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Dean Carter has been an innovative and industry-recognized leader of People and Culture for over two decades across Fortune 50, hot growth, and culture-driven organizations. He currently serves as the Chief People and Purpose Officer at GUILD Education, a career opportunity platform that enables forward-thinking employers to invest in their employees, unlocking life-changing opportunities for personal and professional growth through learning programs, career development, and one-on-one coaching; and also serves as an Independent Director for Griffith Foods, a high-growth sustainable food company. A former CHRO of Patagonia, Sears Holdings and Fossil Inc., Dean has also previously served in HR and management roles at Pier 1 Imports, Pearle Vision and Procter & Gamble. Dean's innovative perspectives on HR, go-big cultures, and employee experiences have been featured in leading media including The Economist, Harvard Business Review, NPR, The Wall Street Journal, and various other books and national publications.
How can leaders in today's environment pioneer new forms of workplace interaction, mentoring, performance management, and role-modeling in order to create inspired, high-performing, connected teams across the organization? What lessons can we draw from nature and apply it to the way we deal with human nature? What kind of organization might we create if we integrate work, life and play, to both live happier lives and get closer to our peak potential?
This episode offers key insights on:
Greetings and warm welcome to all of us to Intersections, where our aspiration is to dissolve all kinds of boundaries that we consciously or unconsciously impose on ourselves, individually and collectively that limit us from seeing truth in its fuller light and human potential and possibilities in their most expansive form.
Today, we are going to have the opportunity to hear from someone who has been at the very center of a beautiful revolution that is happening in the workplace. Before I introduce him, let me share a quote from the founder of the organization that he has stewarded the human resources function for, and that is Patagonia. These are the words of Patagonia's founder Yvon Chouinard. He says, "Our current landscape is filled with complacency, be it in the corporate world or in the environmental front, only on the fringes of an ecosystem, those outer rings do evolution and adaptation occur at a furious pace. The inner center of the system is where the entrenched non-adapting species die off, doomed to failure by maintaining the status quo. Businesses go through the same cycles. Conventional corporations at the very center of the ring, and these tend to eventually die off, though through either their own misdeeds or catastrophic events, such as dismal economic climates or unforeseen competitions. Only those businesses that operate with a sense of urgency dancing on the fringe, constantly evolving, open to diversity and new ways of doing things are going to be here 100 years from now."
That is a beautiful provocation and inspiration for the conversation that is going to ensue. It is my real pleasure and joy to welcome into our midst, Dean Carter.
Dean has been an innovative and highly recognized leader of people and culture for over two decades across Fortune 50, Hot Growth and culture driven organizations. He currently serves as the Chief People and Purpose Officer at Guild Education, which is a career opportunity platform for forward thinking employers to invest in their employees. He is also the former Chief Human Resource Officer of Patagonia, but also in the past of Sears Holdings and Fossil inc. Dean has also previously served in HR and management roles at Pier One Imports, Pearle Vision and Procter and Gamble. His perspectives on human resources on Go Big Cultures and employee experiences have been featured in leading media like The Economist, Harvard Business Review, NPR, The Wall Street Journal and various other books and national publications.
It is a great pleasure to have Dean in our midst. Welcome!
Thank you. Thank you. It is always great to hear Yvon's words. For 8 years I was a student of Yvon Chouinard. There are so many things that he said just so eloquently and beautifully, like the quote that you just had. Also sometimes just a few words. I remember the first day that we came back from COVID. It had been two and a half years that we had been apart. We had a food truck and people were all over campus, and I happened to run into Yvon. We were both holding a cup of coffee and looking at the distance. I said, "This looks a lot different today than it did a month ago, doesn't it?" He said, "Yeah" in this very Yvon gruff voice. And I said, "Yeah, just feels a little different". He looked at me and he just said, "You know what, Dean? No people, no company".
There is just so many. I could give a list of moments like that with him, where he just says something that really is brilliant and sharp. What a great person to learn from.
You spent 7 years there. It is in many ways, very unique, and a bright spot in our business ecosystem as an organization that really fuses an incredible sense of purpose and values with profit making and the more conventional parameters of business success. How did Patagonia change you and this proximity to Yvon, his ideas and his spirit? How do you feel you are different coming out of it than when you went into it?
That is a great question. I have thought a lot about that, actually. Here is what I came to believe about Patagonia, is that every day Patagonia nudged me to be closer to the person that I want to be. Every day I would get challenged. Just when I think that I am enough of an activist, then it nudges me one more time to do a little more. Just when I think I am doing enough for the planet or my own personal commitment, I get nudged in another way.
I will give you a great example. Just when I think I have an understanding of our impact and footprint, and then, Patagonia comes out and says, "Okay, by the way, everything that we're doing about making puffers and sustainably-made jackets is not saving the planet. It's actually destroying the planet slower than everyone else. And so, if we're really going to save the planet, we have to think differently". And so Yvon introduced, in the future, 100 years from now, we're going to be a food company. The way to save the planet is through food. That was like what? We have been talking about outdoor and we have been talking about surfboards and wetsuits and sustainably made puffer jackets like that was a hard left turn. And here's why. He just said, "If the world moves to regenerative agriculture and we have healthy soils, healthy water and healthy spaces, then not only do we slow climate change or stop it, we begin to reverse it. If our purpose is to save the planet, then we have to evolve to a very different company over time". Then I just thought about what am I? What is my impact on the planet? What am I putting in and what am I taking out? That is the essence of regenerative agriculture, it is, what do you put in and what do you take out?
