Ep. 7: Beloved Economies with Jess Rimington + Joanna Cea
* Subscribe using your preferred podcasting service by clicking the “subscribe” link in the above audio player*
-
Join host Andrew X along with Jess Rimington and Joanna Levitt Cea, two powerful women who've joined forces to create the incredible book "Beloved Economies." Rooted in historical analysis, accessible truth-telling, and present-day experimentation, their work aims to transform our current extractive systems into more resilient paradigms. Head over to the interwebs right now and order your copy because it's packed with accessible stories and examples of how we can change the rules and create a truly different economic landscape. Whether you're an economics newbie or a hardcore next economy enthusiast, this book will challenge your perception of the working world for the better. If you're tired of the same old economic systems and yearn for a future where power is shared, resilience reigns, and communities thrive, keep listening. Jess and Joanna are about to drop some serious gems that will leave you feeling inspired and empowered with practical guidance. Join us on this journey to demystify love in action and unleash its transformative power in our lives and organizations.
Highlights:
• Jess & Joanna's Respective Journey: Jess and Joanna share personal anecdotes that influenced their professional journeys. Jess bears witness to small town Palo Alto transforming into Silicon Valley and shares her involvement in promoting Star Trek conventions and exposure to diverse communities that sparked her imagination and curiosity about different economic structures. Joanna discusses her involvement with the Buen Vivir Fund, an international investment fund that stands apart from the norm. The fund's decision-making structure is based on grassroots practices for lending, emphasizing power sharing and instead of financial investors reaping all the rewards, the fund's growth goes back into supporting future projects.
• The Love that Catalyzed the Book: The magic truly began when these two phenomenal women met at a women's leadership retreat. Jess wowed Joanna with her spoken word piece, igniting a connection fueled by radical imagination and a shared desire to challenge the structural issues of the economy. They became fast friends, crashing on each other's couches and deepening their exploration of power sharing and alternative ways of working. Little did they know that this friendship would evolve into the Beloved Economies research project, which exceeded all expectations and blossomed into the enlightening book we all need in our lives.
• The Seven Transformational Practices: Jess & Joanna unpack the seven practices that emerged from their longitudinal research study, including 1) shared decision-making power, 2) prioritizing relationships, 3) reckoning with history, 4) seeking difference, 5) sourcing from multiple ways of knowing, 6) prototyping early and often, and 7) trusting there's time. Further, Jess & Joanna discuss how these practices interact and reinforce one another.
-
Jess Rimington
Jess is a next economy strategist focused on the design and ethics of emerging post-capitalisms. Her practice and research is grounded in historical analysis, accessible truth-telling, and present-day experimentation. She is focused on supporting the imagination of small business and organizational leaders to step out of the current extractive systems into more resilient paradigms by transforming how we work. Jess’s work is informed by over a decade of experience leading two global organizations–as both an Executive Director and Managing Director–building cross-cultural teams with innovative work cultures rooted in power-sharing.
Joanna Cea
Joanna Levitt Cea is dedicated to reimagining investment and funding practices to lift up the well-being of all. She has worked in community-driven efforts to stop destructive investments that threaten local livelihoods and ecosystems, and she has also helped launch solutions that enable communities to determine our own economic futures. Joanna led the human rights organization International Accountability Project for eight years, and served as founding director of the Buen Vivir Fund with Thousand Currents.
-
-
-
RTR Themed Intro 0:07
The practices that we collectively saw as a co learning community and the researcher share power, record with history, prioritize relationship, join over the last four,
seek difference, source from multiple ways of knowing, prototype early and often. And trust there's time,
and there's no particular order. That's something we always like to say around the practices that we think is really important, and they're certainly not anything new. So, these deep patterns that emerge are reflective of how life just functions and moves. And we show that from a biomimicry, learning from ecology and biology case studies in the book. And also they're embedded within ways of practice, and organizational design that have deep lineages and cultures and communities of people all around the world for millennia. And when we hear them make me feel like an intuition of remembering right for so many of us.
You ready we get down to business investing in existence, shifting from a system steeped in extraction that steady sapping off peoples and planet to cash and slashing, widening gaps in our access to land wealth, peace, satisfaction. Imagine basing relations on more than transactions. It's time for new pathways, and we need to shape them through our inner landscapes, our relations, our approach our dedication, we're on the road to repair as a commitment to transformation. Welcome to the road to repair a podcast exploring our journey out of a business as usual economy to work, collective healing and liberation.
We are your co hosts Andrew X. Jessica Norwood.
And I'm dickish guy and gar
and we're very excited for this conversation. All right, friends, welcome to another episode of The Road to repair.
Andrew X 2:06
I am blessed to be here with two incredible women. Just Remington and Joanna. Love it. Sarah. Welcome Jess and Joanna.
Joanna Levitt Cea 2:16
Thank you, Andrew.
Jess Rimington 2:17
So happy to be here.
