PURPOSE, INC.

Participants:

Michael Young

Bill Shireman

Trammell Crow

https://www.amazon.com/This-Together-Republicans-Democrats-Capitalists/dp/0985452498

Michael Young:

Welcome to the Purpose, Inc., the podcast where we discuss corporate purpose and stakeholder capitalism. I'm your host, Michael Young.

I love politics. I always have. But I think we must confess and admit at the moment in this country to a vast and painful disproportion between the machinery of our politics and the quality of the government it has produced and the value of the outcomes for the citizenry. And one might say well, that's because we have divisions in politics. But we've always had divisions.

People are different by their very nature. We hold differing views and we have political parties that represent those views or at least we hope. And so, divisions are not new but what what's now different is that we live in an age where the political media industrial complex has amplified those political cleavages and social divisions to the extent that there is now virtually no space in our civic life for respectful dialogue, thoughtful deliberation, evidence-based problem solving let alone civility or effective government.

And I would say—and others have—that the proximate cause of this is a media landscape that is now powered by revenue maximizing algorithms that create filter bubbles designed to inflame our lizard brain emotions and a business model structured to manufacture and amplify fear and outrage. And this weaponization of division has forced us into segregated thought bubbles where the views of others, if they're expressed at all, are caricatured and mocked and where we see one another as enemy combatants rather than members of the same tribe, the same species, the same family who may fundamentally disagree but need one another to work through and solve the big problems that we face as a society, things like global pandemic, climate change, social inequities, racial injustice. Just picking those out of thin air. So, rather than seeking compromise and solutions, we're being trained by the political media industrial complex to fight one another rather than see that we're all in this together.

And so, that's what we're going to talk about on this on this episode. My guests today are Bill Shireman and Trammell Crow, two individuals who have spent their lives finding common ground and bringing sworn enemies together to the same table to find solutions that we can agree upon.

Bill Shireman is the founder and President and CEO of Future 500. Future 500 is a non-profit consultancy that builds trust between companies, advocacy groups, investors and philanthropists to advance business as a force for good.

Trammell Crow is an entrepreneur and philanthropist and he's the founder of EarthX which is the largest annual exposition and forum showcasing initiatives, research, innovations and policies and corporate practices serving the environment. And I think Trammell provides proof that middle American conservatives love the planet just as much as coastal progressives. And both men are really studies in contradiction. They identify as Republicans and environmental activists, social conservatives and free market enthusiasts. And what they're doing is finding innovative ways to solve complex environmental and social challenges. And their message is simple, that we can't meet the global health crisis, the climate crisis, the economic crisis or any future crisis as a divided nation, that we're not enemies, we are family and that we have to work through our differences together and that the real enemy is polarization.

Together they have launched a cross-partisan campaign called In This Together and they've written a book by the same title which I have read and I can commend to you and I will link it in the show notes. And their audience for the book is the 98 million voters who are dissatisfied with both political parties but those who identify as bridge builders and problem solvers. And they point out that there is a super majority of voters in this country, about 70%—call them traditional liberals or passive liberals or the politically disengaged or traditional conservatives—who are together open-minded and fair-minded and are willing to hear one another and solve problems together.

And what's incredible about these two, about Bill and Trammell is that they're not interested in ideological litmus tests or interest group manipulation. What they want to do is create a new approach where we can elevate politics back to what it is meant to be which is a vehicle for us to work out our differences. And what they suggest and we get into this in the discussion today is that we need to harness our collective power, our aggregate buying power and our voting power to take back control. And so, this is an absolute spot on conversation right for the times ahead of our coming election. So, I'm thrilled and delighted to welcome Bill and Trammell to the podcast. Bill and Trammell, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

Bill Shireman:

Happy to be here.

Trammell Crow:

Thank you, Michael.

Michael Young:

Thank you. And so, we're going to get into the book primarily, All in This Together and I think one of the things that for me leapt to the eye when I started reading the book was this comment in there about the fact that there's virtually no space right now in our civic life for—and I'm quoting—"for respectful dialogue, thoughtful deliberation, evidence-based problem solving and civility in the public square or effective government.” And I will say this. I find your analysis and your critique of our current political system withering on point but in a way hopeful. And so, I'd like to just turn it over to the two of you. First of all, unpack that analysis of how we got here and get into what are the immediate causes of this and then where do we go from here.

Trammell Crow:

Well, Michael, Bill is the primary author, the thought leader and smarter than I am.

