How to Lead Collaboratively with Simon Mainwaring

57. How to Lead Collaboratively with Simon Mainwaring

“I think each one of us needs to do things that are relevant, authentic, and specific to your business.”

—Simon Mainwaring

We First

Podcast Transcription

Hello, I’m Michael Kurland, CEO and co-founder of Branded Group, an award winning facility, maintenance and construction management company that services multisite commercial properties such as retail restaurants, health care facilities and educational institutions. Welcome to the BeBetter podcast. Each week I interview thought leaders from a variety of industries who will share their stories and the lessons they learn as they strive to be better for their clients, partners, employees and their community. Are you ready to be better? Hello and welcome to another episode of the BeBetter podcast. I’m your host, Michael Kurland. Joining me today, Simon Mainwaring, CEO and founder of WeFirst and super excited to have you here today. Simon, why don’t you tell the audience a little bit more about who you are and what you do?

Simon: Thanks, Michael, and thanks for the chance to share some thinking with your listeners. I’m the CEO and founder of WeFirst, we’re a strategic consultancy that is focused for the last 10 years on building purpose driven brands. And we help them develop their strategy, what to say and how to say it. You know, their culture building so and rallies around it and also the impact storytelling so that they actually get the credit that’s due. I’m also The New York Times bestselling author of WeFirst, which is a book that came out a while ago. I got a new book coming out called Lead with Way. But I think most importantly, I’m an Australian dad with two wonderful daughters and my wife and I here in L.A. and yeah, all this good.

Michael: Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. I am super excited for our conversation and I want to get the audience fired up, too, because we’ve got a lot of good stuff to unpack today. So we were talking preshow about your kind of your bebetter story and who you were leading up to the book WeFirst and I would like to, I’d like you to kind of tell your story of how you got there, like who you were in your earlier stages of your career and what you were doing and then how you got to where you’re at and your first book.

Simon: Thanks for the question. I started out as an ad guy, actually. I was a lawyer. I trained as a lawyer in Australia and and studied fine arts. And I realized that you can’t make any money painting. So I ended up in the advertising world. Words and pictures come together and I worked in agencies like DBB and Saatchi & Saatchi in Australia. Then I worked in London and Leagas Delaney and Saatchi & Saatchi, which was, you know, London was sort of hallowed ground for advertising back in the day then. And then I was fortunately headhunted over to come and work at Widening Kennedy, which is Nike’s agency here in Portland. And then I came down to L.A. as worldwide creative director on Motorola, and we played a part in launching something called the Razr phone. That was a big deal back then that, you know, all of that, oddly enough, Michael left me feeling I didn’t even know what it was empty or I wasn’t sure what was wrong. You know, I was a young dad with young kids, and yet I was disgruntled. I was restless and I was feeling very disillusioned with work. And so I left working as a staff guy and was a freelancer. And for about six years I was like the cleaner from Pulp Fiction. I was sort of like, you know, the guy you call at the last minute when you got to fix a brand or an agency, need some help or a brand itself needs some help to keep a client or keep customers out there. And I did that for six years. But again, I found myself walking around my backyard here just up here in L.A., kids inside in the kitchen. I’m in the backyard. I’m like, why am I unhappy? What’s wrong with this picture? And I couldn’t work it out. And then as circumstance would have it, I walked into the kitchen of my house back then and there was an answering machine on the counter which tells you how long ago this was and how old I am, which is just self incriminating. But anyway, there was five messages, one from my mom yelling very loudly down the phone, Simon, pick up the phone, pick up the phone because she was calling from Sydney and there’s a time difference to L.A. Then my mom, again, even more distraught, then my sister yelling down the phone, then my mother very upset, yelling down the phone. And then finally, her last message was Simon Dad died, call us when you wake up. And it turns out that he was trying to call me to say goodbye, and I didn’t hear it because of the time difference, but those words call us when you wake up took on even greater meaning for me. I hadn’t seen my dad for five years. I was disillusioned professionally in terms of just selling things for the sake of selling things. And I think in hindsight, I was just looking for more meaning in my life and more meaning in my work. And it makes you a better husband, a better father, a better person, a better contributor. And I think we all want that for ourselves. And again, as serendipity would have it, I happened to read the speech that Bill Gates gave at the World Economic Forum that year and then later on the floor of the General Assembly that was called creative capitalism. And he said, listen, given the global economic meltdown, we need better help from the private sector. And so I spent three years writing a book called WeFirst to answer that challenge that launched the company. WeFirst the company’s been going for 10 years and here we are.

