organization, which is build on community, which is build on belonging, which is also built on a broader sense and impact or purpose, you call it, if you use FedEx words from the reinventing organizations. So that, that I do believe we, we, we will need. Now that said, you know, our economic system and, and global economy is not built on any of these, right? Is it is built on consumerism and it's built on profits, basically. And then also you, you could say serving a few by exploiting the, the broader community in a way. So this is an extraction, this is probably where, where, where, where. Yeah, totally. Yeah. And then, and this is where we're probably, I would say this is where, where the beyond brokers or beyond ego kind of thing would, would probably require a bit of a shift. Now, if you look at people like Gary Hamel, who's written theocracy, was it four years ago, five years ago now? Mm-Hmm, <affirmative> then, then he would, he would also say, well, you know, that, that means there's a bigger systemic shift that we need. And, and the question comes back to what, what you said, I think, is that gonna happen? When is it gonna happen? At which scale is it gonna happen? And this is, this is a bit, I guess one, one of the bigger, and I'm actually curious to hear your view, how, how Covid, for example, accelerated or decelerate in the last two years, that kind of trend or not. That's, that's one of the big questions.

Jose Leal:

Well, from my perspective and the, the work that we've been doing, I think it's accelerated that transition. More and more people organizations, groups that we talked to are were driven by the, the reality that life was very different during that period of time. And that going back into the rat race really felt different because they had the opportunity to back away from it. And going back into it, the, the commuting, the, the, the time checking and this, you know, you have to be here at nine. Yeah. You have to leave it, you know, all of the kind of stuff that for a lot of us, we've, we don't feel that anymore. You know, it's it, but the ma vast majority of people still feel that old way of working. Right. and so I think a lot of people here in the United States, at least in, in the Bay Area, we've sensed that in a big way of, there was an announcement that our train system here in in the Bay Area has after all this time, after Covid has reached 78% of what the capacity was before.Wow. Right. Crazy. Even to this day, like this much time long. So something's changed. Right. Some things changed, and the roads seem to be a little bit less busy. And so, you know, things have changed to some degree, and the number of organizations that have tried to force people back into the office, right? I don't know if you've heard the story, but there was a story, one of our banks here in the United States I can't think of the name of it right now, but it'll come to me, one of the employees that they forced to come into the building because, you know, you can't work from home anymore. You have to come back in. That person actually didn't work with a team, not a local team. Her team was distributed. So she was working by herself in the corner of some floor of some building that she had to travel to for an hour and a half or two hours. She died and they didn't discover her for four days. So, so that's a kind of proof of, of <laugh> what's happening, right? Where there's the disconnect and we don't know how to follow the old system and still honor the human needs. Right? You talk about, you talk about belonging, belonging wasn't being served. Right. But that was the, that was the intent, is that you're gonna be able to, oh, too many, too many quotes. But that was the intent of, of the old system is be in here because you're gonna work with your colleagues, even though she wasn't. So I, I agree with you that a lot of these changes are happening and have been happening, and you've mentioned, you know, Gary's work and you know, the reinventing organizations and teal movement and all of these other things that are happening. And there's two scales, right? There's the, we need to make some improvements within, in the way we work how we organize ourselves, how we do meetings, how we do all of this stuff. And, and a lot of work has been done on that. My sense is that that work kind of takes two steps forward and one step back when it meets the reality of the organization, because the organization hasn't really changed. Some processes have changed within it. Some, some approaches, some you know, but, but the organization hasn't really changed. And you bring in somebody in and, you know, things are back to the same kind of kind of thing. First of all, do you agree with that? And second, how do we make change that's more fundamental than the tweaks and the adjustments and the approaches that we've been doing. Many of us have been trying for a few years now. Some, some of us for 10 15 you know, Doug from Morningstar Farms, you know, he's been at it since the nineties, right? And doing a lot of work. How do, how do you see that? Because I see that there's a lot of stuff done being done at this level, but it needs a change in that other level for it to really be able to have staying power and not just be sort of for the moment.