Andrew X 2:18
Yeah, so happy to have you. In a moment, I'm going to invite you to give us a little rundown of each of your highlight reel of your personal background. But just for our listeners, Jess is a next economy strategist focused on the design and ethics of emerging post capitalism's her practice and research is grounded in historical analysis, accessible truth telling and present day experimentation. She is focused on supporting the imagination of small businesses and organizational leaders to step out of the current extractive systems into more resilient paradigms by transforming how we work. Justice work is informed by over a decade of experience leading to global organizations as both an executive director and managing director building cross cultural teams with innovative work cultures rooted in power sharing. That's Jess, y'all. Joanna is dedicated to reimagining investment and funding practices to lift up the well being of all, she's worked in community driven efforts to stop destructive investments that threaten local livelihoods and ecosystems. And she has also helped launch solutions that enable communities to determine our own economic futures. Joanna led the human rights organization international Accountability Project for eight years, and served as the founding director of the when vivere fund with 1000 currents. So we have two heavy hitters in the house and also fresh authors of this incredible book, which you should go on the interwebs right now and order a copy beloved economies. And we'll be talking about that a lot more in this episode today. S o I will send it back over to y'all I don't know who wants to start first. Share with us a little bit about your backgrounds.
Joanna Levitt Cea 4:04
You feel inspired to start just
Jess Rimington 4:05
tell me you did.
Joanna Levitt Cea 4:07
Oh, I guess I'm talking I can't. Well, thank you, Andrew, for sharing the formal background there. I'm not sure what else I would add. I guess just in thinking about my journey to the book, two things come to mind and my life journey. So I'm from Palo Alto, California. And I grew up in a time when that area was transforming from a smaller, sleepier town into what is now like the epicenter of Silicon Valley. And that process just seated in me a lot of questions about what does economic development and quote progress mean? And who benefits who doesn't? And who gets to decide? And my family was supportive of me continuing to follow those questions and my work and studies since then, and then also during my time when I got to be a part of the team 1000 currents a really awesome organization based in Oakland, but with a team all over the world, the opportunity to be a part of imagining and building this totally different kind of investment fund, that one revere fund helped me realize how much so many folks are hungry for stories of different examples. Because every time I just even informally mentioned, what that fund was doing, and how different it was constructed and decided upon the ways returns flowed and everything, people would kind of have this, like, oh, you can do that. You can change the rules. And that's what gave me the juice to do the the hard work of writing a book, which is not easy as anyone who knows, and beyond this collaborative research and learning journey with Jess and all the people who are behind the book in the research, so that we get out there and what we hope is a really accessible way. A lot of stories about yes, you can change the rules, you can do things really differently. And in fact, we need to at this time,
Andrew X 6:00
che that's super critical. And we have quite a range of listeners on this show. Some are completely new to economics and finance. Some people are hardcore next economy, folks. So just on the when vivere fund, can you maybe unpack a little bit more about what distinguishes that fund and your experience with that from what might be the norm?
Joanna Levitt Cea 6:25
Sure. And I'll speak to how it was when we first launched it in 2019. And I know, the team and fund members are currently on a journey of updating it right now. So folks can learn more at 1000 currents.org. But the a couple things really cemented it being different. Number one, we decided to start with a blank slate and bring a founding circle together, everyone was an investor, but not everyone was investing financial capital. So we brought together 10 grassroots groups from Asia, the African continent, and Latin America, and eight really open minded investor or foundation groups from the United States to have a learning exchange and think about what are ways historically and in present, that communities have been able to essentially do forms of investment share and lend capital to each other in ways that actually reinforced community power and wellbeing. And a lot of the learning was focused on learning from grassroots and indigenous groups who have lending practices that have been around a long time, including decision making practices around that, that are so different from the very black and white dual way that today, we think, oh, there's an investor and an investor committee that grills you and sees if you make the cut to do this. And then you have to jump through all these hoops as the entity or person being invested in. But instead holds it in this more holistic way of everyone stewarding a pool of wealth that needs to go and help people and grow things and come back. And so that fund is an international investment fund, but it's based on grassroots practices for lending in community. So one thing that's really different is the decision making structure. Another is the way that that fund grows. So when folks receive capital from the point of view or fund, it's technically a zero interest loan, but each group has the option and aspiration of returning not just the full amount of capital they borrowed, but also an affordability, a solidarity gift that reflects their success that they put in over and above that amount. But that growth, that extra money doesn't go back to the financial investors, financial investors just get their original capital back. And they get a whole bunch of learning and upskilling and capacity building from being in community with all these grassroots groups. And then that extra money stays in to support the next generation of projects. So it's like it's a fun that grows. But it doesn't go in the ways we tend to think it has to go right.
Andrew X 9:07
I love it. Solid example of non extractive finance y'all.
Joanna Levitt Cea 9:12
And a community controlled asset vehicle for those hardcore next economy listeners.
Andrew X 9:21
All right, over to you, Jess,
Jess Rimington 9:23
thank you. I think for me, I'll just share some of them personal connective tissue that led me on the professional journey. So I grew up in a blue collar working class, small business family in a small town and saw my parents do a lot of different things to survive, maybe like part of a nascent form of what we would call now the gig economy and had this kind of interesting experience of seeing the ways in which the economy didn't work for everyone in this country and broadly, and also because One of the things that I ended up doing was being involved in promoting Star Trek conventions, which I don't really ever speak about. And I'm starting to understand the degree to which it did impact me professionally as it relates to my activism.
