Forging Deep Connections: Collaborations Architect Jean Oelwang

Jean Oelwang is a Collaborations Architect and the founding CEO of Virgin Unite, an entrepreneurial foundation that builds collectives, incubates ideas and re-invents systems for a better world. Prior to starting Virgin Unite, Jean worked with over 25 Virgin businesses across 15 industries. She is the Co-Founder of Plus Wonder, and author of the book, Partnering: Forge the Deep Connections That Make Great Things Happen.

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Show Notes

Connecting with Richard Branson and creating Virgin Unite
How business background shaped your approach at Virgin Unite
The unique challenges of the social sector compared to the corporate world
Origin of and work at The Elders and B Team
How “partnering” evolved as a concept
Key concepts from Jean’s book
Background and goals for Plus Wonder

Summary

Jean Oelwang is a Collaborations Architect and the founding CEO of Virgin Unite. She is also the Co-Founder of Plus Wonder, and author of the book, Partnering. Jean discusses her background working with partners to lead the incubation and start-up of several global initiatives, and how we can forge deep connections to amplify the impact we collectively make in the world.

Full Transcript

Brian

Welcome to another episode of LifeExcellence with Brian Bartes. Join me as I talk with amazing athletes, entrepreneurs, authors, entertainers, and others who have achieved excellence in their chosen field so you can learn their tools, techniques and strategies for improving performance and achieving greater success.

Jean Oelwang is a collaborations architect and the founding CEO of Virgin Unite, an entrepreneurial foundation that builds collectives, incubates ideas, and reinvents systems for a better world. Over the last 20 years Jean has worked with partners to lead the incubation and startup of several global initiatives, including The Elders, The B Team, and many others. She has also worked with over 25 virgin businesses across 15 industries to help embed purpose in everything they do. Jean served as a partner in the Virgin Group leading their people strategy, and she was also the joint CEO of Virgin Mobile in Australia prior to starting Virgin Unite. Jean is active in a number of advisory board roles, including The Elders, The New Now, and the Sara Blakely Foundation. She serves on the boards of several organizations, including Ocean Unite, Penn State Board of Visitors, and Unite BVI Foundation, and she is also a B Team leader. Jean is the co-founder of Plus Wonder, a not-for-profit initiative created to spark more meaningful, deep connections and collaborations in the world. She is the author of the book “Partnering: Forge the Deep Connections that Make Great Things Happen.” I’m a huge fan of her work and her book, and it’s an honor to have her on the show. Welcome, Jean, and thanks for joining us on LifeExcellence.

Jean

Thank you, Brian. Thanks for that beautiful introduction and for all the work you’re doing. I just mentioned to you earlier just how wonderful your podcast is.

Brian

I appreciate you saying that Jean, I love the concept of partnering and forging deep connections both personally and in business and other collaborative relationships. One partnership that has clearly been a blessing for both of you is your partnership with Richard Branson. How did you two first connect and what inspired you and Richard to create Virgin Unite?

Jean

I feel very blessed that I’ve had the honor to work with him now for close to 25 years. We first connected over something that was quite funny actually. There are two different versions of the story. I was, at the time, working in Virgin Mobile Australia, as you mentioned. We were just launching so Richard was coming into town to help us further along with the launch. His version of the story is that he got off the plane, I put him into a car, bundled him out to this field, laid him flat down on the grass, put a harness on him, then as he was being lifted up, lifted up by probably by one of the largest helicopters in Australia, said to him, sorry, we couldn’t get you insurance. He was flying in to land on our competitors cages for Virgin Mobile to release them from their contracts and then we’re going to kick off into the launch. And my version of the story is that I picked him up at the airport, brought him into our boardroom and sat him down and explained to him that there was no way anyone was going to find Richard Branson flying from a bungee cord on one of the largest helicopters in Australia, over the bridge and into this launch. As you can see, his version is a much more exciting one. But that’s how we first met and then we worked together through Virgin Mobile and then started Virgin Unite.

Brian

You’ve enjoyed tremendous success on the business side as I mentioned, Virgin. It’s interesting to me how you transitioned into the social sector. How did your previous experiences shape your approach at Virgin Unite? Because although there are certainly similarities between leadership of a for-profit organization of a business, and a not-for-profit organization, there are definitely differences too.

