We ended up building it through just iterative conversations based on instinct and common sense. And it worked. You know, we just kept going and didn't look down. And I think there was something looking back on that time, that power of trusting your instinct, conversation, keeping it lo-fi, and listening. My name's Katrina. And I'm Steve. And we are curious about how changing conversations can change organizations. Yeah. And together with our community of transformation nerds, we're exploring how to leverage conversations to make our workplaces more fit for humans, but also more fit for the future. We'll use our podcast series to do just that, while being in conversation with business and staff. Thought leaders who have interesting perspectives on the topic. So, without further ado, let's start the conversation. Today, we're in conversation with Gail Galley. Gail's background is in marketing and advertising. She's helped to create campaigns for clients ranging from P&G to the Labour Party in the UK. She's also worked in communications at the BBC for more than eight years before taking over as CEO at esteemed advertising agency, Fallon London. All of this serves as a backdrop to what comes next, which is when in 2015, Gail joined campaigner Richard Curtis to found Project Everyone, the campaign unit that launched the Sustainable Development Goals on behalf of the United Nations. We'll be talking with Gail about the project. We'll be talking with Gail about the work that Project Everyone has done to spark and fuel a global conversation. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals is quite a mouthful, so we'll refer to them in this episode as the SDGs or Global Goals. Lean in and enjoy this conversation with Gail Galley. I'm going to ask you first, why have we invited Gail on this podcast? Well, many reasons. Gail is cool. My wife met you almost 10 years ago and she said, you've got to meet Gail. She kicks ass and you do. So because you're an intelligent and inspiring person, but also because you were part of and instrumental in turning a boring report from the UN into something that has now changed the conversation globally. In every organization I can think of today and any organization I work with, the sustainability goals are part of their narrative. It's part of their conversation and it could be anything from a sports club to a big corporation. The global goals are part of the narrative and I believe that it was thanks to the work that you and your organization did. So I'm super curious to explore how do you turn insight into a global movement and that's what we're going to explore. So with that framing, I think it's the perfect time to say welcome Gail. Thank you for joining us. Well, it's a pleasure to be here. I think your wife kicks ass. So back at you. I agree. Yes, I'm sure you do. Could you take us back eight years and maybe share with us some of the conversations that actually led to Project Everyone? And how did you get it? And how did you get it going? So of course the SDGs, the Sustainable Development Goals, were the successes to the Millennium Development Goals, the MDGs. And there were eight of those. And it's so fascinating to me that even up until then, 2000, there were no sustainability goals. Despite everything we knew, despite all the science being very clear, that the UN was focusing its global mandate on, sure, worthy things, hunger, education, gender, all those things, but not sustainability. So the conversation to add sustainability into the SDGs is in itself amazing that that had to happen. And as I understand it, it was quite controversial. You know, some of the bigger supporters, donors, countries who were very focused on things like hunger, you can imagine, or health, or health, did not want sustainability added because they thought it would dilute. So that was a conversation that was had and obviously resolved the way it resolved, which is sustainability is added. But when I got there, when I arrived on the scene, as it were coming from, as I said, ad industry, so this was all new to me, there was quite a degree of sort of adversarial behaviors and conversations between the development world and the sustainability world. And they played out in the launch year. And then, of 2015, of 2015, because it was also the year of the Paris Agreement. So depending on where you sat, this was either the biggest month in your life because the SDGs were launching, or it was the biggest month in your life because Paris was happening. And of course, Copenhagen had not worked five years earlier. So there was an intense buildup and hope for Paris. And people were getting cross with each other because the climate lot had got the march together, and how dare they do a climate march when it's the SDG launch? And real tension, which was interesting to me as someone who was coming from a space where I thought, this is all one thing, right? We're all trying to make the world better for everyone forever. But it was tense, and it was interesting. And I think that the amazing defining tone to Project Everyone was that it never stepped into that conversation. And it never has, and it never will. For us, the goals represent a system of unity. It's an holistic system. You can't fix one without the other. No one wants to live on a dead planet, but equally, do we want to live on a healthy planet where women and girls don't get any kind of recognition or children uneducated, et cetera. So the conversation that we engendered was about moving forward together. How can we come together to make the world better? And it was also a crazy kind of energy. It's like a start, it was a startup. It was a startup, but