Haxted Thinking No. 15 - September 2024

Autumn is here, the season of wide skies, kaleidoscopic colours and clarification. Autumn is transformation, the season of memory and sorrow, where previous lives die away and stores are replenished for the coming winter. The abundance of Spring is in the far distance. Now is the time for chopping logs, readying the fires and coming to terms with all of the uncertainty that characterises life. Time for getting comfortable with discomfort.

Uncertainty

There’s a terrific line in Matt Watkinson’s brilliant book Mastering Uncertainty, that really resonated with me:

“Chance is not something undesirable to be eliminated – a wrinkle to be ironed out, or a barrier to overcome – it is the wellspring of opportunity itself.”

I think in business we sometimes forget that chance, or random mutation as Darwin taught us, is the very juice of evolution itself. So why on earth it should be any less important to business, than it is to all other forms of life, beats me. In a world of radical volatility, uncertainty and ambiguity, it strikes me that we should be looking to the biological lessons of the last 3.85 billion years more than ever, not less. Biology, the science of life and all the vital processes that sustain it, is fundamental.

In the world I know best - that of real estate development - the output of the engineers with their physics, chemistry and mathematics skills, is plain to see. Bridges that stand up, buildings that keep the water out, materials that patinate and age best, and so on, are plain to see.

What’s not so plain to see is the need for a way to embrace the constant uncertainty out there, to help design not just a more resilient built environment, but also business practices and leadership models that move beyond resilience towards what Nassim Taleb captured in his framework of ‘anti-fragility’:

“Some things benefit from shocks; they thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors… and they love adventure , risk, and uncertainty….…Let us call it antifragile. Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better.”

Whenever I come across the notion that our man-made technologies are the solution to uncertainty and the answer to the fragility we’ve created in our economies and cultures, I’m left wondering whether we’re missing what’s right under our noses. The natural world doesn’t care for optimisation, just survival through ongoing replication. We do well to remember what Janine Benyus, who coined the term ‘biomimicry’ for the intentional problem-solving design process inspired by nature, said in response to being told how clever engineers were:

“Imagine designing spring.”

So what? Well I think this reminds us that the business and leadership superpower that needs more focus than ever before, is adaptability. The property of being able to actively and passively alter behaviours, interactions and processes in response to selective pressures, is kryptonite to the ever-increasing turbulence and drama we seem to be faced with. And to become more adaptable we need a more comfortable relationship with uncertainty and chance, and the humility to simply not know. From there we can saddle up the curiosity and imagination that in turn lead to better innovation.

Leadership

As the seasons change, and transformations take root, I’ve been thinking a lot about leadership. Whatever business we are in, and however much technology we might rely on, it is people who deliver, and people need leadership. The role of the leader is to cultivate environments where individuals flourish collaboratively.

I think leadership is a responsibility of all of us.

"Leadership isn't about rank. Its having the moral courage to do the right thing on a difficult day when no-one is looking"

Lieutenant Colonel Langley Sharpe MBE

However, in appointed leaders, the most important starting point has to be letting everyone know where you're intending to go, and why you're going there, and most importantly, what's in it for them to go along with you. It is that quality beyond all others that made Churchill such an effective leader.

In my experience the difference between high performing teams and less high performing teams, is that sense of clarity of meaning. It is connection which drives that willingness to follow. Connection and trust. And that comes from strong powers of communication. We are tribal creatures and biologically we all have the need for connectedness. At its core this connectedness is a feeling of belonging and being part of something larger than oneself - something with purpose and meaning.

People like to talk about where they're going, but too many leaders don’t do it. Without that there is an absence of meaning. Poor leaders always leave out that clarity about the destination and talk about change instead. But people hate change without knowing why things should change. To be an effective leader means explaining what's in it for your team members to change with you, just as we understand that the transformation from Summer to Winter needs the explanatory process of Autumn.

Return on connection

Connection, belonging, community. These are the things that really matter to us as humans.

We live in the age of ‘how AI is going to change everything’ and a raging debate about the primacy of human intelligence. It seems self evident to me that nothing really does change when it comes to our need to be part of something that matters, to share our most visceral, human stories with each other. To spread compassion, understanding and, dare it be said, love.

This was evident in the experiments I was lucky enough to run over the past few months – the Waggle at the fabulous Bell Inn, and the Ember Sessions up in the beautiful English Lake District. And it was in bucket loads of evidence at The DO Lectures back in July, a truly transformative event that I have had the great fortune to have been involved with as a founding partner, since its origin in 2008.

The thing is, connection and belonging are such powerful stimulants that can be the fuel for anything and everything good. It’s the magic ingredient behind the amazing difference CJ Bowry and her team at Sals Shoes are making around the world. It’s the vital ingredient in what binds the elite military units like the Royal Marines and UK Special Forces.