Jean

Brian, I think both systems – both the economic model as well as the not-for-profit model in the world – are broken and need to be fixed. But certainly having that business experience before I moved into the not-for-profit sector was really, really helpful. My earlier career, what I was doing was mainly helping start up mobile phone companies in different markets. So it was kind of the heyday of mobile phone companies which shows how old I am. It was years ago when we were first starting and first starting to grow them. But I remember we were moved from country to country, starting in Bulgaria, then Colombia, South Africa. We’d start these mobile phone companies but we’d use the kinds of tools that we had in the previous market in order to scale them and grow them more quickly. And what I saw in many of those countries was similar social and planetary issues that weren’t going to scale because they were so isolated to that one country. We weren’t sharing ideas across borders. I immediately became fascinated with how to use those tools, business and scaling solutions, how we approach our not-for-profit problems, how we approach our interconnected social and environmental problems. But I think one of the biggest turning points for me was when I was working in South Africa for a company called MTN. We were one of the first companies to start prepaid services and we literally made our annual sales target within one month. We went into the townships to find out what was happening and we saw the most extraordinary entrepreneurial approach, where people were setting up briefcases with phones and prepaid phones to actually sell phone calls. They set up these trailers with phones in them. They created all of these interesting business ideas and for me, it was this light bulb moment. But the most beautiful thing is that they were creating jobs and uplifting people that were living in poverty. It was that light bulb moment of the power of business to drive change in the world and the intersection. I think having that grounding in business and understanding the role – that when you combine business with not-for-profit, with government – we become unstoppable. We can really solve any of the problems that we’re facing right now. I think that grounding, and how you scale, how you approach an issue, but as importantly, what is the role of business in solving problems, and not separating those sectors into silos, was really helpful to me. It was also helpful in knowing, when I first started in Virgin, that the number one thing we need to do is help make sure that our businesses were putting people and planet at the center of all they were doing. That was one of our first focuses; when we started Unite, it was working with our airlines, working with our banks, working with the gyms, to look at how they could embed purpose at their center to really drive and scale that change and then what role could we use with our businesses, with government not-for-profits.

Brian

I can see how business processes can translate, and you mentioned scaling can translate, into the social sector. But what unique challenges did you find when you started working with Virgin Unite and also in other not-for-profit organizations?

Jean

As I mentioned earlier, I feel like we’ve structured business without putting people and planet at the center as we should. But we’ve also instructed not-for-profits to be not that efficient and effective and scaleable. I think some of the challenges that I found immediately were this weird structure where you have all these NGOs, not-for-profits, really fighting with each other for funding, rather than incentives that actually have them coming together to figure out how they can scale a problem. I think you also, again, often then, because of the way the sector’s structured, is you have the issues in isolation. You may have social issues over here, planetary issues over here, when in reality they’re so interconnected across the board. But again, we’ve not really allowed NGOs to have that permission to do cross-sectorial work, because we’ve defined what buckets we’re going to give to them with funding. I think that’s a third thing; we’ve set up this weird model, Brian, where it’s not necessarily about solving the root cause, the systemic issue, it’s about mandating the problem. It’s about giving those funds at the whim of the donors, rather than really understanding how do we come together. How do we work with a not-for-profit sector to really get to that root cause of the systemic issue? We’ve kind of caused that, by the way, again, we’ve structured it. So I think those were some of the challenges and the outcomes of that, where often then we’re not solving issues as fast as we can be. We’re not bringing together those three sectors, because not-for-profits are just trying to survive and really raise funds. And so one of the things we’ve really tried to do at Virgin Unite is look at how do we turn that model upside down and really center ourselves on collaboration and bringing together leaders across sectors to really work together to solve some of these problems.

Brian

I think that funding challenge is really a big one, though. One of the last things that you said, I think, because most not-for-profit organizations aren’t well funded, that the focus is often on how do we get funding rather than maybe the mission. I know that’s not always the case but I’ve been involved with a fair number of not-for-profit organizations and funding is always an issue. So again, depending on how large the organization is, how many people are involved, a lot of times everybody’s sort of focused on funding because that drives mission.

Jean

One hundred percent agree and it creates this warp dynamic where we focus on giving rather than partnering. It also creates the sense of a lack of balanced partnership and also lack of dignity, often, for the charity because they’re having to again, focus on being the recipient of a set of funds that perhaps are not the right things for them to be doing to really solve that root cause of the problem. So I think it’s a fundamental challenge where we need to reassess that model and look at how do we create those equal partnerships between the donors and between the charitable entities. How do we get that right so we can really leverage the skills, both on the donor side and on the charitable side.

Brian

Yeah, that’s very important. Jean, you’ve been involved in so many organizations, many organizations that collectively have made a tremendous positive impact in the world. I would really…I’d love to discuss all of them that I know about – which is probably not all of them that you’ve been involved with – we obviously don’t have time to do that. But I’d like to ask you about a couple of them if I could. Tell us about the origin of The Elders, which I find really interesting, and your role with that organization.