We will talk more about how that impacted, how it completely reshaped how I think about my role of leading people and humans. But it was a significant shift in the business model and a significant shift in my own personal view of what I am coming to work every single day to do as the head of people.
It reminds me of an early reflection from Steve Jobs in a Rolling Stones interview, where he was asked about what drives him to do what he is doing and he framed it this way. He said, "Look, every day, we wake up and we consume things. We consume things that other people have really produced for us. It's very rare and unique when you have this opportunity to actually create something that nobody else has in the past and put it into the flow to be able to allow the rest of humanity to benefit from something that you put out there versus what you're taking". So this notion of regenerative-ness of what you are putting in versus what you are taking out, I love that theme. In the way you just described it, it seems like Yvon is like a practical philosopher.
He is. He is not just a practical philosopher, but he is a studied philosopher. He does a lot of homework. He does a lot of reading and research and speaks to people who are thinking differently than him. There is another thing he always says, "When you're looking at something new, be sure and do your homework". You just cannot jump in. I would say, he is personally, for me, a philosopher. Any interaction I had with Yvon, I was listening intently as a student or apprentice. That is my view for living differently. It wasn't just Yvon, there were a lot of people at Patagonia who carried change and were inspiring. His wife, Melinda Chouinard, is extraordinary! A big part of culture and setting beliefs around. If you really want to support women at work, talk to Melinda Chouinard.
I remember very specifically, I just joined Patagonia and I had left Sears. We were building a child care center in the warehouse. Most warehouses don't have child care centers. Usually that is reserved for corporate offices, but certainly not for warehouses and Melinda insisted that we put a child development center in this warehouse in Reno. So I got a call that said they were a little bit delayed. And I said, okay, I'll let Melinda know that the construction is delayed a few months. So I sent a note to Melinda and just said, "Hi Melinda, Construction is going to be delayed just a few months on the developmental center." And she said, "Okay, thanks for letting me know. Here's what I want you to do. I want you to put on the microphone and the megaphone at that warehouse, every single woman is now on paid leave who is nursing. I will not have a single day go by that another woman at that warehouse cannot bring her baby to work and cannot nurse. So, they can all go home on paid leave until this is done and nurse their children.
From that day forward, I am very clear about what I need to do for nursing moms. Any decision I make around that is making sure that nursing moms are not separated from their babies as a result of work. Clear on that decision. Anyway, that was a game changer for me. I have held that with me around women at work and the systemic challenges of having children and how do you mitigate that and the responsibility to do that. It shows up in Patagonia. We have senior women in leadership all over the place. Not because we have this specific Women at Work program, we just make sure that 98% of women return from leave to Patagonia because they can continue nursing. They have got child care. They have got support. Patagonia flies a nanny with you if you are traveling and you can be a traveling companion so you don't have to pour your breast milk out in the airport.
When you make systemic changes based on something you really do care about, then you make an impact. Otherwise, it is just a lot of talk and not much walk.
What I also read in that story is the genuineness of that intent behind it. She deeply cared, and she got you to a point where your heart was opened up and you got attuned and you deeply cared. These policies are not just lip service. They are not just being done to check off boxes or to look good or just mechanically and operationally go through things. One of the things that pains me most about mainstream corporate culture that makes me want to aspire to help, support and advance the evolution of those cultures in a world of tomorrow is that everything we do, should be coming from a place of deep caring, deep clarity and courage of our convictions. It seems from everything I have been studying about Patagonia through your talks and Yvon's writings and things that it is a culture where everything comes from a place of deep caring and clarity.
It does every single day. That deep understanding and clarity of what we are here for and what we are doing in any company. It is easy to think about companies like Patagonia, who lean heavily on something like saving the planet. Not that everyone believes that the planet is in crisis, but that is another thing. But when you believe that if we don't do something that our children and grandchildren would not be living in the same kind of place that we are living in, then you walk up the stairs two steps at a time.
When you believe at a place like Guild, that there are so many people who are locked out of opportunity and really need a second chance, either their parents did not go to school, they are just life challenges. When you firmly believe that given the chance, given a coach and given an opportunity that you can help someone lift out of a place they feel completely locked out of, then you come to work every single day, jumping two steps at a time.
We had a little bit of conversation about capitalism. If we do not do this unlock for a lot of people and bring them into this system, if we just ignore this, then we are going to be in deep trouble. I think as a country, we have got to do this unlock and find there are so many people who feel left out of the system and structure and bring them in for whatever reason, either diversity, inclusion, Middle America, big pieces of our country that we need to bring them into the system. And we have to do this specifically.
Reminds me of a quote from Gandhi. He said, "The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would be enough to solve most of the world's problems". You can get people a little bit closer to that place, right?
