Agile people conference is important because I get to meet a lot of like-minded people who are all leaders in a complex environment, so getting to know how they tackle the complexity and issues is really important. I'm here at Agile people because there's a wonderful conversation going on where we're starting to see the convergence of many things coming together. So there's people here from all over, they're asking wonderful questions, they're open-minded and they tend to run two question marks as opposed to run away from them so it's very exciting. The topic of the conference is also extremely interesting with system thinking, how to apply it practically and there's so many great people here to meet to talk about this exciting topic so this is the place to be for me today. What I like is the low-key environment where people can really meet and exchange their thoughts, sessions going on at the same time so there's a lot to learn in a very condensed time. Agile people is an important conference because it makes you look at things from different way in new perspective which I find really boosting creativity. Agile people moves Agile out of development department and looks at organizations a whole including HR, business development, marketing. There is so much need for this booming economy here to really embrace new concepts and the subjects like the one we are discussing today in the conference is really of high relevance and Agile people is bringing this really to the companies. Agile people Sweden is doing some wonderful work and it's extremely important at this point in time because we need to be asking ourselves lots of questions, we need to be looking at things differently and not always from our own perspective. The more different perspectives we have on things the better and that's extremely valuable right now because it helps people become more Agile in their brains and in the way of seeing the world. Good morning everyone. What a happy crowd. Good morning and a warm welcome to Agile people Sweden and one of my favorite days of the year. No doubt. Good. I'm here today for Agile people because it is a conference with extra much pep on the agenda. So how many speak Swedish? Wow. Okay, yeah. So anyway, that was the some teasers from last year. Today is the fifth consecutive year we run Agile people Sweden, something that started in a small room with a big idea and that is growing and growing every year since.  So this is a conference where we take and we pack up a lot of pep, a lot of energy, a lot of possibilities and a lot of amazing people focused on one thing and one thing only, which is exploring and spreading the Agile principles and values in order for all of us to be able to create better organizations where people are happy and high performing. And this is also a conference where we explore the latest trends, where we get to meet amazing people from different walks of life and all types of businesses. This is also a conference we've learned where we've committed ourselves quite heavily to be in the forefront of organizational change. That typically means we're annoying. So if you leave today and you feel a bit more irritated, pissed and annoyed compared to when you got here this morning, then we've succeeded, I guess. I've had the privilege of being here several times myself. I ran the 2014 and 2015 conference. And for those of you who haven't met me, I've spent the past 12 something years in the intersection between HR and communication. I founded the first internet conference for HR directors. I'm writing currently a book on the state of mind at work, a provocation book, really. You might like it, given today's topic. But one of my true passions is helping organizations and leaders attract and engage other people. And if you're in this space, as you know, because many of you are in the same space, you end up talking and working a lot with the notion of future work. And so today, today's topic is really a personal favorite of mine. And I will try to guide you through today to make sure that you have the best possible experience. And today's topic is really a carefully chosen one. So the future work, scaling agile to improve work life. Now, I think we all agree that there's a shift going on in the way we do work and the world of work. The only problem and challenge is that many organizations are still stuck in the past, struggling, not really being fit for the world of today, even less so fit for the world of tomorrow. So this is part of what Agile People Sweden is all about trying to help navigate around this. So we'll spend a whole day today and also a whole day tomorrow on this topic for those of you who are with us tomorrow. And to help us navigate all of this, we've invited or we've handpicked a selection of really great speakers who are passionate about this topic as well, and they'll be here and share and care with us. You'll meet Jürgen Appolo in just a bit talking about how to scale agility. James Priest will take us on a tour around enterprise-wide agility and give you a quick intro to the S3. We also have Bonita Roy, which is here to talk about self-organization and self-organizations and why you should and you can trust it. We're also going to do a panel with the selection of these people and we'll have lunch obviously. We'll also meet Leonard Franke and Jöran Nilsson, whom among many other things have written a book about the agile company, so they'll be sharing and teasing us a little bit on the content of that. Also, we meet Erik Schöhn currently at NetEnt, who will take us through a game-changer session, handpicking some experiences from Frampub, Ericsson and NetEnt. So we're really looking forward to that. And then we will have, yes, for those of you who have longed for it, we will have the Speachers Coaching Clinic, difficult three words to put together in one, which is basically a speed version of a round table where you go in and out, as you please, to different tables. And at the end of the day, we have the pleasure of meeting Joshua Veil, who will talk about how he's building the most decentralized organization on the planet. So quite interesting. And that's only for today. So tomorrow, for those of you who are with us, there will be workshops throughout the day, and we will not finish up day one in any other way than we've done in the past, which is the Mingle and the Agile Ale. Yeah. Yeah, good commitment there. No, but for you guys to connect and meet each other is one of the biggest contributions we can make for today. So there will be lunches and breakfast, not breakfast, breaks. And the Mingle tonight. And we're some 220 people in here, in case you haven't noticed, but I can see it's completely packed, and it's a world record for Agile people of Sweden. So there's a lot of potential of meeting great people. There we go. You get to thank the organizers in just a little bit. So this is what it can look like, you know, inspiration and shock in great combination, I don't know. But we have all kinds of businesses in here, all kinds of organizations. We have HR, Management, IT, Product Developers, and what have you. So do make time to connect. And whatever you do, do not turn off your mobile phones. So tweet as much as you like. There will be prices as well. We'll tell you more about them in just a bit. So this is where it all happens. It will be happening some things on the screens on the side as well. And we're also trying Mentimeter for today. So a chance for us to pop a few questions to you. We'll start in just a little bit. And the other way around as well. Yes. Is there a Wi-Fi code? So we're down in the bunker. That's why you're asking. You know, these days, everybody has 4G, so they don't need the Wi-Fi. But if you're in this place, you probably do. What was the Theatriceppet? And then, Theatriceppet Guest. That's it. And the code is 8-8. So that's 8-8. Yeah. Let us know if it doesn't work out. And that was a great introduction actually, because my next move is to invite these two fabulous people, two people that are instrumental in building Agile People Sweden, Pia Mia Turén and Mika Ljöte. Give a big hand. Welcome. We're back. Yeah, it's English, Swedish. We go back and forth. We're back for the fifth consecutive year. Yes, it's amazing. Fantastic. Can you hear me? Can you see her? Yes. Yeah, I found some pictures. Oh, yes. But yeah, so how does it feel? Because this is a fifth year. Lots have happened since the first small room. It feels fantastic. And now I feel even more fantastic. I can't even see you almost. And we have all the lights on. Yeah, the lights are here. But all my friends are here today. And James and Jorgen and Matias and Monica back there is drawing. So it's amazing. Fantastic feeling.  Really. And you feel the complete opposite or? I think we've been planning this for half a year. Yeah. Meeting, self-organizing, meeting together on Skype, Google Docs, Slack, some face-to-face, but basically now having everything come manifesting itself today. So it's a great feeling. Good to be here. Finally. Finally. And what is then the biggest change, you would say, compared to five years ago in the movement in general, but also agile people of Sweden? Are there any, what would you nominate as the big changes? But I think, I mean, we sold out two weeks ago. I think there's a big now movement, big change, going into more self-management, self-organization, new ways of leading, organizing. I think this is the tipping point is happening right now. And this is also what we are about, agile people. We want to kind of catalyze this shift move much faster. So that's what we're all about. And it's so good to see it happening. Yeah. And we are, I think we are in the middle of this paradigm shift right now. And we cannot see this shift until afterwards because you can't see the history happening before. So my take is we're in it as we speak.  And why didn't you settle with a small seminar? And why did you do this in the beginning? Well, five years ago, we gathered at a conference in Smörgen and my colleague, Kalle Blomberg, who is not here today, he had a kid and he had a job and a Volvo, so he's busy. But he's coming back. I'm convinced. He said, we need to have a conference, he said. And we were all out on the consultancy assignments. So we didn't have time really to manage him because he was new in the company, right? So he said, we need a conference, okay, but then do it. Then I said, we need training, we need a meetup group. Okay, do it. Then I said, I didn't have time with him. So that's how it started. And then I came up with a name. Agile People is a great name. Let's name the conference Agile People. And we have this need, I would say, to change the world, to change organizations, to create people who are happy, who are engaged, who can perform and can really make a difference because there are too many people who don't feel good today in their organization. So that's really the mission that we are going after in Agile People. And they weren't kidding, by the way, the tickets were sold out two weeks ago and I worked a lot with conferences and that seldom happens. Everyone buys the last four days because everyone was just so busy. And it was good because in the beginning of September, there was like, not that many tickets sold. So anyway, a big change from last year is that you wrote this. Yeah. So today we have a book. There we go. Yep. So a big change from last year, we have a book. Yeah, we have a book. And it will be more books. Probably we will write the next one together, all of us. But I have a lot of people who have contributed to this book. Reena from Finland. It's Fabiola from New York. It's Björn from Agile People, Sweden. And Cecilia from Bia Vesterholm from Stockholm. Bonita Roy, Matti Clausson from King. A lot of people have contributed to the book. So