Organisational compassion in challenging times

Rosemary  0:47  
Good morning, everybody and welcome to our second psychology and positive organizational scholarship community of practice. Although I can't actually see you all, I know that you're out there. And we've had a really wonderful response, I think around about a 400 rsvps from my students, from academics and from practitioners, and from people around Australia, from people in the UK, and great group from New Zealand as well. So thank you.

Just to begin, I'd like to acknowledge the country that I am meeting you on. At UTS Business School, we respectfully acknowledge that we're located on the land of the Gadigal people of the Eora nation, the Gadigal people have cared for their community land and waters for 1000s of generations, based on their deep knowledge of their country. We pay our respects to their ancestors, their elders, and acknowledge their ongoing status as the first peoples of this land. And I myself am actually on Guringai land at the moment. And you might like to pop into chat, the land that you're also meeting us on, and that'll actually give us a great idea of where everybody is, at least in Australia at the moment. 

Okay, so I'm just going to frame up this morning before we open up our discussion. To introduce myself, my name is Rosemary Sainty. I'm an academic at UTS Business School. My background is over the last 10 years working in corporate responsibility and corporate sustainability, which has now morphed into business with a purpose and positive social impact, which leans into positive organizational scholarship (POS). So I teach here at UTS. I think, fortunately, also, at this time, at our university, there's a strong sense of the public purpose of higher education, and in the Business School, in particular, a positive social impact. Now, I'd like to do a little bit of webinar housekeeping. Zoom is fantastic for being able to bring lots of people together, especially our international guest speakers. But unfortunately, with the webinar, we can't see you all, so it'd be great to keep in touch through the chat function. And that can just keep running as a commentary, any comments that you'd like to leave in there, whether people are speaking or not, we might be able to jump in. But in particular, what we'd like to do is, by 11 o'clock, or on the hour, open up our discussion to all of you through the q&a chat. So if you'd like to post your questions in the q&a, and comments, running comments in the chat, then that should work quite well for us. A little bit about the purpose of the "POS CoP", really, it's a it's a broad purpose, and we're certainly watching what's happening over in the States in Michigan, with their fantastic community of practice. But here in Australia, we're starting in a more modest way. And it's really about bringing academia together with the field of practice for one to inform the other and for us to be able to have a conversation. So really quite as straightforward as that. So just looking at the slide I've got here, it's about joining leading scholars and practitioners in the fields of positive psychology and positive organizational scholarship (POS) in a deliberative space where we can all have a voice, to discuss the latest thinking in research, teaching and practice. And of course, its timely role on I think we'd all have to agree, with the state of the world at the moment. Academics inform the field of POS through formal theory, research and teaching. And practitioners inform academia effectively through a depth of insight gained from real world practice. And it's those two things that we feel create a community of practice (CoP). 

So moving on to our agenda.  The first part of the morning, we're dipping into the academic side of things. So my colleague, Suzy Greene, will be interviewing our fantastic guest speakers, Jane Dutton, and Monica Worline. And once we've had that conversation, where in fact, Jane and Monica will also be introducing us to their fields, as well as their experience, we will then segue into the perspective of the business practitioner, Bob Easton. And I'll be interviewing Bob. And then once that's got going, we'll then invite Monica and Jane into our discussion as a panel. And from there, we'll then open up the floor to all of you to post your questions and answers. So hopefully a good kind of chunk of the second half of the morning where everyone can participate. Okay, now I'm just going to test my technical skills, and put up a poll  for all of you. And I hope that this works, just so that we can have an idea of your experience in positive psychology, positive organizational scholarship. We'd like to ask you, have you ever used a positive psychology or positive organizational scholarship approach in your work, or your practice or your teaching or your research, or for my students out there, even in your studies? Fantastic. Looks like you've all found the poll. let that go for another minute. I can see I've got one of my students in the chat over in China. So we're circumnavigating the globe. Okay. So that's quite a good mix. Thank you everyone. So that's interesting information. I'm just going to stop sharing my slides. And hopefully, everyone can see everyone else. I've got two business school colleagues here. You can see probably in the frame. And I'm going to hand on to Suzy Green to kick off our morning. So Suzy and I are the partners in crime here. So representing the practitioner academic approach to this POS COP. So Suzy is a clinical and coaching psychologist and founder and CEO of the fabulous Positivity Institute, a positively deviant organization dedicated to the research and application of positive psychology in workplaces and schools. Suzy is a leader in the complementary fields of coaching psychology and positive psychology, is published in the Journal of Positive Psychology and has lectured on applied positive psychology as a Senior Adjunct Lecturer in the Coaching Psychology Unit of University of Sydney for 10 years. Suzy also currently holds an honorary academic position at the Center for Wellbeing Science in the University of Melbourne, the Black Dog Institute, and as an affiliate of the Institute for Well Being Cambridge University. She also is the co-editor of the newly published Springer text Positive Psychology Coaching in the Workplace, which launched just this week. I think, well done Suzy. She maintains a strong media profile appearing on television, radio and print and is a wonderful person full of a lot of energy. Suzy, over to you.

Suzy  9:41  
Thank you so much, Rosemary, and welcome to everyone. Thank you so much, Jane and Monica for joining us today and also Bob here today and there are so many familiar names on the attendees here today. So I tried to say a few hellos in the chat. But Hello to everyone if I've missed you, it's so wonderful to see familiar and new names on the chat box and really pleased that you're joining us today. And so as Rosemary said, I run the Positivity Institute and a large part of our offering is positive workplaces. In fact, it's my offering. Although we also do work in Positive Education, it's a smaller part of our offering. It's really where I really cut cut my teeth, I guess, on positive workplaces or positive organization. So as a clinical psychologist by profession, I haven't really had an opportunity to work beyond the individual or small group level. And having had the opportunity to work in schools here in Australia for the last 10 years and working with my colleagues, including Aylin Dulagil, who's on the call today, about to become Dr Dulagil, I'm very proud of Aylin as well. Ireland's worked very closely with me as an org psych. And I've certainly learned a lot over the last 10 years in how we actually apply the science of positive psychology and positive organizational scholarship. So I first became aware of POS, I would say when it really first launched, and I just wanted to check with Jane and Monica, was it was it 2004? Or what was the correct date? Would you say of the formal launch of the field?

Jane  11:23  
The first conference was in 2001.

Suzy  11:26  
Wow. Okay, fantastic. And the Centre itself would have been, it was

Jane  11:33  
We'd declared the Centre about two years later.

Suzy  11:36  
Right, fantastic. Well, I actually started teaching at Sydney Uni on positive psychology in 2004. And at the time, I was aware clearly of the science of positive psychology, and I utilize that for my doctoral research on coaching as as a practice to increase mental health and well being. But when I started to look around what had been done in the workplace beyond the individual level, I came across the center, and was it originally called the Center for Positive Organizations, and then it changed the Center for Positive Workplaces? 