that energy of startup with the biggest mission in the world at the heart of it was intoxicating. So it was very easy for us to start conversations with big supporters, like Bill Gates and the like, because we would ring up and say, hello, I'm ringing on behalf of the United Nations and Richard Curtis. Would you like to help us save the world? And they'd be like, who are you? But I think the tone that we were starting with was so different to those legacy climate campaigners or hunger campaigners who were tired and also in conflict with each other. We were like the news bunnies. We were like, hello, would you like to help us? And the higher up we got and the more ambitious we were in the way we expressed that mission, the more people lent in to help. So we would just have conversations actually. Genuinely, the way we designed the launch, I'll talk about design, design in a sec. That's of the icons. That would be different. But the way we designed the launch campaign was we thought, how do we reach everyone? That's why we're called Project Everyone. It was meant to be a project. We didn't realize we were going to still be here, but the launch was the goals are for everyone. Let's make them for everyone. So Richard just called this the Project Everyone and it's always stuck. So we thought, how do you reach everyone? What are the biggest verticals in the world? These were not scientific conversations at all. These were common sense, you know, notepad. Okay, media, that's big. Okay, how can we get like the biggest media owners and okay, let's get screens, let's get advertising agencies, kids, schools. Okay, that's big. How do we get and that's we ended up doing the world's largest lesson, you know, the world's biggest advertising campaign. And we would have a series of conversations with experts in that area. Over the course of about three months in our office and ended up designing a really rough, rough stroke thing that and including the workshop that which is where I met your wife at. We ended up building it through just iterative conversations based on instinct and common sense. And it worked, you know, we just kept going and didn't look down. And I think there was something looking back on that time, that power of trusting your instinct, conversation, keeping it low, identify and listening. Richard's dream at the beginning was that we'd get the wheel, you know, the global goals wheel on every packaging, everybody's packaging in the world. And because from his point of view, why would you not? I've got the head of Unilever as part of the negotiations. You know, you have every company in the world saying they want to do this, they want to do that. Of course, they'll put it on. So and we thought, yeah, that would be amazing. So let's get some really big industry players around the table to chat. And, you know, to a man and woman, they were like, that will never happen. And actually, it hasn't. They're right. There's all sorts of reasons why that doesn't happen. Different country regulations, you know, there's a ton of other things already that they're signed up to, you'd have to change the machinery and every different market would be different. And that was a case of, you know, we didn't do everything we wanted to because we listened. I mean, I'm not sure Richard has listened because he still would like the wheel and every packaged good in the world. But we listened for that time for the time being. But mainly people said, okay, I get what you're trying to do. How can we do that? So we built this, there was 12 of us and we built this global launch where our strapline was, our strategy was we're going to reach 7 billion people in seven days. So and then so one day it was media takeover, one day it was football takeover, one day, you know, and, and, and. And we think we reached maybe 3 billion by carefully looking at the maths. But, you know, a glorious failure, as Richard said, because we did not do 7 billion in seven days, but we did pretty well. Pretty well. It was all right. It was all right. That's amazing. Maybe we could draw attention to the actual visual part of it. Yes. So, because what we want to talk about is how to fuel conversations. And at least, you know, I really recognize this round circular visual with lots of colors on it. I'm sure you've seen people wearing pins with it on and so forth. So can you tell us a little bit about the thinking around that and how you thought that might fuel conversations on this topic? Yes, of course. So you're absolutely right in the premise that if we hadn't done what we did, it would have stayed a document. And I do have a presentation that I give. I haven't given it for a while, but I have two slides that show the original policy document. And then you flip the next slide just shows the table. And it just makes the point that it's so obvious, but it does make me sometimes if I'm particularly stressed or frustrated, I go back to that slide and say, it's okay. But, you know, however rough the going now is, we did that, that, that, that was important. And it was, it was Richard's, Richard is a visually driven, he's a writer, but actually he has a terrific visual sense. So I think it was his instigation that this needed more visual pizzazz than it has. We also were very conscious of the everyone bit. So it had to be visual in a way that was not reliant on language or indeed cultural reference. Because what would look amazing if you're choosing a certain set of references, especially if you're using, say, photography, would resonate brilliantly, say, in Southeast Asia, but it wouldn't make any sense at all in, you know, Northern Europe and vice versa. So there