Jean

Yeah, and I should say, before I talk about any of them, that there’s an army of people that have been involved and partners and all of these that have helped make them happen. The Elders really started…it was an idea between the musician Peter Gabriel – who I adore, he is one of my big heroes in life – years ago he started to think as the world becomes this more connected village with the internet, how do we have these elders – these groups of elders, as we would have around a campfire – to really help guide us on global issues. Then you had Richard Branson, who when the war started in Iraq, really wanted to bring together Mandela, Kofi Annan, Archbishop Tutu, to see how they could come together to stop the war. So that was the genesis of the idea. We brought those two ideas together. I’ll never forget; it was one of my first days of work and Richard came to me and handed me a letter from Nelson Mandela that said, let’s go, let’s do this. He handed it to me and he said, okay, can you make The Elders happen now? And I remember just looking at it and thinking, I’ve just quit my amazing job in Australia to come to work with a crazy man with a beard, and thinking, how on earth were we going to do this? But we gathered…and this is another [thing] to your point about the nonprofit sector, I think often we don’t have the right voices in the room, the people that are actually impacted by the issue. We learned that really early on in The Elders because we decided we were going to put together this three week session where we brought in some of the most amazing entrepreneurs from around the world, amazing frontline leaders, some of the elders themselves. I’ll never forget, Brian, because I’ve come from the corporate sector and I had created this perfect PowerPoint presentation and went in there with “this is the idea and this is what’s going to work.” I’ll never forget coming to this island, this session, the night before and Peter and Richard literally just looking at me and saying, no PowerPoint. So I stayed up all night creating these flip charts. I was standing in front of the room with a ton of my heroes in that room and I’m using my little flip charts. I’m watching President Carter, who was sitting right in front of me and he had these piercing blue eyes and thinking, oh my god, he loves this idea. This is so fantastic. He’s staring at me the whole time, it’s going to be brilliant. And at the end, he stands up and he says, I don’t believe in this idea. I don’t think it’s going to work. I remember just feeling like I wanted to melt into the cement and never come up again, and then looking at the back of the room and watching Peter and Richard, their faces just fell to the floor because they felt their idea got blown up. We scurried back into Richard’s office at the time and we just sat there kind of stunned for a few minutes. But then we had such belief in the idea and such belief in each other, that we kind of picked ourselves up out of that moment. To their great credit, they stuck with me and stuck with the idea. We walked out of that room and we spent the next three weeks – we ripped up my PowerPoint – at the feet of these frontline leaders, at the feet of some of the elders or business leaders, really building and shaping what The Elders could be. Tutu and Carter were there helping create the purpose and the values, and front line leaders were saying, this won’t work; really critical thinking. We came out of that three weeks with a way better proposition. It was a really important learning point for me some 20 years ago, about listening to the right people, getting those voices around the table, co-creating and putting your ego at the door. Years later, Carter – who then became a critical part of The Elders, at his going away party when he was in his 90s, when he was leaving The Elders – he stood up and he said, The Elders is one of the most important things I’ve ever done in my life. That’s because of the co-creation. So when you ask about my role, my role really became the curator of ideas and listening to people and helping pull that idea together, helping get the right leadership and team in place, spinning it out so it could be independent and work on behalf of the universe. And then making sure over the years that we had that right group at the center, and it’s now Mary Robinson at the helm as the chair. She’s doing an amazing job. We have an incredible group of 12 elders, who work really on the behalf of the universe with no other agenda. They focus on three primary existential threats, one being nuclear threat, the second being pandemics, the third being how do we look at our planetary crisis, and then kind of weaved within all of that our cross cutting themes like conflict resolution, gender, etc.

Brian

It had to have been incredibly affirming to hear President Carter say what he did after having been involved with The Elders for a long time. The other thing that I want to just tease out a little bit is one of the lessons that I heard – I would love for you to share a little bit more – is having the courage to sit in a room like that and say that you don’t agree with an idea. Can you talk about that a little bit? I know you have extensive business experience and experience in the not-for-profit side as well but I’m sure you’ve sat in a number of meetings where everybody comes into the meeting and they hear what’s being presented and maybe they’re thinking that they don’t agree with the idea but they don’t have the courage to actually articulate that. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Jean

I think this is such an important lesson that I’m still learning. Like, this morning, I was on a call and people were sharing that they weren’t happy with this idea but it opened up this beautiful space then, where we could put aside that idea and just brainstorm. In the end, we came up with a way better, what I would call “third way idea,” that was built on some of the principles of those first ideas. But it was a much better idea because it brought that thinking, and that was because of the bravery of someone on this call. In that case, that was a bravery of Paul Polman, who used to head-up Unilever. He stood up and he said…he gave me, like, a flag before we got on the call that he wasn’t happy with this idea so he was already setting the scene for that and letting me think about it. And he brought it up in a way that was an opening space rather than a closing space. I think that’s what President Carter did in that meeting when he stood up and made that comment. He gave us the space to step back and think about, okay, maybe there is a third way, maybe we aren’t right in the way we came in with this idea. But he did it in a loving way, which then opened the space for those next three weeks. And he stayed there with us for three weeks and sat in all those meetings and he did the hard work to co-create on the third way idea. I think that’s another important lesson that I learned, it’s okay to bring up something and say, I don’t like that idea. It’s not going to work. But then it’s really important to do the hard work and figure out what is the next idea. What is the evolution of that idea, that pivot of that idea, rather than just undermine people’s ideas. That’s what I’ve seen The Elders do again and again, is they do it in a loving way. They do it in a transparent and frank way so there’s clarity but then they help you pivot. They help, they sit and they do the hard work and think about what could work. What change are we trying to make here? I saw Tutu do the same thing, Tutu was brilliant. I’ll never forget, he was in a meeting and he saw two people having deep conflict which was deterring us from coming out with a better way and a better idea. And rather than ignore the conflict – which 99% of us would do, we just shuffle our papers then and walk out of the room – what Tutu taught me to do is, he stood in that meeting room and he had the bravery and the courage to say to those two people, I see there’s a conflict, let’s try to resolve it. Let’s not ignore it, let’s not sweep the conflict under the carpet. Then he held that safe space for them to talk through the conflict and to come to a conclusion and to come out the other side with their relationship intact. I’ve seen them do that a million times where they can have this heated debate, where they don’t ruin or break their friendship or the partnership. What they do is they have discussions around what could be a better idea, what could be a different direction, even when they’re really passionate about it. They hold that space of respect; they’ve learned to have the conversation without disrespecting one another and I think that’s a really important part of it.

