Book Chat: Beloved Economies: Transforming How We Work

Addi: 0:01

Hi, this is Addison Berry, and you were listening to the Osio Labs podcast. The show that explores the question, how can we create sustainable businesses that care for people and make the world a better place? On today's episode, I'm joined by my colleagues, Ashley Jones, Blake Hall, and Joe Shindelar. This is episode number four, which will be a book chat about Beloved Economies: Transforming How We Work by Jess Rimington and Joanna Levitt Cea."A beloved economy comes from treating with care and reverence the autonomous power of everyone's story. And from each of us being able to contribute to, and access, abundance." The core concept in the book to achieve this is to distribute rights to design. Rights to design are what we exercise when we imagine, decide and build together. Our current system has these rights to design held by a few, which consolidates wealth and power in a reinforcing pattern that keeps this wealth and power within a small group. To distribute rights to design and build a beloved economy they share seven practices. Share decision making power. Prioritize relationships. Reckon with history. Seek difference. Source from multiple ways of knowledge. Trust there is time. Prototype early and often. In this episode, our team talks about our takeaways and recommendations as well as what changes we should be making on our team. So my first question is, did everybody actually finish the book?

Joe: 1:35

I finished the book though. I also. There were a couple sections that I skimmed through pretty quick. There's, it's, the book is kind of divided up where there will be a chapter that is sort of the, you know, key takeaway, one of the key takeaways. And then there will be a chapter that is kind of the like, and here's the anecdote that explains to you how we know that this is the key takeaway. And I, I read all of the anecdotes, but some of'em I read through, I skimmed through pretty quick.

Addi: 2:05

Same.

Blake: 2:07

I totally skipped the acknowledgements and the end notes.

Addi: 2:11

Yes.

Ashley: 2:12

Yeah.

Addi: 2:13

Yeah. I did not go through all of the appendices that they had, through some of it, but I, I definitely was like, Hmm, I don't need all of the background details.

Ashley: 2:26

Right.

Addi: 2:27

Yeah. So overall impressions. What is your overall impression of the book and would you recommend it for others to read or not?

Blake: 2:41

I think for me, the existence of all of the appendices kind of provides evidence for my overall impression, which was that it's very thoroughly researched and it felt very academic at times. I think when you're talking about this sort of stuff, precise vocabulary is important, so I don't wanna discount that, but were parts that felt jargony and academic and sort of were a little bit of word salad. That could just be my ignorance in sort of the, the field, or it could just be the way the book was written. But my impression was that it was a very seriously and well thought through researched piece of work for better and worse.

Joe: 3:26

I would say Blake, that really kind of. Is a great way of summarizing how I was feeling about it and I wasn't quite sure what to say and that sort of like, it reads more like an academic paper than a novel. And at points I especially because there are a bunch of these anecdotal stories in there that do read a bit more like a novel where they're, you know, it's like telling a story and less academic. And then there are the parts that are very like, We need to stick to the words that we've established, cite our quotations, all of that and those parts were a little harder for me to read because I would just kind of like start to glaze over a little, but. That said, I appreciate the effort that was put into doing things like, you know, at the outset of the book, they put a bunch of energy into establishing some common vocabulary. Like we're going to use the words business as usual and beloved economies. And there was a couple other ones, breakout actors. And this is what we mean when we say those words. Which I guess is good cuz then it goes on to say those words a lot through the rest of the book.

Ashley: 4:43

You know, I've been sitting here like thinking about would I recommend this book? I feel like that was like the question, and I feel like. For me personally, kind of like Joe and Blake both said that the academic jargon did kind of glaze me over a bit and I do much better with, the anecdotal, the, the, the parts that, um directly reflect real life and they're giving real life examples. Like, I can get into that. I can, I can envision myself there, I can see it, but when it gets really wordy, I, I do get a little sleepy. And that's not to take away from the book, I thought, you know, it gave great insights into like what work could be. And I love the idea of the beloved economy. But if I would, if I have to decide whether I would recommend it or not, I think I kind of sit dead center like 50 50. It kind of just depends on what you enjoy. I think if you're somebody more like me, I would, I would probably say no.

Joe: 5:56

I wonder if, so all of the book has seven key takeaways from that they want you to learn or like the business practices that they want you to think about and try. And for me, none of them were new. Like they, maybe they described it in ways that I hadn't heard before, but they were all approaches that I am conscious of already. I think things that we largely do at work already, and in some ways because of that, I wonder if that made it sort of a little like, yeah, yeah.

Ashley: 6:32

agreed.