Jane  12:10  
It's always been CPO. 

Suzy  12:14  
And again, I became very familiar with Jane's work, Kim Cameron's work who is a  leading scholar in positive leadership, and also Bob Quinn's work and then have been following with much interest and awe the development and the evolution of the center since that time, and I've really seen it move from very academic (was my take on it in the early days), to much more applied over those 15 or so years. So it's been a delight to watch what's been happening over there and the incredible work that you've done and continue to do and Monica's incredible work in particularly around compassion. I guess it has been a little frustrating for me here in Australia, because I've had a number of conversations with business schools over the last 10 or 15 years, and there's been little bites of interest, but nothing really taken up wholeheartedly.

So when Rosemary reached out and expressed an intrinsic interest in the field, I've just been so excited to work with someone who works in a business school setting UTS Business School, and so excited to be involved in this emerging community of practice that we have. I also want to thank Bob for being here. And just a little bit of positive reminiscing here. I actually met Bob for the very first time in Jane and Monica's workshop in Montreal, on your 'Awakening Compassion at Work' workshop. So it's actually synchronicity, (perhaps Carl Jung would have referred to that as). And then of course, I've had the incredible privilege of working with Bob at Accenture for the last four years. And Bob is not just a practitioner. He's clearly an academic, I would say because he knows the research very, very well. He holds a Master's in Applied Positive Psychology from U Penn. And so again, it's been a joy to work with someone like Bob to look at what the science looks like in practice, and we've had a great opportunity to do that.  Im looking forward to Rosemary talking more about that to Bob today. 

So for now, I'm going to hand over to to Jane and Monica. And I'll just do a brief intro because I think everybody has had access to Jane and Monica's bios. Of course, many people on the call today will know Jane and Monica. So Jane is the co founder and core faculty for the Center for Positive Organizations. She's a Robert L. Kahn distinguished University Emeritus Professor of Business Administration and Psychology at the University of Michigan. Jane's research began with an interest in compassion, which I didn't fully realize, Jane, I knew a lot about your work in high quality connections and have utilised that significantly in the work that we do. But also your research on job crafting and positive identities. And of course, your recent publication which as you can see, is a very well worn and dog eared copy of your book that I have read and used a lot since it was published. I think that was back in 2017. And Jane, of course, has a book with Gretchen Spreitzer on How to be a Positive Leader (2014). And she's also written 'Energize your Workplace'. Monica is the founder and CEO of Enlivened Work and innovation organization that teaches businesses and others how to tap into courageous thinking, compassionate leadership and the curiosity to bring their best work to life, and live and work as a Social Benefit Partner of the Center for Positive Organizations with the mission of helping change agents create workplaces that bring us to life each day. They are such  long Bios, I encourage you to take a look so incredible people that we have here on the call today, but I don 't want to intrude any longer on Jane and Monica's precious time to be with us. So I'm going to hand over to you, Jane, first, and then I believe you're going to very make a smooth transition to Monica. So you're going to give us the big picture on POS pos org scholarship, and then hand over to Monica to talk perhaps a bit more specifically on compassion. 

Jane  16:33  
Okay, that will be great. So first of all, let me just say, I'm delighted to be here. It's a total privilege. And there's nothing I like to do better than talk about positive organizational scholarship, because actually, being an academic with this kind of lens has changed my life. That's dramatic, but it's but it's really true. So Monica is going to engineer our slides. She's also the maker of the slides. So if they if you think they're beautiful, I do too. And Monica is the is the creative of the two of us. So I thought I would just give you a brief intro to how I talk about what positive organizational scholarship is. It's actually the way Monica and I talk about it together, because we often teach together when we're teaching about this, so it will go to the to the next slide, Monica. So if I were to say really simply is what is positive organizational scholarship, it's it is really applied positive psychology plus applied positive sociology. And unlike psychology, which has sort of had this positive frame really flourish, or really expand. In sociology, it's a little bit strange and deviant. But the sociological perspective, which looks at whole systems and whole institutions, is really important to understanding the advantage and the value of a positive organizational scholarship lens. Because what we're really trying to ask, and answer is "what creates and sustains human group and organizational flourishing?" Next slide, Monica. 

So what is this term flourishing? It's actually a beautiful term, but a little bit mysterious. What I mean by flourishing is we're really interested in what is it that is conducive to a person or group or a whole system being in a state of optimal performance or optimal functioning. And I love the analogy of gardens, because I think it's really helpful. So imagine yourself as a plant in this garden, and you are flourishing, and the whole garden is flourishing. And you can tell by the life in it, you can tell by the variety in it, you can tell by the color in it, it is optimal. When a system or an individual is flourishing, it's optimal in several senses. It's more energized, it's more vital, it's more creative, it's more innovative, it's more engaged. And when we talk about this in positive organizational scholarship, we're often talking about moments or periods of flourishing rather than flourishing all the time. That's actually a difficult state to achieve. When we're thinking about organizations, we need to think about the soil. And so we often talk about in positive organizational scholarship, what we're trying to do is identify what are the qualities of the soil that allow again collectives and individuals to flourish, which is a really different focus and we often know what flourishing means by its opposite with is often used in the literature that by the term languishing, so Monica is going to flip up to a version of a garden that is dying, or at least is not nearly as it may be,  its on a path of slow death. And it's languishing, we know it's languishing because of the depletion of energy, a sense of dullness. At the extreme level, it can be where people and systems are anxious and depleted. So we're trying to understand flourishing, but we know it in part by the contrast to languishing. The next slide, Monica, please.

So another way to look at positive organizational cult scholarship is a way of seeing and this is actually this change in the way of seeing, which as, as I said, changed my life as a researcher, just as a person in general. It sees organizations as sites of human collective strength and capability building. So it asked questions like: how can we build and cultivate organizations that are more courageous, that are more innovative, that are more compassionate? - which is where Monica and I have been focused, but it really looks at the level of collective strengths. Now I was actually a strategy researcher for the first eight years of my career. And so asking these questions about  - what is it about systems that creates these these dynamic capabilities that allows an organization to sustain excellence over time? - is very consistent with the positive organizational scholarship lens. It just opens up the set of strengths that we look for, in a system, the kinds of strengths that really at the collective level, unlock human capacity and capability. So the second bullet here, it's a quest to understand what conditions at the individual unit and organizational levels cultivate flourishing in a continuous basis. And part of our argument is that the kinds of conditions that do this are ones that unlock resources from within people, within individuals, within dyads, within teams, and within organizations. And the kinds of resources that I'm talking about are our confidence, energy, hope, those kinds of key renewable, human based resources. And the last bullet is just to emphasize why the garden metaphor I think is helpful is that we try to focus on the life giving or generative dynamics or conditions in organizations that cultivate flourishing. So it means really taking seriously the idea that these are living systems, they're not inert systems, and that systems can be more or less alive. Next slide. 