Timm Urschinger:

Yeah, yeah. No, and totally with you. And I think, so I had a conversation with Gary Hamill two or three years ago, and, and, and I'm not sure if you would still say the same, to be honest, but back then he said you, you will not be successful in transforming, for lack of better word, an organization, because the system around the organization is not built for that kind of idea, right? So, so that level of consciousness of the organization, like Fred would probably describe it in reinventing organizations, is quite useless, at least to sustain that idea. If you have a system, let's just call it global economics, that is not built on that consciousness level, right? And and, and I actually had a conversation with Bill Andersen who's now the CEO of Bayer and doing this dynamic shared ownership thing that's quite visible these days whatever, five, six years ago when he was still at Roche here. And, and, and you know, we, we, we, we discussed the question, is there like a, a critical mass, like, like a point of no return, doesn't matter what Timm or Jose think, right? If if there's like 15,000 people, 10,000 people, 20,000 people in the organization work differently, you're, you're beyond that point of no return, right? And, and, and back then I said, bill, I, I do think there is that point of no return. You just gone too far. And, and actually, I, I would disagree now with myself, like whatever, five later, because I, I do think that it's dependent on a few people at the top because of how the system and, and, and how the economic systems build actually, right? And if, if you look at, at Roche, if you look at ING Bank and the Netherlands and Belgium, if you look at all sorts of companies across the globe, in fact, it's always depend on that consciousness level of that individual kind of at the top of that organization, right? So, and, and now if, if, if you, you know, you mentioned a work from home kind of thing. Dell, for example, just this week announced that you gotta be back in the office, and Dell is obviously a technology company. So I guess you have more of these individuals that, that you described for that bank where like, you know, you work globally anyway, you work virtually most of the time. So what's the point? And, and, and I do think it's like you know, the, the level of uncertainty increases in global economy, the, you know, with all the wars and everything going on, but also interest rates and whatnot. Inflation, yeah. And, and the higher the uncertainty is, the more people try to control something that is always an illusion to be controlled, but you know, you've still tried it, it's kind of a human instinct, I guess. So if you, if you then have, you know, corporate leaders if you wanna call it that way, who've, who've not, you know, thought through that stuff or wouldn't be at that, you know, conscious level. If you, if you, if you ask Gary or Frederick probably then, then I would say you'll revert back to the patterns and themes that, you know, so it is, it is, it is almost like a counter movement, I would say. Yeah.

Jose Leal: 002180902974972691

Yeah. And, and I, I agree with Gary that we need in order to change, so I started where you, I think you may have started, which is if we change the way we see each other and act with each other, things will be different and the organization will come secondary. And I evolved to, and, and this speaks to, to, to Frank's point you know, a higher purpose is great, but a higher purpose within a jail cell is horrifying, right? Like imagine having a higher purpose, but you can't move outside of the jail cell, right? And now what do I do? I can't express that higher purpose because I'm confined. Right. And thank you, Frank, for, for your comment. And, and it's, for me, it's, there's a third step now emerging for me, which is yes, it is about purpose. Yes, it is about serving life and us wanting to serve life in a way that we each can and want and, and have the desire to do uniquely. It is about coming together in a new way that's not bureaucratic, that's distributed, that's peer to peer, that's about a, a, a sense of transparency of each other's purposes and recognizing the value that we bring to the table rather than sort of creating a purpose that, that drives us to do things. Sort of like we're following a purpose again, rather than allowing our own purpose to drive what we're doing. But then there's the structure piece, and we, we call our current economic system and, and work system the fiat system, because much like the currency, it is worth this much, I tell you. So it is a dollar, it is a fiat dollar, which comes from this concept of the kings, where we say, well, this is a boss and it can be a good boss or a bad boss. You have no choice. These are the systems, it's our systems, and you have no choice and we have with this organization and you have no choice. My sense is that the structure of organizations as a whole, how organizations work, their role in society as a whole needs to change. So it's not just us, it's not just how we organize, but it's also what is an organization. And that goes back to the conversation, you know, do we need organizations and what role does a new type of organization take? Because we're inside a system, this fiat system that says from, it's a top down hierarchical process, right? The government allows for a company to exist. A company has shareholders and owners and, and leadership. And then they can do whatever they can they want within their fiefdom, which we said wasn't okay. We said we want a democracy in our world, but within this fiefdom democracy does not exist for the most part.

Timm Urschinger:

Agreed.

Jose Leal:

So, so how do we then take away that ability for that fiefdom to exist? Because that's part of the problem, right? The second somebody owns a company, they legally have the right to do whatever it is that they want to do within it.