Michael Young:

So, Bill, all questions to you.

Bill Shireman:

No, not all questions to me. And I'm not smarter than the guy who has a photographic memory and reads a book a night. But Trammell and I know maybe we can cut this part out of the tape or maybe it works great. I don't know. But the points that are right there under question number one which he just read, they are what we've been talking about. Do you want to start it and then I'll finish it?

Trammell Crow:

I'm not sure if I'm saying this the right way. But how do we find ourselves in this mess, in this polarization, in this angry world? Maybe I don't parse things up finely enough. But I would say it's our zeitgeist. It's the spirit of the times. It's worldwide the way governments are changing and populism is the new direction that we're going in. But to be specific about it, I'd say it's the big data, the algorithms that separate us all and put us in our little camps and then the political industry which has just gotten worse and worse and brought us to this point.

Bill Shireman:

Yeah. It is that political industry which has always been there and the business model for politics for a long time has been fear. But now we have these two new elements of big data and social media and they are making scientific, they're getting so far ahead of human cognition that they are really trapping us before we even realize it into these echo chambers that keep us at odds with one another and it’s driven by advertising, driven by the advertising dollar. It's not driven by a desire to destroy the planet or the country. It's driven by advertising dollars.

Trammell Crow:

So, you could say that this again worldwide global trade hyper capitalism has just finally emphasized profit so much that our wonderful establishment of the press is not what it used to be. It's become business.

Bill Shireman:

There's no serious news media. There's simply entertainment that is cast as news. I mean the criteria isn't truth. The criteria is clicks.

Michael Young:

Right. Yeah, I heard somebody say it's not about the first amendment, it's about second gulf stream. So, but I guess the hopeful part in the book in what I saw is yes, there are these warring factions and there's this information industrial complex that leads us to alienation and separation. But in the book, you talk about the super majority of traditional liberals and traditional conservatives who are open-minded and willing to hear one another and work together. So, could you bring us into that thought space?

Trammell Crow:

Bill?

Bill Shireman:

I'll start and Trammell, I want to hear about EarthX because EarthX is really doing this. But there is a 70% broad center of us that really can work out any of the big challenges that we face even the wedge issues which are now abortion, guns, immigration and climate. Those are issues that are used by the political industry. They never want them resolved because they're highly profitable and they divide people into these neat little chambers. But 70% of us can work out all four of those issues and more. The problem is that we've been divided into these two separate echo chambers and if you're on the left, all you hear about the right is the very most objectionable things that they could possibly say and if you're on the right, all you hear about the left is the very most objectionable things that they say. So, we're all thinking the other side is all crazy and our side is only partly crazy. So, we're going to side with ours. That's destructive. So, the objective is quite simple. It's to build a bridge between those two 35 percents. Build a bridge of about 5 million people that can connect that 70% majority together again and EarthX is a part of that bridge.

Trammell Crow:

Well, I like to be dragged in kicking. You mean you insist that I speak about EarthX, do you? Well, I shall.

Bill Shireman:

Yeah.

Trammell Crow:

It’s been an engrossing project for 10 years now. We started Earth Day Dallas with the idea of Earth Day is a time when the environmental group should get out there in front of people, not so much to have a festival and to celebrate but to educate and to incite to action. Doing it in Dallas, of course, made it a different proposition where we couldn't just go start screaming climate at the top of our lungs. So, we learned very, very quickly that bringing people together with different points of view was the approach that we had to take here. And now even though we're online, it seems that so many people agree with the idea of opposing points of view that I've met in the environmental world, people out in the field, they appreciate what we're doing a great deal. So, this theme of speaking of things in ways that haven't been, different voices sitting together, Republicans and Democrats on the same stage, ocean expert meeting a sustainable rancher is what we've created and it's what's necessary to get ourselves out of this fix where we're so polarized.

Bill Shireman:

It's really the most authentic rainforest in the environmental and sustainability community. Every species of human being is there. We've got men and women. We have a special program with women and we've got the corporations, we've got oil companies, we've got tech companies, we've got billionaire donors, we've got mainstream investors and, of course, ethnically and racially and religious and so on. We've got a tremendous diversity of people at EarthX and when you get these people together, there is a chemistry that results in new possibilities. Just like physical chemistry does, you get these people together and a lot of possibilities come into being. We've changed whole markets globally, the forestry market and we're beginning to change markets around plastic and we're failing to change markets around climate unfortunately because of the political barriers. But all of this is possible when you bring diverse, truly diverse people together.