Andrew X 10:12
We're talking about the show, Star Trek. Star Trek, sci fi a very diverse show for its time,
Jess Rimington 10:18
it was Yeah, we were the roadie like the staff that would set up and break down those venues. And it meant that all these scientists that were obsessed with that show, like the first folks to do the Hubble program, and all these folks who were inspired by Star Trek for various reasons around the future, it showed could be possible became this community that I grew up around. So I was having this simultaneous experience of feeling, like getting first access to like the Hubble telescope photos just because they wanted to show the Star Trek star and I was just like, the 10 year old around and like looking at the cosmos. And then remember that like, first image that came out of like the nebula with the star factory, and the colors and everything and just feeling like so in awe of the expansiveness of the universe and possibility through speculative fiction and the science that was around it. And then also seeing this economic struggle and seeing this dichotomy. And I think that led to imagination and the power of it to imagine out of where we are in two different and when I got to college, I remember being so struck when I started in the working world with how different I was being trained as a professional and had quotations here to operate and what work was supposed to look like and quotations because I was going to make it different than my family, as opposed to how I saw my family operate and how we operated from a resiliency and survival perspective, in those small business and community contexts was a lot more like power sharing. It was like, You better not piss off your neighbor, because you're gonna need something from like, you know, it was relational and a lot more intuitive. But that wasn't what I was taught professionalism was. And I think that combination of seeing this ability for radical imagination, combined with seeing the structural issues of weren't working in the economy, and becoming very skeptical of what we're being fed, work needed to look like, as a part of the economy. And having it not really seemed like something that worked for most of us, led me into what some of us call the next economy movement, or this way of trying to imagine different economies.
Andrew X 12:33
Do you have a favorite Star Trek character?
Jess Rimington 12:38
That was nine years old. I can't say that I can't answer because, you know, it's it feels like that would be the wrong thing that they're all lovely, actual human beings. Yeah. And the characters.
Andrew X 12:48
You don't want to make any tricky enemies. Never know when you might need to borrow some sugar.
Jess Rimington 12:56
George Takei, who plays du loup was a big influence on me as a child as just a human being. He taught me a lot about history, he would walk around things,
Andrew X 13:07
I guess. Awesome. So to tie that up a little bit like how did the two of you begin to come together? You've been working together and collaborating for some time now. And then we can drop into the world of beloved economies?
Jess Rimington 13:21
Sure, I can tell our meet cute story, Joanne is pointing at me.
Joanna Levitt Cea 13:26
Great, because like, I think it's your turn to tell the story.
Jess Rimington 13:31
So Joanna, and I met at a we're both young executive directors of nonprofits, and we're both having to fundraise for the first time and learn how to be in facilitatory leadership in support of a team. And we're really young for this position. So we're in our early 20s. And through different channels, had both gotten scholarships to be part of this woman's leadership program. And we were the youngest people there. We met in that context. I remember thinking Joanna was so cool and blind sit next to her at lunch, the first day at this conference. And I had never seen quinoa before. So what was also happening for me this day is I was picking up this bowl what I thought coming from California, she had seen chemo I had not. And I was like, Look at this crazy grain and joint. I was like, yeah, it's Kima. And I was like, oh, so that was our first conversation. And we became fast friends and started thinking on each other's couches. Basically, when one of us I would lived in Washington DC at the time, she was working there for some of her work and but lived in California and vice versa when I had to come to Bay Area for work. And then we both ended up transitioning out of leadership around the same time, and being kind of burned out at the same time and having a lot of questions about what we saw even in the organizations in let's say movement spaces that we were so committed to from an activism perspective. It just seemed like the way we were working with sometimes still part of the problem or at least not In full alignment with the values of the externally espoused missions of the places we were wanting to work through, that is what started the seed of what became the blended economies research was a series of questions about how power and ownership amongst organizations, the organizational structure could look and what that could do for resiliency and creativity.
Joanna Levitt Cea 15:22
And I'll just add that the moment I remember really noticing, Jeff, at that women's leadership retreat was early on, we each had to do some sort of presentation of some thing related to our vision, and just had seemed very quiet, and then stood up and just dropped this spoken word piece. I was like, Whoa, who is that? And what kind of power coursing through her and I? And, yes, the rest, as just explained this history,
Andrew X 15:54
I love these little details of these stories. Who knew at that point, this like women's leadership retreat, that it's just like, all moving towards this, you know, whole thing that's impacting our entire next economy ecosystem, you know, advancing all of the things that you elevate through your work through beloved economies and beyond? Because obviously, if there's more to get into we, we can make space for that. But so you were just mentioning that beloved economies began as a research project, did you know that it was going to become a book?