I didn't do this book alone. Okay, so it's a pure Agile project in a sense. It is. And you really live your own recipe, in a sense. Yeah. So Agile People, as normalization, is self-organizing and self-managing. And the kind of conference just kind of emerged from that. And also we want this day to be a bit self-organizing. You notice it when you came in. You have to find your own tags and things like that. So as a participant, you need to step up. And if things are not as you expected or so, see what you can do to help or catch anyone of us in the Black Crew t-shirts. And we will try to help as much as we can. Okay. And we'll do more things. We will honor the best tweetmaker. What will we do? I think we will give away one or two books. Yes. And there will be also another conference coming up, Remote Forever, arranged by Mollud. So there was also a premium pass that you can win. And I think it's the kind of best and most tweets today. Just go all in. But do pay attention as well. But there are books and conference tickets. So that's a nice grab if you're active. Also, you're not doing this alone. You have a lot of peers in the Agile People team. Where are you guys? Can you stand up, please? Agile People? They're out working. Yeah, probably. They're somewhere else. Okay. But there is a whole team, we promise. But you also have a lot of friends of the house. Yes. Yes. These are the sponsors. Yeah. We have Dandy People in Mia and Mattias. They are here today. We have Squid Agile. Squid just started one Agile department. So keep your eyes open after these great consultants. I see Agile. Haven't seen Shannon here. Oh, she's here. There we go. Hello. Hello. How are you? For certifications, Agile certifications, we have Chrisp, where Mickey is working as well. And Green Bullet is my company. We are also sponsoring. So thank you for sponsoring. Thank you. I think a big hand for the partners. Thank you. All right. And we also have Mentimeter. One of the questions we had coming here today was, so how many have actually been to an Agile People conference before, and what do you do at work? So if we could, if we could have, now this code doesn't really, it's not really visible. But the whole point is you go to a URL, which is menti.com. And then you use the code, which is over on that screen, which is 7702. And then you pop your answer to the questions, and we'll see how many have been here before, and what do you do for living in your organizations? It's eight. Eight. Eight times eight. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. We're not doing it because it's easy. So we have a first happy crowd that's been here once. That's good. To us, it's always a nice proof point to have new people coming, and some old friends. And you know, we're about 200 people in here, so this is an indication of speed. But I think it's maybe easier to look at that screen, menti.com. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, in that case, let's just do a show of hands, shall we? How many have been here once before? Okay. How many have been here twice? And how many have been more than twice, and you've stopped counting? Okay. So there's a lot of people that are in between somewhere. But it's good. It's a good mix. And how many people in here work in IT? Oh, wow. That was easier. All right. How many work in HR? There we go. Yay. You're my special friends. And what else do we have? Management. There we go. Great. Product development. Yeah, there we go. Everybody's into product these days. That's it, right? That's the categories. Okay. Awesome. Yeah, those just to get a feel for the audience. I think let's get this started, shall we? Do you have any final words to the audience? Have fun. Have fun. That's a good takeaway. Thanks, Tia Mia, Mikael.


Here I am in cakewalk with some drums and some bass guitar, and I'd like to say they're playing a groove, but my timing is so sloppy they sound like they're tripping over each other. Let's have a listen and hear what I mean. Yuck, I'm going to fix that with some quantizing, so I'll shut down both of these windows here, I'm just going to make sure that my drums and my bass guitar are selected, then I'm going to press Q on the keyboard to bring up the quantize options. I'm just going to change the duration here to one sixteenths and then I'm going to hit okay. Let's have a listen now. Much better, but I knew which settings to choose to get the results I wanted. Hi folks, I'm Mike and I hope you're well, and I'm going to help you to get the results you want from the quantize feature in Cakewalk by BandLab by looking at just a few key features which help me out time and again. Let's start off by taking a look at resolution. So in order to get the results you're expecting from quantizing, it's vital that you understand this setting right here which is resolution and I'm going to help you to understand that by using a different feature in Cakewalk and that's the snap feature. Let's just close this window and you can see that I've got snap turned on right at the top here. Now I'm going to be using this little rhythm here between this kick and snare. Let's have a listen. Now of course that's being played over two bars and there's four beats per bar. Let's just count those out. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. Now to help us to visualize that I'm actually going to change the resolution of the snap feature. So I'm going to go at the top here and I'm going to choose one, four. That's four divisions per bar okay. That's going to give us those four beats per bar. You can see those vertical grid lines have appeared there and we can see that a number of these notes are quite close to those grid lines. Now if I start to use the snap feature and actually grab one of these notes and drag it around you'll see as I move it it does snap to the nearest line. Now I'll do this one here it snaps to the nearest line. This is exactly what quantizing is doing. It's not dragging it of course it's just saying hey where is the nearest grid line or resolution line and I'll move the note to there so it's in exactly the right position. So I can do that with these notes and they will move to the correct position okay. That's what quantizing is actually doing. But the eagle eye amongst you will notice that some of these notes are nowhere near one of these vertical lines yeah. And if we start to move them to the nearest line of resolution so to speak I'll start moving this around. They end up a long way away from where they're supposed to be yeah. You can end up getting a rhythm that you weren't quite expecting. Let's see how that sounds now that we've moved those notes to the nearest grid line. Not the result we were wanting at all let's undo most or all of that okay. So what we had there was an incorrect resolution in order to accommodate some of these notes which were in between the grid lines we're going to change the resolution here to one eighth or eight divisions per bar okay. Now you can see some new vertical lines there and you can see that all of the notes are somewhere near one of these lines okay. Now rather than actually use the snap feature and move these one at a time which would take absolutely ages I'm going to now use quantize. So I'm going to right click and drag this blue square over all of these notes to select them all. I'm going to press Q on the keyboard that brings up this quantized dialogue and then I'm going to select one eighth remember that's the resolution that we need to have these notes somewhere near the nearest grid line. I'll click on okay and you can see they've shuffled around a little bit and now it sounds like this. So it's important to understand what resolution setting you're going to need to get the results you want. If you were to do the same here and you had the setting in quantized too low let's just choose one or two divisions per bar like so we'll click on okay that's close to the result we had before yeah where it's just going too far away yeah and likewise if you were to choose something sort of crazy we'll just press Q and we'll go for all the highest setting we can go for 132 dotted click on okay well yes it's done something and it's almost there but as you can see quite a number of these notes are nowhere near our grid lines that's because the resolution was way too high so it's very important you understand your music and what is the right resolution setting to get the results that you want. Quantizing is all about timing and now would be a great time for you to like this video and subscribe to the channel if you haven't already done so. Now we're going to talk about another problem you may come across when quantizing your music. Now some pieces of music are written in what's called compound time and again if you don't quite understand the settings for resolution here you can get some very undesirable results let's just have a quick listen to this rhythm here which is a kind of a swing rhythm. Now we're using snap again to demonstrate this and we've got our snap resolution setting up here set to 1.8 now you can see that a number of the notes are very very close to grid lines here but some of them are really not very close to grid lines so what we did in the last example was just to increase the resolution here so let's do that now let's just go up here and change this to 1.16 on the snap settings. Now you can see that quite a lot of these notes here are pretty close to grid lines yeah so surely right that's the setting we should use. Let's try that out I'm just going to right click drag across all of these notes press q for quantize and change the resolution to 1.16 I do it confidently expecting yes that's the answer I click on okay and okay quite a nice little rhythm but not the rhythm I was wanting let's press okay the problem here is is that this piece of music is not about divisions of 2 4 8 16 and 32 in fact each beat in this kind of rhythm is divided into three parts okay so what we would do for our snap feature if we were changing that is we would go to 1.8 which would be reasonably close but then change it to a triplet value okay by pressing this three button up here when we click on that you can see that each of our four beats one two three four is now divided into three little sections there okay now you can see that our notes of our little rhythm are all quite close to a grid line now if I select them all press q for quantize I'm going to choose 1.8 but triplet this time okay click on that click on okay have a listen so if you're trying your quantize resolution settings and nothing's quite working out and you don't have much of a music theory background then it's very much worth trying out to see if it actually should have a triplet value now some people find that if they quantize everything the music starts to sound way too robotic everything's too much on the grid as they say now if we quantize the drums and bass that we quantize right at the beginning of this video we'll click on q and we choose our resolution and click on okay just when I do click on okay just look at the notes at the bottom here in the drum grid I'll click on okay and you see that they all moved exactly to the grid line sounds okay but it can sound a bit too robotic let's undo that one of the things that you can do to counteract that is to use the strength setting so I'll press q on the keyboard again and you can see here with the strength setting that can be at 100 which means it's going to go exactly to the grid line or you can move it all the way down to close to zero now if you do this let's just say put it to I don't know 35 and click on okay again just look at the notes again down at the bottom here I'll just move this up out of the way look at the notes here I'll click on okay now you can see that some of these notes moved close to the grid line but didn't move