Michael: Well, that’s I mean, that’s all an amazing, amazing story. Thank you for being so vulnerable and sharing about your father. I understand what it’s like to lose a father. So that’s never easy to bring up.

Simon: Yeah, father-son relationships are hard, right, guys?

Michael: I mean, the audience knows my story and definitely a lot to unpack there. But again, I would do anything for five more minutes of time just to sit with my dad. So thank you for sharing all that. And so talk to me about the first book and WeFirst. You wrote it because you were inspired by Bill Gates’s speech. But what was really in it? What was your message?

Simon: So, you know, I think it’s a really good question, because sometimes you think when an author writes a book, they’ve got some message that they divine, that they just have to get out there. My case was really simple. It was really dumb. I just looked around and said with this global economic meltdown, I’m not happy with it. Why can a few people do disproportionately well, and it comes at the cost of everyone’s homes and health care and happiness all around the world. And I kind of sat there thinking, you know, what is a way to solve for this or what’s the root of the problem? And I really just sort of level it down to this sort of me first mentality, which is obviously something everybody knows about that, you know, I thought, well, what’s the antidote to that? What’s the tonic to that? And it really is well, in my mind, it was new vernacular that we first, which is all about just elevating the well-being of the collective so that everyone can do well. And the only reason I did that was that I had experience writing work that really had a large cultural movement. When you do that like Nike, when you do it like launching something like the RAZR phone and so on, and you go, well, what if we use the power of this storytelling to actually do good and answer what was in Bill Gates challenge and why not do it even more so when platforms like Facebook had just started? Twitter wasn’t even there. Arab Spring was happening, you know, and, you know, Twitter was just coming out of the gates. And so anyway, all of that is to say that I thought that if we could facilitate a dialog between brands and consumers and being and institutions and citizens, we could probably thrive things in a positive direction. And I think to some extent we’ve done that. But I also think there’s been a missed opportunity there. I think a lot of the platforms that sort of leaned into the advertising dollars more so than the impact.

Michael: I mean, I totally agree with you, especially with those social media platforms, they’re not what they used to be. They’re not what they were intended for. And now it’s all about the almighty dollar. Right. And I think I think even they were they released something the other day about Zuckerberg had said he was going to go out and say everyone should get vaccinated. And it’s all everyone on his team overruled them and kind of iced him out and he couldn’t even get his message out to the people or something along those lines. And it’s like, so what does Facebook stand for anymore? I don’t know. I mean, that’s a whole other show right.

Simon: But I will say the one thing about that is how important Facebook, all of these social media is that social media companies, what it’s done is it’s basically created a different experience or understanding of what reality is. You, on the basis of what you shared and what you look at, have created enough sort of input to create, you know, predictive analytics that allow them to share data with you that is a function of that data, you know, that they suspect you’ll be interested in. So it means that your experience of reality is informed by the information that has been shared with you. And the same with me. But increasingly we find we’ve got these different experience of reality. So it’s very hard to solve for a problem when you can’t even agree on what the reality is in the first place. And I think that’s troubling.

Michael: That’s very troubling. So you wrote this book with the hope of bringing, you said earlier you’re part of conscious capitalism, is that correct?

Simon: Yeah. I mean, where B-Corp best for the world, we’re part of the conscious capitalism movement and also, you know, have been involved for a long time with sustainable brands and real leaders. We’re deeply invested in this world. Yeah.

Michael: So what what’s your hope between those corporations, those partnerships that you have and that you’re trying to sustain with brands going forward? What do you want companies like mine or Facebook or anybody else out there that’s listening to do, what’s the call to action? Because I think I get it, I, I think I get it. We definitely are trying to be better ourselves by doing our one for one program, which the audience knows about, you know, sharing a meal for every service call we complete and doing things through our partners of OC Coast Cleaners and Habitat for Humanity. But what are you calling for? All these other companies that have no idea what a B-Corp or conscious capitalism is to do going forward?