In real estate development the traditional approach is to find available sites, undertake detailed and extensive feasibility analysis, review possible physical uses, and then design and build ‘exemplar’ buildings, ideally bound together in what urban designers, architects and good developers like to call ‘place-making’.

But I think there’s a better way. An approach more suited to the challenging world we now find ourselves in. Our economic system generates extensive negative social and economic impact and relies on government (ie. us through taxation), to clean up the mess. Sometimes philanthropy helps and that’s to be applauded. But the problem is, even at its best when the capitalist model generates enough wealth for a few philanthropists to give back, negative costs are often incurred along the way. What Bill Gates does is great, but what detrimental costs were paid along the way (as he became a billionaire) because of Microsoft’s rise?

A better way is for restorative business models to replace the status quo. In this scenario impact venture capital allows businesses to grow at net zero negative (social and environmental) cost. The traditional investment model of measuring risk and return gets replaced by measuring risk, return and impact. Eventually all investment decisions are going to be impact driven, they will have to be be, so let’s encourage models that get there quicker. Things can’t continue as they are – there’s too much inequality, social cohesion is too often threadbare, the environment is in a terrible mess, and UK government investment resources are at historic low.

If we acknowledge that connection, belonging and the sense that fertile community, small and large, is the correct start point, I believe we’ll get far superior outcomes to what we see at the moment. These things should not be the goal of place-making, they should be what place-making starts with. An truly human impact approach of this nature inevitably leads to mutually reinforcing positive chain reactions.

It's funny really. In the 36 years I’ve been working in real estate we’ve always referred to the ‘built environment’ and the ‘natural environment’ as if they are separate entities. But they aren’t. All we really have is our home, this big blue ball. Dr. Iain McGilchrist’s work is brilliant in bringing this back to our attention - the periods of most separation and disengagement from our environment are also those times at which we are most fragile. If we can start to see the myriad problems ahead, and treat them as all interconnected, then we can upend the status quo.

Let’s reframe ‘social and environmental’ challenges not as expensive problems to solve, but as opportunities to invest in connection and belonging. And we’ll use all the tools we need whatever they may be technologically. But not in lieu of human ingenuity and human wellbeing. What if we change the paradigm and rather than investment decisions being all about ‘risk-adjusted returns’, we start to make them based on risk-return-positive impact outcomes. What if we could measure not ‘return on capital employed’ but ‘return on imagination’ or ‘return on connection?’

The enemy of change

Who’s the enemy of change?
Who’s the enemy of transformation?
The enemy is the status quo. The enemy is fear.

When is it time to blossom?
It’s time when the pain of staying where we are is greater than the pain of letting go and bursting forth into the unknown.

This guy above is ‘bully.’ He was designed by the fabulous Jo Briggs, and he represents fear. He is so prevalent in our lives and in our businesses.It’s time to face him and make friends.
The best way to do that is with curiosity and imagination. To stare fear in the face and say “no f**k you” and do the thing anyway is an act of rebellion.

It’s time to shine.

The Creative Body Process

I think it is rare that we do have genuinely transformative experiences in life. Transformation is so much more than simply change - for me it acknowledges our metamorphosis into something radically improved in some way. I was privileged and humbled to experience a transformation recently at an event hosted by the wonderful photographer Siân Davey. Siân has created something utterly unique down in Dartington. I can do no more than share here the note of thanks I wrote to Siân, and to encourage anyone with a meaningful creative practice to consider joining her in the future. In the meantime if you can get to the Soho Photography Quarter 16-18 Ramillies Street, London W1F7LW, before November 29th 2024 you can see her Garden project in all its regal beauty at scale.

Siân thank you so much for the Creative Body Process experience last week. I came, as I’m sure many do, with a sense of trepidation and a certain fear of being exposed to my own vulnerabilities. The fact that I had very little understanding of what to expect, and knowing that I was one of only a few men attending, only served to heighten the uncertainty. But what the Creative Body Process revealed to me in glorious technicolour, is something I’ve come to suspect over recent years - not knowing – uncertainty - is a place of tremendous fertile possibility.

What you have created is truly magical and transformative. The way you hold the space for exploration, with such care, devotion and open-mindedness simply allows incredible things to happen. The trust that you generate and forge between all the participants, so immediately, is beguiling and wonderful and life changing, it really is. This is a process so much beyond connection to one’s creative practice, it is hard to do justice to it in words. I have never been able to connect my visceral need to befriend my creativity, with the difficult place from which it originates. Your tenderness and wisdom made that happen in the most extraordinary way and unlocked something inside, a truth, a confidence, which has already changed everything for me. So thank you, thank you.

Thank you also for sharing your home and your beautiful Alice with us, and thanks too to Abi for her care and attention. Please do share this wherever it may help. What you are doing is vital.

Thank you for joining me. Please let me know what you think about any of the stuff raised. I’m available by email at carlo@carlonavato.com and will do my best to respond within 48 hours. I’d love for this newsletter to promote discussion and debate, and to open up new possibilities for discovery and gathering.