Brian

I was going to ask you a follow up question, but I think you just answered it, because most of what you’ve been talking about is from the standpoint of the person who objects to an idea, or somebody stepping into confrontation. But what I wondered about is the dynamic that’s required of the group, because the person can object to it and present that tactfully and in a way that conveys openness and seeking that third idea that ends up being the best idea. But there’s also an openness required of the group to not shut down that objection or to lobby for the idea to go forward in spite of one person’s objection. Can you share more about that?

Jean

I think that’s something in that moment, that story I shared with you with President Carter, that I really respected Peter and Richard. Because this was an idea that they were deeply passionate about and they could have like, stood their ground and let their egos take over, and said, okay, we’re just going to keep on trying to push this through, we’re going to walk in this room and try to get people on side and try to push it through. Instead, what they really did is they put their egos aside, and they really went back into that room – every time we went into a conversation – thinking maybe that other person’s right, rather than going in defensive, that my idea’s the only way. I think they created that culture for the rest of those three weeks. We were open to all ideas that came out because they were not defensive. I think also they allowed me…because, as you can imagine in that moment 20 years ago, just starting my job, I was deeply vulnerable. I was thinking, oh, my gosh, I’ve just gotten…the idea, I didn’t present it in the right way, I’ve let these two down who I deeply respect. Instead, they embraced me and they helped me keep my level of confidence when I walked back in that room. I’ll never forget that moment. Because again, that created that culture where I went back with this confidence that we’re really going to make this idea work. And so that again set the framing for kind of a loving environment, rather than me going out there in fear that I was going to lose my job or that they thought I was doing a bad job. They created that loving space for me as well. So that was an important lesson. Then when we walked back into that room, we sat down and we really, really listened. That was probably, again, one of the number one lessons; we were authentically listening, taking people’s ideas. We weren’t just doing it as a check box exercise, where we’re really going to go back to our idea at the end of this. I think we not only proved that in the room by creating that space, we also proved it in the outcome of the idea, where we showed that we had listened, and we changed the idea and evolved that idea dramatically to make sure it took in that feedback. So I think the people in the room, and the three of us, tried to set that scene, which I’m not going to say it was easy, it was hard to do because we’d fallen in love with the idea.

Brian

You make it sound like it was a symphony that flowed smoothly and eloquently and beautifully and, of course, it wasn’t like that. But there are so many great lessons packed into the stories and the examples that you’ve shared. Switching gears a little bit, you’re also a B Team leader. Can you tell us a little bit about The B Team? How did The B Team start and what’s the work that you’re doing? They’re both organizational and also the specific role that you have as a leader.

Jean

After we started The Elders, we also started something called the Carbon War Room, which is around market-based models to reduce carbon. We realized that unless we change the way we do business, we’re going to be having these conversations for decades, because it’s one of the root causes of why we have these issues from a social and environmental perspective. So we started to think wouldn’t it be interesting to bring together a group of business leaders, as we had done with The Elders, to look at how we could work towards a better way of doing business for people and the planet. That was the genesis of the idea. We started to bring together groups of leaders, again, the similar way to what we did with The Elders, just to listen. We talked to thousands of people around what could a group like this do to make a difference. That was some 12 years ago now; we launched The B Team about a decade ago. The B Team group of leaders are all leaders that are committed to this purpose of how do we put people and planet at the core of what we do as business leaders. Again, we focus a lot on transparency and corruption. We focus a lot on the planet, we focus a lot on something called one hundred percent human at work, and how we bring humanity back into companies. We look at how we build a movement, but also how we’re looking at policy shifts, how we look at these leaders as role models that can stand up and take courageous stances, and how do we look at them as examples of what they’re doing in their own companies. My role at the start was similar to what we were doing with The Elders, of incubating it, building it, bringing in a leadership team. There were amazing leaders, amazing partners that I worked alongside to make that happen. Then we had an amazing CEO who just recently stepped down because she became president of Iceland a couple of weeks ago. (Brian: Wow.) Yeah, Halla, amazing leader. We were thrilled but we were very, very sad to lose her. We’re very excited that she’s president of Iceland and going to be, hopefully, driving large scale change at the helm in that role. So now we’re actually looking for a new B Team CEO. As a B Team leader, my role is to work alongside those leaders on how do we push the envelope. How do we challenge…like one example of something that Paul Polman and Richard and the whole host of The B Team leaders did some time ago, in 2015, is they worked alongside The Elders, they worked alongside the amazing Christiana Figueres, her team, who was leading the push at COP in Paris in 2015 to get the Paris Agreement. Christiana was, like going back to your symphony analogy, she was the conductor and her team were the conductors. They were the ones that would give us orders at The B Team, at The Elders, on which countries and nations we needed to speak with; how can we get business leaders really to give the leaders ground cover with a commitment to become net zero by 2050. So that was an example of where you also get collaborations to work in parallel with one another and we’re looking at how we do that. Again, a large part Christiana’s leadership and others leadership, like Paul’s, in the lead up to the COP 30 in Brazil, next year.

Brian

Jean, you’ve taken on some huge, huge problems, some of the world’s biggest problems, with Unite, and many of other organizations, some of which we’ve talked about. You’ve brought together, clearly, some pretty amazing people and pretty successful people to try and solve them. What accomplishments in the last 20 years are you most proud of?