Joe: 6:33

I, I know what you're trying to say here. Fewer words is, would be fine, but maybe because I'm. You know, maybe I'm not exactly the target audience because these concepts aren't new to me and they are things that we are already largely putting into practice.

Addi: 6:49

Like, we're already on board with this, this concept and these practices. So it's sort of, yeah, I, I agree. Like I, I mean, I would recommend the book, but I wouldn't recommend the book to everybody. I.

Ashley: 7:04

Right.

Addi: 7:05

You know, it would really depend on who I was talking to and what I thought they might get out of the book. And so it would really, for me, it's like a case by case basis thing. But I do think there, there is a lot of really good, rich information in there. And I think in particular, when I think about who I would like to read the book, you know, or it would be, you know, people who, haven't stopped to think about why we work the way we do. Cuz it kind of, it sets a sort of a case for this is why we think work doesn't work. This is all the stuff that's actually going on underneath everything. And then these are the ways we see that changing. And I think ex exposing someone to these ideas and getting people to think about it, that would be great. And I would love for people to read that and take that away from it if nothing else.

Joe: 8:03

Yeah, I totally agree with that. I feel like for myself, the strongest part of the book was the beginning where they, they talk a lot about just kind of you know, define, define work. How is it that we ended up with this definition of this is how workplaces should operate. Why do we think that we can't change the way that they operate? And these were all questions that I definitely found myself being like, oh yeah. I, I totally fall into things from time to time where it's like the quote unquote business as usual, and I'm just doing it this way because like, well, that's the way you're supposed to do it. And I like that This book really made me go, why? Why do I think that this is the way that I'm supposed to do it? Who said that this is the way that I'm supposed to do it, and why can't I do it a different way? Uh, and, and that, that part for sure, and I would recommend this book to people, especially based on that, just to get you thinking about it's okay to think about business outside of the box. And one way to do that is to under help to sort of do the internal work of understanding why do I think that this is the way that a business should be run and I dunno, a little bit of like, you have to know the rules before you can break the rules.

Addi: 9:22

Yeah. Or I think of it as like you have to see the cage you're in in order to break out of it.

Joe: 9:27

Yeah.

Addi: 9:28

You know, like,

Blake: 9:29

And then, coupled with the beginning of that, like the last chapter for me was also really eyeopening where they talked about some of the collaboration they're doing with people who look at biomimicry and study like natural systems and natural processes and you know, spoiler alert, but they're presented with a paper where basically they independently. Came up across a collection of very similar principles and it's like, yeah, it turns out natural selection and you know, the sort of real world has been doing things following similar guidelines for hundreds of thousands of years probably, cuz it's a good way for organisms to survive and adapt. So

Addi: 10:13

Yeah.

Blake: 10:13

it's almost like as humans, you know, like we're looking to, to the wrong. Models or guidelines on how to be happy and successful and you know, whatever that means and all of that. I thought the way they sort of tied that together at the end was really good.

Addi: 10:30

Yeah, and just again, the idea that we are living by a set of guidelines, it's just that most of us aren't aware of them. We just assume that that is the natural order because we've been. Conditioned to, to believe that. so I like, I like that aspect and like for me, I think in terms of takeaway from the book, like I think it is a good book and I did get a lot out of it. And I think, so I think like that aspect of it, of just sort of really making you question. Why do you believe this is the way it should be? But honestly, sort of back to what Joe was saying is like, these are things that I, I've already bought into. This is already something I believe in and and want to manifest. And so in a lot of ways, just reading this book was oh yeah, I'm not alone. There are a lot of other people out there who are thinking these things and working on them and actually like implementing and figuring it out. and that's really heartening and hopeful. So there was a lot of hope that I took away from this book is yes, okay. I'm not crazy. This is real and we can do something about it. And it was just like, oh gosh, that's, that's nice. That feels good.

Joe: 11:43

I totally had moments where the book is like, you know, they're telling a story and someone like, and then this part was really hard. And I'm like, yeah, it is. I feel the same way. And, and then you might start to doubt yourself and wonder if this is even possible. And I'm like, yeah, I definitely feel that doubt sometimes. It was, yeah, it resonated with me in that way. And other people are also dealing with the same things. You're not alone. Other people are also, you know, working on figuring out ways to do things different and practice this stuff and let's.