Trammell Crow:

These accomplishments in rainforest and ocean and so forth are things that Bill has done through his Future 500 corporate sustainability work and that conference also occurs at our place as well. What really excites me as an example of this are the hunters and fishers as wildlife conservationists which is difficult for many people to accept because they just don't understand that the United States of America is a walking laboratory of how we have so many mammalian of species healthy with healthy populations because of hunters. But they've come to us after 10 years here in Dallas. Dallas is an epicenter of hunting and fishing and they've come to us after watching us happen for so long and realizing that we're safe territory for different points of view as a group of wildlife conservationists and have wanted to reach out their hands and have dialogue with the environmentalists, the conservationists and the environmentalists. And if that can happen in this day and age, it is stunning to me and the environmentalists have not been difficult to entice into such a dialogue.

Bill Shireman:

And that's extremely important because half the environmental movement is really missing in action politically right now. The environmental movement is represented as a liberal progressive Democratic cause. But conservatives, Republicans, libertarians, there are huge numbers of conservationists there, they have traditionally led the conservation movement and they form together a super majority of Americans who are dedicated to this. So, we got to bring the hunters and the ranchers and the fishers and the farmers together with the vegans and the vegetarians and the liberals and progressives because we all love the land. We all love the Earth.

Michael Young:

That was another thing that really struck me about the book and both of your backgrounds and the work that you're both doing in this space is and I appreciate the mammalian diversity. I think what you're talking about is a level of cognitive diversity that I think that is exactly what the algorithms are cutting against is cognitive diversity among ourselves. We're sorting geographically. Right? And so, progressives and conservatives don't mix and mingle. So, this idea that you two walk the walk in in bringing people together and have done for a really long time. And Bill, I know from talking to Erik Wohlgemuth at Future 500 on the podcast in season one, he really unpacked the theory of change and you both have brought sort of warring factions to the table and I think that is a mighty, mighty effort. I'm just hopeful. Can you guys solve this by November 3rd?

Bill Shireman:

I think by November 4th.

Michael Young:

Fourth. Okay, great. Excellent.

Bill Shireman:

Yeah. It may take a little extra time. And that could be in 2024.

Michael Young:

Okay, good. I'm counting on you guys. But could we just unpack for a minute and kind of double click on this idea of how both liberals and conservatives are only partly right about climate and the planet and where are each right and where each wrong? And then where do we have to overlap those two circles to get some movement on climate?

Bill Shireman:

I live inside both echo chambers. And so, I've had a chance to be completely baffled and gradually get some ideas about how they work together. But conservatives have traditionally a constrained view of people and nature. The conservatives tend to think that people are selfish by and large and that nature or the world out there is dangerous and that's the running assumption. So, they look out at the world and they say people are going to take our stuff if we don't protect it and there are creatures in the forest or other people across the border that are going to attack us if we're not careful. That's their outlook on the world. So, I call them the protectors. Their focus is on protecting what we have. They want to protect their families, their nation, their communities and that's all very good. Progressives have the opposite tendency of the worldview. They think of people as selfless, people will always do for each other first and nature is supportive. There's always enough out there for everybody. So, they are the liberators. They look out and they see oppressors that are stopping people from doing what's natural to them and they seek to liberate them. That's a great combination. The protectors to protect what we have, the liberators to release what we can be. But in our politics, we have separated those two human impulses which are made to go together and we put one group in one side to go crazy on the idea that we're at danger and we put the other group on the other side to go crazy on the idea that we're all oppressed. And so, we have these very dysfunctional communities. That's where it comes from. We understand if we're real human beings that people are both selfish and selfless, that nature is both supportive and dangerous. That's what we need to deal with. We can only do that together.

Michael Young:

Got it. Well, and maybe just unpack further the sort of the costs and the risks that we're facing economically, environmentally. Obviously, COVID then just layers atop planetary warming and so does economic distress. This is obviously a unique time. What are some of the immediate things? And just for shorthand, I think I talk about corporate purpose. I think the thought, the intuition here is about bringing more purpose to politics. And so, how can we make some real progress on this and given the existential risks that we're facing now, how do we come together?