Jean

Oh, I’d have to say, probably, the friendships that have been formed by the leaders within collectives and between collectives. That’s, I think, where I see the exponential impact happening; whether that was the wonderful Kofi Annan, who we sadly lost a few years ago, working with Hela Botte??? who worked on the front lines in India and really the collision that they had around some issues. But the beautiful partnership and friendship that they formed then made way bigger impact than they ever could have on their own. And just to see…when Mandela died, and there was a lot of conflict at the time between the the political regime in South Africa and Archbishop Tutu, to see the different beautiful friendships surrounding Archbishop Tutu. I’ll never forget, Brian, when we were at lunch in 2013 with Mandela and The Elders – didn’t know that it was the last time they’d be with this great leader before he passed later in that year – I remember, at this lunch, they were sitting…I was sitting in the back along the side watching them and there was just this laughter and this joy with these tears about where the world was. Then at the end of the lunch Nelson Mandela just stood up. He was way into his 90s at that stage, and yet still had more grace and stature than any human I’ve ever met. He stood up and he slid his left hand slowly into his amazing wife, Graça’s [hand] and they turned gently to walk out of the room. Before he left the room, he turned and looked at this group of friends that were sitting at the table, these elders that he had brought on board, and he just smiled at them, and his eyes and his smile lit up the entire room. It was as if he was saying, you’ve got this, you’ve got this now. And then he turned gently to walk out of the room. I just always remember that moment, because they’ve never let him down. They’ve worked…we thought we were going to get like two days or three days of the elders time per year, and they give hundreds of days of their time and they’re continuing to do this work and friendship. So I think the biggest success is friendships that have been formed, that allow that continuity of impact and momentum, ongoing for, hopefully, generations to come. I think the second thing is that we’ve allowed these collectives of leaders to be bigger, more audacious, to take more challenges, more chances, because they’re in these collectives. Watching them, and…we were part of an amazing initiative that’s now run by the wonderful Chris Anderson at TED and also Tom Tierney at Bridgespan that’s called Audacious Projects. This was an idea that came together from Chris at TED and Richard and Jeff Skoll and a host of others, and it was really about how do we get philanthropists together to make big bets. Now they have put billions of dollars into not-for-profit initiatives to allow them to scale. So it says kind of how do you bring together these collectives to allow people to dream big and make things happen and to allow them to be brave and courageous and stand up. I also think – back to our conversation about one of the problems of the not-for-profit sector – one of the things I’m most proud of is, we started the Carbon War Room, as I mentioned, years ago. But we realized that one of the things we were missing, we had the entrepreneurial, we had the business ideas, but we didn’t have the scientific or the technology ideas. There was this amazing partner called Rocky Mountain Institute, that was started by Amory Lovins and run by this amazing leader, Jules Kortenhorst, so we decided that if we merged, we’d be way bigger and better than if we were on our own. We went from being a $12 million organization to now it’s an over $250-300 million organization, doing way bigger and better things. We merged into RMI, so we lost the Carbon War Room branding, which was the best thing we could have done, because then it was one organization; we merged the boards and so we got the best of everyone. Jules did an amazing job setting up an executive committee that we sat on. And for a decade, we all worked really closely together to make that thing a success; a huge credit to Jules Kortenhorst and his team, including Jon Creyts, who’s the CEO now, who just turned that thing into an extraordinary entity. It never would have got there without the merger of those two bodies. So that I feel very proud of because it was something where, again, we put our egos on the Carbon War Room aside so that we could become bigger and better.

Brian

Is that what it takes? Just setting your egos aside? We had talked very early in the conversation about sort of classic not-for-profit challenge of multiple organizations, all underfunded, all trying to do the same thing. And you’ve talked, at least now, about two mergers. What are the dynamics required? Because it seems like just in the research that I’ve done prepping for the show, that that’s not uncommon; that organizations that you’ve been involved with, either through Unite or outside of that, that those organizations end up merging. How does that happen and what’s required in order for that to be successful? Because that’s a little tricky, I would think.

Jean

It is super tricky, and it was not easy at all, because you had two groups in the Carbon War Room and RMI who were both deeply passionate about their work, deeply passionate, and when you mix them, then…we had lots of fireworks in the front. We had lots of long nights about figuring out how it would work; which skills, which party we’re going to bring to the combination of RMI and CWR. We did something important in the beginning, we didn’t say to the team and the CWRSI, which included me; we didn’t say, okay, you’re going to have to get rid of your brand, you’re going to have to get it right at the beginning – we let that evolve. It wasn’t till like, I think year four or five, that we said, okay, this is big enough now and clearly the RMI brand is stronger, that we can let go the CWR [brand]. We let things evolve that were these high tension points as well, and didn’t try to change them overnight. One of the things that Jules, the CEO at the time, did – again, he could have taken an easy choice and he could have formed a board with all of his mates that he knew he was close with, instead, he didn’t do that – he formed a board of people from both organizations that he knew was going to be rocky and difficult at times, but he knew would get a better outcome. One of a few of the things that Jules did that I learned a ton from, is he had this exec committee where we were literally meeting weekly in the beginning of this merger, if not more frequently than that. We over-indexed on communications and meetings to make sure that front end was done in a really effective way when we were merging the two organizations. We also really focused on very clear communications, very clear roles and responsibilities, just taking the time to work through those things. They sound simple, but those things made the world of difference. I think we carried that exact committee that Jules had built on for many, many, many years. As a leader, he didn’t just…it wasn’t an inauthentic, “I’m going to set up an exec committee, listen to you, but I’ll do what I want,” it was a true partnership that he formed and with deep, deep working relationships with partnerships, with that exec committee and the wider board. I stepped off the board last year, because we realized, we got to the point now where the thing is very big, it needs a whole new level of board membership, it needs someone that’s going to have a global profile, it needs someone that’s going to be helping scale it, not just to the $250 million where we’ve got it now, to the $500 million to the billion dollar organization that it needs to be to drive these changes. I think that was also a beautiful kind of phasing out of that early crew into a crew now that can help them to the next level.