So to get us to the question, the focus on compassion, I just want to say, a framework that we find really useful for thinking about conditions that foster flourishing is a simple framework that puts its bet on three core conditions that are resource producing. That research would suggest are resourcing producing are:  positive connections or those moments of interactions that you have with other people, when you feel energy and mutual regard; positive meaning, or the the times we interpret or impute something with a sense of value, worth and significance; or positive emotions. And the triangle is just meant to say three sides. The triangle doesn't have any meaning beyond that. But what it leads us to ask and a question that I think is really important for researchers and for practitioners using a positive organizational scholarship lens is:  how do we design for conditions that foster flourishing? So how do we design organizations that have more of these momentary positive connections? For example, how might we reimagine onboarding in an organization so that instantly people have more of these positive connections? If we were thinking about positive meaning how could we organize sessions like this or meetings that we have with people so to institutionalize routines, so that there's more a constant cultivation of positive meaning? And finally, how could we change communications or the emails we send or any any other aspect of organizational life so that we induce more positive emotion, knowing that if we access any of these conditions, it actually is going to unlock resources, and move us towards a more flourishing state? So that's in like five minutes. I don't know how long I took but a very quick synopsis of some core ideas of positive organizational scholarship. And it might give you a background for what Monica is going to talk about with our compassion work.

Suzy  25:06  
Can I ask a couple quick questions, Jane? 

Jane  25:09  
Sure.

Suzy  25:10  
I guess just curious. You mentioned your background coming into POS. And I guess a little bit of an epiphany.  With compassion, that was surprising. I didn't realize that compassion was there from the very beginning for you, even though it really hasn't become a really relevant and popular topic until recently, you've been looking at it for quite a while. Is that correct?

Jane  25:36  
Well, as a strategy researcher, what was really striking to me is -  I studied the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, that's the one that had the World Trade Center set of data. And I studied strategic change. And one of the things -  the sort of invisible dynamic capabilities of the Port Authority was its compassion for the people that inhabit its facility. So for example, it was the organization that produced the most homeless shelters in the city of New York. And they purposely hid that capability. And yet, it was really important for what they were able to achieve over time. So I kept seeing when I was a field researcher out studying all these different organizations these relational capabilities around human suffering, but they were not being elevated as dynamic capabilities that were contributing to an organization's performance. So the seeds were planted a long time ago, in me seeing across organizations real variance in the degree to and how they dealt with suffering, human suffering, both inside the firm, or inside the organization, but also with its customers and clients outside the organization.

Suzy  26:50  
Absolutely. Look, I love the analogy to the plant world, and particularly given I have a surname of Green.

Jane  26:58  
Yes, it's very timely ..

Suzy  27:01  
It's a lovely connection. And I also use yours, and Monica's quote in a lot of my presentations, particularly to senior leaders at the moment, around the need to look at both the seed and the soil. Because I'm having been, even pre COVID, doing many, many presentations  to employees and to leaders, around the skills of well being or the skills of optimal human functioning few, like, I realized fairly early on that we needed to at least acknowledge that the soil, the environment that you're in is, regardless of how skilled you are. And I knew that as a clinical psychologist, that having worked with people, particularly that were off in stress related work claims that I could certainly support them and equip them with psychological skills. But if they were returning to a toxic environment, or a soil that wasn't conducive, or actively undermines well being, and so it's so important, isn't it for, for when you particularly as a consultant to go in and work with an organization to have those discussions around, yes, we can certainly run a workshop or provide education. But there needs to be some recognition that you may not be perfect yet. But it might be a work in progress. But it is important that we're addressing the soil.

Jane  28:18  
Yes. And again, to just continue that metaphor, and then I'll be quiet. This is an issue of absolute necessity at this time in our globe, because we can't throw more resources, money and material resources at these huge problems. And so we really need to know how to unlock human capacity and capability by tending the soil differently. And at a scalable level that allows for more unleashing of potential reality in systems.

Suzy  28:52  
Absolutely, and POS has much to offer. 

Jane  28:56  
I think so I really do. This is not about happy. I mean, this is about absolute survival. I think at a at a collective level. So I'll stop talking,

Suzy  29:11  
We'll hand over to Monica because I think compassion is what we need is the foundation of high quality connections and diverse flourishing organizations. Thank you, Monica.

Monica  29:23  
Thank you, Suzy. And thank you, Rosemary for the invitation to be here today. And thank you, Jane, for being my longtime colleague and teeing up the conversation. I'm so privileged to get to follow in your footsteps in more than way than one, including today to add on talking about compassion when we began starting about flourishing, and I want to point out a way that Jane and I often help our students understand the connection here. When Jane talks about flourishing seen as a state of optimal functioning, we can think that flourishing will have many, many kinds of indicators. Hence the metaphor of the garden and the resonance with the many different forms of life and color and vibrancy, different types and shapes of flowers, right, there are many different indicators of flourishing in the garden. And when we talk about compassion in organizations, we can think of this as one particular kind of capability. That gives you a particular indicator about the capacity of a system to flourish, and how it is unlocking resources for flourishing. 

So I'm going to give you a taste of how we would think about compassion in the context of understanding the flourishing of a system. And when I say compassion, if you read awakening, compassion at work, thank you, Susie, for your dog eared coffee, it warms our hearts for sure. Or if you read some of Jane's earlier work on compassion, you will know that what we mean by this is a four part human experience that always unfolds in relation to suffering. And so when we talk about compassion, were instantaneously also talking about acknowledging, being with, speaking and making present, then difficulty, distress and suffering that's present in organizations. And in understanding compassion, we understand that as a process of noticing that suffering is present, interpreting that suffering is relevant to what we're doing here together in this work organization, or in this community place, and that we have capacity to address it. So noticing, interpreting, feeling - a form of empathic concern, a particular feeling that we care about the well being of others. And when we feel that form of empathic concern, it leads us almost instantaneously to actions that address or alleviate suffering in some way.

Now, of course, those actions can be more or less capable. And what is important about thinking about compassion in this way, is that this process can unfold in a variety of patterns. And the process itself is an emergent process that reinvents itself as different and new forms of suffering come to light in the organization. So we're importantly here from our perspective, not talking about compassion as purely an emotion which may be different from how some of you have conceptualized the idea before. And we're also making a distinction with some of the social psychologists who study compassion, who think about getting as far as the desire to alleviate suffering. And can we in organization terms, and in thinking about compassion enacted in systems are looking at an action that is taken to alleviate concern, even where that action might be tiny. And in fact, micro moves of compassion are often some of the most important and undervalued expressions of compassion that we can teach leaders, managers and co workers to express to each other. 