was a lot, so we knew how to be visual. We knew we needed to be global. We knew it needed to be intergenerational. You know, the essence of the mission is to raise a whole generation behind the 2030 generation who grew up just thinking this stuff is normal. Like, of course, we want gender equality. Of course, we're going to respect the planet. But if you're not teaching them that from the get go from, you know, school age, then they're not going to grow into that. And you're going to have to start again when they're baked into their sort of old wrong ways, as it were. So we had to appeal to kids as well. And so it's quite a chunky design brief, really, if you think about it, it has to work everywhere. You can't use anything that's too specific. It's got to cover every issue. And it has to be instantly recognizable. The UN did not help in the sense that they spat out 17, which is just a rubbish number. He was introduced to say, even God only had 10. So can you really not get it down? We were like, it's 2015. Can't you get it to 15? Surely you could put a couple of them together. Inequalities and gender? No. Okay. But all of that, of course, was intensely political and being negotiated with 193 member states. So the number was the number. So that was another element of complication. And we were in one of our media conversations. And I was talking about how we formed the campaign in these specialist, dialogues. There's a guy who I had worked for at the BBC. He's now the director general of the BBC. He said, oh, design and the man you need is a Swedish designer called Jakob Trollback. He's brilliant. So we flew. This is the lovely nature of that startup. So Richard and I sort of went, okay, we must meet Jakob. Where is Jakob? Jakob's in New York. Let's go to New York. So we went to New York. And I remember it really clearly because it was so pivotal. We'd done a briefing, obviously, over the phone. This was pre-Zoom. So we hadn't met him. We just had phone calls with him and tried to distill the enormity of this complex brief to his design mind. And so we met in the very swanky bar of the New York So House. I was one of those life moments where you're sort of looking at yourself on the outside and going in with Richard Curtis, thinking like, this is cool. This is really exciting. I think it's the second trip I'd taken after the trip to Denmark with him. And Jakob comes out. And Jakob is a great friend to ours. And so he won't mind me saying he's an hilarious caricature of what a Swedish designer would be. He's extremely morose, extremely sort of serious. It takes every detail as, you know, as blood. And he had some concepts prepared. And there was a few routes. And he could obviously, because I've worked in the ad industry long enough, I know the presentation trick about the order you present them in and how you present them to show the one that you hope is going to be taken, which was the one we've got. Very iconic, simple, graphic, bright colors, you know, all the stuff you've seen. But there was another route, I think, as Richard might have asked for it, which had much more humanity in it, photography, lots of young faces from all over the world. And Richard really, his instinct was, I really love that. And I remember I could feel, as you do with creatives who, it's not going their way, I could feel Jakob's sort of deep trauma rising because he didn't agree. But he can't, Richard's so lovely and charming and, you know, brilliant. It's hard to disagree with him creatively. It was struggling with this point in the meeting. And then I think Richard must have gone to the bathroom. And I remember Jakob leaning over going, help me, help. This is a disaster. And we go, okay, I agree with you. But so let's like work out how we can. And Richard came back and because he's such a great listener and we argued the toss a bit and we ended up with where we got to. The wheel is interesting. The wheel is there because of 17 is a crap number to design with. So, you know, there's no shape that looks great in 17. But when you add the wheel, then you can do three rows. And you have the tablet. And then a bit later, Jakob and I collaborated with the Swedish government to design the targets, which is, again, I think one of those genius strategic switches, which would not have happened if the UN had been left to their own devices. I don't know if you know, I'm sure you do know, you know, each goal has its headline, but then it has its targets and then it has its indicators. And the targets are where I think they get really granular for people to use the goals. And I think they weren't really being talked about or showcased so much. But when we designed them into the icons of their own, the ones I can always remember are their life below water targets because they're very sort of cartoony, you know, what pollution looks like, what overfishing looks like, what a reef looks like. Businesses particularly really, I think, then leapt in at a target level and they could really see the granularity of what they were trying to achieve. So, and I'll keep using the ocean as the example because I think it's a good one. It's so huge, life below water. I mean, literally, it's the biggest system on earth. And you as a business might stand for that. I want, you know, I want to help the life support system, but where do I start? Well, I think once you get to target level, there's some really great places, pollution, plastic, what are you using your offices? You know, you could start ranking yourself against those targets. And I think when they are put into icon form the way we did it, I think it was 2017, we designed up the targets. You could see