Joanna Levitt Cea 16:26
Nope, we did not. So just mentioned, we both ended up transitioning out of the nonprofit executive director roles we had when we first met at around the same time. And we're both kind of thinking about what was next and wanting to take some time. We both ended with a lot of questions. As Executive Directors are in many positions, you're kind of just surviving each day and putting out fires and not having a lot of time to ask and explore big questions. Always, the kinds of questions Jeff mentioned about alignment of way of work with mission, and particularly around power sharing, and evidence, we felt we've seen that power sharing was not just the right thing to do, but more effective. But there were actually some really sharp, rigorous questions we had around that that we wanted to look into. And a number of colleagues have each of us encouraged us. Why don't you do that? See if you can, you know, do something as a research project, see if you can get an academic center to back it. So it has some gravitas behind it. And long story short, which we can go into, we had the opportunity to join at the time, the Global Project Center at Stanford University, which was interested around kind of trends and crowdsourcing and decentralization that were really early. This was 2015. So just kind of on the rise. And what did that have to do with work related to impact social sector? And so the suite of questions we had fit with interest that Senator had at the time, and we had a six month initial stint as visiting scholars and some funding, and we thought it was going to be a six month thing, and then we move on with our lives. And this is now eight years later, that clearly didn't happen. Anyone who's done research would probably say, What are you doing six months, you surface the really important questions, and you start following some threads. And we met some really amazing humans and people and groups who were really demonstrating to us, yes, there is a business case for power sharing. There is a important trend to look at and aligning ways of work with mission. And we continued in our research capacity unfunded for quite a while and published a couple articles and one in Stanford Social Innovation Review got a good amount of play in circulation at the time. And that's really when we started feeling the questions that came up in that and we can talk more about what that was. It felt like we were starting to surface something that was so important, we almost felt like we had an obligation. This is worthy of a book. This is too hard to fit into these pages. There's a fuller, more expansive exploration around this. And there's more to uncover here. That's in late 2019 is when Jess and I really decided to launch this is not just a book, but a research and narrative change initiative. So the beloved economies book is an output of multi year research and narrative change project that also produced a podcast, and that really engaged hundreds of people. Ultimately, in looking at these questions,
Andrew X 19:39
I was gonna shout out that podcast at some point. It's a really incredible podcast, y'all should check it out. You can just go to the beloved economies website beloved economies.org, that incredible, imaginative future that you all heard just describing a little bit ago. It's like that it's like a whole projection into like, what We are in that world and what is it? Like? I don't know if you would add any colors to that description.
Jess Rimington 20:07
Thank you, Andrew. Yeah, it's what how that podcast got produced is that we paired screenwriters that had been working on scripted TV and film with activists and advocates for different aspects of economic change. And they co imagine together what would a day in a life be of a beloved economy that worked differently, and they had complete creative control over the the episode format. So some are like romantic comedy, some are sci fi, and you just kind of get to immerse yourself into these different worlds that show the diversity of what we can imagine and envision for our economy. And therefore what the diversity of what we could build.
Joanna Levitt Cea 20:48
And that podcast is called the light ahead.
Andrew X 20:53
Check it out, yo, subscribe, subscribe. So that's really fascinating to learn about the deeper story of how you've come into creating this book. So let's dive into beloved economies, the book, we've heard a little bit about the podcast and the journey to get there. Take us into the book a little bit, obviously, not too much, because, folks,
Jess Rimington 21:15
it's okay, we want to be as open source as possible, though, also, please tell your friends. I mean, one of the things that happened around your three or four of the research is we realized that we'd been looking at organizations and companies who had changed their way of working and in the process, were generating particular kinds of quality and results, ones that were traditionally of value within what we call in the book the loveless economy within the current extractive paradigm, things like profit, etc. That variety of more beloved or reparative, restorative economies would likely be important to things like employee retention, things like profit, organizational resiliency, simultaneously, they were also generating forms of value that the folks in the organizations and companies were most excited to tell us about. And this was things like joy, that they felt like going into the workplace, different perspective on how they wanted to prioritize and operate with their relationships amongst each other as a team that actually, in some cases affected how folks parented or how their relationships with elders chipped in, there was all these other aspects of what they were generating that in the interviews, we couldn't really steer them away from their most excited. So even though we're originally like, Okay, we got to prove the business case of this, you know, and that was what we set out to see what was there. You know, from a business case perspective, we ended up really expanding our imagination of what the business case was, and what kind of meaning and value was being created when folks transformed their way of work. And we were looking for organizations and companies that had transformed their way of work in ways that included a greater number and creativity around who was involved in the creative decision making table. So that was kind of the initial frame. And what we ended up realizing around year four. So the research was that there was almost this underlining pattern that we didn't expect. So this was the kind of surprise that kept us all going on the beats of this is a, what became a co learning community of these organizations and companies around 60, folks that were both being a part of the participatory research and also helping ultimately craft this book together. And there was these seven practices that they were all doing, they might have had different words for it. They call it different things. They were from really diverse industries, from a hospital department to disaster recovery efforts to youth groups, to nonprofits. And when they met each other, it was like they were recognizing kin, like there was this instantaneous, oh, my gosh, you care about how something is done. You're working in that way too, like there was this instantaneous fluidity amongst them and connection that ended up that relational component and then wanting to come together end up being the thing that surfaced this pattern. So the book shares these seven practices. It's your specific case studies from this organizational group, and outside of that group, actually, somehow two's around the seven practices, as well as what the data showed, of why these practices matter and how transforming how we work connects to impact and transforming the economy at large, not just from a theoretical perspective, but from a hey, we actually did this research long enough that we ended up getting longitudinal data that showed at least leading indicators that there is transformative change that can happen at the industry level, at the regional level. And we believe at the macro economic level as well. When we think about our workplaces as a place for internal activism to change how we work and if we care about living in a different economy. The proposition of the book is we can really start where we are in our workplaces and dependent of industry, in some cases, even independent of latitude within an organization, though definitely not blind to the fact or not ignorant of the fact that there's a range of challenges that are not equally distributed in a workplace when it comes to trying to advocate for internal change. And the book talks about that, too, and suggest some strategies from folks in the coal learning community on how to process that protect oneself, and ultimately, where one could push, you know, some suggestions. So that's the book in case within the gracious gift of this amazing elder activist named Dr. Reverend Virgil Wood, who began his work around what the construct of a beloved economy could be in the 1950s and 60s, alongside the beloved community work when he was in the civil rights movement, and has continued that to today in his 90s. So he became part of the research journey, and gifted the term beloved economy, to the book into the research as a way to describe what he saw the ultimate impact these organizations and businesses could make when they transformed their micro fractal, to use and build off of emergent strategies. And Adrian rebrands, framed as this fractal of change what that could become. And he in the book speaks, in his own words, what that beloved economy could be like,
Andrew X 26:23
I appreciate this centrality of love or love lessness within your languaging around this, I know we often use more neutral terms like the next economy, the blue economy, the green economy. But I appreciate you centralizing that component. Did you come up with the term the loveless economy, thinking of the term beloved economy? I'm just kind of curious.