Dean, thank you for opening up to Guild and its culture and purpose as well. That is where you are now in your post Patagonia life. I want to talk a little bit about not just the arc of your experience at Patagonia, which I know is going to be a keen interest to our audience, but also, what you have been doing since and where you are headed.
Before we get there, let's turn the clock backwards a little bit. In your formative years, what have been the key influences and pillars that made you who you are? I'm referring not to the pre-Patagonia days because I'm also curious about one thing, which is, for a culture that is as a special, unique, forward thinking as Patagonia was, I have also seen it is hard sometimes to recruit leadership from the outside, because people come in wired in a certain way based on the kind of cultures and organizations that they have been a part of. It is hard to make them do the unlearning to open them up to their fullest potential in the current environment. I am just curious what got Patagonia to see in you? Somebody who could be a tremendous participant, but actually a culture shaper.
When people ask me, "Dean, because you came from Sears and into Patagonia, what was it like to adjust that?" And then my answer was, I have been adjusting all my life. My whole life has been an adjustment. Working at Patagonia was the first time I felt like I wasn't adjusting. It was my big personal unlock. My whole life has been an adjustment.
I can talk to that a little bit and how it shaped me and how Patagonia just opened up. Working at places like Patagonia and Guild, I don't have to adjust. I am fully in my flow and in my best self and showing up.
An example of when that was clear to me or when I made the decision even to go into H.R., I was working at Pearle Vision. I was a new Store Manager, and I was kind of moving up and in the organization starting to do some training and development and I have been transferred back to the corporate office from California to Dallas. A rumor started going around and I had come out in college, but I was living in Texas. In Texas, there were still sodomy laws, so you could be put in jail for sodomy. There certainly was no protection for employment. As a matter of fact, if you came out, it was perfectly legal to fire you simply for being gay. Just that single reason. So, someone in the company started telling people, "Hey, Dean is gay. I don't think that he should be working here. This isn't right". I remember being terrified. This is like my big fear. It was not like I hid it at work. But I certainly did not wear a shirt that said, I am gay. But I did not hide it. I thought, you know what? I'm not going to live like this. I'm not going to live in fear. I went to the head of HR, Roy Wilson. I just walked into his office and said, "I'm Dean Carter. I don't know if you know me, but I need to let you know something. I'm gay. And that's not changing. I understand there may be some people here that are concerned about that. And if you're concerned about that or if this is a concern here, I can't work here. I feel like I've got a lot to give and I feel like I'm making a difference in this place, and if you don't want that, then I'll go somewhere else and do it. But, I am just checking in with you to let you know this isn't changing and I'm here and I hope to make a difference, but if it's a problem, I'll go. I'll leave the door right now and go somewhere else".
He said, "Oh, Dean. You are so okay here. You're safe, you're valued. And I just want to let you know you have a place here." That was the day I decided to be the chief people officer. Roy inspired me and I said, someday I can be in that role and do that for someone else. That was a big shaping moment for me that I thought, "Okay, I'm walking to this and I'm going to lose my job, or I could even go to jail". You think things change and we're still fighting for that, by the way.
Well, thank you for sharing that. That really gave me goosebumps. Putting myself in your shoes and trying to think about what that moment might have meant. But also, I realize that you are saying we are still fighting for that and at the same time also feeling a sense of gratitude as to how things have been evolving and changing for the better, with more embrace, acceptance and comfort with allowing people to just be themselves and honoring and appreciating in their different paths that we are taking in humanity, isn't it?
Also the way you just role play that, if that was, 80-90% of how you actually did it. Hats off to you. Because I saw in that moment, a level of just centeredness, comfort in expressing a thought, but also just accepting that maybe this little community is right for you or may not be right for you, and you are giving them the choice to make that call. You respect them for doing what they need to do for themselves, and at the same time, you have no insecurity about who you are and your place in the world, regardless of what choice or decision they make, but you just want to give them that opportunity to make a very clear and informed choice. There is this thing called fusing of opposites, not just like having the pendulum swing on just one side, which is either completely dislike you and be devastated if you let me go or I will think you are amazing. I do think that we can make the joint call in a way that could do beautiful things and at the same time know that with or without you, I will thrive. Anyway, it is a beautiful dance.
It was. I believe in showing up authentically is where you bring your best self. I actually did get ultimately promoted into the person who was leaving the company, not of their choice, and I ended up taking their job. There was a little weird kismet in that moment. It was an accelerant for my career, actually. That was a surprise. I think just showing up as who you are and being in spaces and places and finding them that make that happen. That's really important to me, whenever I go to places like, Guild, to make sure that people feel safe and seen, it is a huge part of my role to feel safe and seen.
Let us continue to expand on that a little bit about people philosophies that really apply to today's time. You have shared how at Patagonia, we see people as resources to steward, not resources for extraction and depletion. To think about how we want this company to be run so that we are going to be in business 100 years from now. Can you talk a little bit to that?
I like to look at the business model of companies and then apply the business model to the human model. Whatever those I like to have, a real close mirror of that. So I try to read the DNA of the company and then understand how to apply that DNA into the people practices. Hopefully it is good DNA. In Patagonia, it happened to be really good DNA.