them being taken off. So it was almost like we proved the case by launching the goals in the first place, designed up and looking gorgeous. And then to come back again with the second album of the targets as it were, and see them be taken off as well. I think there's a lesson in that about learning from what worked and then do it again. I think there's also a lesson in the power of aesthetics. So immediately when you get an image glued to a story or something, there is at least the potential of that being sticky. But without that, I mean, we can all think of photographs that remind us of a certain crisis or a war or something. And when we've seen that photograph or something, it can be erased. And that's what aesthetics can do. So I think it's a super, super powerful tool to design a conversation by using aesthetics or design. I agree. And I think sometimes companies, industries don't feel that it's somehow appropriate for them to be playful like that. But I hope this shows that if the United Nations and with all the seriousness of the goals can distill themselves into a great aesthetic, then anyone can. And maybe you should consider that for their own expression to themselves, to their staff, to their clients, because I think it does help. So we talk about transformations and they are long usually, and they're big and they're, you know, moving at some kind of tempo. And sometimes it's really difficult to know, are we actually moving even, even the slightest bit? And so what I'd like to, to ask you is when it comes to your side of this, in terms of communicating around them, how do you see that? With the global goals and how do you kind of maintain the motivation to keep fighting at it when you don't necessarily see all the progress that we would always, that we wish for? Yeah, it's a really good question. I mean, at a surface level, the goals are great to work with because there's, because they cover everything. There's always something to celebrate. You know, there's always something gone right somewhere in one of the 17, somewhere in the world. So if you're an optimist, they're like I am, and like Richard is too, there are fantastic systems. To remain motivated. And even at different, you know, something terrible might have happened politically. Like I remember when Trump got in, we were very worried about progress for the goals in the US, particularly because the Trump administration was not a fan of the UN at all. He'd made that very known. And he was not a fan of some of the multilateral organizations upon which the goals rely. So that was a very dark sort of shock to our optimism. But then what happened was this incredible uprising of activists in the States, particularly gender activists, LGBTQ, race, all the things that that administration was making noises against had this fantastic equal and opposite effect of activism rising. And equally, there can be some terrible things going on in the climate world, for example, bad science reports. At the same time, a new innovation will come through from the business world, or a regulation from somewhere in the world that makes you think, or Greta will pop up, and you'll take hope from that. So I think it gives you a really brilliant deck upon which there'll always be one of the levers you can turn up or draw your inspiration from. I think if we launched in 2015, so seven years, nearly halfway there, without question, when we're nowhere near halfway there. I think things were moving very much at different paces, in different goals. And the invasion of Ukraine, without question, has set everything back and still unknown as to how much and for how long. So that is now a challenge. How do you maintain the optimism and energy of that system through what are, without question, currently and going to be tough, tough times for everyone. And I think that's where I do draw optimism and hope from the business community, particularly who have adopted them so much, because they're useful to them. You know, businesses are good at long-term strategies. They like frameworks. They like obvious ways to connect what they're doing with other businesses, investment opportunities, consumers. So I think business will power us through the next few years of what could be, in terms of humanitarian issues, really, really difficult. But yeah, I think it's a palette in which every paint is contained. Every colour is in that palette. So if one is running thin, we'll find another one. But if you were to think about like, in terms of consulting, if you were tollover. It's a palette, which is a palette. And if you were to do it again, from a conversational point of view, and you could turn back the clock and say, okay, we are at the beginning of this, and you were to think about conversations that either didn't happen or, you know, were not right, what would, is there anything you could point to that you would do different? That, you know, from a conversational point of view, would have potentially had an even larger impact, that you kind of lost the ball or something? I mean, not that I can talk about, I think. I think we were doing it at pace, right? We were doing it at real speed. We didn't get to have conversations with some of the major players in the individual goal areas as much as we might have liked in order to knit them in to the whole system going forward. So whether they are some of the bigger UN agencies who have been supporting some of these individual goals for ages or some of the outside actual up and running movements. So this is where I won't name things because that would be too political. But I think had we had the time to understand what this system and we might have