all the way to the grid line so it's going to make the performance sound a little bit tighter than perhaps before without it sounding like everything is programmed exactly to the right place now I personally find and it is a bit of a personal preference thing if I quantize this and change this to around about sort of 80 or above I think we'll go about here 82 click on okay that I generally get a sort of a decent result you do have to have a bit of trial and error with this but let's have a listen now so there's no obvious timing issues there anymore the drums and the bass seem to be in time even though they're not actually perfectly in time now some instruments can really benefit from the offset feature particularly I find it useful with instruments which have a slow attack okay let's just have a listen to these strings here now in order to to make these sound like they're in time you actually tend to naturally play them just a little bit early there's a clue there you can see with my playing all of the notes are just a little bit before the bar line or the grid line there okay now if I go ahead and grab all of these and quantize them like normal click on okay they've all moved to the grid line I mean if I play them by themselves they might sound okay but if I play them with the metronome they sound like this some of them are just sounding like they're a little bit late especially the last chord here let's have a listen again okay so the metronome is revealing that they're sounding a little bit late now of course you don't normally have the metronome turned on you may have something like this piano turned on let's have a listen so particularly again that last chord there really sounded out of place to me let's undo that so what we can do is improve the timing of these if we got a little bit sloppy but we can actually offset them all by a particular amount now I'm going to click cue again for quantize and you can see we can offset them using this offset setting now we want these notes to be a little bit early there is a little bit of trial error probably involved here if I just drag this control down I'll go all the way as far as or not as far as it can go let's go to here I'll click on okay or you can see that they're all now way too early okay so you need to play around with this a little bit I'll undo click on cue for quantize again I happen to know that around about minus 50 or so should be about right click on okay you can see it has lined them all up now now they're sort of more in time with each other but they're also going to be in time with that piano much better as well let's have a listen so I find that a really useful feature as I say when I've got instruments with a slow attack we're back to our original drum beat and I have the resolution on snap here set to one eighth okay we're not going to be using snap but I'm just using this as a visual representation because it gives us these lovely grid lines here now you can see that most of the beats are very very close to one of the grid lines okay so the one eighth setting if we were to quantize this is going to work for all of these beats apart from right at the end here where we just have one beat which is not anywhere near one of those grid lines so if we followed what I did earlier that would mean we'd increase the resolution here up to one eighth I'm sorry one sixteenths okay that makes sure that we have everything near a grid line but it's sometimes a bit of overkill and sometimes you'll find that some of these beats the other beats don't go to exactly where you want them to go to so another solution for this and it's just one of the solutions is to use the window setting in our quantized settings now if we take a look at this beat at the moment and we just quantize it with the regular one eight settings we'll do that now set to one eight I'll click on okay you can see that beat at the end there has gone very close to this other beat we've got two right on top of each other there that's not going to give us the result we want so I'll undo that you can see it's back where it was so one of the things we can do we'll go to quantize we'll still leave it on one eighth okay we won't change the resolution but we'll use this window setting now this is a kind of a tolerance setting and what it's saying is like okay now if a note is very close to the grid line I'll quantize it but if it's a very long way away from the grid line I won't quantize it at all I'll just ignore it okay and we've got a kind of a tolerance value here okay so with it's set to 100 basically the feature is switched off and if we go all the way down I'm going to choose something like so let's go for 20% here okay so I'll click on okay you saw all of the other notes were quantized to that one eighth setting but it just left this last note alone that can be really helpful sometimes when you've got sort of flanges and sort of ghost notes and things like that things that are not exactly ever supposed to be on a grid line that can be quite useful if you want some incredibly useful tips and secrets for cakewalk by bandlab click on the thumbnail on the other side of this logo I've made a playlist of a series of secrets and tips I've made which may just save your day


Higher ed actually faces a lot of challenges that we see. One is volume. I think security has to happen at a pace in a university much higher than what we see in a corporation. Every quarter you might have 10,000 joiners, which would be students joining your campus or 10,000 students leaving your campus. So how do you manage that volume and finding systems and solutions that provide security can be done. But the ones that do it at scale and automated fashion is very important. So tying your security needs around strong identity, the ability to, you know, foster identities over time, years, decades even as students leave or graduate from your university and become alumni. You stay in touch, you continue to provide them with email access. You continue to provide them access to systems and services. And what you don't want to do is have that access be compromised by, you know, bad actors or people who are trying to take advantage of incomplete unscalable processes that leave things behind that you are constantly trying to clean up, but you can't do it without some form of strong identity strategy that allows you to onboard those people and kind of provide the services and capabilities they need at the scale you need. You know, if I kind of summarize the things I see are challenging our customers in the higher ed space, it's really volume. How do I keep up with this volume? If I have manual processes, it gets really painful. Mistakes get made, things get left behind. So I need a lot of automation. I need a cohesive, you know, identity project that allows me to even progressively profile identities, right? I have, you know, early students coming into the university, their high school, maybe they're doing a fast start program. I want to capture those people and start to kind of, you know, get them to come and obviously join our university as a student. And then throughout their life cycle, you know, as an undergrad, as a graduate student, as maybe a doctorate student and then an alumni, you know, I really want to kind of build this story and this family type atmosphere around our university that entices people to come in future generations, join our facility. And that's a big volume for us.  So that's, I think, really the biggest problem that they face. And it kind of gets a bit strained when you're the CISO or the CIO of the university and you're really trying to get everybody to get on board with your program and provide them with a world-class, you know, delightful experience that lets, you know, identity be the new forefront of how you supply services to your students and provide a frictionless, you know, experience so people can, you know, get their packet, get online, get on board, get everything they need to get started. And nobody's calling the help desk to try to figure out how to, you know, get access and get things done. So, you know, identity really, you know, for me is the new, you know, engagement fulcrum for what people want to do to provide a great experience.


Welcome back to the nonprofit show. I like to say welcome back because my assumption is you found your way here before. But if not, welcome. We're glad that you found your way here to the nonprofit show. Today we are excited to have back with us, Katie Warnick. Katie has been with us for a long part of this journey. So grateful to have your support. She serves as the CEO of Staffing Boutique. Yes, and has brought to us today a conversation all about recruiting tips. And this recruiting tip episode is focused designated specifically to that CEO executive director role. So before we jump into the deep end with you, Katie, we want to remind all of our viewers, if we haven't had the pleasure of meeting you yet, Julia Patrick, she is here, of course. She is the CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. And I'm Jarrett Ransom, co-host, CEO of the Raven Group, but also known as Nonprofit Nerd. So honored to serve alongside day in and day out. You know, we would not be here if it weren't for the amazing rock stars like Katie and so many others that are part of our presenting sponsors. So thank you to our friends that allow us these opportunities. And that goes out to Bloomerang, American Nonprofit Academy, Fundraising Academy at National University. Also thank you to Nonprofit Thought Leader, your part-time controller, Staffing Boutique, Nonprofit Nerd and Nonprofit Tech Talk. Katie, you know, when you joined us early, I want to say March of 2020, we weren't quite sure what we were doing and you were along for the ride and you saw the vision probably right at the same time we were seeing the vision. So thank you for being a huge part of the show, helping to produce over 900 episodes and you can find them on streaming broadcast podcast and you can also download that app. So wherever you stream your entertainment, consume your entertainment except for the sphere. We're still working on putting us in the sphere in Vegas. You can find us on the non-profit show. Would that be amazing? Yeah. Oh my gosh, I would never leave. I'd have to like, I'd have to move to Vegas and just sit in the sphere because it's cool outside. Yeah, it is really cool outside. But hey, for those of you again that are joining us, if you haven't met Katie yet, I would love to reintroduce her to all of you. Katie Warnock, CEO and founder at Staffing Boutique. Check out her website at staffingboutique.org. Grateful to have you back with us today. Thanks for having me. You know, Katie, it's fascinating how our conversations have changed. I think, and Jared, I'd love your opinion about this. It seems like for so many years, staffing and employment issues were like kind of the same, the process kind of the same. Then all of a sudden the pandemic comes and everything's upside down, the labor market shifts, the economy shifts. And we keep coming back to you saying, what's happening? What's happening? What are you seeing?  