When we had the conversation about moving from apparel into food, the concept of regenerative agriculture came up, which was the concept of that is the way we toil currently. Toil opens up the soil and then grows things again is a highly destructive process to the soil.
What happens when things grow? It creates this microbial community underneath with the seed. It kind of comes together. What happens when the seed grows? It comes up out of the ground and pulls in carbon into the soil. It enriches the soil and there is this symbiotic relationship between the plant, the air and the soil.
In traditional tilling, when the plant is done at the end of the year, it produces a piece of corn. The pharmacist, thanks to the corn, pulls it off, slices it into the ground, kills the microbial community, and the dirt is less alive than it was before.
So we have to use pesticides and fertilizers and spend all this money restoring the soil, and then the ecosystem around it is destroyed too. The rivers are dirty. The air is not good. Eventually, you end up with something that you have to put so much money into the soil that it is expensive to grow crops, because the food that you make is not that great.
I thought about this around humans and our practice of human resources. I felt like the annual performance review is a little bit like thanks for the corn and like the ripping of the process. The conversation, even in mindsets, is based on fixed mindsets, not growth mindsets like how do you get people to grow? When you call someone at 3? There is no growth in that. I am a 3. It got to thinking about, "Wow, what if I think about my practice of putting more people into people's lives like we put into soil and use regenerative practices around human beings, resulting in the question on the survey, not like how much more can you give us in discretionary effort, but as a result of working with the company, does the company put more into your life than it takes out?
We started doing that testing like different benefits and we did a new benefit, where we were going to basically work 9 hours a day, 4 days a week, and then every other Friday we were close. Then you would have one Friday off, basically giving 26 three day weekends a year. The whole company voted. We did a pre-survey and a post-survey to understand what was the impact. Six months later, we asked people as a result of this, what was the impact on your relationship with your spouse? As a result of this, what is the impact on your time you spent with children? Your ability to go to the grocery store, your ability to buy healthy food, your ability to get outside and enjoy the outdoors and do the things that you love to do? All of those scores went up dramatically. I don't know any company that has ever said as a result of working for this company, we hope you have a better relationship with your spouse. Hope you have more time with your children. I hope you have the ability to get outside and play. I hope that you have the ability to go to the dentist and the doctor and buy healthy food.
That context, once we put that out there and said, this is what we're trying to do at Patagonia. This is what we want to do about your life. It is like the Hotel California. People stayed in and checked in and they did not check out.
I will always believe in that concept now. I can't go back to the extractive practices of the profession of human resources. I can't go back to that. I have to think every single day like, this extractive or is it putting back something back into people's lives? What is my moral responsibility in that?
I think for me, you are painting a picture of something that in my work, in our work at Mentora Institute, we have been striving to codify, which is of an inspired organization. What does it mean to be an inspired organization, an inspired culture, an inspired team and inspired individual? I love the idea that there are certain lessons we can learn from nature or from organizational life that can apply to the human, being the individual and then amplifying it from the individual to the organization. That is really beautiful to see.
I want to push the boundaries of this a little bit even further. You have spoken about that form of regeneration and what you put into each of the people in your organization versus what you are extracting from them. You have given examples here of the childcare story from Melinda that became really helpful for moms who just recently had babies. Also this one about a 3 day-weekends once every couple of weeks.
I am also convinced and want to test this with you and feel free to push back, that part of the solution lies in having us not see there to be a huge distinction between what we feel are moments in our life that are very nurturing and what we feel are moments in our life where we have to show up for call of duty and work. In other words, why should we need to de-stress from work? Of course, we need to regenerate. We need quiet moments both with our families, but also just by ourselves. But also, can it not be the case that if we create the right environment and bring in the right people, etc., that every moment of what they do is a joyful moment of engagement with their craft and with their community and therefore is giving them energy rather than taking energy out from them. And of course, at the end of the day, physically the body becomes tired, but the spirit is very nourished in every moment at work. Your thoughts and ideas on that.
I'm going to horribly quote Yvon Chouinard. He said, "A master at kind of the point of life is that when they are at work and when they are at play, you really can't tell the difference."
Beautiful!
I am butchering what he really said, but that is to some extent like the whole mastering of how to live is like that work and play are integrated. There is that TV show Severance, I do not know if you have seen that, where they put a chip in someone's head and they separate work and life. This person thinks like I can separate my work and life and it is a disaster. It is clearly a horrible thing, and it shows up so clearly in this moment when there really is a severance between work and life and it just goes to show you cannot separate those things. There is no such thing as leaving life behind and coming to work. And there is no such thing as your work not impacting your life. I do not think there is a work life balance. That is a weird concept to me.
If you go back to how we did things a long time ago, work and life were integrated. You woke up, worked and lived. I think we are also losing a bit of play. The idea of play. I did a lot of research on play. Why do we play and what is it? It is not because we are human beings. It is because we are mammals. Mammals play. It is so deep in us. It is dogs play, cats play porpoises play, whales play, bears play. You see them at play. We have this innate need as a mammal to play. When you create experiences at work and life, and there is no space for play, the core of us of being human beings is crushed.