Simon: Well, you know, the business case for being more purposeful is really strong now. And there’s several components, you know, firstly, all of us out there are intimately aware of the challenges we face, like climate, plastic in the oceans and so on through media every day. Younger demographics are coming through millennials and GenZ, who really look at the world through a values based lens. And they’re your employees, their, you know, your customers. And you’ve got to make sure that you’re aligned in terms of, you know, if you want them to support your brand, buy from you, work for you and so on. And then thirdly, I think, you know, the social connectivity between these tools mean that if a brand calls you out, it spreads very, very quickly and it can really cause reputational damage and so on. So all of those things have come together to really inspired business to look at what it does differently and even more so in the last two years, the heightened awareness around the climate change. And then look at Covid, the way we’ve treated the planet, how we’re treating each other has just played out around the world or the most tragic circumstances. And it’s heightened the expectation on everyone in business to be really articulate and intentional about the role they’re playing in the world. Otherwise, we’ve got the great resignation going on. We’ve got people reforming their priorities in their lives, redesigning their lives and not wanting to work for firms that they think are part of the problem rather than part of the solution. So what do I want people to do? I really think there’s a big opportunity for brands, whether you’re a founder of a startup or the CEO of a global corporation, to shift their focus to whatever degree they’re guilty of shall we say, of a me first focus, which is just about profit for profit sake and really just sort of, you know, arguably taking advantage of people and compromising to generating our environment and really leaning into serving the whole system, which is the natural systems, the planet on which we live and the social systems which make our lives in business possible. And the reason is this, brands can’t survive in societies that fail. I don’t care what widget you make. You know, if the climate is affecting your supply chain and you can’t grow the cotton to make the t shirt or you can’t get the person to come and work for you because they don’t like what you stand for or increasing number of conscious consumers won’t buy your stuff because they don’t know what you care about. It’s going to hurt your bottom line. So I would like people to be self-interested by serving others.

Michael: I think you’ve brought up so many great points there and thank you, thank you for that call to arms, because this is, you know, when we talked preshow, you were talking about your fear of climate change. And the one thing that you said to me was what kind of environment is going to be here for our children? And you said we had in 2021 the hottest summer on record. And the fact is that next year will then be the hottest summer on record and it’ll continue to be the hottest summer on record until we make change. Right?

Simon: So, I mean, according to the data that’s out there in terms of recorded human history globally, this year was the hottest summer ever. And it’s also going to be the coolest summer for the rest of your life.

Michael: Yes, that’s what you said. Way better than I did.

Simon: I mean, just think about that like, depending on where you are in the world, lots of people love to go to Greece. And Greece was on fire, floods in Europe, Germany and nearby countries. I mean, you look at what’s happened in California, where I live and Australia where I come from. I mean, the world on fire. I mean, this is not some intellectual exercise, some wonky abstract idea for, you know, stuffed shirts. This is our visceral daily experience of life and it’s going to only increase. And we’ve got no one to blame. If we don’t change what we’re doing now in terms of having the negative impact and also increasing the positive impact, we only have ourselves to blame.

Michael: I totally agree and I just keep thinking of that, I don’t remember the name of the Matthew McConaughey movie where he went to space and he was like trying to find, I think, another planet. And he ended up going through it was a Christopher Nolan movie. But the reason he went to space was because the whole earth was just a desert wasteland. Do you know which one I’m talking about?

Simon: I don’t know that one but you know I have heard various people talking about basically the Earth becoming this light industrial wasteland. And there was a movie I saw when I was surfing for a movie the other night. And basically the plot was two or three different planets that humanity had inhabited beyond Earth because Earth was barren. And then those planets that inhabited, we’re fighting each other to be the one in control. And I was like, you know, how many sometimes predict the future? I put my head in my hands and said, oh, my God, is this what we’re going towards? We deserve to be out of business as a species. We’re just like two dumb by half. So anyway, let’s hope not.

Michael: Yeah, definitely. Let’s hope not. Yeah. There’s a couple of movies out there that there’s one there’s another one with Matt Damon where they’re down on earth and it’s a wasteland and all the rich have moved up to a space station and they’re trying to, whatever they’re doing, I can’t remember the name of that one either.