And I think it's a fascinating time. Been a real roller coaster over here. Yeah, it has. Yeah, it's been a real roller coaster. Well, let's talk about hiring a new CEO and executive director. And you told, started telling this to us right in the beginning, it's like, hey, there's gonna be this tsunami of people retiring and they're aging out of this type of leadership and we're gonna have to fill all this. What are you seeing? Cause you're advising us to start with determining what we need. Yeah, what am I seeing? So I think that if we were to talk about this and just this is gonna be the theme of the next 30 minutes, right? So I'm going to emphasize the word time, allow enough time, right? That's how we're gonna end this as well. Just allow enough time for this to go well. So I think what you need to do when you are determining the nonprofit needs, you need to look at your organization, you need to evaluate what the current CEO is doing or the current executive director and is it working? And so that takes a minute to sit down with the current person in the place, the CFO, any executive staff that has to deal with that person directly outside consultants, the board chair and really determine where your organization is. If it's been successful, is it falling short at the end of fiscal years? Really taking in that feedback from everyone internal and external and deciding where the organization wants to go with that new CEO, right? So really setting up for success, the new person who's taking over. This is a great time to evaluate your organization and if growth is in the future, right? The next three to five years is the organization just grinding and it's sort of business as usual. Do they want to take on more projects, more programs, maybe embark on a capital campaign and think about all of those aspects before you decide who your search committee is to handle this recruitment process that will take some time, right? So the other thing that I just wanted to say about that is search committee. We kind of take for granted that every nonprofit knows what to do when they're searching for a CEO or an executive director and the reality is a lot of them don't, you know? A lot of the organizations that I deal with don't even have HR departments. That's why they use me for recruitment. It's typically the business manager or the COO is the person that kind of handles that HR function. So what are we looking at in terms of search committee for a CEO or an executive director? You know, it's obviously going to be someone on the board but it's really important to appoint a search chair to handle the current CEO, executive director search. It takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of administrative work and you're not gonna have an executive handling the search. You need someone above that. So that's why you're going to the board and setting up the expectations of what that hiring process is going to look like once you've evaluated your current organization's needs. Okay, so you said so much that's kind of freaked me out because I love your advice, but now I'm thinking, you know, on the boards that I've served and I'm thinking in my mind, you look around the table and you've got to be like, who can do this? Who can even, I mean, Jared, do you see where I'm going with this? This is such a huge lift. You're volunteer. You're probably serving in other boards. You're dealing with your own business and now you've got to find somebody who's gonna be championing the search committee. I mean, it's really frightening to think about this. It is and I have been in a lot of these conversations over my career because I've served in that professional interim space and oftentimes, right, like the board will say out loud, I didn't expect to be putting this much time into this task or even managing this task, you know? So it takes a lot. I find a lot of board members tend to, I'm gonna say it out loud, get comfortable with the current executive director and they want, no matter what, everything to work out because they don't wanna go that extra mile that it takes because it can be a very lengthy and involved process. And I think it should be, right? Like this is one of the top hiring positions for the organization. Yeah, great. Yeah, and so, you know, having the search chair is super important. Setting the expectations of how much time it is going to take upfront is really important. I've actually had to do the search a number of times and every time I deal with the search chair, it tends to be someone with more of an HR background. Maybe they're HR and corporate and they sit on the board or maybe they have some sort of like legal background and they take it on, but they always say, this is a lot of work, you know? It's a lot of coordinating schedules, which is super hard just in general when you're dealing with board members. And then, you know, you need to be able to debrief everyone on where you are with the interview process. So you need to be able to take good notes and then also be able to sort of regurgitate those notes to the current board and also kind of be able to handle any sort of questions or anything that's going on from internal staff and be able to handle them accurately and confidentially. Yeah, and confidentially. I love that you said that. Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot that goes on there. Well, let's talk about the job description because I feel like that's probably one of our first task is we say, okay, we're now searching for a new CEO executive director. Let's pull out that job description. Let's dust it off, right? Is that what's happening? Like, are we literally dusting off one from the 80s? Are we writing from scratch? Are we going to chat GPT and asking it to write one? Like, have you read this complete job description? Yeah, I think that that is always, for any position, I always make that joke. Like, is this the job description that someone just saved on the drive like 15 years ago or is this an accurate job description? And again, you know, the tasks of the CEO has probably changed just since COVID to Julia's point earlier. You know, so you really need to evaluate what that job description looks like. Asking the current CEO, you know, what does your day look like? What does your week look like? What does your month look like? And jotting down those bullet points and making it an accurate job description. I think that the one mistake so many people do make when they're writing job descriptions is it becomes more of a wish list than a reality, right? So you really want to make it accurate because it's really important for the incoming CEO to know what the expectations are, right? So it needs to be accurate in that respect. I think you should write a new job description. You said something very interesting and that was, you know, like interviewing the CFO or the development director and getting input about what that talent might look like or be needed. Do you ever see this being done with job descriptions where you somewhat share it and you're like, hey, CFO, hey, development director, take a look at this. You know, are we missing anything? Or- I've seen organizations do it. You know, I've actually done it here when I had to rehire. You know, I was like, write me what you do because I don't know. You know, I knew what the job was when I hired for it originally but the job has since changed. So I was like, write me down what the next person is going to do. So I think that that's a great way to start your job description. One thing that I'll add and I think it was pretty alternative but there was a survey that went out to all staff members asking, what is most important that the CEO possess like skill set, expertise, whatnot? So this survey went out to the entire staff but what I found interesting was there was a delineation. Should the CEO come with previous nonprofit experience or should they not, right? Like are we looking to really garner a new talent in the for-profit? And I was just, I found it very interesting and the results that came back, you know really helped to shape that job description but it used Julia. I really use the voice of all of the employees not just that executive level. You know, I like that. Yeah, I like that because especially in these times of phenomenal change, not just from the pandemic but the technological change, the way we fundraise and communicate, it's a new day for leadership in such a big way. So I think that's a great idea. I can't imagine a lot of doing that. You know, this next question I have for you, Katie, I'm really intrigued by it because this, I think of, you know, Jared Ransom, the nonprofit nerd talking about professional interim CEOs. Let's all push our glasses up as Jared just did. You know, this new voice in business, for-profit as well as nonprofit, the interim position, what are your thoughts on this? I love this idea. You do, okay. Let me tell you what, because what happens often and this isn't just CEO positions but this has happened to me a number of times throughout my career doing this is a CEO or an executive director is leaving the organization knows they have ample time and they think that they're going to be able to fill this whether it be on their own or through a staffing firm and that person exiting has a set date and it could be, you know, three months down the line like they're giving a sufficient amount of notice but I don't think the current organization takes into account how long this search is going to take and now what happens is it's two weeks to the exit of the existing ED or CEO and they don't have anyone secured and they're not even close to wrapping up interviews. So now what happens? Now they're sort of doing everything in their power to fulfill what's going to happen and they wind up hiring an interim anyway, you know and that's when they come to me and now we have just two weeks to fill an interim where we could have been proactive, gotten an interim while they did the search process and said from the beginning, this could be six to nine months, this could be six to 12 months and get someone in the door that way, you know so many things don't fall through the cracks. The CEO is such an important role. It's so important for your donors to have a contact at the organization, there needs to be someone there so I am a huge advocate for this and then on top of that, you know just getting a fresh set of eyes in, getting someone in who's going to maybe have more of a professional development focus. Sometimes there are emotions with a new with a CEO leaving or an ED leaving for the staff. So that person can come in and sort of weed through those emotions of current staff and past staff members and that way when the new CEO gets appointed it's a fresh start, you know. I echo all of that, Katie and I think you were so spot on the best intentions are laid for that timeline to be as short as possible to bring in the executive director, right? Like really casting the net far and wide finding that unicorn, bringing them in, onboarding them but the reality is in my experience and you mentioned it too it could be anywhere from six to nine months and you know really having a gap is not going to serve the organization it's not going to serve the board members because guess what? Now that search committee, someone likely needs to step up and be that day to day contact for the staff and they don't want to do that, right? Like that's, so bringing in a professional interim I think should be part of as soon as you get a resignation from a CEO if you're lucky enough to receive a resignation I know there's a lot of moving targets, right? Where people haven't been given that but if you're given that luxury use that at the same time to start recruiting and bringing in a professional interim I think at the same time. Yeah, I agree with you. You know it's, I know it's been fascinating to watch your work in the interim space, Jarrett and I think one of the things I find the most intriguing and the most difficult for the sector to understand is that the interim is not a babysitter while things are working out. They're taking a look at things they're offering their opinion they're like you use that word they're a fresh set of eyes navigating the process but let me ask one more question would that interim be a part of this hiring thing or are they separate? I know that it's an ethical issue to apply for the job that that's definitely frowned upon and not done but do they help administrate some of this process