“Norms, as those of us who work on gender norms know, are one of the most powerful intractable things because nobody even sees them. Right? They’re so baked in, of course, women raise children, that’s how things are. And so there’s so baked into how we see the world. Sure, but that’s a cultural norm, not truth.
And so I can challenge it. And then what’s really important, and I think is most important about this paper, is to say, How do I assess my relative ability to do that? Can I take on these cultural norms?”
Joy Anderson, President and Founder of Criterion Institute
In this episode
Join Joy Anderson, President and Founder of Criterion Institute, as she speaks with Vicki Saunders, founder of SheEO in this special podcast, they discuss Joy’s latest paper “Disruptive Fields“—a comparison of the development of the field of gender lens investing to the development of climate finance.
They also touch on:
- Recognizing the systems and cultural norms that affect everyday power dynamics, and how we can challenge these norms
- Representing diversity through different types of knowledge
- Intersectional influences and the perception of complexity
- How resources, particularly the viability of contributed time, reinforce privilege
- Helping people recognize what their power is to challenge systems
- And making intentional decisions
Criterion Institute is a nonprofit think tank that works with Social Change-makers to demystify finance and broaden their perspective on how to engage with and shift financial systems.
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Podcast Transcript:
The podcast is being transcribed by Otter.ai. (there may be errors, run-on sentences and misspellings).
Joy Anderson 0:00
Norms, as those of us who work on gender norms know, are one of the most powerful intractable things because nobody even sees them. Right? They’re so baked in, of course, women raise children, that’s how things are. And so there’s so baked into how we see the world. Sure, but that’s a cultural norm, not truth. And so I can challenge it. And then what’s really important, and I think is most important about this paper, is to say, How do I assess my relative ability to do that? Can I take on these cultural norms?
Vicki Saunders 0:00
Hi, I’m Vicki Saunders. Welcome to SheEO.World, a podcast about women who are working on the World’s To-Do List. On this podcast, you’ll meet women who are transforming systems and committed to creating a more equitable world.
Hi everyone, super excited to be here today with Joy Anderson who has a groundbreaking new paper coming out which I have been so excited to read early drafts of. We want to share it with you today, I think this is really going to help people see the structures and the systems that we’re actually in. This stuff is so hard when you get to the systems level and the root issue of some of the challenges that we’re facing in the world. And so welcome Joy, I am psyched to talk about Disruptive Fields. Welcome.
Joy Anderson 0:34
Oh, thank you, Vicki, and thanks so much for taking this time. Always fun to talk to you.
Vicki Saunders 0:40
So as a non-paper kind of reader person, even though I have like a deep academic background, why are you writing this paper? Tell me what, what is this solving for us in the world?
Joy Anderson 0:56
I think, first of all the the audience is it’s solving for a fairly small group of people. And I just want to I want to name that off the bat of, of people who are field builders. And I’ll come back, we can talk a little bit about what that means. But people who are shaping fields, and in particular, this came about because we were at a table, it was a, it was actually an advisory board for our work on gender based violence. Anyway, the question came up for the 85th time, why isn’t gender lens investing as far along as climate finance? And I sort of did a “harumph”. Well, they have more money, they have more power, they have more white guys like, don’t you see all this? Like they had an easier narrative, we were working upstream, we had to overcome bias and privilege in ways they didn’t have to. And I’m finding myself babbling through all of this. Patty element at the table was just like, you should write that.
Vicki Saunders 1:59
Exactly, yeah.
Joy Anderson 1:04
Eighteen months later, though, I’ve the progress of writing this paper, which is hopefully its progress towards being useful is to move from an extended rant and whine to a how do you actually analyze power dynamics? That in the choices that we make, of when we push, when we’ve stepped back, when do we work in the system? When do we challenge the system? Because somewhere in that, I mean, a starting place. And and I think this is the starting place of the paper at some point is that we don’t even know we’re in a box, right? We don’t even know that we’re making choices within a system. We don’t even know that there are power dynamics swirling around us. So one of the points in the paper, just as a quick illustration, is just that a norm in finance is that bigness matters. I mean, imagine that being run by a bunch of men, and they decide that bigness matters, right? And so in finance, bigness matters, how much money we move matters, like how big the transaction was, and how much capital is and are you talking billions, right? Like all of that matters. But it doesn’t actually matter for impact or quality. Right? It matters as a power move, it matters because the norm in finance is that bigger is better. And so what I call out in the paper is we seem to spend an enormous amount of time justifying by naming how much money’s moved. And for women entrepreneurs, for example, this is always going to be defensive, because to celebrate how much money has moved and compare it to how much money is moved in climate is, like, comparing apples and elephants, right? Like, we started with a bias and how much money was moving to women entrepreneurs, the whole point of the field was to overcome it. So what we should be measured by is how much bias we’ve overcome. Not Have we gotten to the place where moving the same amount of money as the big boys.