felt like coming in to somebody who'd been doing this work for 10 or even 20 years, then we may have been able to knit ourselves together as one force rather than what may, I guess, have looked like splitting the force and like, here's another thing. And then because we were a good thing and a shiny thing and we, you know, we had the potency of the UN and Richard and then increasingly Bill Gates this and Beyonce that, I fear that might have caused resentment. That is not helpful. I think, I think, I think you're onto something because I think some people, it's a big enough course so you can't not be part of it. But, but especially in the beginning, there was, there could be a sense of being excluded. You ran with the story. You had the cool narrative. Where am I in this? And I guess that's what you're pointing to that. How, how can we align with the forces that are working with us to a large extent than being too obsessed with our own story? And owning it. Yeah. And it's really hard, isn't it? To be fully inclusive of absolutely everyone and everything whilst not diluting your own focus is hard. There was a brilliant story where I thought, wow, we really have arrived of the pin symbolizing a cult. I don't know if you read that. There's, it was an Australian conspiracy theory that started, but like broke out globally on the internet where it was like an Illuminati thing. And they were showing pictures of like, look, that world leader's wearing the badge. She's wearing the badge. You know, that rock star's wearing the badge. And then they were having these sort of, brilliant, brilliant, mad voice over things about this cult of the global gods. It's really funny. And obviously that's not true, but I can see why it would look like that if you're not in our world at all. And you're, you know, people, that's how conspiracy theories start, isn't it? And we've had a few instances where people sort of want to say, oh, we're going to do a project everyone for this region or my town. And can I, can I, and they've been maybe using our name and saying that they're like official and you want to go with that energy and go, that's amazing. But sometimes what they're doing is not, uh, whatever, uh, acceptable to the UN or, uh, within the main campaign beat. And so that is a tension. How do you, how do you harness everyone and everything, um, without it going, um, a, a sort of wrong or just diluted. So that is hard. And, but I think at, at those big org levels, I mean, when we launched them and did this jazzy week with the big projections on the UN and meet takeovers on Google, and Wikipedia, all, all, all, all really great. We all got back to London eventually and we're sort of taking stock. And, and, and Richard was remember really optimistic that we could just do a ring round. I mean, literally just ring all the biggest charities, all the biggest businesses, all the biggest sort of campaign units. And they'd all just put it front and center because it almost like the answer has come. And, you know, it did, they did not, you know, because we, I think we'd, we'd missed an opportunity. We'd missed a year, basically. If we'd had another year where we could have really thought, how, is this going to land? Let's listen to who's out there who are already fighting for these amazing things. And let's work at how we can be supportive to them as well as doing the job that UN needs, which is launching these things. Um, and that, that's really a large part of our work now, uh, at, especially when it comes down to activists in those areas, let's find the people who are marching, you know, let's find the people who are doing their own, uh, beach cleanups and doing their own restoration projects all over the world and say, well, how could we help you? You know, we've got loads of things, that you could maybe could be helpful to you, like connections, like, you know, influence and power. And you have so much that we could learn from. So how can we work with you? But that, you know, that is hard work. That is hard. It's not hard. It's great work. It's, but it's laborious, you know, it takes time. And, you know, it's not the model we started with, which was very much top down noisy. Let's build a movement. Now we're trying to also connect it to the, to the roots. And, and, and that's very much Amina Mohammed's, um, message now as well as that these goals need to be taken. Nationally, they need to be taken regionally. They need to be taken locally. You know, what do they mean to you and how can you live them in your life? Because that's the real step change I think to do next. It's not like we've done as much as we can do. And we will continue to be the noisy kind of jazzy people that, that, you know, the pied pipers of the movement as it were. And we want to connect into those grassroots levels so that the movement can be one movement. And how do you, how do you make noise and kind of focus differently, um, at the different levels? So I'm just thinking, um, of course you'll want leaders and businesses and countries and so forth to be engaged in this conversation, but also some kid at home might see this and be curious. So when your, your, uh, audience is so broad, what are some of the things that you think, um, when you're putting together? together the communication or the initiatives that you launch it yeah it's what do I think I think um I think I need therapy and I need a year off because it really my husband calls it project everything all the time um because that's that is in a nutshell the hub of the challenge it is for everyone about everything um Richard has a brilliantly simplifying phrase which is to make things happen you have to