Timm Urschinger:

Yeah, yeah. No, true. And, and, and probably there's, there's different ways of answering that. I mean, technically speaking, you know, I was, I was also owning a company, you know, like a year back. And, and you know, we've, we've never had a, let's just say governing system around limiting, at least legally my power. So legally speaking, I, I, I had all the power obviously, you know, we Frank, Frank, Frank and I actually had that conversation with, with the whole team some point in time three years ago, or some things like, well, you know, guys, technically Frank and I, I don't how much we were owned, like 80% of the company or something. So we could have decided anything legally, right? Anything. And, and we had a conversation with the team, like, what do we do about it? Do we put a governance in place to limit that? Or what do we do? And they basically said, well, we don't care. We trust you. So this is, this is this, this, this was a simple answer. So we never did anything about it. So it was, I guess that's one part of the answer. You don't necessarily have to do something about it. Now, the other part is you could obviously build a structure and a governance around it. I, I, I think the other part that could be interesting as well is if, if, you know, if, if the hypothesis is that the most important asset of any organization is their people, then you could theoretically vote with your feet and say, look, that that thief Themm that Jose just built doesn't work for me. Right. And, and, and we see that partially, I, I think we don't see that everywhere. That's, that's probably one due to privilege as well.

Jose Leal:

It's pretty hard to, it's pretty hard to walk away when exactly the rent needs to be paid and. You know, da, da, da, da, da, because the whole system is designed to extract through you.

Timm Urschinger:

Exactly.

Jose Leal:

Right. It's, we are the vehicles of extraction. Extraction doesn't happen without us.

Timm Urschinger:

Yep. Exactly. Which is, which is then coming back to, I guess, Frederick's newer idea around the week. You know, this, this more sustainability oriented story there, where, where, where he basically says, if you want to change that, many of these things actually, then the only thing is you, you need to have a paradigm shift away from, you know, more and more and more, and consumerism basically to, you know, get, go one step back individually as well on what do we actually really need? Like, do I, do I need to have all of these gadgets and things and whatnot? Do I, do I really need like five cars and I don't know, whatever else, right? So that's, that's, that's a bit the kind of, the theory that that's theres is like, okay, we, we all talk about that, you know, higher consciousness and then, you know, I'm sitting there with my whatever 20th phone of these ones, right? It it, right. So does, does that actually fit the picture or not?

Jose Leal:

I wanna say mine is a little bit smaller and older.

Timm Urschinger:

Fair enough.

Jose Leal:

But, but no different, right? Exactly. We're, we're all, we're all guilty of the same thing. So, so we're, we're saying is it's a systemic thing and tweaking an enclosed part of the system, making it a little bit better doesn't change the system.

Timm Urschinger:

Correct.

Jose Leal:

Right. It, it isolates to some degree from the system, but it doesn't change the system. It simply isolates to some degree.

Timm Urschinger:

Exactly. And which is, which is in part, part, part of the conversation, which is, do we need an evolution or do you need to make the old system obsolete and replace it by something new? And, and, you know, there, there's, there's quite some people actually would say evolving the current system is not possible. You need to replace it with something better. Yeah.

Jose Leal:

Well, and, and Frank is, is commenting about you know, AI tools and, and so forth. Any idea of changing the system by people I don't think was possible until all of the technology and the tools that we have to today existed and the level of education, right? When Taylor was doing his thing, huge amounts of people were coming from farms with, you know, one or two years of education going into factories and, and not having structure other than that live, live structure of living in a farm. And to make it work, that structure, some kind of structure needed to be established. It was pretty harsh structure, in my opinion, the way that it was designed, the way there was thought of, but it got us to this point, Right? We're in an inflection point. And that it, you know, as, as Frank is pointing out this, the, the capabilities we have now of this inflection point is the point that allows us to move forward. And Frank, I'm not saying that organizations aren't necessary. What I'm wondering is, is it okay to have an organization that has more power than people and is tied to the system so strongly that, again, changing anything within the organization really does not change the system, right? And can we actually alter the way we see an organization, right? I personally have this view that a, a new kind of organization is necessary. And you've been around this space quite a while. You've played with this for, for quite a while, and you're working now with ey to, to do some of this research, to do some of this work. My sense is if we think of an organization not as a thing, but a happening, that's fluid, that's reactive, that comes in and melds like a murmuring where more people come into this organization and then leave and then come in when it's necessary and join together when it's a nice warm night out. But, but then this band, when they need to go and do the thing and then come back, and that is that, are we capable of that now?