This idea of work is play. Play is work. Life is work and play. With the integration of these things there is a little bit of opportunity to live, play and laugh. I think that is the ultimate space to create, where everyone feels comfortable to do and live all those three things. And if you extract play from life or work, then, it goes against our deepest part of our DNA as a mammal.
That is very thought provoking. I haven't given a whole lot of attention to play. I think you are really sparking it for me as a topic I want to deep dive on. Are there any resources that might guide our listeners and me as well, in terms of studying the interface between play and the workplace?
There are a lot of people who have studied play. There is a book called "Play". There is an International Institute for play, someone who is just really focusing on that. I was really curious about the impact of play, because Patagonia has this theory about the importance of play. I just thought, "Well, let me peel that back. What does that mean?" There is an Institute for the Science of Play. Those are really great research points for me and I just continued to Google. I am experimenting with ChatGPT right now, like how would I play at work? I think you will find really great ways of implementing play in work and I don't think it is like putting more foosball tables at work. I think there is space for play.
Guild does this in a really fun way, by the way. At first I was like, "What are they doing that for?" But every meeting begins with an icebreaker. First I was like, "Oh my god, the icebreaker. This is like so 1980. I cannot believe I'm back to my training days. We're doing icebreakers". But, what it does is, it creates a little playful moment. A little moment of play before every meeting. It is usually something playful. Like, what's your number one song in your Spotify list or something more intense?
I asked the other day what was the coldest moment of your life? Because it was a very cold day. Someone said, "I climbed Mount Kilimanjaro and I got frostbite". I'm like, "That's a cold day". It is a moment to play and laugh. It is an unlock for virtual work, because we don't get to see each other in these moments and so I reintroduce you at the beginning of every meeting to know something about you and you don't know about me. We all kind of do that and then we go into our meeting.
That is a small thing, but that is play. That is play and work. I think we need to find ways of doing that. So just don't jump into the next meeting and the next Zoom, which is why people are depressed. Actually, the absence of play is depression. That is what science says. When humans cannot play, we get depressed. I don't think we played a lot in COVID. I think that we had all these wellness programs and we had to do all these things because play was difficult during that time.
This is really sparking something with me. One of the things that I have extracted from studying some of the inspirational, luminous leaders from history, one of my paths towards understanding human potential has been to study the Abraham Lincolns, the Mother Teresa's, the Eleanor Roosevelt's, the Gandhi's, the Nelson Mandela's and even like the Steve Jobs and the Warren Buffett's and others. Yvon can certainly be put into that group as well as a pioneering force in his world of business. One thing I found from these people is that they were seeing so much more potential in people than most of us do on an average day. In the 20th century, we had a lot of advancements in science. I am very happy and grateful for those and they definitely helped us illuminate our communities with just greater insight about personality, behavior and motivations and all of that. But I think one of the things that was limiting about it is this notion of personality assessments.
Again, I'm curious about what your thoughts are on that. But the idea that we are like fixed personalities, and then we start to label ourselves and other people based on the MBTI, as a sensate or a thinker or what have you. With these people, what I find is that they had a certain hunger, a need or a desire to move humanity forward along some ideal vision they had of where they wanted it to go. Churchill in the Second World War, seeking to really get a lot of bravery and valor out of the British people and resiliency at a time when all hell is breaking loose. Gandhi wanted to very peacefully demand from the British to just leave our country and let us have the right to govern ourselves. Mother Teresa opened the heart, you know for people to pay attention to the dying, the destitute and all that.
What I find in these people is that they just saw more compassion in people than we necessarily tap into every day. Gandhi saw a lot more calmness in people. Churchill had a lot more courage in people. Steve Jobs has a lot more creativity in people. And somehow, they were able to get people to that place. It is kind of like what you were just saying about Yvon was able to get you closer to your ideal self. For those people who chose to follow them, those people who chose to be part of that change movement that they were inviting them on a journey of, they became just a lot more compassionate for a period of time, at least, if not for the rest of their lives. I don't know what those longitudinal studies might show, but for that period of time, they were just so much more courageous, so much more creative, so much more compassionate.
There are studies that have actually been done on some of these people being exposed to a Steve Jobs or Mother Teresa or what have you, and they just self-report like, "Oh, wow! I was just a lot more creative. I was just a lot more compassionate somehow in the presence of this person or in being in attunement with their message or their movement." Now, you think about that at a high level, how do you apply that practically to the everyday world?
A little bit of what you just said about play, what it suggests is that, these people who are coming in, we think of them as just, this is Hitendra showing up. This is Dean showing up. But no. Actually, it is like which version of Hitendra is showing up? Which version of Dean is showing up? And how can I make sure I get the closest to the best version of Dean, the best version of Hitendra? And for that, doing a little bit of that play and reset.
I have done some experiments with my Executive MBA students here at Columbia, as well as with some of our executives in our Mentora Institute who have been volunteers and participants. One thing we found is, inviting people to just take a pause before a critical meeting and use that pause to do a little bit of a reset, check in with their emotional state and make sure that they are opening themselves up to a positive intention for the meeting that is going to come up so that they see possibilities in it, even if it is a meeting with finance and they just feel like finance never gets it, they are going to put constraints on me, or whatever it is, taking all that clutter out of their mind, opening themselves up, maybe visualizing a couple of positive interactions they will have in the meeting, that is all it takes for them to actually go into the meeting and have a dynamic that pleasantly surprises them with what kind of outcomes they can get.