So when we talk about people, and what people can do to build the capability for compassion around them in whatever context, they find themselves, we talk about questions that put agency around the four parts of the process I just introduced. So we talk about how can I notice more of the suffering that's around me? And how can I treat that noticing as a part of what is valid and important for me to pay attention to in my work environment? When I noticed suffering, how can I interpret it with more capacity to respond and when I can't interpret what's happening, or when I have a question mark in my mind, how can I interpret people more generously, and keep at the forefront of my interpretation that people want to do good work, that they're generally good and capable, and that if something is getting in the way, it's likely because there's pain in the room that hasn't been understood or expressed yet. Thirdly, how can I better tune in to what's going on around me so that I can activate more empathic concern as a part of the emotional world that I live in, in my workplace. And then finally, how can I continually cultivate more and more capability to take actions actions that go from very small to potentially very large coordinated actions to address suffering that's happening around me. And in awakening compassion at work day in I try hard to give examples that go from the important moment when suffering arises at work, and someone can reach out a hand or extend a kind word, or make a facial expression that makes it safe for the person who's expressed something difficult to stay with the difficulty is that everything from those micro moves at the interpersonal level, to how a global organization operating across many countries and hundreds of 1000s of people could activate compassion as a recurrent, scalable activity. And when we want to talk about compassion on that continuum, you can imagine that we have to work hard with some theoretical tools that help us. 

And so in addition to the flourishing triangle that Jane introduced to you, what we talk about in awakening, compassion at work, and what you can extrapolate, to thinking about flourishing more generally as other indicators of flourishing is that you can cultivate those conditions that Jane names and the flourishing triangle more capably through a social system, when you think about putting the flexible elements of that social structure to work on unlocking that kind of resource. So that this, this architecture for flourishing combines the social architecture that we name and awakening compassion at work with the flourishing triangle, who say that if we can infuse the routines of an organization with more positive emotion, more positive meaning and higher quality connections, we can unlock more capability for flourishing. And we can do the same with roles with networks across the organization, and in thinking about the daily forms that the culture of the organization takes. So this is the way that Jane and I when we work with students, and as we think about extrapolating from what we've done with compassion, to a broader question about flourishing in different kinds of contexts, put the two theoretical ideas together. And that really helps us ask new kinds of questions.

Suzy  38:27  
Thanks so much, Monica. It's brilliant work. I absolutely love it.  I also love those slides, too. I love the colours that you've utilized. Well, what about your own journey? And I understand that you were a student of James, you're very fortunate to do a work with Jane, what has been your journey to POS and compassion? 

Every day have a practice of feeling grateful for the serendipitous accident that of, as Jane might say, the universe landing me in her backyard at the University of Michigan, I came to the study of organizational psychology with a very honest question. I had worked early on in technology organizations where I found really brilliant people pushing themselves to the edge of what they were capable of doing both in the terms of the work patterns, and also in terms of the problems that they were trying to solve. Where some of them we didn't even understand if they were solvable. And I grew very curious as I entered that world as a young person, of understanding how to make the organization a healthy place for people to be or what I would now say a flourishing place in both in the sense of healthy individuals But also healthy, interpersonally and healthy in the sense of the incentives that were provided for doing the kind of work and the ethical guiding principles for answering these big questions that technology was trying to answer. And that was the innate curiosity that led me to the University of Michigan. And the serendipity part was that I happened to be there and working, already curious about these questions and writing a dissertation on the topic of courage in organizations. When Jane started the first projects on compassion, I was able to get involved from the very first studies that we were doing, and it's been the passion that has carried me through my career, and I hope and trust will carry me through many more years of it.

Meant to be Monica it sounds like. So I've there are a number of questions coming through some really great questions. But I'm really mindful of time. So I'm going to hand it back to Rosemary, to continue the conversation with Bob now and then we're coming back for a final discussion all together and from the audience. So thank you. Thanks so much. Wonderful.

Rosemary  41:12  
Yes, thanks, Monica, Jane and Suzy - I'm so glad that we're recording this, I can go back and listen to it. Yes we always knew it was going to be hard trying to fit everything together in this hour and a half. But let's forge ahead. So I now like to introduce Bob Easton, who is the Chairman at Accenture for Australia and New Zealand. I'm just going to go through your bio Bob because I think it's definitely worth covering. Bob is responsible for leading Accenture across Australia and New Zealand and helping leading companies solve their most complex and challenging business problems. As one of Accenture's most experienced client executives, Bob has been fortunate to work with some of the world's largest businesses and influential leaders. That work has spanned many industries, from consumer products to financial services, and taken him all over the world, New Zealand, Australia, China, Southeast Asia, Europe and US. Bob is passionate about one question above all others, how best to build flourishing organizations, and workplace relationships based on trust. And this is a big issue. He firmly believes that human connection is the most potent force we have for unlocking the full capacities, capacities we all have. This philosophy guides his work at Accenture, where they are committed to being the most truly human organization in the digital age. It's also why he believes so strongly in the power of continuous learning. This has brought him back to education many times over the years. He is currently completing a PhD on the subject of the human flourishing of individuals and workplace collectives, and serves on the global Board of David Cooperrider. Center for Appreciative Inquiry. Bob's a recipient of Trust Magazine's Lifetime Achievement Award for his thought leadership and contributions to building trust based relationships in business. So timely Bob. So Bob's experience from a 600,000 person company will be a valuable perspective for our conversation here, with his concerns, including the persistence of burnout, despite a plethora of well being programs that have been spawned over particularly the last decade. So in discussing with Bob what we could cover in a short amount of space, we ambitiously have three items. One of them is to have a bit of an understanding of Bob's own journey towards positive approach and flourishing organisations, and ultimately to the practitioner scholar that he now is;  a bit of a perspective from the business angle, particularly from a business leader perspective on this approach. And I think Bob are also keen to bring up a provocation for the morning, which may lead us into our panel discussion. So perhaps if we could just start just with a kind of sketch of your journey in this space?

Bob  44:13  
Yeah. Okay, Rosemary so firstly, thank you very much. Let me just, it is wonderful to be be here with Jane and Monica and Suzy, and the rest of you today. Let me just first make a slight correction. I'm not leading Accenture in Australia and New Zealand anymore. I'm the Chairman which means we have a very capable, brand new, just put a brand new CEO in place this weekend. So I get to step back and do some of the things that are much more interesting than leading an organization day by day. So yes, I think I came to positive psychology and positive organizational scholarship through pain that I saw in the workplace and pain that I experienced myself, and I've been in organizations for a long time, both in military and, commercial organizations.  I've worked across many countries, and there was a particular moment in my career where I was working in an organization, I won't say where, but it was a very large financial services institution. And, you know, was, it was one of a number that I saw were the way in which I coined a phrase at the time, which was the master slave relationship that, you know, the people working for the organization were the slaves and the people running the organization were the masters and I just saw the way in which people were getting burnt out. That impact on myself there was a moment I looked at my life, I said, I'm not going to, I'm going to try and avoid work like that, I'm going to try and do something about it. 