that we've been talking about? I vote no. Okay. No, but I mean then you really have to look at timing. You ideally wanna have looked at the nonprofit's needs before that interim person came in. So your staff and your search committee should have an idea of what the next CEO is going to bring to the table. That's what I think. Now there's been instances where I've seen interim CEOs stay on for close to two years. And so that's a different situation. I think certainly at that point, they do have a say in it, right? Because things have changed in the past 14, 15, 16 months but my initial answer is a hard no. Okay, good. That's good. And I've been involved. Yeah, I've been involved in both. I would say I think it's more streamlined for a larger organization to not involve that interim. I find often for smaller organizations the board needs a little bit more shepherding. And so I have served in that capacity of the scheduling, making sure our calendars are in line, things like that. So I've seen it done both ways and I don't know that there's a right or a wrong. I think it's one of those, it depends but I fully recognize and respect Katie. Like, there are some nuances with that and you're right. I mean, there have been some interim positions that I know have wanted the interim to stay longer than that six to nine months. And I feel that once that happens, it's just, it's a comfort zone, right? And we can't allow that comfort zone to remain because then we're not doing what we're hired to do which is to help them move forward with that full-time CEO. Great. And another thing just to add there, if you're getting an interim, it doesn't always have to be a 40 hour, 50 hour a week job. There are part-time interim, you can save a little bit there and really just look at what the initial day-to-day responsibilities that need to be tackled by that interim. That's not gonna be the person that's gonna hit every bullet point on your job description but what are the things that shouldn't fall through the cracks during this transition for your organization? I love that. I love that. Well, let's talk about the process and you made the comment starting off that we need to kind of get a champion of this process, probably someone from the board, they're gonna shepherd through all this. Do you find that people understand how to map this out and what it is and vetting and all that? I mean, is that why this takes so long or is it? Yeah, I think that if they're smart and they go in this with a strategy and idea of how they're going to recruit, I think that they can do it. I think that having a search chair and a search committee upfront, going over what realistically screening is going to look like. So obviously I'm going to say work with a staffing firm but if you can't or you don't want to, you really need to point out some of the basic things. Number one, how are you gonna recruit? Are you gonna network? Are you posting this publicly? Is it a confidential search? Just kind of all of those little things that need to be accounted for upfront. The other thing is what is the interview process going to look like? Who is this person meeting? Is it one round? Is it two rounds? Is there going to be an assignment? All of those things. What does compensation look like for this person? What's the full package look like? You don't wanna start a process, find a candidate you're in round three and you're nowhere close in salary ranges. How all of those things decided upfront to be transparent with your candidate pool? The other thing is just, who's getting back to these candidates? Who's the point person? Is there a process of getting back to these people? You don't wanna interview one candidate and then they don't hear back from you in three weeks and you were interested, but you need to be sort of corresponding correctly and that's a lot for someone who is the search chair that goes back to that, all that work that goes into the search chair. Another thing too, when you're dealing with executive level positions and you're dealing with board scheduling, it's so, so hard to nail down board members with schedules, right? So a lot of the times, I suggest getting times on their calendar. If your board meets every Thursday, monthly, say, okay, well, after this board meeting or before this board meeting, we're gonna allow three hours of time for scheduling for interviews, even if there's not even a candidate in play. But put that scheduling in before or after a board meeting will go a long way because then at least two or three board members that need to meet this person know that on this night, they have to be at the board meeting prior and if it gets canceled, not a big deal, but at least you'll allow that time. I think that just sort of those basic things and logistics go a huge, long, huge, long way to work your strategy for filling this job, I guess a little bit quicker, but again, allow for time. That is very wise. I love that. I have to ask about the background check because I feel like, you know, for recruiters yourself, you know, and others, Katie, this is something you do on a regular basis, but searching for an SEO executive director from a board committee is sometimes very rare and some board members will never go through this process, right? Just based off of their term limits, but others might have the beautiful opportunity to do it more than once. But looking at this also, one of the hangups I've seen is that background check, especially when an organization doesn't have an HR department. Just, you know, who does that? How do we do that? What is the process of that? So I just, I'm calling that out because I think that's something that needs to go into the timeline and the process and something that, again, that we just need to account for because I've seen that become a hangup. Sure, yeah. And of course, there are companies you can partner with to do your background checks and you can do the MoloCart, but yeah, someone should be the point person on that.  And I'm curious right now, are you seeing that people are like ready to work? Is it harder? Is it easier to find this type of leadership? Is it, has it not changed? Like give us kind of that bigger viewpoint to kind of, so we can understand what's, who's even acting. I remember one of the first times I was on during COVID, whatever in 2020 and we talked about how a lot of CEOs and executive directors were actually postponing retirement because they didn't want to leave their organization in the current situation. And then what like two years later, I think that there was a bit of a mass exodus, you know, all these people that were set to retire went ahead and finally got to retire. So hopefully they're enjoying retirement. As of right now, I, you know, I think I said this the last time I was on, I just don't, I don't know what's happening. You know, it's a lot of people are sitting tight. A lot of people are very happy in their organizations. There's a lot of vacancies, you know, there are jobs out there. But at the same time, it just, it doesn't seem right. There's something going on with the market. It's, it seems like it's, I don't know, it seems like it's quiet and people are holding steady as if they are waiting for a change to come. But the change isn't coming, right? Because we were fearing a recession probably 18 months ago. And I don't want to sit here and say, like, it seems like everybody is fearing a recession, but it seems, it seems like that. Like it seems like we're all on a cliff and something is about to happen. We're not really sure what, right? So, you know, in terms of what, what are people doing? Again, organizations are hiring there are jobs out there, but it's, it's very quiet. Interesting. Do you think that has anything to do with a general election coming up in a presidential election? Do you think that? I think that you just hit the nail on. Okay. Because, well, you know, because the political sense of nonprofits and funding and just in general of fear, you know, I feel like people can navigate anything if they know what it is for good or for bad. But when it's like what you said, it was really interesting the way you phrased this, we're kind of all on the cliff and are we going to fall off or are we going to be, are we going to back up? Yeah, and it's weird. It's weird because what, was 2022 one of the biggest years for philanthropy? I feel like it was. So I think it was 2022. So, you know, coming off a really strong year, but it's eerily quiet. That is interesting. Yeah. Well, one of the things I'm seeing too, and I know we don't have too much time, but we're seeing some of the younger professionals looking to rise the ranks, right? They're looking to take on their first CEO position, maybe their first development director position. So really I'm seeing also as we look at this, you know, mass exodus that recently happened, but then we have so many eager younger leaders that are like raising their hands, right? And stepping into that position. And that to me is interesting because I think a lot of our organizations, you know, are transitioning from that CEO that's been there for 15 years to a CEO that might be in their 30s, even 40s, and this is their first time leading an organization. That's something that I've started to see in the sector. Yeah. It's a new dawn. Well, you know, I say this every time you're on, Katie, well, it's a new time. I mean, because it just seems like it's not the same old same old. And so it's really a lovely thing to have you come on and give us this overview of what you're seeing. I think especially coming from the East Coast, you know, you see things in a different way. A lot of times first is that it moves west. And so Katie Warnick, CEO and founder of Staffing Boutique, check out staffingboutique.org and you can learn all about what they do, how they do it. And it's just a fascinating aspect to how we need to be working in the nonprofit sector because we're people-based. I mean, if we don't have our teams put together, we can't serve, right? And so really, really interesting. Katie, I always love our time with you. And it is a hair and fire moment, I think at least once every episode with you, because I'm like, oh my God, it's a good thing. Hey again, everybody. I'm Julia Patrick, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. Been joined today by the nonprofit nerd herself, Jared Arrance, I'm CEO of the Raven Group. Again, we have these amazing partners. Most of them have been with us from the very beginning. They include Blumerang, American Nonprofit Academy, your part-time controller, nonprofit thought leader, fundraising academy at National University, Staffing Boutique, nonprofit nerd and nonprofit tech talk. Hey, Katie, you know, I loved this conversation and I think that we had spoken about drilling down even further with some other high-level C-suite positions. So we're gonna revisit this with you with like development director, CFO, you know, a program director, some other things like this so that we can kind of understand some nuances that we need to be looking at because so much is changing in our labor market. And so I really look forward to this trajectory to take with you, thank you. Amazing, love it. Yeah, absolutely. Jared, go ahead and sign us off, sister. Yeah, well, thank you so very much. Thanks to all of you that have joined us today. You know, we have produced over 900 episodes and we wouldn't be here if it weren't for you also joining us along this journey. But we have closed every single episode with the same statement or mantra and we invite all of you to stay with it as we move forward. But every time we say it, Julia, it always like, it sounds a little different. It's the same words, but it always gets home a little different. And it is to stay well so you can do well. Thank you so much, Katie.