Vicki Saunders 4:15
Amazing. Okay, this is so great. I mean, this is gonna be so helpful, because both of us, I feel like we’re on this parallel path, because you’re doing this at the systems level. And I’m like, isn’t it obvious why we do everything the way we do it? At SheEO, la la la ranting? And I’m like, Oh, no, I have to write paper too. So thank you for modeling that. I deeply appreciate it. And I y eah, wow. Okay. So understanding the box we’re in so that we can actually pay attention to the power dynamics that are happening underneath it. Can you walk us through like, what are the elements of that? Can you give us a bit of an overview?
Joy Anderson 4:49
Yeah, sure. So, um, it’s a framework. It’s, you know, my parents are theologans and my brother is a philosopher.
Vicki Saunders 5:06
That explains a lot. This explains a lot, I got it, okay.
Unknown Speaker 5:09
And so I often start with a framework. And I get really rigorous about making sure that it’s all lines up. But I like this one. And so it looks at six things, it looks at the ways the, the the cultural norms. And you know, the cultural norms that sit within the world affect how value is assigned, right? It looks at leaders who are signaling authority. So in an early stage of a field, we need the Al Gores who stand up and say, “This is real”. And here’s David Blood, who also says this is real. So leaders signaling authority, but you often need the people in the system, who have that authority to be able to signal that your authority is legitimate, then there’s a set of experts. So the third piece is you have experts who are naming what knowledge matters. And so the finance person saying this, the finance person who sort of blesses this as Yes, that is that is real finance. But also, how do we, how do we build up new kinds of expertise as translators who can speak both gender and finance or climate and finance. The third is thinking about how we form networks, a lot of field building work, the work of of, of constructing communities of human beings, is about forming networks. But those networks, the moment they’re formed, they start to find who can participate and who can’t. So really digging into those power dynamics. The next is looking at structures that solidify power at some point, we say we should have standards, we should say how everybody’s doing things. And so you set up these kinds of standards, for example, that then solidify power, or the business model. So field building are also part of a kind of structure that solidifies how power works. And then finally, the point that we started all of this with is where do we have resources, reinforced privilege? So a lot of maybe didn’t mention this before. But this is this paper is a comparison of the development of the field of gender lens investing to the development of climate finance. So I draw from examples from both fields, or say, Why did this happen in different ways. But in the resources, reinforcing privilege, you’re sort of highlighting the money that moved to the climate war room and climate works. Early on, in in the early 2000s $300 million of capital was a lot. Gender lens investing has never seen $300 million of fields building money, like philanthropy, supporting field building. Yeah. And so the the kind of volume of difference. You know, you and I have recently been told that perhaps perhaps $5 million, is too much to ask for, because do you really need that much?
Vicki Saunders 8:27
It’s unbelievable.
Joy Anderson 8:27
$300 millon, right, went to climate works for just field building work to build up. kind of find it. So that kind of how do you? How do you look at the ways that resources and how they move reinforced privilege. So those are the six pieces.
Vicki Saunders 8:46
That’s interesting, because I saw a presentation in Europe a couple years ago, around the amount of money that went into micro fi, as well in micro finance, and it was billions of dollars of philanthropy went in before it became market ready, like that. And so when I heard that, I’m like, gosh, there’s there really are these examples out there. This is not a unique situation when a new thing is emerging. That is like busting cultural norms. There have been precedents set. So I think it’s it’s extremely important to walk through this, and the comparison between climate and gender, I think is just phenomenal, right? It’s just like, so obvious when you see it. So do you want to share, you want to dig in a little bit to like cultural norms? Do you want to do an example of each of these? Because I think it would be helpful for people like I think that frameworks really interesting, but how are we assigning value systems like what is the cultural norm right now?