Bill Shireman:

Well, we are way out on a limb as a planet. We got more than 7 billion people on the planet. The numbers continue to grow exponentially. It's extremely dangerous and we're beginning to see the consequences of a single global ecosystem that is tightly connected. It's the most dangerous thing in a rainforest if you've got just a monoculture because anything can come in and spread and destroy the forest and that's where we are globally as a human culture. We're a global monoculture, an industrial monoculture. We've been forcing ourselves down the road of physical growth much, much further than is safe for us because we're afraid of moving into a culture that becomes better, not just bigger. We've got these institutions that are wonderful institutions, big government, big corporations, big labor unions and big NGOs and they came into power collectively in the 1940s and they haven't let go of power. We don't need to overthrow those big institutions. We need to re-enter them as human beings and realize that they were created by human beings to serve our purposes, they are not the power, we are and reanimate them with real human beings. So, that's why companies to do good, we have to make it legal and natural for companies to look at the most good that they can do and to profit from that. That means changing some of the rules.

Trammell Crow:

But not by regulation, by incentives.

Bill Shireman:

Yeah. Regulation just means you're making big government even bigger and when big government gets bigger, big corporations get bigger and the left sees it as corporatism, the right sees it as statism. It really is corporate statism and it's not because the state is bad or corporations are bad. It's because people have opted out. We've somehow figured that they're different that they actually exist when they're just legal constructs in our minds. We have all the money and all the power. The institutions have learned to get it from us but it's a pretty simple matter for us to take it aside and use it to make them better.

Michael Young:

Yeah, that's great. And I think as you were talking, Bill, I was thinking about that traditional market-focused conservatives will hold up Adam Smith as the ultimate arbiter of what should make decisions, the market and the invisible hand. And I think forgotten in that is that Smith made a fairly blunt and withering critique of both monopoly capitalism and government overreach and cronyism. So, I think that often gets forgotten and I think it's interesting to see contemporary views as vegans and hunters that we are both of those things and I think we cannot go to one extreme or the other.

Trammell Crow:

Quoting Adam Smith can be really dangerous. Unfettered capitalism was not Adam Smith and it just it seems that's the way people misinterpret it nowadays. The book that he wrote just before that I believe, like in 1775 or something, was the requirement for capitalism to work is a commonly shared value system and that's what we're trying to do without. Doesn't work that way.

Bill Shireman:

Yeah. We've so mechanized this. I mean it's absurd the degree to which data has enabled us to mechanize the profit of the process of profit diversion and profit maximization so that we're not even operating. People talk about being fearful of when artificial intelligence occurs because how will we know. Well, that's kind of where we are. We've outsmarted ourselves with our machines. We're now trapped inside them. But we still have enough self-awareness to step outside of that and take charge of the machines.

Michael Young:

And maybe if you could just unfurl for me “The Declaration of Interdependence” because I think there are a number of ideas in there that I'd like to hear you both talk about.

Bill Shireman:

Trammell, do you want to go through it there and then I could talk about it?

Trammell Crow:

You wrote it.

Bill Shireman:

It was a group. It was quite a collection of people actually that wrote it including David Brooks, The New York Times columnist and the representatives from about 20 different groups that are working to reunite the country and you can see them all at InThisTogetherAmerica.org, all the groups that participated. But “The Declaration of Interdependence” really is a recognition that our differences are a strength. We are reaching out to what we call solutions voters who are those voters who understand that even though they might be strong progressives or traditional conservatives, they are not responding to fear. They are pragmatic in their idealism. They respect each other. And by signing the declaration, we agree to work together and bring our best ideas to the table. We need 5 million people to sign this because that's 5% of the voting population and that's enough to win any battleground race in the country. It's enough to change the business model for politics. But what it's really aimed at is genuinely understanding diversity. The current business and political model is based on a lowest common denominator of us. It takes our liberal fears and our conservative fears and intensifies them. That's lowest common denominator. It turns off everything about us that's really human. What we're focused on is our uncommon denominators, the ways that we differ from each other because that's what makes us human and when we bring our differences together, that's what makes us whole.

Trammell Crow:

We're characterized as being much more different than we really are. Innovation, for instance, is something that's attributed to the Republicans at this time but most of the cleantech innovators I know are Democrat. [foreign language - Viva deteronce? 00:31:03]

Bill Shireman:

Exactly. Yeah, Republicans are good to talking about innovation but they tend to be conservative and protective of the past. Progressives claim to want to march us forward and they're better really in some ways in the marketplace making marketplace ideas work than some of the conservatives out there. So, we really need each other together.