Given how far we've gone. Okay. Well, the one does actually we have modern technology. Yes. It's amazing how only a few years ago this would have been unimaginable. So can our extensive audience hear us, right? Can we go live? Are we live? Okay, well hello one and all. I'm delighted to start this discussion with Jack and B.J. about individual accountability for corporate wrongdoing. B.J. recently joined us in discussion at the House of Lords on this topic. And it's an issue which I've discussed with Jack over a number of years as part of our corporate accountability initiative here at the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy in the University of London without spending a large amount of time on introductions to say that in different ways B.J. and Jack have been involved in the law courts and their firms over many years in looking to address issues of corporate wrongdoing. And quite recently Jack wrote me and we discussed the fact that he had come to the view that indeed the issue of corporate limited liability was one that really needed to be made much more. And it's from that correspondence that this conversation has started. And I just wanted to turn it over to Jack and just talk to us for a little bit about why he thinks corporate limited liability is an issue that needs to be much more prominent on the international stage. So Jack. My concern has been that there's been very little personal accountability on the part of both corporate executives and directors for any of the activity which has led to the financial crisis we're now going through. And that failure to have personal accountability spills over into a wide variety of other areas not just financial crime but liability for bad behavior on environmental issues, bad behavior in terms of dealing with customers. And I'm not talking about minor league belt bad behavior. I'm talking about seriously bad behavior as an example. Just within the last number of weeks we had a huge chemical spill in a river in Charleston, West Virginia that left hundreds of thousands of people without access to clean drinking water. The first thing the company did was go and file for bankruptcy. And that just doesn't cut it. We really have to have some accountability on the part of the individuals and on the part of the corporate shareholders because without that people have no real concern for the end consequences of their action. Now in the area of finance it's particularly difficult because using criminal law to go after the head of the corporation is extraordinarily difficult because you have to prove that there was intent. And that's where the prosecutors sort of throw in the towel. The only really serious way you can go after them is to go with a civil lawsuit. And the civil lawsuit doesn't work because the typical modern corporation is not just a corporation. It's a collection of corporations and the question of where the liability is and who's responsible is almost impossible to figure out. And when the lawyers get into it they wind up giving up because it's just too difficult. So we have to come up with some modification of this system so that there is personal accountability by the people involved because otherwise they view the corporation as a way of making as much as they can consequences be damned and then making off with the money they've made and not actually paying for anything, leaving the mess for other people to sort out. And I think personal responsibility is the heart of the matter. Dare I ask, Jack, have you given any thought to how we make this happen either through public opinion or the courts of law or legislatures? I'm thinking that it wasn't so long ago that the idea of tax justice being a big issue was laughable. We all we cared about it, but nobody else did. And yet in a few short years this issue has risen to international prominence. And I was wondering if you hadn't given any thought to how we start to move this agenda forward. Well, tax justice is actually involved in a key issue here, which is the use of offshore shell companies. And that has a lot to do with limited liability. I'll give you an example. There's an insurance case that I've been involved in where the insurance company has turned itself into a collection of shell companies in a variety of offshore locations. A policy holder has tried to sue and suddenly discovered that instead of going after a corporation, he's got the problem of a mayor's nest of offshore shells that lead nowhere. And in fact, if he wins the litigation, there's a high probability that he won't be able to collect because one or another of these shell entities will wind up bankrupt and there will be no liability on the part of the parents. It seems to me that a good starting point would be to say no subsidiaries. If you're a corporation, that's it.  You're known, you're understood. And the responsibility goes to that corporation. If you look at the structures that were involved in the offshore shenanigans of the banks, there were literally thousands of corporations. Every one of the separate entities was a different corporation. And frequently they evolve corporate ideas like corporations with no known ownership. Now, some of this was for tax, but the rest of it was for regulatory and liability purposes. So the beginning of this I think would be to say, look, just as it's a problem for tax, it's a problem for liability and responsibility to have corporations become a collection of shells in a wide variety of different places. That seems to me to be a very profitable beginning point. Now, there are some other possibilities as well, but perhaps we should talk about that for a minute. Talk about the number of shells. Yes, I'd like to bring Vijay in and his company, his firm was involved in the infamous Asbestos case, channel of Asbestos Cape. And he's also, as you are, involved in these sorts of issues day-to-day in the law courts and in the legal system. Vijay? Yeah, I mean, just as I was going to give a bit of introduction about the work we do and then talk about how limited liability affects the claims that we bring. And my speciality is that I do industrial disease cases. So usually I'll be acting for an individual. Sometimes my firm has done cases on behalf of groups of individuals doing large corporate entities. And limited liability is a major problem in respect of the work we do because a lot of my cases are Asbestos related claims. So you might have somebody exposed to Asbestos in the 60s or 70s. And because of the passage of time, because many decades have passed, the company that you're looking to suit is rarely still in existence. And the problem with limited liability is that a company can close down completely and then reopen as a new company with the exact same directors, the same place of business, the same customers, you know, doing exactly the same thing it did before. But because in law they're regarded as different beings if you like, different entities, you can only sue the company that has gone bust and of course you can't do that because it's no longer in existence. And it's a major problem for the type of cases that I bring because you're reliant on trying to identify who provided the insurance at that time, which can be a hit in this operation. And, you know, just to echo what Jack was saying about group structures, you know, it's really bad that you'll have a parent company which is essentially the controlling mind of a group of subsidiaries. And, you know, with, again, because we're looking at events many decades ago, the parent company usually is still in existence because, you know, it might be a blue chip company such as Cape. But the subsidiaries tend to, you know, they tend to go out of business, there's no insurance, so you're left with no option but to be inclined against the parent company. But I think that the shocking thing about limited liability for me is that even if it's obvious that a parent company or any other sort of organization has used limited liability to escape claims being made against them, the courts have said there's a case of Adams and Cape Industries in 1990 that said that, you know, even if the outcome is unjust or improper, that's completely fine. They can still do that because of limited liability. If they follow the provisions of the company's act in terms of all the practicalities, then that's absolutely fine. So, you know, the case that we brought, which is Chandler and Cape, which went to the Court of Appeal, was we were forced to find another way to get around this limited liability issue because, you know, in Chandler I was acting for, you know, the claimant who was employed by a subsidiary company. The subsidiary company is basically a defunct company now. It's got no assets. The insurance policy had an exclusion clause which excluded any claims relating to asbestos related illnesses. So we had no option but to bring a claim against the parent company. You can't do that because of limited liability. So we had to use tort. And the beauty of tort is that it allows more flexibility. And, I mean, it's a good outcome in that, you know, my firm does cases involving parent companies here such as BP and Shell. And, you know, they engage in all kinds of activities overseas. You know, we're doing a claim in respect of Colombian farmers and, you know, there's a kind of environmental damage that resulted from subsidiary. And hopefully cases like this will help. But as I say, this is just restricted to tort law. And, you know, each case is very fact-specific. You need a lot of evidence. There's all kinds of challenges. The evidence that you need is frequently held by the person that you are suing. And they're not always willing to disclose that information. So, you know, there's all kinds of challenges with that. Charles, Jack. Well, my reaction to that is that the matter is even worse in the United States. Because here we have a notion of form non-convenience where the courts say, look, if you had a subsidiary, let's say in Ecuador and that subsidiary was polluting, we in the United States are really not going to deal with a challenge to the parent corporation when in fact it's an Ecuador subsidiary that did the damage. And the case is a case that should be tried in the courts of Ecuador. And of course, the subsidiary will then go bust. And the consequences are nothing left. This problem of jurisdiction is a massive problem. And in the U.S. it's meant that most of these claims simply can't be made in an American court. That I find to be an unacceptable proposition because it means you can get away quite literally with murder with no consequence. Now, the criminal cases that have been brought are typically criminal cases, let's say in the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act setting, criminal cases against individuals. And the tendency is to bring them against lower level individuals or reach a settlement with the parent corporation. But uniformly when the country that has been victimized by the corruption or the illicit payment, tries to go after the individual or tries to go after the corporation to get a restitution for the monies that have been paid as bribes. The case falls apart because there's no way for the country that was victimized to get at the evidence. I represented the government of Nigeria in an effort to get evidence in the Halliburton case so that Nigeria could both recover money and prosecute individuals involved. The U.S. government refused to cooperate with the Nigerian government despite having a mutual legal assistance agreement. Now, if you find that kind of barrier in a criminal case, imagine the difficulty in a civil case and the unwillingness of American courts to follow up. So this business of having no responsibility by managers, no responsibility by the parent corporation, means there's in effect an open season for bad behavior. And we've seen that. We're getting that kind of open season for bad behavior. Yeah, I mean, we have probably not as bad, but we also have jurisdiction problems here. We also have to argue that this is a convenient forum. And it's worse with when the subsidiary is based in an European Union country because there's some new regulations that have come in, which means that even if we do bring proceedings in the U.K., if the tort or the damage occurred overseas, then the liability issues are decided with regard to local law and likewise the level of damages as well. So there might not be scope for making a damages claim in an EU country and also the damages or the compensation often might be very minuscule. So, you know, we do have similar problems here as well. Well, it's all very depressing. It's good to get an issue which is large but beneath the surface. And I wonder if we can start to continue our discussion about how we get more people engaged in the topic and also to think about how we raise the issue. I think Jack's point about subsidiaries is a very important one. I just wonder at a more fundamental level whether one needs to raise the issue that limited liability is a fundamental violation of property rights and of the principle of equality