Simon: But we’re totally depressing people right now.

Simon: I’ll tell you where I see the opportunity. There’s an incredible opportunity right now. Like also I’m going to be a cynic and then I’ll be an optimist. As a cynic, I think there’s a lot of legacy businesses and industries that are going to not want things to change because they’re making gobs of money the way things are, that’s going to work against us. I think there’s a lot of people around the world, understandably, that kind of accept they’re going, listen, certain nations have really enjoyed all the benefits at the banquet table of capitalism for a long time. And we want our term. We want to have flat screen. We want our cars. We want our iPads or whatever it is. And there’s also the vast majority and growing majority of people around the world that live under ten dollars a day for whom wanting to change the world is a luxury they can’t even contemplate. So I understand cynics who say, how is this going to change? And here’s why I’m optimistic. Never before have we all been so acutely aware of the challenges we face. There’s never been an existential crisis of this level before, something larger than ourselves. Never before have we had the investor class at the table where you’ve got all these big pension funds and institutional investors and retail investors through Robinhood saying, hey, we want companies to do better and do good because we’re in trouble and we know about it. And then the third thing is, I think the narrative, the story of business is changing. And so when you get the stakes, the stakeholders and the story together for the first time when we’re already starting to see it and it’s building momentum, we’re starting to see business reengineer itself towards regenerating our future. And that gives me great cause for optimism.

Michael: Yeah, I’m glad to hear the optimistic part of what you just said, because the Senate can be in all of us. Right. And everything you just said. One hundred percent. I mean, I’ve thought the same thing, right. It’s like, do we even want to bring children into the world who, you know, you start going down that tunnel. And that’s that’s not a good place for anyone’s mind to be mine.

Simon: So, no, I’m a dad with a nineteen and a twenty two year old daughter, and they just came back from Australia. They were there for the last 11 months and got stuck there because of quarantine. And they literally surprised me, walked through the door last Monday and I almost wet myself. It was just like, oh my God, I cried, Oh, I’m so happy, Oh my God. But they talked about this, they said, do you think that do you think we should have kids and I’m gutted when I hear that, gutted.

Michael: Yeah, totally. I mean, me and my wife just got married and we’re having the conversation. And I think the end result is, yes, we’re going to have kids. But it’s definitely I mean, it was never a question in my mind. And it’s now like maybe it’s not the best idea, but we’re getting way off topic here. So let’s talk about your new book that you’re coming out with. This is exciting. This this is kind of everything we’ve just been leading up to. So tell the audience the name of the book and when it’s coming out. And then let’s talk about the book.

Simon: Well, it’s called Lead With We The Business Revolution That Will Save Our Future. It’s out now for preorder on Amazon. So I would love the support, love you to go and check it out and I’ll tell you why it’s relevant to you and why it’s important and to be a worthwhile investment of your time. For 10 years, my company has been working with a lot of great, purposeful company startups all the way through a large organizations, Thoms, Timberland, and so many others, helping them accelerate and scale change. And my preoccupation in the last three years is we haven’t been getting far enough, fast enough. And there’s a moment coming in time where if we extrapolated the good that business is doing and sort of drew the line up, it’s getting better and better. We’re more accountable. There’s more scrutiny. But at the same time, if we the timelines we’re working against, they’re contracting. And in I my estimate, and I’m not a data scientist, but anywhere between eight to 12 years is going to be a point at which they come together and we are in serious trouble and it’s too late. And I’ll tell you what’s going to happen at that moment. We are going to show up in ways that are unimaginable today in business. What do I mean? Look at the pandemic. If you told me in February last year that the largest companies in the world, let alone every company around the world, would retool their supply chain, make PPE equipment, make ventilator’s, make meals for medical practitioners, send all their employees home, do unimaginable things. I wouldn’t have believed you, but the crisis brought us together in service of each other and our own survival. We’re going to experience that on a much greater scale. And my articulation of what that mindset is, is leading with we. And rather than wait 10 or 12 years. Let’s start now so we can mitigate the trouble. And so the book is called Lead with We, and it’s a book about the future of collaborative leadership. What does that mean? How do we all work together in new ways to accelerate and scale our impact in ways that drive business growth? Why? Because your employees, investors, your consumers will want to work full, buy from and invest in companies doing good. The market forces will be behind you and it will propel your growth if you’re more intentional and articulate about it. And so the book frames out this narrative, a whole new visioning of business built around the idea of not me first or we first, but really leading with we as a point of departure or a mindset, a process for how you go about business and a higher order aspiration in terms of what success looks like and then it drops down. What does that mean for a CEO? What does that mean for company culture? What does that mean for products and innovation? What does that mean for marketing communications? What does that mean for working pretty competitive collaboratively inside your organization and across sector? And then how do we pull all of that through so that the connectivity between our individual actions and companies that is currently working against us and making the world worse can work for us and regenerate life in a way that it needs to. And it is a very specific, actionable roadmap, whether you’re a startup or a large, complicated company for how to do that based on real world companies that we’ve been working with.