Blake: 12:22

Well, and another aspect of that, like you, you've mentioned that you know, as a company it feels, it does feel very much like we've bought into these things and we're doing fairly well with most of them, but we're also five people. So there's that classic case of like, you go to read a business book and there are all these case studies. And it's like, well, when you're running a meeting of 300 people, this is how you can go about building consensus in an innovative way. And I just find myself kind of laughing and being like, I don't even know how I'd go about that. We have five people and it's way easier because you can literally just hear from everybody and, and go around a circle. So there's some of that I was really impressed with, with a bunch of the stories because it feels like they're doing things. At scale that I didn't necessarily know would be successful. So I thought that was interesting because a lot of times when, at least for me, when I talk about, you know, our company or, or my work with other people who ha who probably haven't bought into this kind of thing, they're always like, oh, well that wouldn't work in a, a big company. And I'm like, well, I don't know if it would either, but you should try. And hear a whole bunch of stories of people seeing success with that, which I thought was was great to see.

Addi: 13:39

Any other big takeaways or impressions?

Ashley: 13:45

I guess I, oh, go ahead, Joe.

Joe: 13:47

ahead, Ashley.

Addi: 13:48

Um,

Ashley: 13:49

Oh. I was just gonna say that I feel you know, though me included, didn't have a lot of context as to why work wasn't working, from a. You know, this academic research perspective, I knew why it didn't work for me in the past, you know what I mean? And I think, I think a lot of people feel that way. I mean, most people that I know and talk to feel that way about work, you know what I mean? Like they feel like a slave to their job. So then to read in the book that, you know, a lot of the ways that work works, are derived from plantations is like,

Addi: 14:31

Yeah,

Ashley: 14:32

like, no wonder everybody feels like a slave to their job. It's like, because you are, you literally are, you know? So I, I liked being able to have context to my feelings because it, it wasn't like a lot of people said, it wasn't novel things. It wasn't brand new to know that people are burned out or stressed or, you know what I mean? But it is, it was helpful to Be able to put some, some factual context behind it. Like, you know, here are the statistics, this is where these practices came from and this is why you feel this way. It's like, huh. Got it. Makes a lot more sense now.

Addi: 15:12

Totally.

Ashley: 15:13

Yeah.

Joe: 15:14

Do you feel like it and it like, did it prompt you to think about those things then too?

Ashley: 15:23

Yeah, definitely. Like. It, it made me think about why I had felt that way, for sure. and I think because I don't feel that way at all anymore, it was kind of just like, huh, a lot of people are still really going through this, you know?

Joe: 15:42

I wonder if, kind of back to the question of would you recommend this book or who would you recommend it to? You know, there's. This leads me to that kind of like, well, maybe for people who are, are feeling like I'm not enjoying work. I feel like a slave to my job. This book has a lot of, it can give you a lot of words to use to talk about the way that you're feeling and also help better understand why it is that you feel that way.

Ashley: 16:08

For sure, especially when it's painted like it's supposed. To be the norm and this is just what we do and to like feel outside of that can, can be uncomfortable. So to, to give it some context and some some reason I think could be really helpful. For sure.

Addi: 16:28

something else that I took from where I appreciated, I guess, in this book where I don't know. So one of the, there's some like sort of caveats I feel like, in that they have a whole chapter on resistance. Even though most people are being oppressed by this system, because the system is designed to put power and wealth into the hands of the few A as a whole, we still resist this kind of change. And so, and I thought that was very important to have in the book because it's an often overlooked thing when it comes to any kind of change is yes, this sounds great and it's wonderful, but it's not an easy road to change the way that people think when they've been. Brought up that way their whole lives. and then another sort of I guess caveat, I'm not sure like where this falls, but one of the things I thought was interesting is there's a thread through the whole book and then you talk about a little bit at the end in terms of implementation is in inner work. A lot of this stuff requires inner work. And so if you don't have a group of people who are willing or able to do that inner work, you're not gonna get very far with it. And I feel like that sort of brought up in there, but not, I feel like that that can be in these organizations they're talking about and like say in our company, I feel like that that is not a barrier that we have because people are self-reflective and willing to inquire themselves. But there are lots and lots and lots of groups where people aren't there. So even if they're feeling the pain of work not working and they can see this picture of, that would be awesome. They may not be in a place where they're willing or able to do the inner work to get there with other people. And I feel like that's a. I don't, it's just like a thought that was sort of bouncing around in my head as I finished reading the book is that's also a barrier and a, a kind of a resistance that is hard to deal with, I think. I mean, it's not one that I've had to deal with in the, in the context of, of here, but anyway, it was just one of those yeah, this is great, but you definitely need people who are willing to actually. Do that inner work and take some personal risks in that way, and not everybody is.