before the law. And actually the Anglo-Americans are going to be beating their chests in glee at the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta. And I think probably all of our constitutions and precepts through the U.S. Constitution up to the Universal Declaration make property rights the environment and equality before the law fundamental principles. And I wonder whether the scope to really take a sort of guardian, cut into guardians, not a guardian, not approach to this and start to go to, let us say, the Geneva-based human rights and business communities and so on and say, listen, isn't this a violation of political rights and go to have a discussion with Human Rights Watch who are most concerned about political rights and legal rights and say, is this an issue that you really should be taking? Where are our lines of attack and who, how can we mobilize our allies if I can put it in military terms? Well, if I can jump in on this, my view is we begin with the proposition that every society has had almost from the beginning of time that there becomes a moment when you're an adult and you are responsible for your own actions. Now, the question here is, are individuals in a society to be held accountable for what they do or don't do when it damages other people or it damages a society as a whole? What has evolved here is a system in which individuals escape all responsibility to their own society for the actions they undertake. And these could be criminal, they could be tortuous, they can be a question of, are you paying the fair amount of tax? But the sophisticated use of multiple corporate shells has simply put these people in a situation where they're not responsible for their own society. And they are also, as a practical matter, beyond the reach of that other basic proposition, which is criminal law, which is supposed to be what holds you accountable. Now, it seems to me the question of responsibility is widely understood globally. A week ago, actually, I was in New Zealand and quite accidentally sitting in a museum at a coffee bar, wind up sitting next to a couple of average working people who began talking about the lack of responsibility by senior bankers and the impact that had caused globally. Now, to hear that coming from a railway worker nearing retirement in a coffee shop in New Zealand is absolutely remarkable. I think there's a real resonance to the proposition that nobody in this huge mess we've encountered has been held accountable and moreover they've walked away with all the proceeds of all the things they've done that have been improper. Now somewhere along the line, that should resonate and leave us with a real opening for a public debate on what are your responsibilities as a member of a society and how do we hold you accountable. And as I said, criminal law by and large operates through a proposition of deterrence, that is you prosecute a relatively limited number of people, but you do it in a very public way so that you scare the people who might do something wrong into being honest. What has occurred in this situation is there is no deterrent effect. And as we know from studies and criminology, there's about 40% of the population when there's no comp on the beat and no prospect of you're getting caught that will behave badly. And we're reaching a point where that 40% is really out there and behaving badly. So we've got to find a way to pull this back. I think the whole problem is a tendency to treat companies as separate beings. So there is this kind of hypothetical concept that each company is a separate person and you can't do one person or another. But of course when you're talking about a parent subsidiary relationship, that concept is meaningless in a sense because they'll share directors. The parent company will be involved in controlling exactly what the subsidiary does in terms of its manufacturing decisions and such like. It'll own the full share capital of the subsidiary companies. So this concept that somehow you've got two separate minds operating is completely fictional and defies reality. And I think the problem in law is that when it comes to this area and when claimants try to argue for lifting the corporate veil as it were to kind of get around the limited liability concept. The courts have adopted a very kind of vigorous and strict approach. They don't tend to adopt that in other areas of law. There is a tendency I've noticed from recent cases to look at the reality of the situation and just see what's actually going on, who's in control, who could have done something to prevent certain damage and so on and so forth and act on that. But when it comes to limited liability, it's a very sort of sharp barrier if you like. It completely prevents any kind of claim being made. Well, I would take what you've just said a step further. We now have an amazing number of corporations that really don't exist. And here's what I mean. You can go to any one of these offshore centers. And for a couple of hundred dollars by a corporation that has professional directors, officers, shareholders, all of whom are anonymous and none of whom by the law that jurisdiction have any fiduciary responsibility for what the corporation does. Moreover, they don't even have knowledge of what the corporation does. Yet the courts are perfectly prepared to treat these entities as real. That absolutely is beyond understanding. Now this issue of no no fiduciary responsibility by directors, officers, or anyone else involved with a corporation is a completely unacceptable concept. We've got close to a million corporations in the British Virgin Islands, and I can assure you that the directors there have no idea of what those corporations are doing, who they're doing it to or what damage is being created. And that it seems to me is a beginning point of saying that these corporations shouldn't be recognized anywhere in the world for any purpose. Yet the courts have been willing to not only recognize them, but because of structures that have been put in place by the OECD with respect to tax, treat them as kind of sacred for purposes of taxation. But that has spilled over into issues of liability. And that is where this debate has to really focus. Can we allow major corporations to pretend that the activities they're engaged in are really being conducted by a real entity that has nobody in charge of it? Approaching this as a historian of sorts, the Salomon case in the English House of Lords seems to stand out as being the defining moment when this got inked in and fundamentally established. And I think that was a case where the Lords, basically Lords at the time, around about 1900 if I remember right, basically said this entire operation is crooked, but there's a law which commits it, therefore there's nothing we can do. It's legal. I wonder whether there's any room to ask the English Court law, whatever it is now, the English High Court, Supreme Court, to revisit Salomon versus Salomon in light of, for example, European human rights law or other modern laws pertaining to equality before the law and property rights, particularly creditor rights, which are, of course, defensively abolished in limited light. And I wondered whether that is just, much of what we're talking about is pie in the sky because we're, in a sense, taking this issue from the point of ground zero, but I've got to always try to look for potential bits of traction to get a grappling hook into to start to engage. And I wonder whether revisiting getting a revisiting of Salomon versus Salomon might be, you know, one way into this. Well, one way, one way that has come up recently, which you might want to think about and which is a way in, are the efforts that have been made to recover the money that has been stolen by the Obiang family of Equatorial Guinea. The Obiang's, as you may know, have run Equatorial Guinea for 40 plus years and have ruthlessly stripped the assets of the country. And the US government, for example, tried to seize the mansion and the cars and various other things that they had in California and the private jet. But then wound up confronting the fact that they were all owned by corporate entities through a variety of structures that made proving that these were in fact owned by the Obiang's very difficult. Likewise, there have been efforts in France to go after the French assets of the Obiang family and there have been similar difficulties that have come up. I think that this involves some gross violations of human rights and a perfect example of how the corporation is used to field literally proceeds of crime. I think you're going to find the same thing is true. Some of the richest people in the UK are Nigerians who have profited wildly from what they've done with respect to taking money from the oil revenue of the state. And there's very little that anybody can do because it's all in collections of structures that can't be tracked down. And in fact, it takes years and years and years, even when you catch someone to try to come up with a way to recover the money. A friend of mine who was a lawyer on the island of Jersey just spent 10 years to recover money from a state governor in Brazil who stole money. And that required going through a trail of offshore corporations and entities and proving that those entities were connected to the crime that was involved. This is one way in one place that I think one can go after it. There are various international conventions, the UNCAC convention, which is supposed to limit the ability of people to protect corrupt money. There are provisions in it for asset recovery. It could be that some litigation relating to that might begin to be something that could spotlight the way corporations are used to dodge responsibility. What I was going to say with regards to where we go with Solomon and Solomon is that the problem with challenging that principle in the courts is that you've had case after case after Solomon, which has affirmed the principle. So if you go to a court with a new case, effectively they've got a long history of precedence which further affirms the principle. So probably the only way around it is via legislation. So it would be down to the government whether they would be keen to prioritize commercial interests or individual or group claimant rights. And I have to throw in that the American Supreme Court has all but said a corporation has the civil rights of an ordinary citizen. We have this Citizens United case with respect to campaign contributions and what that has allowed is a complete dodging of all of our campaign finance laws. And as a gag, a corporation in Maryland literally filed to run for public office because the ruling said corporations are citizens. So we're going to have President Google. There's something like that. Well, if you go to President Google, don't give them our ideas, Jack. There's considerable reasons to believe we already have it. No, indeed. The URA is the World's Day Factor. But this is an issue which really requires much more sophisticated further discussion. We've been looking at some of these issues through a particular lens. It can be the lens of tax payment. It can be the lens of responsibility for tortuous acts that have injured individuals. It can be through the lens of corruption. But whichever angle you come at it, the misuse of the corporate form and the removal of personal responsibility from the people who are running the enterprises. And that's my focus has really been a corrupting influence. And the more that this goes on, the more people behave as if it's open season. You can do anything you want. There will be no consequence. If you're rich enough, you have enough layers and enough lawyers, you're home free and the society is left with the consequences. This debate has to be joined across the board. We have to draw in the people who worry about it from a human rights perspective. The people who are looking at it from the injury and torque perspective. The people who are looking at it from the corruption and criminal behavior perspective. And even the election corruption perspective to figure out where we go with a solution. Well, one small step is I wonder whether we could make this transatlantic discussion the beginning of a regular monthly online discussion. As we continue to explore the topic with wider groups and wider networks. But I obviously there are the Center for Financial Integrity Networks for the business and human rights community. But what we might do is to send around this web discussion and we'll see if in a few minutes any of our listeners want to chime in with a few questions and discussion. But it is not compulsory. But we might think about sending around this discussion within an invitation to resume the dialogue for the monthly with hopefully a snowballing group of participants. Because I think we've got a nice crunchy snowball here but it's a little small still. And that might be just a small way to start to build momentum. I wonder what the two of you think of that. Well, here in America we certainly have enough snow. All we've had is water this year, Jack. We