Joy Anderson 9:41
So the first one that I named is is sort of a narrative of moving lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and the more is better and moving more capital. Um, the second one is, is about materiality and positioning things as material and I will say in criterions practice day to day, this is a huge focus of ours of sort of making sure that gender is seen as material because our analysis of power dynamic says, you have to make that case. But what I point out in this piece is making that case is a choice, and it is constraining. It means that instrumental arguments of sort of saying that, you know, so materiality is is about the, the, that whatever data point you’re looking at, or pattern that you’re looking at in the world would affect financial decision making. That’s that it’s material because it affects financial decision making. And so we constantly sit in rooms that are swirling around like, well, that’s not really material is it and people in you know, people get to decide whether or not it’s material. But that puts us stepping into that, because it’s a choice that I made to work within that cultural norm. You know, the box that you’re in, right, you have to constantly then on their terms, claim materiality. And there’s a lot of people who have stepped out of it and said, you know, the whole system’s rigged, like, this whole thing about that finance gets to decide as value is what’s off. The next one is, is, um, you chose the wonky one here, Vicki, but the next one is about systemic risk. And the power that climate finance had, in being able to name climate as a ubiquitous systemic risk, is something that, that gender has not been able to achieve. Right? Delightfully, the new pension fund that just announced the Japanese pension, the new pension fund, the new transaction coming out of the Japanese pension fund, largest pension fund in the world actually does say that gender is a systemic risk. But that’s been a position that that climate has achieved that gender hasn’t, and the power dynamics in being and accepted systemic risk, is we’re still trying to defend our right to even be talked about at the table. Yeah, and then, and then finally, and this is this is one that that you and I talked about all the time of sort of designing for the investors intent. And there’s an assumption that what the investor wants, should drive a lot, right? Because you in the end, when you get the investors money, okay.
Sure, that is that is, you know, impact investing, Jen actually defines impact investing, as people who have an intent. So, power dynamics absolutely in place, I’m not saying we should throw this all out and just ignore the investors intent. And we will then run wildly through fields of wild flowers, because it will all be different. I’m not naive, I just want to name that saying what the investor desires, drives all other decisions. We just need to be aware of that. And then there are ways to say, and what’s emerging now is much more collaborative modes of decision making, I think about, there’s this new book that the folks in village capital have just put out about what happens when you give up that power? What if it’s not your desires? What if it’s what the world needs that’s actually driving decision making? How do you give up power in those settings? And it is possible. So again, this is it, especially for this one in, ’cause norms, as those of us who work on gender norms know, are one of the most powerful and tractable things because nobody even sees them. Right? They’re so baked in, of course, women raise children, that’s how things are. And so there’s so baked into how we see the world. And, and so this is one of the most challenging ones to sort of say, yeah, and then there are 1000s of others of norms that you could hold up to say, Sure, but that’s a cultural norm, not truth. And so I can challenge it. And then what’s really important, and I think is most important about this paper, is to say, How do I assess my relative ability to do that? Can I take on these cultural norms? Do I have the, am I equipped to do that? Or is that too dangerous for my work? And how do we assess it?
Vicki Saunders 14:42
Yeah, I mean, the I also just the thing that’s sort of sticking with me a little bit on this too, is like giving up power, like assuming as opposed to using power with, right, the power with versus power over. And so there’s just so much reframing around these things to really understand them, but thanks, that’s So that’s, I know, I started with the hard one. But to get into these, so the next piece that you have here is really around leadership and leaders signaling authority. And so I’m really fascinated by this piece too, because it’s this getting validated by the people who have the authority, and identifying who can actually do that. I feel this a lot at SheEO, we’re doing voting right now. And, you know, we have people who are voting on where money is going without looking at financials. I love that. But like, I think goes against the cultural norms around these things. But it actually yields really interesting results that are working. So do you want to talk a little bit about this piece around leaders in finance?
Joy Anderson 15:49
Yeah, just building on that example, maybe just one of these pieces of one of the things I find fascinating, is that it in my experience in gender lens investing, when the gender expert walks into the room and says, Wow, these things are, I’m not sure. I’m not sure this is the right analysis. Maybe there’s a couple other factors we should be looking at, are we really getting to root cause? Like, have we fully looked at the way power dynamics are playing out in this setting? The whole world doesn’t stop and say, oh, my goodness, the gender expert has spoken. And we should defer to their authority, and rethink everything that we’re doing, because it might not be legitimate. We just don’t. And that does happen. When the voice of finance speaks in a room and says, this isn’t really a real deal. Right. And, and that is, again, I am naming things that once they get named, you’re kind of like, of course, ’cause finance has all the power, like, yes, but the wonderful thing about change is that we’re actually taking on power dynamics, we’re saying, What if you didn’t have all the power? What would that look like? And where are the places that we could in our work of how we choose to build fields, say that on any transaction that we’re, you know, in anytime that we’re holding up transactions and saying, are they valid, 50% are experts who know something about context, and 50% are finance experts. And we make that because for me, I don’t actually always care if the I mean, I, you and I talked about this a lot. Like, I actually think representing different kinds of knowledge is often more important than actually diversity, right? Because if you put the legitimate woman on the on the stage, who’s in finance, that’s important, and having diversity is important. I don’t want to minimize but you haven’t changed the dialogue, you’ve just changed the gender of the person in the same dialogue about the privilege of finance.