Wow. That's really powerful. I think we do expect people to show up at 9 p.m. or 9 a.m. in that moment without a pause, no breath between things. It is like meeting, meeting, meeting, zoom, zoom, zoom. I think that idea of let's pause for a moment and just be ready to be present or whatever the icebreaker or whatever those moments are, I think they are so critical. Thanks for calling out all those people who brought really incredible things out of human beings.
There are people in my life that pull things out of me like Yvon, Melinda, Lisa or other people who saw something in me or gave me a really safe space. My goal is that I hope to give people that safe space to be their full selves, to have space to time for quiet and play, to think. It is so important. And I and I do feel your point on people like MLK, Gandhi or Rosa Parks, people who really see the world as a possibility for change. You don't do those things unless you see there is a possibility for good. You don't put yourself in those situations if it weren't.
I read a book called "The Ministry for The Future", which had a huge impact on me. It really just talked about a few things. One, it talks about how the world doesn't lack of abundance. It is an abundant place. It is just centered in a few people. If we worked around a world that shared more in abundance, that would be different. The book "Abundance" is a mind changing book for me. Just like to think about how I approach things, that there is abundance, not scarcity. When you start to approach the world from scarcity or even your talent, teams and things from scarcity, then you start thinking about how much can I extract? Not how much can I put in. If you are thinking about this from abundance, then there is plenty for everyone.
I think that there is just this concern in the world of how we have evolved a little bit is like this scarcity piece and kind of keeping as much as you can for you. I think once you realize that there is like an abundance that is what "The Ministry for The Future" just says.
We need to move to a place to think about a world that is abundant as long as we just share it a little differently, then we don't have the problems that we have.
It just even talked about currency, which was a fascinating concept. What if currency weren't like gold and silver? What if it were like sequestered carbon? What if we even shook up big ideas like that? Maybe the whole world is based on the extraction of carbon, is basically the whole currency, what if we flipped the currency on its head that the retention of carbon was actually the currency? Think of the wealth redistribution that would happen in an instant if a rainforest that you do not destroy has continuing value. It is a fascinating concept. I love the idea. You and I could just talk about abundance and bringing that to life and bringing that to people and how if everyone came with a view of abundance.
Thank you for sharing that. It has been on my mind recently how the typical diet of most of the organisms we know on the planet. What does an elephant eat? What does a horse eat and all of that? Then you think about us as humans, and you think about what a bounty nature has given us in terms of different kinds of foods that it naturally just produces to serve our health and to serve our palates to dance with joy, and of course, the human ingenuity on top that over centuries has made humans understand how to mix and match things and spice things up and all of that. If there had to be any proof point about how much nature loves us and wants us to have joyful lives, isn't that just a proof unto itself? What if nature just produced one kind of widget like this is what you're going to eat, this block of something every day as human beings and you don't have it for the rest of the life. You will have sunlight, play and all that. But in terms of eating, you're just going to have to eat this because the human body just cannot take anything else except just that, right? That could have been a certain vision of a certain planet. But instead, look at what it's done for us. Therefore, we gotta love it back. We got to say, thank you nature. Let's have a conversation. Let me be in service of. Because, you're doing such beautiful things for me.
That is such a beautiful thought. It is like thinking about the planet as this beautiful place that we have this mutual relationship with. Thank you in return. I think we have thought a bit about this place just like humans. How much can we extract from the planet? How much can we extract from humans? I think we both know those models aren't sustainable. You cannot continue business models that are only focused on the extraction of humans. And we cannot have a planet where we just figure out how much we can extract from it too. We have just got to figure out how to live with it and breathe with it and enjoy the beautiful palette that it is creating in our food. There is abundance. But man, we just got to figure out how to live less of scarcity and we are going to be good.
It is beautiful. One of the things you've spoken about is the importance of honoring every individual's natural hunger to want to be their true selves. When you think of a collective, whether it is at Guild or Patagonia or other collectives you have been part of, how do you ensure that in a collective as individuals are being invited to really be their true selves, that at the end of the day you still get a certain form of harmony, an alignment, give and take, consistency in the shared energies, quest, direction and progress and all of that, because, in some cases there seems to be struggles that organizations have had, on the one hand wanting to create that sense of flexibility, freedom, self-expression, but on the other hand, finding that it has led at times to a lot of tensions and unexpected conflicts between different groups that think differently about things. And now they're empowered to speak up or people who might just be very strongly resistant to a certain corporate mandate or etc., because they are being empowered to lend their voice. This conflict between the idea of unleashing the genie of the individual expression and all that, and yet, on the other hand, wanting a collective to come together and march to the same drumbeat.