Joanna Levitt Cea 26:46
It's a great question. I know, like a couple of folks on our research and book team are surface that early on. And then a few members in the CO learning community pointed us to the very powerful writing that Bell Hooks has done on exactly that frame. And Bell Hooks doesn't say the loveless economy, per se, but talks about this kind of epidemic of lovelessness. That is a crisis in our society. And we quote some of Bell Hooks writing on that and bringing the term so yes, it's one that kind of organically came to those of us who are working on this and felt right, and then we realized, there's definitely not the first ones to think about it in that frame. And to notice, like once you call that out, it is really clear how much there's a love ethic missing from the workings of the dominant system. And that shifting to that is not a warm, fuzzy, right? It's shifting to an ethic of love is very powerful and rigorous and needed. And there's lots of existing frameworks and practices around that. And I'll just say to, you know, just mentioned, we ended up having all this longitudinal data, because the research went on all these years. And you asked Andrew, did we start out with a book project? No. And we started the book project before the pandemic before the uprisings, it kind of takes our breath away still, that the book and campaign and everything is now out. And culminating in this time, when this question of transforming how we work is huge, and everyone just is still stepping out of the pandemic, it's still very fresh that we all just experienced, we can change how we work, we can rewrite the rules of business as usual, like overnight on mass, for better or worse, but we do have way more latitude than we think we do. And so this book, the real end of the day takeaway. Yes, there's those seven practices. Yes, there's the love analysis, and its biggest call to action is yo people tap into our power to change how we work and recognize that the data here shows that when teams reimagine and rebuild how we work in really intentional ways. This is a powerful lever of change. It's one we need to be pulling alongside policy change alongside labor organizing alongside all the other levers that are vitally needed to shift the behemoth of our economy. But this is a powerful one. It's not just something to Oh yeah, like makes us feel good to change how we work in our teams know like when we become those fractals adjustment in them, Adrian, right so powerfully about and when we become examples of what else is possible and still successful, that accelerates other forms of change.
Andrew X 29:33
If you'll permit me to reflect my thoughts in this moment, we use it's interesting to hear your kind of connection to Bell Hooks. I was recently talking with someone special to me who I hold in very high regard this incredible entrepreneur solopreneur Lotus Wong who started this organization called School of unconditional love predicated on this the same inspiration of Bell Hooks. Part of the impetus, as I understand it for inspiration for that is that in that book, there's some discussion that there's not a school. We have the school all around us that teaches us that love lists economy, right? That kind of like, get minds type of mentality. And like you said, Joanne, it's not just a feeling, although I like to sing. I think I heard it from Stephen Covey, I want to say, Love, the feeling is the fruit of love the verb. So it's like yes to that warm and fuzzy feeling. But when we say love, a lot of times, people might feel resistant to that, because of like, oh, that's a warm and fuzzy thing, or maybe there's not a lot of emotional intelligence. Anyway, so Lotus Wong and I were talking about some of the different layers to that verb aspect of it, there's multiple layers to the just love of self side of it. And I've talked about that kind of on the first episode of the season a little bit how I myself have within my livelihood in my dharma practice, I was like, looking at the systemic level of things and trying to aim for impact on that level, and then like trickling back to myself, whereas in the past couple of years, now, I've really tried to invert that and prioritize the personal and then go up from there. And as I've been doing that, and talking about that with folks, it's been seeming really resonant. So I just think it's so cool to hear that validated. And also your book, like you were just saying just a moment ago, there's these seven practices that have emerged, which is another aspect of the verb side of what that actually looks like in action. I just wanted to share that reflection to kind of both share what's happening in my head around that and also, like demystify the relationship between this conversation around love, the feeling the verb and what that looks like and means. So maybe that's a good segue. And so diving into
Joanna Levitt Cea 31:56
love that, that Thank you, Andrew, that's really powerful to just to think about the practices as one framework or set of helpful scaffolding for walking the path of love the verb in economy. Yeah, thank you. Feels Right on.
Andrew X 32:13
Thank you. I'm feeling inspired by you right now. So let's dive into what some of those seven practices
Jess Rimington 32:21
are. Sure, we work together to list them all out great. One of us always misses a couple. So together we get. So the seven practices are in, there's no particular order. And something we always like to say around the practices that we think is really important for folks to understand is this isn't like a recipe. It's not an order of operations. And there's certainly not anything new. So these deep patterns that emerge from research like this are reflective of a lot of things, one, how life just functions and moves. And we show that from a biomimicry, learning from ecology and biology case studies in the book, like so many in the next economy movement are doing such a great job with. And also they're embedded within ways of practice, and organizational design that have deep lineages and cultures and communities of people all around the world for millennia. They don't happen to be front and center and this current economy where we're we're speaking about right now in terms of the dominant extractive neoliberal capitalism economy. But that doesn't mean that these aren't deep patterns that many, many people already consider common sense. And when we hear them make me feel like an intuition of remembering right for so many of us, so the practices that we collectively saw as a co learning community and the researcher share power, record with history, prioritize relationship, past future and over the last four, seek difference.