haven't had any snow at all down here. My kids want snow. Well, we have we have more than enough but I think the the idea here would be to begin to get people to focus on this issue of the corporation in a way they haven't focused on it before. And I think that, you know, the real vulnerability of the people who defend this nonsense is the way these offshore entities are being used, literally by the hundreds. If you go to any major corporations filings with the securities people, you'll find that there are literally hundreds of corporations. And the court the financial statements says, we're not going to tell you the names or what they do, because they have no material effect on the balance sheet. So then you ask the question of well what the hell are these corporations for anyway. And the answer is to put distance between the people who are running them and the things they do. And that to me is the huge point of vulnerability where we can focus in on the lack of responsibility and the consequences for our societies. Yeah, I think also we will need to preempt some of these sort of other side arguments as well. So, you know, it's certainly clear from my reading of the cases that there is a paranoia that if you somehow tamper with the limited liability concepts, you're going to engage the whole commercial world as it were. And that might not necessarily be the case. So we probably need to do some research into that as well. If you will, there are ways to begin the discussion without appearing to be completely against any form of corporation. So for example, when I said at the outset, you have a corporation and that's it. No subsidiaries. You have a corporate entity that has officers and directors and will allow that as long as there is no officers and directors liability insurance. There are a variety of ways to limit the use of the corporation as a dodge without undermining the capacity of the corporation to raise money or to do a variety of other things. So we don't have to throw the whole system out. And I think we can actually begin a discussion of how it got out of control and where it has to be pushed back as a way of not scaring the horses. I think this system of having subsidiaries overseas is going back to an olden era. It's just as an organization grows, it's very difficult to monitor what each and every subsidiary in various different countries is up to. Whereas now with email, with conference calls, with all kinds of technology, a parent company can monitor exactly what's going on overseas. It can open up a branch company. It doesn't mean to open up a separate entity. Some of these companies that are the huge entities that we're dealing with really manage the subsidiaries as separate entities. If you work inside of one of these corporations, the fact is that it is centrally managed and it is centrally managed in an extraordinarily authoritarian way. You have to be a litigant, but suddenly there's this paperwork maze of subsidiaries which are thrown up at you as being the real entities. I have worked inside with corporate clients. And there was one corporate client where the first day of my involvement in the case, I spent being briefed on the corporate structure. And I had to take notes, sadly, because there were so many different entities. And each entity supposedly had been created to respond to a different government, a different regulatory agency. But they had nothing to do, nothing whatsoever to do with the way the business was run on a day-to-day basis. So I think I mean, that's my experience. Yes, I would hope that we could try to find a date for the two of you and others to renew the conversation possibly in late March. And try to set up a schedule with more people. I'm doing a guest lecture at the law school at the Chinese University in Hong Kong on this. It would be nice to be able to invite them to give them this discussion, but invite them to participate in a further discussion that we and other people have in a few weeks' time. Because I think it's one of these things where once people see, it's a bit of an emperor's new clothes issue, I think. Once people see that it's okay to talk about this without the sky falling in, then we'll find more and more people who will want to join the discussion. I hope you're right. I think with respect to your speaking in Hong Kong, there is a place that is sort of an epicenter of the problem. Most of these newly formed BVI corporations are owned by Chinese. And a huge amount of money that is being siphoned out of the Chinese economy is going back into the Chinese economy as investment from the British Virgin Islands, which is perfectly nonsensical. And a lot of that money is money that is the product of corruption. This is an issue that the Chinese government is going to have to confront. Further, the Chinese government has a mountain of debt that has financed the huge economic expansion. And I'm all for the economic expansion. So the question really is, what is the responsibility for that debt? And what happens if there's a real inability to service it? Do all of these entities go bankrupt? Is the government left holding the bag? Has anybody in the government even asked that question? And I think these are all things that for the Chinese are front and center as major issues. Well, I will see what they think about them when I raise them with them in a week or so. I'll let you know. Well, I hope you get out of Hong Kong in one piece. Having worse places. Okay. If anybody would like to chip in, please do so. If you look along the top message bar, you'll see there's something you can click on to raise your hand to get into discussion. Also, you can type in messages and we would welcome them. It isn't compulsory and you're allowed to listen and treat this as a radio program. But we wouldn't want anybody to think that they weren't invited to take part. Well, you're thinking about that. We are colleagues here who are involved in the UN Human Rights and Business Network. And I think we want to look to take this discussion into that community. But maybe we can talk with colleagues and the next time we have a discussion, perhaps in a few weeks' time, we can start to map out the different constituencies that we want to try to raise awareness with. I don't know what the two of you are thinking of that as a notion. I think any step forward is a good step. You should be a diplomat, Jack. You should be a diplomat a little later. Maybe you considered me as being diplomatic, but anyway. Well, I'll be the first. I'll just take a device from our technical advisor here. Okay. Well, we're not going to embarrass people by putting anyone on the spot. We've been chatting for a good 50 minutes and have managed to violently agree with each other. The question I think is whether we can get into violent agreement or disagreement with a never-growing circle. Hold on.  No. Yeah. Go right ahead, Ellen. I'm getting no audio. Hang on a second. We're just trying to hook her in. The software is free, which probably means it's been marketed by the MSA, I suppose. Well, I hope that means... Somebody said to be a great aphorism. If it's free, it means you're the product. I hope somebody is telling us. Have we got it on that, Robert? I'm not hearing the silver estimation. Unpaired, the attendee hasn't entered their audio pin, so they need to. Can we just get a typed message? Yeah. Ellen, could you type a message in? Because our technology, I don't think it's quite up to things as we would like. In the bottom left-hand box, you can type, I believe. We shouldn't be frustrated as astonishing as it even exists. I sometimes remind our colleagues that I was berated for spending money on a fax machine by a foundation in... by American Foundation in 1986. They said, why are you wasting... You've only given me $5,000, and why are you wasting it on a fax machine? What nurse do you want that for? Oh, I don't know. Great. Hi. I figured out the pin. Sorry. Hi. Yes, I'm Eleanor. I'm from the Whistleblowing Territory, Public Concern at Work. Some very interesting points, so thank you very much for that. I just had a couple of points from the perspective of whistleblowing. Obviously, whistleblowers are very important in exposing wrongdoing in the first place. When it comes to greater accountability and reform of the court for limited liability, there's clearly an argument that this may reduce the need for whistleblowers by deterring wrongdoing in the first place. But there's also the point perhaps that it might encourage whistleblowers because one of the main reasons in the UK why people don't raise concerns is because there's a cynicism. They think that nothing's going to happen as a result of them raising concerns. So perhaps if greater accountability is seen, then this might encourage people to come forward and perhaps in effect expose more wrongdoing where it could be. Not really a question there, but just a couple of points. Well, Jack, you do an awful lot of whistleblowers. Do you want to comment on that? Sure. Whistleblowing is indeed very important. But the way the system now works, there's very little to protect a whistleblower. And indeed, I've given continuing legal education for lawyers who propose to represent whistleblowers. And the first thing I tell them is you better tell your whistleblower to expect immediate, unmerciful retaliation and pass that low probability of anybody successfully following up on what you're going to tell them. For the very reasons I've just described that the criminal prosecution is virtually impossible because of these layers of corporations getting the evidence and showing what the criminal law requires, to use the legal Latin mens reo, which is intent. And so you're not going to get the criminal prosecution. And then what about civil? And again, you're up against this set of issues of corporate shells which protect people from civil liability. So whistleblowing is something incredibly important to the society. But the hard truth is that it's very hard on the whistleblower. And there are very few people out there ready to protect the whistleblower against anything. And the way that success is relatively small. So maybe if we improve the situation of limited liability, we'll help whistleblowers. But I think that that's still a huge problem and would be even if we solve the limited liability question. Yeah. Thank you for that. Yeah, I mean, I would agree with that. I think if there's threat of litigation, a company will move forward to act. And they can make life very difficult for a whistleblower. I mean, one thing about the cases that we do is that you need massive evidence. So each bit of evidence is a strand, if you like, and you put everything together to make what's called your factual matrix, which is your case, really. So the whistleblower's evidence might be helpful, but you still need lots of other documents and evidence to make your case, really. So it's still a difficult one, I think. And I think, you know, if you've got a company turning against you, I think it makes matters worse. Eleanor? Yeah, that's very interesting. Thank you for that. Well, have we got other folks out there, Rohit? That's okay. Well, I found it to be a very interesting and, dare I say, profitable discussion intellectually, if not financially. And I think there's quite a lot to build on. I'll let you know part of Hong Kong in one piece Monday week. And maybe as part of the follow-up to this, we'll have this online reasonably soon. And we'll send it to each of you and hope that you can put it up to your respective networks. And at the same time, we'll try and see if we can agree a date for the end of March to advertise at the same time as we send this around to build the discussion. How does that sound? Sounds good to me. I would also propose something else. I'm going to be in London the third week in June, and it may be. The third week of June? Yeah. We might very well be able to put together a somewhat larger group to have a discussion around the table and see where we can go with these ideas. That's brilliant. We'll take you up on that offer right now, and absolutely, that's a deal. Back at the March and in person in June. That's great. I hope you could talk to Ray Baker and see where we go. I've lived most of my life working in the anti-bombs and guns field. To my mind, this feels a little like the discussions that we had when there was a discussion about, well, do we think we can do anything about landmines in the early 1990s? And there were about six people, I mean about a dozen people. And I think when it got about 20 people, I was in the room. And on the one hand, it felt like exactly the right thing to do and desperately improbable. But the successive initiatives like that make me think that if our instincts and our judgment is right, then actually it is possible to make things happen, however improbable it seems. Possibly that is my sort of upbeat, raw, raw note to end on. Is that what I do? I'm all for that. Well, great to see you, Jackie, only virtually, and see you in June. Indeed. I'll talk to you in March. Okay, bye-bye. Bye. Bye. See you.