make things and that carries you a long way actually so we've made some things uh which can hit different groupings of people uh and meet them hopefully where their needs are so you mentioned children one of the launch things we did was to create this world's largest lesson all based on uh teaching all kids everywhere about the goals and we've continued to do that so that is a program that we do um in all the languages um and it rotates themes every year but we think we're in about we think we've taught about 100 million kids um or enabled teachers to teach um that figure is probably higher now actually um so that's a sort of distinct focus another thing that we make in terms of make things happen to do you have to make things we do a lot of real world convenings at the places where people are so this is how we get the leaders so we go to things like the UNGA the World Economic Forum Can Lions COP increasingly and we make sure that in those rooms we create an experience where we get the business leaders in and we also get the politicians political leaders in which normally means you get a bit of celebrity in there as well because that's what they like being next to but we make sure increasingly that in that room is also the activist you know is also the community organizer um so that everyone's getting what everybody needs you know the business leaders feel authentic the organizers get to meet the people who've got the money who've got the influence that they need to shift their community so increasingly uh that and especially post pandemic the energy to do that the energy to do that is off the scale again i'm sure you're feeling it too so we've done i think two we did a whole COP in Glasgow which is back to back convening convening convening convening um and that was amazing i think it really helps shift the dial and it joins people up so that what is a mad target audience of everyone can get distilled and focused around an issue at that point in time and hopefully stone in a pond kind of model the ripples can then be felt until we get together again but i mean it is hard but i mean it is hard that is the hardest thing about the job the job what do you actually do like when you when you say you're convening things and and you you want to spark conversations on this topic at those very important sort of conferences and and things what is it a set of questions do you heavily facilitate dialogue or you know very concretely what what do you bring into that space again that's another that's another question of my night what do you actually do dot com um yeah we heavily curate and manage the conversation so the three words that i rule my life by whenever we're anywhere near one of those conference cycles is run of show what's the run of show who's hosting what's the theme and the topic what's the narrative arc you want to get from a to b it's like a show and increasingly especially it's you know some conferences more than others it is a show like we'll bring a performer in we did this amazing one recently at the world economic forum um where we run of any called the goals house and we run we pop up like a members club all those places and um we did a goals dinner with uh bill gates was there and um that means lots of other people want to be there so that's the way that works and but then we had some brilliant activists from around uh the world brought in a moja the musician in who's also the champion behind the great green wall project in africa and the frame of it all is the world's to-do list what's what's on your to-do list because we've turned these goals into 17 to-do post-its um and that was how people had to interject in the conversation was like tell us what's on your to-do list and tell us who you need to get it done and it was amazingly simple the more specific you can frame your intervention actually the more people like that and the richer it becomes so we that's the kind of stuff we do so you're likely to have a very tightly controlled topic i moderate a lot but also we get journalists great make great moderators sometimes and just make sure that everyone uh felt feels held and focused on what it is they're contributing to that narrative um and then increasingly try and bring in more listening practice at those dinners i mean i do think we do this well it breaks my heart and makes me furious if i go to an event where people are on their phones and they're not listening and i can't believe that that happens in those places it happens so much i think not in the goals house because if i'm facilitating i now it's like teaching children at carpet time i call it out at the beginning middle and end if i see it happens in the end if i see it happens it makes me furious it does happen um but um increasingly i think it's unacceptable um and i think the kind of alchemy that you can weave by bringing in the performer the expert the policy person the world leader the business person the innovator i think one of the accents that we always bring to our convenings is solution what is possible what are you doing what have you seen that works what are you if you're a scientist what are you working on because no no one is moved really to action through despair or through um moral duty i think my observation and i i believe it to be sort of written about people either move through brute fear like personal fear which most of us don't live in we're lucky enough not to live in that situation day to day or they're moved by hope you know so i think if you i've seen rooms really come to life where you do start with a bit of the context but you really quickly move people into what's on your to-do list how are you getting that