Vicki Saunders 18:06
Yeah, I mean, that totally brings up, I’d never really recognized the degree of that until I was at the World Bank, at one point, and we just saw literally a sea of like, all these different like, racialized people coming in throughout the day sharing all these things. And someone at the end went, Wow, it’s so diverse here. And they said, Oh, actually, it’s our biggest problem is that everyone went to the same four universities. Everybody thinks the same. Yep. So it’s, there’s a depth underneath this, right. Yeah. That’s, that’s really fascinating. So this flows right into whose knowledge matters? Really interested in this part? Right? Like, what data is legitimate? Who decides that? Yeah, let’s talk experts. Yeah.
Joy Anderson 18:49
Yeah. And and I think the one of the pieces in the experts that that I’m most interested in, my favorite section in here is sort of looking at when do we privilege simplicity, and define what complexity is not tolerable? Because it’s not that things have to be simple. It’s that, right? So that’s too complicated. actually looking through things with a gender lens broadly, and making sure that your gender lens includes a queer lens, well, I just got to the fact that we’re looking at men and women, you’re also telling me that I should have a queer lens that’s too hard, or doing race and gender at the same time is like, you know, talking and chewing gum and walking and doing other things, like of course, you just have to be able to do these things, walk and talk at the same time. But but the sort of who gets to decide that’s too complex. And when when do we say alright, I’ll just simplify it because it’s important to simplify or do we say, how come we didn’t have to simplify the quantum physics that went into how that energy thing actually works. And when scientists who bring empirical data to the table, you’ll listen to them all day, I remember going to a climate conference once and listening to a presentation about sort of climate science. And I was just stunned at the complexity. But somebody walks into a speech about gender and just says, Can you bottom line this for me? Like nobody says that to a climate, I mean, I’m sure people say that to a climate scientist, sometimes I wanted to say it to these people. But the privileging of kind of empirical data transactions that are there’s all kinds of historical reasons. In oh, I’m sorry, I’m gonna get really wonky here, but in how sort of knowledge and fields formed, even within academics of why we sort of privileged hard data of over soft data. But that plays out again, in what’s valid data.
Vicki Saunders 21:02
Yeah, and I mean, that’s also partly a bit of a replica, or leftover from our reductionist mindset stuff, too, right? Which is like this, cuz, you know, again, in the gender space to generalization, but like, there is a holistic approach that women often take to things versus the reductionist approach that we take on a bunch of others. And when you start to talk about the whole, like, I’m writing a grant application this morning, and part of that thing is like, I can literally hear the person reading it going, why don’t you just pick one of these things? Why are you doing mentorship and buying power and investing and expertise and network and influence? Like, pick a thing? That’s what everyone else does? They’re all interconnected, and actually, the values in the leveraging all together. But again, to this point of like, Yeah, when does it get to be complex? And when does it get to be simple as PowerPoint?
Joy Anderson 21:52
Oh, I’ve done this one recently. But I remember about eight or nine years ago, I was on faculty for unreasonable or Echoing Green, one of those entrepreneur, accelerators. And suddenly, it was just like, you do not have the privilege of focus. What are you talking about? Entrepreneurs have to focus. So it’s like, well, if you focus, you’ll simply create the same, you’ll externalize something else. And so the same externalities that we created all of this field to say, externalities shouldn’t be seen as separate things. I’m working on water, I don’t see how gender has to be, I’m not a gender person, I’m a water person, oh, for the love of God, really, like I’m working on poverty, I can’t think about race, because that’s I would be not focusing, if I was saying I was working on poverty, and racee—racial constructions of poverty at the same time, that would be not focused. Like literally, we say this, to social entrepreneurs, pick your topic. So and so for me just to really highlight this paper is written a little bit for the we, who have been shaping how fields develop, right, not just written for the entrepreneur to say you should, because there’s lots of people who sit in positions where they’re not, they’re not trying to work at a systems level, that’s not their goal. They want to work in their community on their thing and see things as interconnected. But for those of us who raised our hands, or had the privilege to be able to raise our hands to work on this sort of field building work, this is really a call to accountability, on the decisions that we make both what we make and our funders make because fields are not neutral, they don’t emerge in a kind of vacuum of power dynamics. And so if we’re not paying attention to how the field building work, the work of changing what activities are happening, what activities are organized, how people in organizations are organized, what ideas are driving things, should it have been women effect versus gender lens, like that was a choice of a bunch of people sitting at a table. And just recognizing the concentration of power that happens within field building. I, I think of Tracy gray, often in this because every time I give a speech, she reminds me of it because, I’m the kind of privilege that comes with saying, you know, for folks who have barely gotten access to the system, those of us who are in a privileged pays place working on systems to say, Well, now I need to construct, know deconstruct the system. I just got here and now you’re deconstructing the system. Right? That’s not, that’s not fair. And so how can we raise our awareness in this incredibly privileged place of, of shaping how fields emerge? how can how can we be more transparent, hold ourselves accountable to decisions that in the moment, feel like? Well, I can’t take that on, I have to work within how the man set things up. Like, I can’t challenge that. And and we’re making personal decisions about our own understanding of our power. But those decisions have ramifications.