Wow. There's a lot in that. Here is my view also of the role in business for me. My role is the curation of a community. I am not doing workspaces and filling cubes. That is not my role. But I do need to think about it as this organism and a community. Healthy communities have a lot of things in them. They have youth, babies, middle people and they have people who are wise and emeritus. One of the things that really hit me is, Patagonia did a really good job at bringing people into the community, around having children in that moment and serving when you're young and all that and did a terrible job in terms of understanding about our aging population. So, we came together and formed a group called the Emeritus, and we respect the wisdom of the people who have been around for a while. We are going to come together and tell stories about the company to preserve that. We have benefits and we changed the way we think about retirement, not a cliff, but a glide.
First, I think that understanding communities needs to be rich and there needs to be diversity in communities that are healthier and more sustainable. The only thing about the community has to have something in common. Whatever that is, that is the thing that ties communities together and the things that separates them. You don't have to love all the same things, but you kind of have to dislike the same things, if that makes sense. Like at Patagonia, you had to be concerned about the climate. You had to share a visceral like we have to do something about the planet. Otherwise it is a terrible place to work. It is horrible! If you didn't believe in climate change, it is the worst place on the planet to work. Once you know your thing, then you can bring community around a purpose. Whatever that is, this has to be a shared purpose and you hire people who believe in this purpose. Then you can have this broad diversity of backgrounds, likes, dislikes, all ages, demographics. All of these things can be a rich community that you can build, but you do have to have a shared purpose. All have to be moving in the same direction. This kind of pull of places just getting the biodiversity for that sake isn't helpful unless you are anchored to a single purpose.
Once you have that and everyone is aligned to that, whether it was like Apple with their Creativity or Patagonia, with the planet, Guild with opportunity, you really need to have a single thing that you are working around.
Even in challenging environments, I think there is a place to rally people around like a purpose and finding people who are in that. Sears was not Patagonia, it was just a very different culture. We knew that the business was challenging. We all knew that we were on the Titanic. We knew that this thing was going down. So I was like, "What do I do in this? And I can't have this as the purpose of staying? How do I wrap people around an idea that we can all share?" Then I thought, okay, why don't we do this? And I brought my team together, and this was 6,000 people. I had a huge HR team and I just said, "We're going to be the band on the Titanic. Let's just be transparent that we are on the Titanic, but, let's play the best music that ever is possible. You're going to be the best trombone player and the best drummer and the best bass player, and we are going to be the best at human resources that anyone has seen. I'm going to make sure that when this thing starts to feel uncomfortable, you all have a lifeboat. Whatever is next for you, will be so much better than the boat you got in on, I promise you".
And so we did. Like on the Titanic, we did beautiful HR. We won Brandon Hall Awards. We formed an organization that exists today on the greatest analytic talent, analytic minds that come together at Northwestern University. Every single person pretty much are now heads of HR, leading big organizations. As the ship went down, they all got lifeboats. They all are leading significant organizations, people and culture all over the country. That wasn't saving the planet. That wasn't unlocking opportunity for America's workforce. It was just like a single purpose of, "Let's be the best at this". And everyone rallied around and we had a really good time on the Titanic.
My point of this story is that, it doesn't have to be a beautiful place like Patagonia or a clear purpose like Guild, sometimes, you can create a purpose like let's just be the band on the Titanic and you can bring diverse people together to come together for that to help each other. It is this image of being in a giant rubber life raft, and if there was a hole in any of it or anyone fell out during the raft, pull them back in like we are all in this crazy, wild, roaring river together. Using imagery, storytelling and a common purpose, even in the most challenging situations, I think you can rally people. But you have to have a shared purpose.
I think there is a book lurking somewhere in there. That was so beautiful! You shared so many really resonant things in the conversation we just had. The shared purpose as a critical enabler of getting a collective together to still be their authentic self, but also be really united behind a common cause. The work at Patagonia to look at the elders and to think about retirement not as a cliff but as a glide. I love that idea. And to also recognize that they have something unique to offer, because they hold history, and then this incredible capacity to not have to pretend that everything is hunky dory, but to recognize sometimes that we are in turbulent waters. Not just that, but we might actually be on a ship that is going down. That doesn't mean you all just turn in your papers because there is still work to be done and somebody has to be the band on that ship and somebody has to gracefully allow everyone to step by step exit from the ship as many people as we can.
One thing that particularly I found very rewarding about, and it is something that I have been thinking about, is that how do we get everybody to get invested in helping advance the world. When you think about ESG, for example, when you think about the environment, for example, and all of that, we have created this very divisive kind of idea that there are some companies who get it, green and energy companies. Then there are some who don't, they're the ones who are giving us fossil fuel. But, on the other hand, we saw what happens when you actually have energy insecurity because there's a scarcity of energy available and prices shoot up, and the people who suffer the most are the poor. So, we kind of need the Chevrons and Exxons and others of the world to show up and do their work every day for the time being as we perhaps seek to transition from our current consumption habits to either lesser consumption or a healthier form of energy generation, whatever it might be. In the meanwhile, we have to be thankful even to these players.