That was in early 2000, I started working on a number of different things on my own without the science, trying to make interventions, I made a couple of different interventions around trust, because I noticed the importance of trust. In 2012 probably through a lot of pain that I was injuring myself with different things that were happening in my life, led me to the Masters of Applied Positive Psychology UPenn. It was just serendipitous collision, like we heard about this morning.  I was with my client  in Philadelphia, I was suffering pain, I read something that pointed me to the direction of the Masters of Applied Positive Psychology.  Built on this, this general feeling of me wanting to do something, get to the bottom of what was going on with this pain in organizations. And I met Jane and other people and got introduced to positive organizational scholarship through Jane and others, and then started. And that brought me to the science I wanted,  this local practitioner scholar I wanted, I wanted to know  what you know, what was the science behind what I was saying. I then started after that a PhD with David and others in Case Western, which I haven't yet completed. And I ended up back here running Accenture in Australia, and at the same time over that period, Accenture, with now 600,000 people was implementing this truly human program, bringing together a lot of the concepts of positive organizational scholarship  and flourishing. 

So that was my experience. And I think there's this point on compassion.  I would say, say there's sort of three words that it's not just trust, it's compassion, trust and empathy, that I've been sort of playing with this and looking at it. But there's so much pain in the workplace today, there's a lot of good things, but there's so much pain that's created in the workplace today, that we we just can't stand back and watch it and the power of unlocking through the studies that I've done and in the practical examples I've seen. Most interestingly, in the US I spent one summer going to 11 amazing organizations in the US and in looking at what was happening to them flourish in organizations, and just to see the power, that Monica and Jane have talked about today, unlock human capacity for good is here and just means we all have to get engaged behind this take collective action to do it. 

Rosemary  48:38  
It's interesting that serendipity is playing a role here. So I'm certainly hopeful that this morning is a serendipitous experience for people that have joined this conversation. And it just occurs to me about a slight deviation of the next question, being in the milieu of business leaders, I just wonder if you could give us an insight at that level of the applicability of these approaches and thinking and the openness of colleagues, business leader colleagues have concepts like organizational compassion?

Bob  49:17  
Well, I think, well being and flourishing is probably one of the fastest growing businesses in the world. In terms of many organizations, most organizations recognize the importance of focusing and putting programs in place to improve them, their minds, the mental well being and the overall well being of their people. I think what they're missing, and maybe this is my provocation, what organizations are missing, is the capacity for reflection, to actually notice what needs to be done. So I have two things that are bugging me at the moment. And so I thought I would answer the question by saying, I think well being in mental health is in the minds of many people, but whether they have enough time to pay attention to it, as opposed to it's just another thing that I've got to get done, along with diversity and everything else that I've got to get done, and pass it down. And what I've discovered is that at the individual and the collective level, this point on noticing is absolutely critical. And what's important to actually help is - how does one, or how does the collective actually know that? What are the capacities to notice? And my practical experience is that mindfulness, reflective practices at an organizational level, an appreciative inquiry, at a group level, it might be a team reflection period, and an individual level or walk or mindfulness program. And unless you have the capacity to notice, which comes through reflection, it's very difficult to actually see what you need to put in place to get things done. And it therefore gets passed off for some other provocation, we just put a whole bunch of programs in place to help the individual but the soil is not being toiled. So the soil stays the same. And organizations and leaders feel great, because they've spent billions of dollars and millions of dollars on programs that impact the individual, but it's not impacting the soil.

Rosemary  51:29  
So who toils the soil? 

Bob  51:34  
So every single person can have an impact. That's the first thing. But what we have to do is take a step back and think about it, maybe doing some research into how can we open up these reflective practices and at the individual and organizational level. So they can notice. Accenture with 600,000 people is one of the most hard charging, you know, tough organizations to be in. But I would say it's one of the most compassionate organizations that I've seen when it notices, and when it notices all these amazing capacities kicking,

Rosemary  52:16  
I suppose, then. So back to that question about the business leadership level, of course, boards as well have their challenges with time. And so there needs to be a purposefulness about this is what I'm hearing. I'm just going to open up the discussion to Monica and Jane as well. So your provocation is what would you say?

Bob  52:48  
My provocation is that in that process, and you should get Monica and Jane's point of view, is that noticing is so critical to it. To notice something, you have to be mindful, you have to be able to see it, you have to be able to make sense of it. And I think organizations lack the capacity to notice and then make sense of, and I think organizations are too happy to put programs in place that will fix the individual when actually the problem's the soil. 

Rosemary  53:24  
What do you think Jane?

Jane  53:26  
Yes I know. I know Monica has a lot to say about this.  I'm just thinking about our own experiences last year, and institutions, very sensitive, like in my case, being in a university, and seeing what did they do to notice the pain of the students, and seeing real variability in the degree to which the suffering of the students was noticed. The suffering of the faculty was noticed and the suffering of the staff was noticed to some degree, but I think this is where the interpretations and noticing it really sort of connected in the soil around core values. And what is seen as important directs the lens that's applied, but it directs where you pay attention. And then the almost instant judgment and interpretation that goes on with it. For example, the variability and the degree to which they noticed suffering and interpreted the students suffering is trying to take advantage of the flexibility in the system, or did they have more generous interpretations of the students situation so that they could notice their pain and suffering? So I think they're really interrelated. Even though we have 'noticing' as the first thing in our little model, you know, the soil or the conditions and the organizations for routines that are in place, what data are collected, shape what gets attended to so I think there's so much more we can do.  I think reflective practices is helpful. But again, I think there's institutionalized blindness to a lot of human suffering.

Rosemary  55:17  
Yes, as we've been saying that well being programs are regularly promulgated in organizations. Monica, have you got any thoughts?  

Monica  55:32  
I think what you just said  Rosemary taps into a lively conversation going in the tap as well. And I would just echo that the things that Jane and I are pointing to and this kind of theorizing about the creation of cycles of constructive change that Bob is so good at describing and calling upon in systems and studying as well. These are what we might think of as emergent, nonlinear, very complex dynamics that very rarely have simple answers. And what Isabelle was saying in the chat was like, these all these good intentions we have around well being programs backfire when people feel infantilized by a wellness program. And there are many other ways that if we aren't holding the complexity of this system, the complexity of the the sort of emergence and non linearity of what we're talking about today in mind, when we think about intervention design, we're designing things that are way too simple for the complex phenomenon we're looking at. And whenever that happens, people know that, and if we interpret generously, people are good, they're capable, they're smart, and they recognize interventions that don't fit the complexity of the need. And that should just tell us as intervention designers in the way Jane was saying, how do we design for flourishing, that we have to design with more knowledge of the capability of the system and the limit of the system in mind. And so I often think of this as quite nuanced work that requires like any design process, the ability to try and fail and learn and fail and try and fail, and the need to stay open to the feedback because it's very rarely the case that we would get it all right the first time if ever, and when organizations are doing well being programs that are backfiring, I think often they have way too simplistic view of well being at the core of what they're doing, or what they're offering is out of keeping with the other social structural parameters we talked about. It's out of keeping with the way they've actually designed the roles in the system. Or its out of keeping with the routines that are going in the system. 