Joanna Levitt Cea 33:51
source from multiple ways of knowing, prototype early and often. And trust there's time. And I'll just say a note on the first one just mentioned of shared decision making power. In some ways what these practices are, in addition to Andrews, powerful new framework for enacting Love is a verb. The commonality between all the groups in the CO Learning Community is that they do radical forms of power sharing and way expanding the circle of who is deciding, creating, owning, etc, in their enterprises. And they're very successful. And we are clear about this in the book, it's not easy to shift into real power sharing, like lots of folks have had negative experiences with it or, you know, devolved into chaos or whatever complexity are. So we're not trying to say like, everyone should do it. We're actually trying to lift up there is an art and science there's not a formula, but these entities that stood out as really radically having shared power and like I said at the beginning and they're more proud marketable and they have higher value products and better retention and people are full of joy and purpose. What is it that they're doing that make their experience successful when other folks are struggling? And via rounds of surfacing is how we got to these as kind of the root ways of operating,
Andrew X 35:17
just in case any listeners are itching to hear, would it be possible to share a sentence or two, maybe just on some of the other six?
Joanna Levitt Cea 35:25
Totally, totally. And we can have fun thing about the book is each practice has its own chapter and there's a vignette in front of each chapter that shares someone from the cool learning community. We call them breakout actors, their enterprises and groups of breakout actor at work. So shared decision making power spoke about and the group showcase there is road to repairs, very own Jessica Norwich's runway, and some really remarkable ways their team shadow Jessica,
Andrew X 35:54
yeah, runway,
Joanna Levitt Cea 35:57
and Nina Sol Robinson, who's also in the COVID. And we showcase ways that their deep commitment to sharing decision making power connects with the very innovative approach to UBI. They did during COVID. And that set precedent for the field. And there's a lot of ways runway shows that ripple effect we talk about right that when you become an example of what else is possible, you shift practice, you spark broader change. The second practice in the book is, I might get the order wrong, but it's just as the order doesn't matter, prioritize relationship. And that's one that it's so key, we struggled as a co learning community to be like, is this a practice? Or is this just like the bedrock of all of them, but we decided to lift it up as a practice. And that is about really valuing and attending to relationships for their own sake, in our teams in our community of collaborators. So that we shift our focus from a transactional one from being about I'm interacting with you as a means to an end to I am engaging in caring about you and the strength of our relationship, because I understand that is the most valuable thing we got going on around here. It's not about forcing everyone to show up and be are 100% whole self beyond what you might want to do. We're clear about that, too. It Yes, a great ways to invite us all being more whole. But each team can decide what feels right for them around that. But about cultivating real care and authenticity, including brave conversations with each other. And boy, did we see over the years of this research, the way that that was a hallmark of what helped our folks be so resilient during the pandemic compared to peers in their field and the ways people go over and above and give their best and innovate and, you know, so those are two. Do you want me to keep going Jess? Or do you want to jump in?
Jess Rimington 37:54
I forgot I was on the podcast. I was like listening to the podcast. Okay.
Joanna Levitt Cea 38:01
Other third one I'll talk about is reckoned with history. And, I mean, this is really where the the repair comes through. So, so deeply repair and celebration, you know, the reckoning is there for a reason. But it was a little while into the research and surfacing the practices for us to realize this was one and that in some ways, a couple of our colleagues pointed to this almost being a precondition for being able to prioritize relationship, it's like to get real, like we got a here are individuals and family histories as it relates to what's going on in the room. And what we're doing here together, you know, the the historical context, we're all operating in more broadly, this record with history really shown s h o n e, like shined as a precondition for having real, authentic relationships with one another. So this can be the opportunity for teams to kind of CO create a shared understanding of the history that is relevant to their work and aims together and the individual and family histories that are feeding into how we show up in the room and interact with each other. Also, it can be the histories of our own organizations and teams like just taking time to be like, what happened this past year, what did we learn? It's kind of a pushing back at the relentless future focused productivity focus of our current economy and building in reflection, like understanding where we got here, and seeing very high returns from doing that, right, really important kinds of learning. Seek difference. This reflects to the on the courageous level of difference that the breakout actors, the folks in our CO learning community, make happen to bring around the table. So totally reinforcing all the things we know about why diversity, equity inclusion and justice is important in our workspaces. This practice points To in the loveless economy, we need to really attuned to how do we push the boundaries of who gets to sit around the table together as peers. One of the groups in the books showcased in that practice is a group called 10 squared, that brings together factory level floor workers with management folks to do very effective innovation work together to come up with solutions to occupational health and safety problems and pushing the boundaries of who gets to be there as peers, and also being very thoughtful and smart about how we bring folks together so that everyone does feel safe and inspired to share the brilliance we each have. So that seek difference source from multiple ways of knowing is very linked to seek difference. We forget often in the loveless economy, that it's not just technical knowledge or financial knowledge that is valuable. There's lived experience, there's intuition, there's all kinds of things. And that chapter really dives into that, and how we can nurture a practice of that on our team. It's not about throwing out the dominant kinds of knowledge, it's just adding to them. Prototype early and often, many listeners may know this phrase from Eric Ries and lean startup and we're honored that Eric Ries endorsed our book. And breakout actors tend to do something a little different with this practice, because they're also sharing power with deciding what to do with the results of prototyping. So there's a very deep learning culture. All the practices are interrelated. They're seeking difference in sharing power and how they bring folks together to decide, okay, we prototype this what's next, you know, what's the next right step? Trust, there's time. This is the one that took us the longest to see. When this came up was like, Oh, yep, yeah, that's something people are doing. It's like trust, there is time to work in this way. Trust, there's time to have the conversations about history to care for our relationships. This one is so hard when they're all hard. But this one is so hard when we're starved for time to survive in the dominant system. And breakout actors talk about this is not about ignoring real urgency, because there are real urgent situations Jess and I were just talking with Andrew before this about evacuating a friend from an emergency situation in Sudan, like a lot of people's work has life and death urgency. But this practice is about rejecting the generalized urgency that the loveless economy keeps us in. It's about recognizing when we reject that and can drop in to kind of a different experience of time, there's a different quality of work and presence and imagination that happens. So those are the seven practices can read a lot more in the book at tips here stories.