Brian

Jean, everything we’ve been talking about so far has involved partnering and forging the deep connections required to make a positive impact in the world. You’ve really given us so many great examples of those deep connections and that partnering working; you’ve had the opportunity in various roles to work with some very well known people and you’ve mentioned a handful of them already. But you’ve also interviewed other lesser known people who represent extraordinary partnerships and collaborations. When did the idea of partnering first occur to you as a concept? What inspired you to explore the depth and meaning of relationships and then to write a book about forging deep connections?

Jean

Well, Brian, probably like many of the people listening to this podcast right now, I wasn’t trained to partner. I was trained probably from the time I was in grade school to be an individual, to figure out how I could get the gold star, to be the best in my sports team. Then I think that continued when I spent about 18 years helping build mobile phone companies. So in the corporate sector, I was incentivized to be – as often as we are – that individual hero. I was incentivized as a female, in particular, to figure out how I could break those glass ceilings, how I could continue and, I think, Brian, that one day I woke up – when I started to get into CEO level in the corporate sector, when I started to get into board levels – I woke up one day realizing how alone I felt and how disconnected I felt from others. Again, I think we gear our incentive structures towards that in the corporate world. So for me, it was a moment of pause and really thinking about how do I reconnect with myself and how to reconnect with other people. I had the good fortune at that point to be working on starting The Elders with Richard and Peter and I started to watch The Elders and I became fascinated with how they became who they were in the world. What was really clear after watching them for a few years is that they became who they were because of the relationships and the partnerships that they surrounded themselves with, whether with each other or whether it was their romantic partnerships or their work partnerships or their families. I became really obsessed with two questions; they were: how do we build these deep connections in our own lives and how do we use those deep connections to become much better at collaborating at scale and build these collaborations to drive greater change in the world. When I first started the journey, it was more about romantic partnerships. Then I interviewed Ben and Jerry, and my whole world changed, the whole idea changed because, I have to say, Brian, I’ve never in my life heard the word love mentioned so much in a business setting. [Laughter.] I never heard so much joy and laughter, like that interview was two or three hours long, and there was just so much laughter and joy. So I was like, how do I get more of this, how can I build this in my business, in my work? How can this be something I can learn from. So it changed the idea into all kinds of partnerships. We spent about 15 years interviewing friends, business partners, scientists, collaborations, family members, and then spent time synthesizing and coding that wisdom and that was really the genesis of the not-for-profit Plus Wonder and the book partnering.

Brian

I’ve often said that the power of one plus one is 11 and I’ve learned so much from you Jean, but one of the things that you’ve done is plus that concept for me. Walt Disney had a concept called “plussing,” where you take an idea and and blow it up and make it better. One plus one equals 11, of course, is this exponential concept, the dynamic that takes place when we partner with someone else that far outweighs the sum of the two parts. I chuckled as I was reading your book because you actually wrote that it’s even more profound. It’s like one plus one equals millions, which I thought was terrific. I appreciate that you have now…even though partnering wasn’t a natural concept for you and you’re right, I think we all start out climbing the ladder ourselves. You’ve had the fortune and people who have really achieved success beyond themselves, have figured out the importance and even the necessity of deep connections and partnering and collaboration. What have you noticed when people come together partnering for a specific purpose? Because you’ve talked about so many examples of that, the last one being Ben and Jerry, which is just a great story of not only ice cream and business success, but of partnering and a deep connection and relationships that cause so many great things to happen that wouldn’t have happened if it was just Ben going his way and doing his thing and Jerry doing the same thing in a different direction.