Joe: 18:55

I think for me, one of the takeaways related to that too was doing that inner work and putting any of these seven principles into practice is ongoing work. It's not a thing that you can just do once and then be like, cool, did it, we're awesome now. And you, there's always opportunity to keep doing the things and. While like, yeah, our current workplace is a safe place to do that kind of inner work. And I think all of us here are people who are willing to do it. There's still an opportunity to like be prompted to do it, be reminded to do it, to make space, to do it, and a little bit of like, you know, it is. You can be willing to do the work, but you also have to have the space to do it. And sometimes you have to have someone tell you like, Hey, uh, at this team retreat that we're on, the thing that you're gonna do now is go sit by yourself for half an hour and ponder this question. and you might, you know, for me it's like I might have some initial resistance, like, Ugh, that seems lame, and then I'll do it. And I'm like, oh, I'm really glad that someone forced me to sit down and think about this.

Addi: 20:10

Mm-hmm.

Joe: 20:12

And, and I saw that as being true with all of these seven principles that they had, where it was like, I think we practice all of these things, but in each of them, I felt like there was also opportunity for us to remember to be diligent about doing it. you know, one of'em was, uh, like fostering relationships. And I, I feel like as a team, we do a, a. Really good job of communicating with one another and developing relationships and being open, but it's also, especially with a small team of five, it's easy to sort of take for granted. Like, oh, we all get along and everyone's. Everything is fine. And you know, one of their examples was start your meetings with a prompt that asks people, you know, more or less like, how was your weekend? and develop relationships in that way. And it just made me think about, it's like, yeah, I have a good relationship with all of my coworkers, but like relationships with anyone. You have to continue to work on those relationships. And just showing up for meetings and talking about what tickets you're working on in GitHub isn't really developing the relationship in the same way that. Making space, intentional space to have conversations about like how's the rest of your life? Yeah.

Addi: 21:25

Yeah. And so, I mean for the, the last question I had on my list was how do you think we're doing on these practices? And is there any one thing that stands out? Because yes, we can always be improving. And I think, I feel like yes, we. Definitely address these practices in how we do our work. There's plenty of room for improvement in all of them, but is there anything in particular that you walked away from and was like, huh, you know, maybe we should X, or you know, we could take a look at Y or something like that. Did anything like that stand out to you all in terms of our company and how we interact?

Blake: 22:04

I think for me, I thought Joe was talking about the prioritizing relationships, uh, practice and I, I think internally we do a really good job of that, but I think historically we've struggled trying to engage a little bit more with our members and our customers that way. I think we do a great job of it when they come to us for support, but it's, it's kind of always a challenge to figure out how to do that in a more intentional way, externally. so that's a place where I think we're all aware of that and I think we all want to improve there. We just sort of don't know how. So for me, that's the biggest one that I think we probably need to work on.

Ashley: 22:44

I think I would agree with Blake in terms of the relationship, aspect, and I agree with the external piece. And it kind of, you know, led into my customer success project. Cause you know, I do think we could strengthen those relationships for sure. but I think, and it might be because I am the last person to have joined the team, you know, I feel like I could do better internally also because I feel like, you know, you guys have much. Stronger, personal relationships, with each other, you know? And I know that's cause you guys have known each other longer, you've worked with each other longer. but I think it stood out to me because we talk about our weekends, like on our five fifteens and you know, little personal tidbits here and there. But I think for me it made it like, you know, you could, you could put more of an effort in that area, you know? Yeah.

Joe: 23:49

I, so Ashley, you mentioned the five fifteens, and so internally we do this thing where once a week we more or less You know, fill out a survey where that has a handful of questions that asks how your week was, and then everyone else on the team gets to see what you said. And so, you know, we're developing relationships with one another through seeing what people are working on and what they're excited about and what they're struggling with. I, after reading this book, when I thought about our five fifteens, and one of the things that I think we could potentially do to improve them would be to, Change the questions from time to time or like have a one question that is unique each week because it, after having done this for a while, the questions become, and my answers to the questions become a little bit rote and they become very work focused. and it seemed like there would maybe an opportunity to, you know, maybe it's not the. Prompt at the beginning of a meeting that's like, all right, everybody needs to tell everyone how their weekend was. But if we added it to that weekly survey, but have it be a different question each week, how, you know, how was your weekend? But also what's your favorite song? Why do you think peanut butter is the best flavor of ice cream? Um, things

Addi: 25:04

Okay, for for listeners, this is a longstanding battle within the company between Joe and Ashley about ice cream. So I'm just, this is why we're laughing about that.