Vicki Saunders 25:44
Yeah, I mean, one of the things that’s interesting. I mean, as we’re going through this, I’ve read the paper a couple of times. And it’s, I don’t know, I’m like reminded of a podcast I listened to recently, and I just continued to see it. Like, as soon as we can touch the box that we’re in, we can really start to innovate and imagine right when we know these pieces, and so as we start to take on this, like revealing that your paper does for us to like, actually get into each of these pieces, we can start to see how are we? How has that affected us? How is that limiting us? Or constraining us or freeing us once you start to see it? Right? So I think it is incredibly powerful. And it’s deep work, right? It’s deep to notice these things. This is something that you have been gifted a unique lens into, and are like, it’s obvious what’s going on people, that’s just a power dynamic. I’m like, Oh, Oh, right. Okay. Yeah. And it takes it takes some unraveling, right to actually get into it. Let’s do one more of these six right now that you’re most excited to share. And then we’ll talk we’ll just sort of close off today with what can we do with this? You know, what do you see as next steps?
Joy Anderson 27:01
Um, well, maybe just another one to dig into is, because it starts to lead into what choices we have to make. In looking at how resources reinforced privilege, one of the pieces that we dug into is the viability of contributed time, because so much field building actually happens around the edges, right, your day job is to run SheEO. And granted SheEO’s mission is to engage these broader systems. But it’s also your job to get money to a bunch of entrepreneurs who are good at working on the World’s To-Do list, since I’ve ingrained your brand so much. And, so I think about fund managers who are building their funds, and then around the edges doing field building. This goes directly to questions of of time poverty, right. Like, there are people for whom the, you know, so much. I mean, I joke all the time, like nobody would have ever hired me to launch a venture fund, I was able to launch a venture fund because I was running a consulting firm, that gave me enough freedom to say, I can not earn revenue from this other activity and launch a venture fund. And in my own experience, I didn’t feel like I had a ton of abundance around that. But I had enough abundance to make a choice. I had a house that I could mortgage, I had things that I could add assets that I could work with. And so we have lots of conversations with with grassroots organizations or people working on social justice issues. And, and their ability to say, I’m just gonna wander into this field of finance and explore it a little bit and see how I might want to shape this field of gender lens investing. That that’s not an option. I remember a really amazing social change leader, she and I had been talking for about a year about what she could do in gender lens investing, and her board took a vote and said, no, don’t focus on that don’t even engage in that don’t go to the meetings. Her board, the head of a social justice organization told the CEO not to spend time on this. Because it would distract from her focus of getting philanthropy out into the world to social change actors.
Vicki Saunders 29:36
I’ve personally—Yeah, same thing.
Joy Anderson 29:38
Yeah. And so that that choice of contributed time and that and the edges around that, I think is it’s not just about did I get the grant. It’s a lot of this is also about who has the freedom to volunteer their time, which is one of the reasons criterions always working to be as porous as possible and make it as easy as possible. For people to say, I want to figure out how I could leverage a way into gender lens investing. We’re like, sure, you know, volunteer for something here and use that as an immediate stepping stone as quickly as you can to where you actually want to be.
Vicki Saunders 30:14
Awesome. Yeah. Really interesting. And that’s a new phrase I hadn’t heard before either time poverty.
Joy Anderson 30:20
Oh, yeah. Yeah, it’s a good gender concept. Good gender concept. Yeah.