Trammell Crow:

But the unifying—I'm getting off subject here—the unifying similarity that we all require and that I think we all respect is science. I'm talking about from the environmental angle again.

Bill Shireman:

Yeah, science is just nature. Science is just our attempt to understand how nature works. It's central to environmentalism and the environment is the one issue of 20 that we have surveyed extensively around. It's the one issue that most unifies the left and the right. So, it is time for us to use the environment as a unifying issue that can help us to fix democracy because if we don't fix democracy, we can't fix climate. We can’t save—we might be able to save the oceans but if we can't fix climate, the oceans are gone too. So, we've got to get together. The environment is the way to do it. EarthX and EarthX TV are really right now—and we hope this isn't true down the road—but really right now the only place where all of these communities get together.

Trammell Crow:

It really seems to be true. There are a lot of media sources, of course, but there's none that is full-time and haven't found one yet that covers all the issues. Some are just conservationists or just climate. Some of them have a few verticals. But since we don't know any better down here, we're saying well, y'all come.

Bill Shireman:

And it turns out that's really what we all need.

Michael Young:

And a couple of questions on EarthX, Trammell. When is the next and how will it be held, presumably virtually?

Trammell Crow:

Oh, well, last April, we had to cancel our event five weeks before it happened. But we threw about eight of the conferences online and realized that would be the way to go. We started this EarthX TV we call it on website and social media about four weeks ago and have had hundreds of hours of programming. But to answer your question, this October 22 is what we call Half Earth Day because it's halfway between April 22's and we'll have a celebration and a number of speakers then. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, October 19th to 21st is the Conservation Conference, Africa United States, hunting, ranching, forestry in addition to wildlife conservation. Something that we can do that other groups don't seem to be able to is energy conference on hydrocarbon and that's Thursday and Friday, the 22nd and 23rd of October. So, they're all on EarthXTV.org.

Michael Young:

Fantastic. And I'll link those in the show notes so that folks have access to those and we'll definitely check out EarthX TV and those upcoming events. Thank you for that summary. We're not almost up on time. So, I wanted to just talk through a couple of closing remarks here for you both. And the book is out now, correct?

Bill Shireman:

Yes, it is.

Michael Young:

Okay, good. And we'll also link that in the show notes. But just if you could both maybe summarize the path forward and you've well laid out the theory for change. What are some steps that each of us as individuals and in our broader business and professional lives should be thinking about and doing in addition to signing the declaration? Just quickly if you could both summarize what would you like to see, what action can we all take.

Bill Shireman:

Number one, what we can do is recognize our common power as citizens. This is why 5 million people coming together to use two sources of those power, one is our buying power, the other is our voting power. Five million people use their buying power to motivate the top brands on the planet to bring new sustainability practices across their supply chain, we will single-handedly be able to protect our living ecosystems and nourish them. If those same 5 million hold our politicians accountable left to right for solutions, we will change the balance of power in politics and be able to get the vital policy changes that we need. But the other thing that we can do and that's what we do together, that's the common denominator. The uncommon denominator is each of us in our distinctiveness. We're moving from a consumer economy to one that could be a creative economy to realize the other half, really the human half of human beings. We're not just consumers. We're not just machines. We're not just destroyers. We also are creators and everybody has got a creative potential that's distinct to them. So, those two things, what's common to us and then bring forward your creativity. That's a part of the new culture that's waiting to come into being.

Trammell Crow:

I've learned a new German word, Michael, and it's called "Siechtumsschulung" and Siechtumsschulung is our zeitgeist. It means the discovery of new wisdom after emerging from a long-protracted disease. We've had a lot of time to think. Even the most frivolous people I know have actually introspected in the last several months. So, my interesting question would be to free yourselves, even you conservatives, free yourselves of the way that we've done things and the mentality that we've had and let's make a new normal what we want it to be and Siechtumsschulung is just too great an opportunity to pass up. Let's not return to the divisiveness.

Michael Young:

Fantastic. Thank you. Thank you for that. All right, gentlemen, Bill, Trammell, we are unfortunately going to have to leave this here. But I am very grateful to you both for coming on the podcast.

Trammell Crow:

Thank you.

Bill Shireman:

Well, thank you, Michael.

Conclusion:

The Purpose, Inc. Podcast is a production of Actual Agency, helping innovators communicate in a changing world. More at www.Actual.Agency.

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