I can make that less abstract by sharing a short example. In the huge pressure that people in health care systems are feeling in the pandemic, there's also been a call to try to create things that organizations can do to support and help people in health care systems. And I was having a conversation with the supervisor who was a well intentioned supervisor who really wanted to help the people in her unit. And she wanted to do mindfulness program and bring in some compassion work. And as we were talking, what came to light was that her unit is seven members understaffed. And she was having trouble finding time for the mindfulness program because people were working huge hours of overtime. And so my design hat would be to say, step back from the mindfulness program and it doesn't matter how many times you use the word compassion. The soil is an understaffed, over staffing, human resource problem, right? That in order to build compassion into the system, the staffing routines have to change and the resource balance around getting people on on boarded and ready for the work needs to be redesigned in some way. And that's how you're building compassion capability into your system. And then mindfulness and compassion training and everything else can be another routine you add, but it's not a substitute. 

Rosemary  1:00:20  
That's such an important point. Because I think the critics of the positive approach and I can think of colleagues here, point to the use of a positive approach to exploit workers - let's bring in resilience training instead of actually addressing what has caused the burnout in the first place. So I'm just going to now segue us into opening up to the q&a so that we can bring everybody into this. And just to throw a little bit of additional complexity into the discussion. I do think it's important just to consider the impact of the tumultuous times we've all been living in. So in Australia, these began with our bushfires, which were fairly dramatic and distressing. They preceded the pandemic. So we went from the bushfires and thinking that was the worst thing that could happen, into the pandemic. 

And we've also been watching our North American colleagues with what's been happening politically and with the black lives movement,  and more recently, the distressing scenes out of Afghanistan  - so there's a lot going on. And looking both at the paper that that you contribute to Jane - positive psychology and a pandemic: buffering, bolstering and building mental health, and also looking at David Cooperrider's, recent paper (I'll put the links up on a web page for everyone to see) where in the in the times of disruption, the best in human systems can burst forth. So the question / discussion point is, are these times a learning opportunity for the positive approach, for positive organizational scholarship and, and positive psychology, because in a way they're being put to the test. So opening that up for discussion. And, Suzy, if you can keep an eye on the q&a, that would be great.

Jane  1:02:30  
I'll just start with one point. I think now, especially where I've heard the term toxic positivity more than in the last 20 years, that it's really important, that there be as much attention to the suffering, and to the pain in introducing these ideas, as there is to the appreciative, you know, inquiry into the good, and, you know, talks about bringing out the best. It's the paradox, so it's a need to hold both those tensions. Really, I mean, if we drop the focus on all the harm, all the pain, all the suffering, and do this more positive thing, it's going to really be toxic. And so I think we need as academics and practitioners to be more courageous, and build our own capacity to live with those tensions, and paradoxes as we as we grow ourselves and whoever we're working with, to try to be good change agents in this context. And the humility that goes with it. I mean, I will say, I get so upset when I see these glib, I mean, in a world of tweets, you know, here are five things. And I do it too. Again, I feel like the way that these ideas are being spread, it puts a premium on putting them into bite size, but like Monica says, it is not bite size. You know, it is really complex, and organizations are complex. So the humility that goes on with sort of what we don't know, even though we're personally learning, and the need to hold both the negative and the positive with deep regard.

Rosemary  1:04:31  
Yes. And Bob, what are your thoughts here?

Bob  1:04:37  
Well, I think I'm glad I'm glad Jane and Monica referred to the complexity of organizations and how things are emergent. I think that we spend, we look at organizations and often give them human like qualities and organizations aren't human beings. They're machines. As my this is my perspective, and there's been a lot of different debate about that, but to me, that the humans in the machine who we need to connect with, and I do think that we are in a moment we are in a time of learning. I'm worried that we might learn some of the wrong things or that we might dismiss the learning. So I agree with Jane's point on toxic positivity. We do have to notice the suffering without getting drawn into it. You know, what amazes me is that I haven't looked at the data, but I have a I have a hypothesis, that if you compare the millions and billions of dollars that have been spent on wellbeing since 2012, and you look at the levels of burnout that exists in organizations today. I don't think things are changing. And that bothers me. I see Monica nodding her head, maybe Monica you could comment on what this sparks for you?

Monica  1:06:08  
I don't know the data Bob. But I suspect you're right, I share your hypothesis. And I thank you for voicing it. I have a further hypothesis of my own, which you could probably guess from my comments before, which is that it at least in highly individualized cultures - I'll put some parameters around my hypothesis, I'm not sure how global this is - but we have become really accustomed to thinking at the level of the individual or even the intra individual phenomenon. And we've created consumer cultures around as Jane said, the capacity to purchase and share bite size advice that almost always in order to be bite size has to focus on the individual or remain at the level of even individual and intra individual change. And in  the words of the poet Rilka  who says that we grow unaccustomed to the language of collectives, and when we grow unaccustomed to that language, we also grow on accustomed to how to do the nuanced work of shifting and changing them. And I suspect that we could pour all the money in the world into individual level, change well being programs, and get some people who are more better off but almost no organizational change.

Jane  1:07:57  
Im just going to give one example. Thinking about, again, the frequency of compassion training is seen as one of the well being solutions, which I think some of that work has been fantastic. But I think Monica and I have also seen how if you simply change a person's role definition, like, for example, what if universities have professors role included being compassionate towards your students? I can tell you, that you would unleash so much more compassion. And I'm not sure compassion training would probably elevate the quality of the compassion, but so much as being constrained by the structures that are making people unable, to unleash that very human capacity to be compassionate. So that's why again, Monica and I keep going back to roles and routines, you know, culture is almost too big. You know, if you change these routines, which are changeable structures, you can scale some of the some of the remedies to the pain and unleash some of the resourcing to turn things around.

Bob  1:09:30  
Maybe I can say something just building on that. I think the problem, the pain, I feel is that organizational leaders feel like they can put programs in place and by putting programs in place at the individual level, it absolves them of the accountability then to actually do anything at the organisational - because I've done something about it. I've noticed that and I've done something about it, but there's no measuring of, there's no impact on the organization itself. And the people go and do their wellbeing program and they come back to you organization and nothing's changed. This bothers me with positive education Suzy, you know that we're training all these kids on positive education and resilience and so forth, but the world they're going into in the organizations, they turn up at organizations with this toxic cultures.