Timm Urschinger:

Yeah. No, that's, that's, so maybe, maybe, maybe question to you and then I probably have a point of view as well, but please. Is that a question that of privilege or is, is that, you know, if you, if if, if you look at equity around the globe, literacy, you know, health, wealth, all sorts of things, then, then that, that kind of concept, let's just call it a more fluid type of organizational idea, right? Happening. I quite like that term actually, but is that a reality say in Uganda where, you know, still, I don't know, I'm just making up, 95% of the economy is based on farming, right? I I'm guessing literacy level is pretty far away from the Bay Bay area or Basel, right? Level of wealth, obviously completely different. Even the whole access to technology, democratization generally on, on many of these topics, a different story. And, and certainly if you talk about equity in, in all sort other spaces like health or wherever is, is totally different story. So is that a thought that you and I have because we are, you know, privileged white men in, in actually rich countries or areas of the country, right?

Jose Leal:

Even richer areas. Yeah.

Timm Urschinger:

Yeah, totally. Even, even even rich in that, in that specific nation, right? Is is that something that's actually kind of doable or thinkable across the globe?

Jose Leal:

I think it's actually more doable in non-rich areas.

Timm Urschinger:

Oh, yeah. Okay. How is, how is that?

Jose Leal:

It's interesting. The people who wanna hold on to what we've got are the people who have got it. When I talk to people in Brazil, they're much more open to the idea, Mexico much more open to the idea, right? Azore is Portugal way more open to the idea. The, the, the more they are disengaged from the system, the less they are bound by it, number one, because the system does, we call it the fiat system for a reason. It traps you, it, it, it controls you, it engages you with it, whether you know it or not. And it's through systemic processes. It's not like with a gun to your head, it's just, oh, you need money, you need a, you need to have a home, you need to have a mortgage, therefore you need to work. If you, you need to have a a good job. It's only the big companies that pay you lots of money. You know, it, it, you know, that system draws people up it, and the further up they are, the more trapped they are. And so my sense is that in some ways, the extreme low end of what you described, you know, there, there are experiments going on right now in, in Kenya with community currency. They're not happening here in the states. Right. They're happening there because there's flexibility in the system, and people with their phones are able to exchange currencies, regular cell phones, not not smart phones, exchange currencies and pay each other for, for activities that are happening, building homes, doing farming, so on and so forth. But what, what's your opinion? What do you think?

Timm Urschinger:

So I obviously not, not a straightforward black or white question, I think Of

Jose Leal:

Of Course. Of course, of course.

Timm Urschinger:

But I think you're right. I mean, I've, if if you, if if you think about it from pure change, network analysis type of theory, then, then, then you would, then, then you would say, well, you know, true change has to start in the periphery and not in the center because the center has too much to lose. It is always change starts in the periphery. And, and, and once you created enough kind of gain, then people in the center will go, oh, I, I, I can't miss that train, right? Because then I, I, I look stupid. I would lose everything and whatnot. So, so from that perspective makes sense. Now, the, the, the other question is you know, the, the equity or the privilege question, I think comes in on literacy and educational level, right? Because you and I, we, you know, rich enough, we, we just sit around, read, read books and, and, you know, get into all of these theories and, and, and then we came up with new models. Now, you know, if, if my, if my soul focus of the days to survive somehow the day and, you know, get a little bit of food, at least then, then there's a whole different story. I think. So I I I, I would agree, you know, there's, there's less risk in a sense, making the system obsolete that doesn't work for me, doesn't feel dangerous, right? And at the same time, I'm probably kind of in my day-to-day hamster wheel if you want much more so is I can't rethink the system. Back to Gary Hammon's point of you can't evolve. You just need to make it obsolete, right? So that's, that's a bit the question, I think. Yeah.

Jose Leal:

And, and that I agree with that completely, right? It, it is about, it's not about transforming what we've got, and it's not about breaking it down. It's about letting it die a slow death because it's no longer serving us that that's, that's the game, right? It's not about, we know it's no longer serving us. We know, you know, the gig work and other forms of organization are emerging for a reason, right? Because it's possible, because technology provides for it and so on and so forth. And for me, this idea that organizations are have, you know, we've created this world where we say there is an organization, that organization has this power, has this ability, has more power in many cases than governments, And we can't have any influence on that organization. We can, to some degree in governments. And yet, you know, the most powerful organizations really, pretty much no one can play with them. So, so to me, there's a, there's a disconnect between the type of work that we've been talking about making organizations internally, less bureaucratic, less about people's egos and, and, and still having an organization that's structured in that way. And for me, then the question is how do we see the a a transformation adopting? And I think you're right, it is about the fringe, right? It's small businesses. Imagine if today say 10%, 20% of small businesses were a new kind of organization built on all of those principles we've been talking about, but collaborative and open and not proprietary and competitive and extractive, and that that community of small businesses evolves to compete with the large organizations that exist not for business, because it's not about competing for business, but compete for the individuals who are about to get into the workplace and say, do I go there or do I go there? Right. You know, I, I, I've told this before on the podcast, but I think it's a, it's an important point right? Now, a hundred years ago, thereabouts, we had a revolution in 1,905, we had 8,000 cars in the United States. By 19 20, 25, we had 18 million cars in the United States. In a period of roughly 20 years, millions of horses became unemployed, millions, literally millions of horses became unemployed. Not because anybody was trying to kill horses, but because any young family that was going to need a mode of transportation by default, pick the better mode of transportation. What if we create a better mode of working holistically, not a better way of acting and doing a department or doing meetings or organizing a, a team of, of, in an organization, but holistically change what an organization is, what a community of organizations is, and provided that as a place, an outlet for people who want to do something different than the organizations that are available to them today. The type of work that's available to them today. Yeah.

Timm Urschinger:

Well, totally. And, and, and you know, it, it might not be in the first place, you make the whole idea of, of a, let's say, traditional organization obsolete. But to Jeff's point in the, in the, in the chat as well with Henry Ford and also Kellogg's, we've, we've, we've seen that, I mean, across Europe, and I guess to an extent across the globe, we're discussing the four day work week. Well, actually Kellogg's had that in the 1930s already, right? And then went away from it for, for certain reasons. But basically they had that already, or you know, before Henry Ford went to the five day work week, we had, you know, usual seven days. Nobody will question why we have a five day work week these days in, in, in most places. Right? Right. So, so there's, there's, there's also that part, you know, we, we, we always talk about making systems obsolete, which, which I think makes perfect sense, but the system might not always be the organization, whatever that is Right. Might be a certain concept within organization alive or work live or something like that as well.

Jose Leal:

Yeah. And I would argue that if we, if we mandate a four day work week, then we're going down the wrong path again, right? That it needs to emerge that I have enough within four days, and that I have the flexibility to live within that, that paradigm. Otherwise we're back to the same thing. Let's go four days and, but I wanna work more and nobody wants to hire me for more, and so on and so forth. Exactly. this has been a really nice conversation. I, I hope it was for you as well. I certainly enjoyed it.

Timm Urschinger:

Definitely. Definitely. Thank you. It is, it is really nice new insights, things about that I've not necessarily think about every day. So really enjoyed it. Thank you.

Jose Leal:

Well, from the beginning, I had hoped that we would end up with something more than what we started with. And it sounds to me like we did. I and I appreciate your thoughts and, and, and I appreciate your, your sense that it is more complicated than the, the things that, that we've been as a community all trying out. And, and how do we take it to the next level? How do we step up as a community again, because this isn't about one organization changing anything, but as a community of, of forward-leaning organizations thinking about how we do this mutually. Indeed. Well, thank you for the work that you've been doing. Thank you for the thinking you've been doing. And and thank you for taking the time to join us here today. 'cause I think we've had a conversation worth, worth thinking about, worth pondering, and and possibly worth rehashing maybe in a few months just to to see what what has evolved since then.

Timm Urschinger:

Absolutely. Thank you for the, for the invite as well. Pleasure. And, you know, happy to come back in half a year and then say the opposite of what I said today, probably

Jose Leal:

It, it's not, it's not wrong to say something different. It's only smarter to say something different as you evolve. We usually stop at 40, but it's been a little bit longer because we've had a good conversation. So Tim, again, thank you very much, and hopefully we'll see you in four, six months.

Timm Urschinger:

Absolutely. Thank you.

Jose Leal:

Okay. Cheers. Cheers.

Timm Urschinger:

Bye.

Jose Leal:

And thank you to everyone's comments. Oh, yes, we do have a guest next week. Thank you, Carlos. Next week we've got Joanna Stanis veca, who is a marketing director at Crunch Geek. Joanna and I have had some conversations around how do we see connection as part of this transformation that Tim and I talked about today. You know, Tim and I mentioned meaning and meaning comes through connection. And so what's the role of connection in in the, the current fiat model and how do we think about it moving forward? So looking forward to that conversation. Thank you Carlos, for pointing out that I would miss that. And we'll see you next week.