Jean

That’s a perfect example to inspire business leaders as well, because they weren’t just starting an ice cream company. That came together because they wanted to build a company that’s going to change the world. They had that essence. It was interesting, Brian, because when we started these interviews, we had purpose as one of the factors of how we selected the 65 plus partnerships. But never did we realize the importance of purpose in two ways. One was to actually help deepen the connection and the partnership between the people because they had this thing that they were really focused on together. But the second thing was how it lifted everyone to become the best version of themselves. When there was an argument or conflict, if the purpose was strong enough, it would lift them above those details that would allow them to, yes, have that conflict, but come back to that purpose to help lift them back above the conflict. That purpose was exponentially multiplied by having these people working together on it, because you’re right, if it was just Ben or just Jerry, we obviously wouldn’t have Ben and Jerry’s. I don’t think we’d have an ice cream company that was as great as the one that’s out there today. I remember asking them, how on earth did you make make Ben and Jerry’s happen? They just burst into giggles and they both said the same word. They both used the words “we were all in,” they kept on saying “we were all in,” that we were all in as friends, we were all in to make this dream work, we were all in to do the hard work and roll up our sleeves. I think sometimes we think that partnering is this fluffy, naive thing that comes together and there are rainbows and everything works well, when in reality it is absolutely hard work and you have to do that hard work. It gets easier over time. I think we learned that from the partnerships. But every single one of the 65 said they put that hard work in to make that partnership sing and to make it strong and to make it unbreakable. I think we often don’t put in that hard work and we give up. They put that hard work in and they talked a lot about trust at the center of their partnership. That was the fundamental backbone, that they had trust, and they had respect for one another. They took the time to build that relationship. Even now…it was super, super funny when I finished the interview with them, we were leaving, and we were going outside the door and they each went and picked up their cooler of ice cream that they were bringing home for the weekend. They had their little coolers and they were walking out the door like little boys. This was like ten years ago, so they were probably well into their 50s and 60s. Then they were joking around because they bought this boat that they co-owned. They were going to spend the weekend with their families on this boat with their ice cream coolers. I share that story because I think sometimes in the corporate world – I knew when I was there for those whatever, 18 or 20 years – we don’t necessarily encourage friendships. It was something so clear that they were so successful because of their friendship. I don’t know if you you’ve seen the latest Gallup study where it talks about how people are…I think it’s something about 23% of people are engaged at work, which means 77% are either disengaged or actively disengaged in the workplace. When they did the analysis further, what makes people engage? The single most important factor was, do they have a best friend at work? And yet, right now we’re creating a culture and we’re creating incentive structures that actually make people disengaged at work and not forming those friendships; we make them compete with one another.

Brian

I just want to say at this point that I love your book, and I’ve read it twice, I’ve taken extensive notes, I’ve highlights and underlines and written notes. Still to me, it’s a textbook for forging deep connections and amplifying the impact we can make collectively in the world, whether we’re talking about at work, or in personal relationships, or in changing the world. I really appreciate that you’ve taken time to do all those interviews, 65 interviews, and conduct all that research, then to gather that and put all of that in book form. I certainly recommend to our listeners and viewers that you go out and get Jean’s book. I think everyone who’s in any kind of relationship or anticipates being in one at some point in their lives – in other words, everyone – should really read this book. There’s so much packed into it Jean, that I think we would need maybe two more shows to talk about all the concepts because you do such a great job of providing a framework for deep connections, and then chapter by chapter, really expanding that. But could you share maybe just two or three takeaways that you think are key from partnering? Again, I hope that for our listeners and viewers, it’s just the start of getting to know the concept, and that they’ll go out and purchase the book and read it at least a couple times; I think it takes that to just begin to have those concepts sink in, it’s so powerful.

Jean

Thank you, Brian, for reading it two times and highlighting it. I think the the beauty of the book is that it’s not my wisdom, it’s the wisdom of the 65 plus partnerships that have gone through the journey and done it. I feel very privileged to have sat at their feet. I think some of the concepts that I learned from them that were really important to me – and some of them surprises – were this concept of celebrating friction. I think that was one of my weaknesses when I went into this process, that I didn’t sit with friction. I didn’t figure out how to create the right space for friction that lends itself to what Andre and Bertrand – the two that did the World’s First Solar Impulse flight, they had some great ideas around this – called it, the sparkles. They call that friction the thing that actually made their partnership deeper, and they came up with tools like creating the right space to have those honest conversations and the right environment that they both felt safe to do that. They were the ones that always say how they went into a conversation with the question “what if the other person is right?” They came from a place of not being defensive, as we spoke about before. They also really helped me understand that third way mentality, because they talked about how anytime they went into a disagreement, they loved it because they knew they were going to come out the other side with a better idea. They also have this concept about starting with “why?” really understanding the other person as a human being and understanding why they may be coming from that direction rather than immediately dismissing someone or making someone feel bad. There was a ton of other practical tools that many of the partnerships have. One of my favorites was around “the other 99 things,” when you went into a disagreement remembering those other 99 things about why you love that person and not focusing on the one thing that perhaps you were upset with them about. Or what I called “positive amnesia in the end,” because some of these partnerships I knew really well and I knew that they had really difficult moments with their partnership that almost broke them. And yet, when I did the interviews and when I had conversations with them, they had this positive amnesia. That was like a protection mechanism for their friendship where they wouldn’t bring back that old history, they wouldn’t dig it up and like, put salt in the wound. They had moved on, they share the stories of how they moved on. But they didn’t undermine the other person. Like Ben and Jerry, I’ve known now for 20 plus years and I can tell you, I’ve never seen either of them undermine the other one with a glance, with body language, with a word, they take the mickey out of each other, and they joke and they laugh, but they don’t hit hard in the gut, it’s always from a place of love and respect and trust. So that positive amnesia was something beautiful. I think the other degree that I learned a ton about is something we ended up calling magnetic moments. Because again, I think I blissfully went through life thinking that partnering and relationships and deep connections just happened magically. These partnerships showed me that they proactively came up with these moments, that they came together to build their shared history. Some of those were something as simple as having a dinner every Sunday night, families asking the question over the dinner table, “what’s something good…” – this is Bert Jacobs from “Life is Good,” his mom used to ask, what’s something good that happened to you today? – to things like…the Airbnb guys had this amazing “elephants, dead fish and vomit” ritual every month, where they brought their team together to ask: what are the elephants in the room, what are the dead fish that no one’s talking about but no one’s doing anything about, and what is the vomit you just need to get off your chest? They talked about how those created that safe space to allow them to build deeper connections with each other. So I think those two were probably the ones that were the biggest surprises to me and things that I had not thought about in great depth.