done and there's nothing can move a room to action more than actual proof of change and so so we seek those people all over the world and if we can't bring them in and during the pandemic obviously no one could go anywhere we um we will film them we'll send cameras to where they are and bring them into the room that way so we are building this one of the biggest legacies i think of project everyone even halfway through and certainly will be the case by 2030 is this goals ecosystem that we have accident you know passively built but it's there so if someone says i really do care about the ocean i want to do plastic but how can we fix this problem we can like we're like those funny minority report people in our brains we can okay the answer is it's that person and she's in grand bahemia and she's just won the earth shop prize but yes we can ring her and blah boom change done i think the biggest thing for me at the moment is time i don't have any they don't the goals don't have any the world doesn't have any so how can we do the deep work and the listening and the stuff that does take the time but also where are the hacks right where's the axe where's the short cuts that we can make to get the progress going so i think the ecosystem and and access into that ecosystem is a really powerful thing that we try and curate and manage you know for the world it's not we don't own it we're a non-profit but i hope we are building it every day for sure i think for sure you've given us hope in in in this and is i think it's a beautiful story about uh as we started out talking about a movement something that's turned into a movement so i think it is super inspiring in any change project you're part of and and and and lending from your or being inspired by your narrative around what you've actually achieved through a piece of insight that is maybe seven eight years old so thank you maybe we could just finish off by doing a very quick round of the takeaway i think when applying it to transformation whether it be in this field or in any field um and and and the takeaway i'm going away with is just the playfulness that you have brought into this even the visual and everything that you try to do the communication that i see that makes it into something that i want to pay attention to so when when thinking about transformation elsewhere that's definitely something i'm going to take forward what about you steve your inclusiveness the way you dared to um to include people that you couldn't control and allowed yourself to lean in and see where they took it i think that's something we can all learn from we have a tendency most of us to to try to try to try to try to try to try to try to try to try to try to try to try to try to try to control a transformation from a to b and i think this is a beautiful story about something that was more movement and less a fixed journey from a to b and i think it's partly because you involved a lot of people that had their own view and angles on this so i that's a takeaway for me is there something that you'd like to say is a top of mind takeaway um as we go out of this conversation i'd probably just slightly concur with both of yours um i think we have to carry on ceding control you know to the people who are going to we're all achieving these goals so how you achieve them is going to be different to how i achieve them and that is challenging when working with big funding structures un etc but i think i i the more i do the work the more i learn that that's the way we'll do less almost control less to achieve more and then just to concur with your playful thought katrina i remember very early on again feeling extremely new in the scene and accidentally ending up on a panel about green finance about which i knew precisely nothing at the time but i think i'd been i'd said yes because it was a company who was supporting the goals and then when i got there i thought aha i see you don't have any women on the panel so i was so i i because there was you know economist here stern there paul polman was next to me and paul uh was the one who'd asked for the help if i joined and obviously head of unilever a very clever man and the questions were it was a nightmare and they were coming thick and fast about did i thought think that they national a new green bond that the government of denmark had brought was stronger than the previous one that the government of chile had tried in you know 85 i was like oh my god and i thought there's only 70 times i can defer the question to other people but paul lent over at one point and i i was really mortified i thought he was going to lean over and sort of tell me off and he went do you know i just love the films that you make fantastic and i thought oh that's so funny but that that is how we are perceived but it's in his mind and he's he's an amazing advocate for the goals he's an stg advocate and he helped the negotiations but the bit that we add the value add is the play and the creativity and that make things happen you have to make things and so that's i think that's why it's such a joy that's how we can cope with the what would otherwise be absolute schizophrenia inducing adhd permanently state of mind that is all goals all the time everywhere with no hope with no sort of guarantee of achieving them at all um it's the play just keep playing and and uh and see where it goes thank you so much for your time with us today gail you're welcome it's fun if you're interested to follow up on any of the references in this episode follow the link in the episode description thanks for listening remember you're never not in conversation so stay curious out there see you next time