Ashley: 25:16

Peanut butter is certainly not.

Joe: 25:19

But, but, and we you know, interestingly and related, this is an ongoing debate between Ashley and I that is, Part of the definition of our relationship that started because at some point we were in a place where we got to have that conversation about like, what's your favorite flavor of ice cream? And I just feel like, you know, there we could take advantage of some of the things we're already doing, like this weekly five 15 survey to ask more of those types of questions and just deepen those relationships and keep putting in that work that's required to make them stronger.

Addi: 25:59

I think for me, one of the things that kept sitting with me was sort of back to Blake's thing with the external relationships with our customers, and specifically in the context of one of the things they talk about a lot in the book, which is rights to design and having everybody at the table so that it's not like, You know, the hands of the few are then distributing, you know, or controlling or deciding. And I feel like, you know, in the work that we do, our customers are part of this experience, right? And they don't sit at the table. Sometimes we ask them questions and, and we definitely are open to feedback. But as it goes into, you know, in that chapter in the book, like that's not. That's not actually getting people to the table and, and making it accessible and making it something that they're going to engage in. And so I feel like that's a, an area that we could really see how that could really change our business and our product and, and just sort of everything we do. If we could think about a way to really, really have our customers be an equal at the table instead of, and like I, I have this quote from, Towards the end of the book, that really struck me with that, which was Loveless ways of work are often about speaking for, creating, for marketing toward, or managing on behalf of all of which, in practice, uphold a conceptual notion that there is a homogenous other, our customers, a subject apart from the person doing the action, whose unchosen role is to receive it. And so it's like, I was like, Hmm, yeah, what would that look like? If we actually had customers part of our creation process, instead of just giving us feedback after the fact or, you know, o occasionally doing a survey and hoping that people wanna answer our questions. So anyway, that's one that I was has been sort of kicking around on my head since reading this book. That could be a really weird and wild change. I don't know what that looks like. I don't know how we would do it, but it's just something that's kicking around for

Joe: 28:14

I went through the thought process while reading the book of You know, si Similarly, kind of like, I feel like we do these things really well internally. We develop relationships, we share prototypes. We, you know, share knowledge and learn from one another, but we don't do as good of a job as we could of having that same kind of relationship with quote unquote our stakeholders, like the people that we're actually building this thing for. cuz it turns out we're we're building the Drupalize.Me website for the members of the site, not for one another. And so in that I was like, huh, we should what? Maybe we should have, what would it look like if there were like people who are members of Drupalize.Me, also on say the board of directors for Drupalize.Me. And I was like, well, that's not. That's not how business works. You can't do

Addi: 29:05

Not business as usual,

Joe: 29:07

That's the whole point is I need to think about, huh? Is that possible?

Addi: 29:12

Mm-hmm.

Joe: 29:13

What would that kind of thing look like? And I had a few moments reading the book where I totally was like, well, you're not supposed to do, no, I am supposed to challenge that assumption.

Addi: 29:25

It's like, it's like whenever you have that thought, that's immediately like a star. That's like, aha, you're onto something here and you need to lean into that instead of backing away. Yeah.

Joe: 29:37

But it made me think about the prototyping, sharing prototypes, get, getting feedback from your stakeholders chapter definitely made me think about similarly, Addi, we could do a better job of that. I don't know what that looks like yet. But you know, we do a lot of work internally when we're, for example, developing the outline for a set of tutorials that we're going to create. And then we all internally look at it and we go, yeah, that'd be great. I assume everybody's gonna wanna learn this. and then we create it. And I think there's an opportunity there for us to

Addi: 30:13

Mm-hmm.

Joe: 30:15

bring more people to the table, bring more stakeholders to the table.

Addi: 30:19

Yeah, well we can continue this conversation on our team calls. we should probably wrap up the podcast for now. Look at that half an hour already went by.

Ashley: 30:32

That was

Addi: 30:32

fast. yeah. Yeah, it's cool to talk about this stuff. So yeah, thanks for reading the book, taking the time. Wading through the words and, and then coming to talk about it. I do think this is a really thought provoking book and I'm glad that we read it as a team and we can have some, some further conversations, on our team calls. I think in the coming months, for sure. Hey, so thanks for listening and let us know if you have questions, comments, or suggestions for what you'd like to hear more about. You can find all of the various ways to reach us on our website@osiolabs.com. That's O S I O L A B S.com. Also, please make sure to subscribe to the podcast on your podcast provider of choice. We'll catch you on the next episode.