What that means to me, is that if I am at one of these organizations, then, can I approach my work with a mindset that I'm not going to try to be around forever, I'm going to try to be around for as long as it takes for me to be able to hand the baton to either another subsidiary or division within my organization that is producing more healthier energy or until people tame their energy consumption habits. In the US, we consume 30 times more energy than the Global South and all of that, so that there is less of me that is needed. And when there is less of me that is needed, I'll regenerate. I'll reinvent myself and go and do whatever it is I need to. For a period of time, I may need to be part of that band on the Titanic, and I'm actually kind of almost hopeful that day comes sooner than later because of my love for the planet. But, that doesn't give me a lack of meaning. It doesn't give me lack of relevance and all of that and I can continue to responsibly play my game. Then, for the rest of us who are not at those organizations, we can share with them on how to do it that way, which is keep playing the good game. Please try to generate energy for us at the lowest cost possible for now, but at the same time, collectively, let's work towards an alternative. And when that moment comes, please be part of that band on the Titanic.
That's exactly it. It can be done in beautiful, easy places. The work is hard at Patagonia or in Sears. I think there is a way to find out how you can do something that's good. I think there is power in pointing people to a North Star. I always feel like it is important to read the room.
At Sears, I have to read the room. What is in their heads? What are they worried about? What are they concerned about? Why am I here? What's going to happen if this thing sinks? Am I going to have a good life? So, knowing that, that's why we are going to be the best band. All of the things that are in your head you're worried about, then that's going to do this. If you're worried about the planet, then come to Patagonia. Come be a part. If you're worried about opportunity, come to Guild. If you're at another place that is like not that, find out what is in people's head. Read the room. Read the room and you'll find out there is probably a thread of feeling that everyone shares and grab that and state it and go after that. That's my unlock. Every community has one.
You're getting me to feel the power of collective consciousness. If you think about you and me, just purely in terms of our physical self, then of course we are separated in physical space. But then there is a certain energy and there is a certain consciousness. When you think about myself and yourself and others in that way, then there is more fluidity, there is more capacity to fuse and unite. At that level, there may be a lot of power for us in what you're saying to see collectives arise at various levels, from the individual to the family to the community, to the organization, to a profession, to a society, a nation and perhaps even the shared humanity at a given point in time. The integrative thread that connects a generation with past generations. There is a shared identity we get in that collective, and that's what you're talking about, right?
That's exactly what I'm talking about. I don't remember the book exactly, but I read a book and it talked about the nature of humans. We are made up of atoms and molecules. That's us, just spinning atoms and molecules. None of those atoms and molecules really touch. But there is an energy that keeps them together. The atoms and molecules are spinning super-fast all around our bodies. Then they get tighter and snugger and they make things like bones, livers, stomachs, faces and eyes and all these things, but they just get tightened up. But I do not end here. This is just what you can see and this is just where the density happens. Who I am is 10 feet beyond of what you can see and touch, because there's still my energy in these atoms. The body is just the density part. And I really believe that when you're in space, you can tell the energy of a human or even animal or tree exists beyond being aware of your space and being aware of what you're putting out into the world and what you're extracting. When you're living life to breathe in and breathe out, are you thinking about this whole exchange and are you being fair? Is this a fair exchange?
I think if we all thought about it, there are plenty. It will all come back and go there. I think it would be.
That's so amazing. It reminds me of this moment close to your neck of the woods. I was driving on Highway 110 towards Pasadena, it was after one of these recent bursts of cloud and rain weather. Then suddenly there was this rainbow out there. It was like this painting in the sky. I looked at it and I was like, "Wow, nature! Nature is just rewarding us with this little gift just to give us a little bit of extra joy.”
So these conversations subtly are happening all the time in nature. It is powerful!
Dean, thank you for all you do and for the path you are on and the messages and ideas that you have brought to our community today. Cheering you on at Guild and in your personal journey. As we get ourselves to the closing here, what's your big dream at this stage in your career, in life, with all that you've experienced and done and felt and sensed? What's your big dream?
Wow! That's a great question. But I do have a dream. I am really serious about this movement. A movement and a belief in being regenerative about everything that you do. The work experience is regenerative. My commitment to my family is regenerative. My commitment to this planet is regenerative. My commitment to our conversation with me and you is regenerative. It is and I can feel the energy coming in. I'm sharing and you're bringing energy towards me and I can just feel it.
If I could create a movement around everyone realizing that and what you're putting into the space is, at least as much as you are taking out. If I could get a movement where people were into that and understood it, either at work or at play or whatever integration of that, and I could like get on stage and do something to convince people that this is what it is all about. That's my dream. If I could do that that would be super cool.
That's a beautiful dream. One of the things I find from studying the Rosa Parks, the MLK and the Gandhi's is that they had this beautiful, uplifting, inspiring sort of vision of a perfect world. It doesn't have to be the same for all of them. It could be their version of it, but it is beautiful. Each of them in their cases, they recognize that the world may not get there tomorrow, but they were motivated to want to move it a couple of inches in the right direction and then hand the baton to the next generation to keep going on the quest.
You have this beautiful dream. It is so vivid and inspiring to hear and so critical for today's time. I have no doubt that in the years ahead, you are going to move the world in meaningful ways inches closer to that. That's beautiful.
Inches closer is good with me. What a great conversation. I really enjoyed this. Thank you so much. It's been just such a pleasure talking with you and I hope we get to continue another conversation again sometime.
Thank you very much and all the best!
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