Vicki Saunders 30:25
Okay, cool. We’ll be digging into it. Feeling it all the time. Okay, so, we’ve got this construct. First of all, where, when is the paper coming out? How are people going to be able to find it.
Joy Anderson 30:37
Um, so we we’re in for final design and editing, to release on the eve of Gender Smart. So it will be launched, it will be very active within Gender Smart for those of you who are participating there. And it’ll be on our website. And we’re actually building a whole section of criterions website to really address powers such a core focus of criterion, and just really bringing together all the resources that we’ve built over time, that affect people’s that support people’s looking at power in different ways. And, and the end of this paper, like, I’m really hoping this paper is practical. Like, I know, there’s pieces of it sounds so wickedly esoteric of like, a theory of power dynamics on top of system change, like, Oh, my goodness. But the second thing that is really important is at the end of the document, and hopefully, throughout, really calling out what is, what is the action? What can we do? And in some ways doing is about practicing, seeing, and practicing paying attention. And that is an action. Learning how to assess your power in context, we’re working on a tool that actually helps an individual or an organization assess, what’s their relative power to take on these different things. Because I really want to make sure the empathy comes through, which is, I’m not stepping back and saying shame on you, you should have made different decisions, and challenge power dynamics, every moment of the day, I have so much personal experience to say that’s not possible. I just want our decisions to be intentional. And then to be able to say, I intended to do this. And then how do we hold each other accountable to say, challenge me if I’m not sticking with it?
Vicki Saunders 32:43
Yeah, I mean, I think one of the one of the hopes I have coming out of this is, first of all, recognizing the structures and systems we’re in, so that we can start to make those different decisions, and to stop the incessant question of like, we’ve wasted so many resources, thinking that they’re going towards solving something. And that doesn’t happen. And people are like, why does this keep happening? Why are we not making a dent in the universe? Why after you know, all this effort, things aren’t happening, you’re like, actually, here’s what’s underneath the surface that we haven’t been able to see, we’re looking at the top of the iceberg. And right below the waterline, there’s the magic sauce, and you just gave us what’s below the waterline, right? From my perspective, this is this is somehow getting us to see under the surface, which should be incredibly catalytic, to help accelerate the transformation that we need across all different elements. And starting with gender and climate. It gives us a way in, but I just hope that this ripples out with so much more use for so many in the field, and I’m so grateful that you—I know it’s incredibly hard to sit down and unlock your brain into this and put it into a format that people can digest. Because it is complex, I think you’ve done an unbelievable job of breaking that down. And I’m really, really excited to see the impact of this. So thank you very much.
Joy Anderson 34:03
Well, and I thank you, thank you, I really appreciate—you’re such a master marketer and so I appreciate anytime that you can say things are clear, but I think the other piece is just recognizing this is this is a corridor work for has been for a long time will be for a very long time. So for me, this is just the beginning of figuring out how do we really support the process of making power dynamics more visible, more transparent, so that we can make choices not so that we can run ourselves ragged but you know, as you know, as Tracy say, we are enough, right? But we are enough is not the same thing as we’ve done enough. And I think while we are enough, I believe, there’s places we could have pushed harder. And I want us to just make those calculated risks. I know those places I could have pushed harder. I know there’s places I could have challenged in a different way. But I didn’t actually know my own power, and therefore I didn’t use it. And I think those of us pushing against intractable systems, you know, some days, we feel lucky to be in the game at all. I know, I feel often just lucky to be in the game at the table. But the question is the moment where there, are we doing all we can to really change the underlying power dynamics, not just manipulate the existing power dynamics to get what we want?
Vicki Saunders 35:52
Yeah, and I think they totally and the ability, so part of, so yes, all of us could have probably done a lot more than we’ve done. But, and perfect timing is now to change that going forward, and to have these elements articulated, to then be able to use those to translate and to deconstruct, hey, this is really what’s happening in this conversation. Can we all see that? You’re claiming that you have the ultimate authority to make all these decisions? Just want to say to everyone, FYI, right, that’s, that’s a thing that’s happening right there that none of the rest of us have a chance to do? Right. So let’s cop to that. And it’s, you know, can we tell ourselves the truth, and if we can, that really opens the door to collaboration going forward to shifting these things. So this is just a huge contribution. Thank you so much. And we’ll be back people with more to come as paper Disruptive Fields is coming out in a couple of weeks. We’ll link to it from our website as well. And thanks very much for being with us today. Joy.
Joy Anderson 36:47
Oh thanks. You’re the best.
Vicki Saunders 36:47
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