Suzy  1:10:20  
My argument has always been to that, how are we going to change cultures if people aren't flourishing? So again, I just find this 'either or' really frustrating sometimes, because as Jane said, we need to be thinking it's a dialectical approach. It's not an either, or we need to think much more broadly around the range of these topics, really. But I also just wanted to touch on - Bob's spoken. We've had lots of conversations around the need for these reflective spaces, which, from a coaching psychology perspective, we have argued for, since its existence is that what coaching can provide, particularly if it's in a formal rather than a corridor coaching conversation, that it does provide a reflective space. And I also just recently wrote a blog on LinkedIn around well being information overload and organizations just throwing more and more content, but where is the space? Where is the space to stop and reflect about who am I? What matters to me? And also, who are we as an organization and what matters to us? So I think the space is a big issue. I also just wanted to highlight because I know there are probably a number of people on here today that are familiar with the new ISO 45003 (https://www.iso.org/standard/64283.html),  the new international standard, which I think is really highlighting the importance placed on an organization and the responsibility that they have to cultivate the soil and minimize psychosocial risks, like work overload, life work-role clarity. I just think it's a really interesting time to be in this space now. And I'm loving this whole conversation. But finding it really hard to stay up up to date, because there's so many wonderful comments and questions, both in the chat and on the q&a.

Rosemary  1:12:01  
Suzy would you like to bring in some questions. 

Suzy  1:12:04  
Yes  Well, there's a couple specifically for you, Bob. One says, Bob, while we have organizations driven by delivering shareholder results, can we really have organizations built on trust? Big question, do you think or... ?

Bob  1:12:18  
Oh, it's a big question. It's a question organisational people have been struggling for, for a long time. And there are organizations, I uncovered a few, there are organizations that have dealt with this issue. I think again, we're giving organizations anthropomorphic like qualities, human like qualities. And what I discovered in my research, my qualitative research, when I was going around that the organizations that I encountered that were fantastic, they came about by a couple of different means. One was the leader had had an epiphany, but they're always driven by a leader and the leader woke up one day and had an epiphany, I've got to make things better. The other one was, what I call founder, you know, organizations that actually the leaders decided to found them on good human flourishing, you know, qualities. And then there's organizations that had some sort of family basis that was based on family values, these were things to me that I sat back and made me sit back and reflect and go, wow, we've really got to get to the leaders of the organizations because when boardrooms start that question is, you know, you won't overcome that point of shareholder value until the organization's truly sit back and decide that they want to truly unlock the human potential in organizations and that they want to do something about the suffering. And they actually notice the suffering. When a board goes away and has a session for three days, and actually talks about how they're going to improve the existence of human beings in their organizations be better off. And I'll say one final thing. Organization's walk around with a metaphor on the head, or the belief that 'all we have to do to be great is to hire people that are worthy of us'. We need to flip that on its head and say, actually, for organizations to be amazing, and to be really truly human organizations, they need to be worthy of the employees that are working for them. So how can we be the most human spirit-worthy organization in the world. Until we get people thinking like that, shareholder value is going to always dominate, but it doesn't always dominate in amazing private organizations. Go and look at a company like Barry Wehmiller in the US. I'm sure Jane, you're familiar with Barry Wehmiller and Bob Chapman.

Jane  1:14:51  
Yeah, I think there's positive deviance. Also within organizations or certainly departments, I just wanted to mention, I don't know how much you're feeling ... the great migration as it's being called in the States. I don't know, if it's being called, you know, where people, a huge percentage of people are leaving their jobs. And I really think the war for talent is going to expedite, hopefully, some organization's transformation to be more human centered. We'll wait and see. But I feel like that's another thing that the pandemic has ushered in - it's disrupted people's contracts, psychological contracts with organizations and they're willing to walk. And they're looking for organizations where they're going to be able to grow and learn and thrive. So I think that's an important force to take into account.

Rosemary  1:15:56  
And hopefully, that's kind of I'm hoping there's a connection there with that, that sense of positive social impact and positive environmental impact, like the whole flourishing good.  

Suzy  1:16:09  
There's been quite a few questions, I think, in the chat box and on in the q&a in the context POS or compassion, more specifically, in the context of working from home and how to be more mindful and build those high quality connections, deep connections with people virtually. Any great tips from Monica, or Jane would be greatly appreciated.

Jane  1:16:32  
Go ahead Monica, we referred to just doing another workshop next week, there's so much interest in this. But it's just a limit of our imagination, there's actually so much that can be done. So do you want to start Monica with some ..

Monica  1:16:47  
Definitely when I was going  say Jane.  I do think that's the most important assumption to make is that the quality of our connections is ever more important if we're connecting through technology, not to assume it's impossible or unimportant, but simply to go back, put your designer hat on, like Jane called you to earlier and say, how might we use the technology itself to share more positive emotion? How am I, I was joking in the chat, right? How might we use the chat to unlock more positive emotions? How might we in the way we set up the meeting, invite people to spend a moment of stillness, making themselves psychologically present? How might we invite them to do cameras on and cameras off in a way that's sensitive to their needs, but also helps us see each other and know that each other are there. And the final thing I'll say we've thought about this a lot. So I have a lot of examples. But I do think also that behavioral synchrony is really important in creating group-ness. And you can create behavioral synchrony on online forums in unexpected ways. A simple one that we use with our students is that when we feel that the class may need a break, or that we want to acknowledge something precious that someone said, that needs our care and attention, we have people rub their hands together to warm their hands energetically, and then all at once to put our hands up to the webcam for a moment, and send that positive energy, gratitude, care, whatever it may be through to the other people in the session. It's a simple behavioral synchrony practices like that can be tremendously effective at deepening connections online.

Suzy  1:18:49  
I also heard I think I was listening to a podcast that you both did last year through the pandemic. And the suggestion was if you're on zoom, put all your cameras on gallery view, if you try and find eye contact with every person on the gallery view, is that right, Monica?

Monica  1:19:08  
Yes, it's right, Susie. And that's it. If you're running a session where people will come together more than once, you can really help people remember one another, you know, and the challenge of helping people connecting remember is different online than it may be when people gather in the same room. But if you have been searching around and making zoom eye contact, you remember one another and we also always if we have the technological capability to leave a private chat message channel open. We actually encourage people to reconnect with the person they met in the last session using the private chat message. Again, here is a place where institutionally, sometimes we get given the interpretation to not allow people access to the full technological solution, because they might misuse it in some way. But if we interpret more generously, that people want to connect, and are capable of connecting when invited, and we invite the technology use in that way, we've had good results.