Brian

Well, there’s so much packed into what you just said, because I think we could just take that one answer. That could be a prescription for marriage, or a prescription for business relationships, or a prescription for friendships, or any other relationship. That was really profound. I was thinking about one of Covey’s seven habits: seek first to understand and then be understood. There’s an approach, or an underlying approach going into it. The other thing that stood out for me is – you didn’t say it this way – what do we focus on? Are we focusing on the things that aren’t working or aren’t going well or are we focusing on the things that are going well, so there’s appreciation and gratitude and concepts like that built into it as well. Jean, you assert that the only way we’re going to solve humanity’s biggest, most complex problems is by forging these meaningful partnerships and then using those relationships as catalysts to drive even bigger collaborations and social movements. You were talking about some examples of that earlier in the show. One way that you’re attempting to drive this right now is through Plus Wonder, an organization you created to spark meaningful deep connections and collaborations in the world. What are your goals for Plus Wonder, and how do you envision it contributing to the world of partnerships and collaborations?

Jean

Thank you, Brian. I have an amazing team working with me on this and an amazing group of board members that came around it. Our purpose is exactly as you said, to really spark partnerships and collaborations of meaning in people’s lives. We’re trying to do that by three big levers and goals. The first one is we believe that this focus on hyper-individualism starts in our school system so we’ve got a group of teachers that have built a curriculum and a set of tools for teachers on how they can [examine] how they teach, are they teaching in a partnership mentality, in a collaborative mentality? Or are they teaching these young students to be focused on their individualism and self-interest? So one big focus is shifting the education system that we have. The second is working with companies to look at re-imagining their incentive structures to be more focused on collaboration and partnering within their companies. And the third, we’re working with a group right now to look at how do we help people understand how they build these deep connections at the center of collaborations, whether they’re in a company, whether they’re a not-for-profit, that’s trying to drive change. What are the tools in order to build that, and we had some in the book. Now we’re going even one step further on that so that we can create this set of tools, this set of experiences that help people understand how they can do that. Changing the education system, companies, and the way we drive change in the world are three big levers that we’re trying to pull right now.

Brian

That’s great work that you’re doing. How can our listeners and viewers learn more about that? And if there’s anything else you’d like to share? How can they learn more about those things, too?

Jean

We have a Plus Wonder website: www.pluswonder.org. You can see some of the tools on that. We’d love to hear from people about partnerships that they think are working, partnerships we should be interviewing, collaboration. We’d love to get feedback from folks on what they’re doing that’s working, or also where they see things break, because that’s just as important so that we make sure we can manage that downside. On the education side, right now we’re looking for teachers and schools to work with, we’ve created a entire curriculum that again, everything we’re doing has been from a not-for-profit angle, including the book. We’re wanting to test and pilot those tools in schools right now so we’d love to hear from anyone in the education system that’s listening. And then in the companies, we’re doing the same thing, where we’re looking at how do we work and pilot with organizations? Like there’s this amazing guy from KKR, Peter Stavros, who’s doing a ton of work on shared ownership models – how we can help lift his work and learn from that – and look at how we can pilot ideas in other companies.

Brian

Hopefully we can utilize that in the workplace, because the statistic that you shared about engagement in the workplace is alarming. I think you said 23% of people in the workplace are engaged, and we invest so much of our waking hours at work. It would be a wonderful thing if we could learn how to be more engaged, how to learn how to partner better and collaborate and feel good about the investment that we’re making in the workplace. Jean, this has been so incredibly informative. I can’t let you go without asking you about excellence. As you know, our show is called LifeExcellence. I’m curious, what does excellence mean to you?

Jean

I think excellence evolves, doesn’t it, depending on what situation we’re in. Right now, to me and personally, excellence means figuring out how I can be more present in every moment of my life. I think the second thing that excellence means is having the informed confidence to be able to understand where your gaps are and build those deep connections around you to help make you – and me in this case – to the very best version of myself. And having the bravery to realize that excellence isn’t a solo endeavor. It’s actually an endeavor of partnership and collaboration.

Brian

I love that, Jean. Thank you so much for being on our show. It’s been great to formally meet you and I appreciate your time on the show today.

Jean

Thank you, Brian, and thanks for your podcast. As I mentioned, I loved your podcast with Gladys, the 103 year old woman who’s just doing amazing stuff. I learned a ton from her and I as I mentioned. I bought her book, so thank you for connecting me to great people like that.

Brian

Well, I appreciate you sharing that. To our audience, thanks for tuning into LifeExcellence. Please support the show by subscribing, sharing it with others posting about today’s show with Jean Oelwang on social media and leaving a rating and review. You can also learn more about me at BrianBartes.com. Until next time, dream big dreams and make each day your masterpiece.