Michael: That’s amazing. I love what you’re saying. So give me an example If you don’t mind, of what a company like myself could do, more or better, like currently we have this One for One program where we’re giving back meals for under privileged, where we’re working on cleaning up the coastlines and we’re trying to build homes through Habitat for Humanity. What else can we be doing? What else can I be doing as a company to work towards this goal?

Simon: It’s a great question. I think each one of us needs to do things that are relevant, authentic, specific to your business. And so all those things that you’re doing to improve other parts of the world, other kind of areas of need, it’s fantastic. You also can layer on top of that how you work collaboratively. What do I mean? That means and I’ll give you an example. There’s a company called Prana, which is a fashion brand. They’ve been around 30 years and they realize there’s a lot of waste going into how that wrapping all their products and shipping them and so on. And so they actually design a folding method that took up less space, required less plastic and really reduce their carbon footprint. They said, what if we do that, why don’t we do it with other people in the industry to reduce our collective impact? And so they started the responsible packaging movement that is now grown to over 100 companies that are inside the footwear and apparel industry, but also beyond in beauty and so on. And so my point is this. It’s wonderful what you’re doing with Habitat for Humanity and meals and all that good stuff that is kind of taking targeted efforts to address acute issues in the society or communities in which you live. What I’m also talking about is layering on synergies by working with other companies inside your industry, outside your industry, treating your employees, your competitors as co-creators of impact. And why is that important? Until we do that, we all have our own little sphere of impact, but it’s limited to us. But we’re not unlocking the synergies, the telescopic synergies as you go up what I call the virtuous spiral of collectivized purpose, where we’ve repurposed business at large and every individual company and then every level of business is not only doing it individually, they’re working together collectively to compound their efforts and to unlock the synergies between them. And I think I think that’s the key to how we accelerate and scale our impact.

Michael: Thank you, that’s very important stuff. I’m glad the audience got to hear that. I recently purchased a pair of these Allbirds shoes. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with the brand. And first of all, they’re super comfortable and I love wearing them. But when they ship me my shoes, they came in a carbon neutral, recyclable box. And also the bag it came in was also recyclable. And so I recycled everything and made sure to stay on the box carbon neutral and just please recycle this. And I think that’s really something I’d like to touch on a little bit more is carbon neutral and how important that is. Do you have climate neutral and sorry, climate neutral, you brought that up in the preshow, can you get into that a little bit.

Simon: I actually talked to Austin from the Climate Neutral organization yesterday. The reality is this. If we really want to address those issues that are a function of how much carbon is entering the atmosphere and dissolving into the oceans and making it more acidic and so on and so on, we need to reduce the amount of carbon. And you see things like eco skys now where businesses can offset their carbon footprint through carbon credits and so on. And you’re seeing lots of companies like Allbirds create carbon calculators that actually help us as consumers go “if you buy this product, this is your carbon footprint, because this is what it took to make those pair of shoes.” All of that is to say that the sooner we draw down carbon and Paul Hawken has a wonderful book called Draw Down and a new book out this week called Regeneration that speaks about this. The sooner we draw down this carbon, the better we can control the rise in temperature that the scientists around the world are predicting between one or two degrees Celsius with enormous consequences for all our lives as a result. So I think the real opportunity for all of us is to first be informed as to a lot of the stuff that we didn’t know about, like what was all the damage being done in those things that we took for granted? Second, we need to take advantage of those alternatives that are out there, like taking the Haitian bag to the shopping store and not getting plastic and all those sorts of little things you can do in your lives. But on another level, you can take it up a notch and say, what companies are you investing in? Have a look at where those pension funds are investing their dollars. Do you really want to enable those who are sort of degenerating the living systems out there and then also look at where you work, look at the contribution you’re making through the programs you do, and also think about what you as a consumer, when you go up and down the shopping aisle, you’re not just buying the stuff you need. You’re voting for the different companies that you want to see survive and thrive in the future. And when you get that lens on everything, you suddenly realize you’re not powerless. You have agency for impact through every lens through which you’re showing up in the world. And in the same way, all of that individual efforts have compounded to create this mess. We need to leverage all of those individual efforts together to provide the solutions.