Andrew X 42:51
You mentioned, there was some ties between interlocking aspects to all of them and how they reinforce one another. I'll admit, I haven't had an opportunity to read the book yet. I've already given it as a gift several times. I'm a huge audio book person, though. So also for your audio Booker's out there that is in production as we speak. Is there a date for when that might come out this fall? Yes. Looking forward to listening to it, because I just also like listening to your voices. Thank you. So yeah, that trust there's time. One is definitely one that I've seen really plague a lot of teams, on all the levels personal to organizational and systemic and is often an excuse for taking and not well thought out action that can make things a lot worse. So I appreciate the inclusion of that, just to tie it all together, you know, on the theme of this podcast, the road to repair, you know, we're very intentional with this name, the road to repair because it's a journey for all of us. And we're all in different places along that journey. And it's things like practices that can help us take meaningful steps along that road. I'd really love to just maybe hear from both of you. How you see how you spoke about it on the reckoning with history one, but just how you see this book can be used leverage seen supported through the lens of repair out of how does this bridge that space? I think for
Jess Rimington 44:23
me, it's twofold. There's something that has felt always core to me from a repair perspective in what became the economic analysis around the practices. And then there's also just kind of a personal obsession I have with what I want to see organizations and businesses that I want to see them change and I hope this book might might help with that. But the macro economic analysis there is there was something that happened when we paired the research alongside a research team associated with the organization biomimicry for Social Innovation and we're so lucky in the last Two years to walk alongside them and share research,
Andrew X 45:03
I heard a really incredible podcast that you did with them, actually, you like, juxtaposed their framework with your framework is really cool. listeners should check it out. We'll link to it in the show notes. But please continue.
Jess Rimington 45:15
Yeah, they're amazing and what you're referencing as they looked at life's principles, and some of the core operating deep patterns of how biological and ecological organisms worked. They designed their organizations and collaboration efforts were very similar to the seven practices. So we became really taken with that as two research teams together and went deeper looking at that. And one of the things that came from that exploration together was this concept around feedback loops. There's two types of feedback loops. There's an ecological biological sense, there's corrective feedback loops that are like, Hmm, maybe we should do a little different, because this isn't working here. And it's having these impacts. And then there's reinforcing feedback loops are like, let's keep doing it, we've been doing it grow, grow, grow. And in a healthy ecosystem that survives and gets to keep living, we have a balance of both are human co created, any human created ecosystem is CO created with other non human beings do right so and are co created the ecosystem of the current economy, the current dominant loveless economy, we really, in the loveless frame, actively suppress the correcting feedback loops. And if you just think about the mechanisms on a tangible level, we have people have signed NDAs, we have them sign noncompetes, when sometimes people leave an organization, and we think they have something contentious, they're gonna go compete with organization, or we silence them through an NDA, if they were trying to give constructive feedback, in some cases, all of these mechanisms that are designed to basically buffer, in some ways, those most benefiting from extractive economy, from hearing what's actually happening, and then then we reinforce and promote these reinforcing feedback loops or like, let's keep doing it. Let's keep extracting. And you know, to me, from a historical analysis perspective, thinking about the origins of the US economy, and capitalism being so tied with extreme forms of violence, subjugation and silencing, and harm and violence, cutting most of the population out of participation, and then extracting labor, whether we're talking about the plantation economy, to, you know, present day practices that are also violently extractive for so many communities in this country and around the world. There's a way I learned to listen into that history in present day. And think about repair. I don't know what the differently isn't the right word. But I just learned to think about that through this way of how stuck that dynamic makes our ability as a collective to imagine more beloved futures, because we're shutting out the majority of voice and participation and ingenuity, by suppressing the creativity, the genius of most of us by the suppression of those channels of communication, so that the labor can be extracted so that the resources can be extracted. And just reinforcing that dynamic. And I think that really provided sort of a nuance of how I came out of this research, thinking about the repair work to be done, and how, how much more latitude I feel like I have as an individual in a workplace, to see even like getting an NDA not to be signed. I know, it seems like a really small thing, but that was something I did years ago, can't talk about it. You know, there are really specific ways that we're continuing to suppress people's ability to talk about what needs to be repaired. And if we can't even have the conversation about the history that needs to be reckoned with, about what needs to be repaired, we're not going to get very far down that road. So it just really expanded my imagination on all of the different surfaces we have in the workplace every day to enact that change from the way we write contracts to the way hiring practices happened, the way firing practices happen. And I think on a on a personal level, I want to live in the economy some day, where every business and every organization, particularly those that are playspace, that have bricks and mortar, understand the history of that place and understand what their accountabilities are to