Jane  1:20:29  
I'll just add, you know, the research would also tell us that what happens in the first five minutes or actually less than that, is really important. And so we've done a lot of play around greeting, like how to have everyone greet each other in a meaningful way, in the first two minutes, you know, even when you have, you know, 300 people  or more and  thinking about what can you do pre, during and post. So thinking about the temporal space of connecting, what can you do before people even get on, that makes them really want to connect with each other, as well as connect with their speakers or whatever. Anyway, I mean, there's so much we could do. And I'm very hopeful. We will not go back to normal, we will be hybrid, I think from here on and using a lot more technology enabled collaboration and coordination and stuff like that. So get on your designer hats, because I think this will never go away. It will may go back in certain kinds of things. But this is an added capacity that I think has been too valuable to let go.

Suzy  1:21:46  
Absolutely. It's been .. suffering for many but a gift in similar ways. But I'm mindful of time again, Rosemary, there are a couple of other questions on there. I know I can see that Monica was about to respond to Tas's question around what does noticing entail and I guess there are a number of people on here that are very experienced in this field. But there's also people on who that perhaps are quite new to the field as well. We do have Professor Felicia Huppert on here, as well. And as we know, Felicia, is very experienced and published on the topic of mindfulness. And I think we've already touched on that today, haven't we, in terms of potentially preceding or building out capacity to notice? And, I always refer people to the beautiful children's book called 'The Three Questions', I'm sure Jane or, Monica, if you're familiar with that. It's comes from Tolstoy originally, which is: What's the most important time? And that time is now. Who's the most important person? And that person is the person in front of me or you right now. And what's the most important thing to do? And I think that is to give that person your time. And I think your original instructions were to do good for that person, which I guess can be acts of compassion. And so it's such a beautiful book, I highly recommend. Any questions there Rosemary that you think we should fit in before we close up today?

Rosemary  1:23:17  
Theres a good question from David Rooney. Bob, would you like to comment on the role of wisdom in organizations? And if a scale to measure the wisdom of an organization would be helpful? So I guess it's that concept of wisdom?

Suzy  1:23:31  
It's a big one that with I love it, too. I love David's work. I love this area, but I assume it's a big question to answer to a few minutes. But Bob, do you want to have a go?

Rosemary  1:23:41  
I might just link it to this question from Mark. Bob, are you suggesting we need to be intelligent about well being? 

Bob  1:23:52  
I think we need to have listening mechanisms that are monitoring well being just like monitoring for the suffering and for the pain, just like we would for monitoring consumer sentiment. But in that wisdom is a big question mark. I would like to make one comment, though. Coming back to something Jane said, which is maybe tied to the wisdom of organizations looking for positive deviance. I mean, Jane, you mentioned that there are organizations that on the surface, they have some sort of toxic qualities, but you find these islands of flourishing within them. And I found that in a number of different organizations and places Ive worked in where you have organizations where you have different parts of the organization that aren't flourishing and other parts that are really flourishing. Why?  And that's because this comes back to Monica's point on connections  - people have chosen to connect and connect in a way which brings out the best of the human human capacities. And so whilst there's all of these, like I have these worries and things, I'm also really hopeful that, you know, the importance of social connection that people recognize now kicks off a collective action amongst us all to really focus on that, and that'll help induce the noticing capacities. And as I love your three questions, Suzy, it's fantastic. I'm very hopeful that the wisdom will develop and evolve.

Rosemary  1:25:31  
Well, it's time to wrap up. And I was going to ask fantastic panelists, Bob, Jane, and Monica, for their thoughts briefly on where you'd like to see the field flourish into the future. So Bob, I might count what you've just said, as your hopes for the future. And, Jane, what would you like to add to that?

Jane  1:25:56  
I think there's so much possibility. I guess I think more experiments, in organizations. I think the question is, could there be interventions more at the team level, unit level, so that we can see if we can till the soil in a meaningfully different way. I also think, as an organizational scholar that imprinting -  it's really hard to change. How an organization is birthed, and what it's  culture or soil is like when it's born is really hard to change over time. And I think there should be training of entrepreneurs, and people doing or organizational startups about how to design for flourishing from inception. And the final point I would make in going back to my strategy. My strategy roots is, I wish there were much more connection between the conversation that we're having about organizational capabilities, kinds of virtuous organizational capabilities, and what it means to be able to compete in a sustainable and impactful way. So I feel like the divorce or the separation between the fields of psychology / organizational /strategy is really potentially hindering the potential impact of this.

Rosemary  1:27:22  
Yes. Excellent point. Monica, how about for you?

Monica  1:27:26  
Briefly, Rosemary, I want to build on where Jane ended there and just say that early on in our discussion today, there were questions about how do we convince the leaders? Or how do we get the C suite interested. And I think that one of the ways that we do that is by connecting the work that we're doing in evermore imaginative ways to the things that we must pay attention to, and the things that we're just on the edges of knowing. So we're a little bit out of our comfort zone as researchers stepping into what the edges of what we don't know. But for me, right now, that means that I'm working with a interdisciplinary group of scholars to create an event in November called Realizing a Compassionate Planet. And we're trying to sincerely bring compassion science into dialogue with climate science. We have a couple of the world's best climate scientists, we're running the conference right alongside the UN gathering of the parties, CoP 26, in Scotland, where all of the world's policymakers are debating how we create a more ecologically sustainable world. And if we don't have compassion, and shared humanity in that conversation, we're missing the opportunity to really bring what we care about to the table. And I don't know how to do it, but I'm dedicated to trying and I think looking for the spaces where people already are tackling the big global issues is where we have to find a way to bring our voice and we can't be scared of stepping into that space.

Rosemary  1:29:14  
Fantastic. I totally agree and I mean, maybe that's the way Jane into that schism between the sort of competitive approach to things and wanting virtuous organizations and there's a great desire to work for an organization with a purpose and there's a social impact. I'm teaching sustainability in one subject at the moment and positive psych in the other and the two need to come together. So fantastic discussion. Thank you so much. Thank you, everybody, for creating an excellent commentary on the chat. So being as connected as we can be in this way. So much to say about today. I'll be creating a website with my colleagues and we'll put different resources that we've talked about today up there as well as a recording. And we do hope to continue the idea of a community of practice if anyone's interested in jumping on board and helping with that. And with a possible topic next year of exactly that space of the kind of the people on the planet part and what the positive approach can bring to that. So thank you everybody, particularly our North American colleagues for tuning in to the funny time of day and to Bob, as well. So it's been a great, great session.

Suzy  1:30:41  
Thank you, Rosemary for being wonderful co host and again, thanks to Monica, Jane and Bob and everyone on the chat. It's been it's been so lively. The two words I think someone said were inspired and connected. That's how I feel too. So thank you so much. 

Rosemary  1:30:57  
Thank you.