Michael: Simon, that was that was a powerful statement you just made. Audience, please. I really want you to listen to that. You do have a voice. And it’s easy again for us all to be cynics. Who am I? I just go to the store and I spend my eighty dollars on the brands I like. But if your brands are shitty and they’re just trying to put more money in their stockholders pockets in their CEO’s pockets and they’re not really helping the Earth get back to what it needs to be, then you are making a vote for that. And you are you are casting a ballot.

Simon: Inaction is action. It’s a choice. And everything that you unconsciously buy is enabling something. And I think that point you made is really, really powerful and needs to be stressed. We are not powerless. We are not powerless. We’ve exercised that power unconsciously every day and we’re in a mess.

Michael: Yeah, and it’s what they say when most they say most democracies fall within two hundred years.

Simon: Yeah most civilizations are their own undoing. It’s not external forces.

Michael: Yeah. And we’re way past that. And it’s and I think it’s the word is escaping me right now, but apathetic when it when the citizens of civilizations become apathetic, which is exactly what you just said. Oh, it doesn’t matter what I do. My dollar doesn’t count. My vote doesn’t count. Then that’s when these kinds of things happen and we lose control and then we end up raising the climate by the couple of extra degrees that are going to be very detrimental.

Simon: I think that’s very true. And I mean, this carrot and stick here, the stick is I’m worried as a parent. I love my kids who are sitting out there in the living room. I don’t want them to have a terrible, terrible future. And especially their kids. My grandkids. Oh, my God. So we have a responsibility at a high level. I don’t care if you’re the big, the CEO of the biggest company in the world, you’re still a dad, a father, a brother, an uncle, a son, and engage with that. So, you know, we’re going to have to live with our conscience on that. But on the carrot side, solving for these issues a massive marketplace opportunities. Look at clean beauty, look at clean food, look a clean fashion, look at everyone looking to nature for all the solutions that can provide the products we want without damaging the environment. It’s an absolute gold rush of opportunity for those who want to solve these issues. And let’s lean into that.

Michael: Absolutely. I love it. So it’s been great having you on the show again. Please let the audience know the title of the book and when it comes out so that they can be excited to go get this book.

Simon: Thank you so much. The book is called Lead WithWe. It’s on Amazon for preorder right now. It comes out in November 9th. And you can also go to lead with we.com. There’s some vocoders if you want to buy a bunch for your company and, you know, to really help mobilize everyone or to share that with your CEO or founder or whatever it might be. But we are not powerless. We, in fact, incredibly powerful, but only together. So let’s so let’s put our shoulder in and get to work. And we all have to participate if we’re going to solve for this. So Amazon Lead With Way and also leadwithway.com. And I just really appreciate the chance to sort of share some thinking with everyone.

Michael: Yeah. Great to have you on the show. And like you said, we can crowdsource change if we all get behind it. So thanks, Simon, for coming on an audience until next time. Thank you for tuning in, I hope that today’s episode inspired you to become a purpose driven leader in your career or your community. There’s no doubt that when we lead with purpose, we can change lives. If you enjoyed today’s show, I’d be grateful if you would take a moment to rate us on your preferred listening platform to learn more about Branded Group’s better experience and how we provide industry leading On-Demand facility maintenance, construction management and special project implementation. Visit us at www.branded-group.com is sure to follow us on social media and you can also reach out to me directly on LinkedIn until next time. Be better.