repair, and think about their ownership and their profit structure. accordingly. Who were the communities from which the land was taken that their business exists on? What are the histories of labor extraction of the past and present and potential future if they don't make a change and how they operate? What does that mean for how ownership structure functions? What does that mean for how hiring practices function? What does that mean for how money moves? I just would love to live in a world A world in which the NBA is training people, let's say programs, that that's a step of a business plan, and you can't have a successful business that anyone's going to go to, if you're not thinking about repair, I would love to live in that economy. And I hope this book contributes to that by providing an on ramp with everyday practices that can get some of those conversations started. So it doesn't feel like so Herculean or inaccessible, or I gotta be in leadership to do it. So that's me,
Andrew X 50:31
join a curious to hear from you here here
Joanna Levitt Cea 50:33
on what just said, and I learned so much about the concept of repair through talking and learning and growing with people in the CO learning community. And I feel moved to read a quote by Jessica Norwood from road repair. And also just to say, I think for me that the bream that I walk away with around repair from doing this book that I hadn't really grasped before is, hey, our whole economy could exist for the purpose of repair. And in fact, we urgently in a real sense of urgency need to do that. And Dr. Wood who just mentioned set a really great quote the other day when we were chatting with him, he was like, the subtitle is transforming how we work. But the real question is transforming why we work. Right on, if y'all will permit me, I've read an extended quote from Jessica to end this up, that just shares that spirit. In describing her vision for a future centered on repair ko learner Jessica shares that she imagines we all have this skill that then expands out into the way that the whole economy, the whole world starts to operate, then when there's injury here, I know how to do repair here. And when I've been hurt, you know how to do repair for me, and so forth, that we are in right relationship means that you take responsibility, the accountability to do the work of repair over and over and over again. And that you recognize the interdependency recognize your link, your Ubuntu, the highly relational pieces of all of us together, Jessica continues, and they'll just say to me, I love how much this links repair with practice, right, like the ongoing practice, Jessica Norwood continues, I always have this imagined vision that if every person that was born, was taught that your only job in the world was repair, the only thing that we actually say, is, welcome to the planet. I'm so glad to meet you little person, we only have one requirement here. And that's your job here. You can go off and do lots of other amazing things. But the core job that you have to do is repair. Your job is to do repair work. And I imagine if every single human being knew that their job, their only requirement in order to be hanging out here at this moment in time, is just to do repair work.
Jess Rimington 53:07
I always get goosebumps. Yeah.
Andrew X 53:15
Thank you. Thank you both. Thank you for sharing that. Thank you for your voices. Thank you for being powerful role models and leaders in this space. Thank you for sharing your wisdom. Thank you for your care. And thank you for your time today and being guests on this show.
Joanna Levitt Cea 53:34
Back at you Andrew and road to repair team. Thank you for the honor of being here and warm welcome.
Andrew X 53:40
Yes, Nikki sending her love as well. I know there's some exciting collaborations with the guilt happening. Dot dot dot future episode.
Jess Rimington 53:50
And just whether your honor just for you to know, I just all y'all is communication from text to email, and like the PDF you set like you're really modeling such an ethic of care to make sure you know, like show up and be like we can be our whole selves and we'll be held in a conversation. So you know, folks don't know sometimes all this stuff that goes into making something like this happen and the care. Thank you for that. made it so easy to be here with you.
Andrew X 54:20
Appreciate that. I'm keeping that in.
Joanna Levitt Cea 54:24
You should get listeners. This is a well done podcast from A to Z. Oh my god, I
Andrew X 54:30
love you too. Thank you so much. I just really appreciate you both and look forward to the next time we get to connect.
Joanna Levitt Cea 54:37
Cheers. Thank you, Andrew. Thank you.
RTR Themed Outro 54:41
Thank you for joining us on the road to repair. Our greatest hope is that this show will have a transformative impact. For those of you tuning in. The row to repair podcast is produced by Andrew X. The Kiska ion guard and Jessica Norwood with amazing post production support from Andrew X. Music for the show was produced by Andrew x in close collaboration with artists and sound designer Zachary Seth freer in the luscious vocals and original poetics of nyeem opinion, shout out to SOPA hood. For all the amazing artwork, you can check out more of their great work on our website, you can find the link at the road to repair.com We always love the social media shout outs and you can help this message ripple out to those who might really benefit from it by rating this show and leaving your review on Apple podcast. And if you feel so called you can make a donation to support the show at WWW dot row two repair.com Thanks again for tuning in and stay tuned for our next episode.
We said with a land we are far more than a commodity. We join with the water bodies on our property. We're reclaiming our shared sovereignty and shaping an economy based on reciprocity, cooperative, accountable, rounding justice and ecology, the Empire's top leg who want to be about this prophecy. We've been summoned to the summit trust we hear something what is now possible Who are we becoming?
The road to repair is sponsored by the guild in one way. The Guild develops community own models of Land, Housing and real estate as a means to build power and self determination in black and other communities of color. Runway envisions a world where black entrepreneurs thrive in a reimagined economy rooted in equity and justice.
