High Agency

‍Mo Dhaliwal

[00:00:03] Welcome to High Agency, igniting conversations with inspiring people, leading transformative change. In a world of increasing complexity and unprecedented challenges, the landscape of social impact is undergoing a remarkable transformation. Gone are the days of isolated efforts and traditional philanthropy. Today's nonprofit sector is challenged to embrace data-driven strategies, racing to keep pace with technology, and facing pressures that necessitate innovative collaborations to amplify impact. From artificial intelligence revolutionizing basically everything, to community-based organizations emerging as powerful catalysts for change, we're witnessing a fundamental shift in how social impact is achieved. So while demand for services soar and donor dynamics evolve, organizations are reimagining their approaches. They're blending business acumen with social mission, prioritizing diversity and leadership, and tackling climate change with a renewed urgency. But amidst these sweeping changes, one question remains central. Why do this at all? And the answer isn't so simple. Social impact organizations need to not just adapt, but thrive in this new reality, while staying rooted in the purpose that drove their existence. So today, we'll explore this question with someone who's been with us for more than a decade. Peter Rinsch is the founder of Uncommon Partners, a consultancy where he brings his leadership experience to the social impact sector. As the former CEO of Hollyhock Leadership Institute and Executive Director of Pivot Legal Society, he's managed and driven change through legal advocacy, organizational development, and community building. Today, Peter works with social purpose organizations on the deepest questions of purpose, drawing on his 20 years of experience where he led organizations, built powerful teams, raised millions of dollars, and questioned every aspect of it. Peter, welcome to High Agency. Thanks, Mo. It's great to be here. I've been really looking forward to this conversation for a while, because for years, you and I have had many, many side chats about what's wrong with the world and what we're going to do about it. But before we get into all that, I'm really interested in first hearing about what lies at the heart of a social purpose organization, how you feel about this, and my role as a co-jeweler of sorts?

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Peter Wrinch

[00:02:46] And you've had some confidence in your more different Holmes, guts in a way. So don't dip me in somewhere, I'm sure there's room for community false global, question. Did social purpose一下 likes more of a running public item over service or do you want to talk about that? Or that I would end up having the skills to fundraise or knowing how to build teams. You know, I grew up in a suburb in a lower middle-class family. I think I really understood that I needed to do something with my life, but it was probably more on a material level than any sort of purpose. You know, my mother was a schoolteacher, and there was a lot of focus on finding a job that really worked for you to build a stable life. I don't really think that fit with me from a very early age, and I remember having really intolerable conversations where I was intolerable with friends saying things like, 'I want to be the wind when I'm older' and things like this. Which would, like, endlessly annoy people. But I think for me, I came out of university and then grad school, and I was really focused on sort of two impulses. One, this idea that what we've built really doesn't need to be the way it is. That really, what we've built is just the product of many people's imagination. It was never here before. It was really on a deep level. It is not what has to be. So that, and I found expression in that in social purpose organizations.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:04:35] Yeah, the imagination is interesting that way, right? Of everything that we take to be kind of chiseled in stone. You know, I like to consider myself somebody that's imaginative and likes to, and is able to think of different perspectives. And what could be, but even I was surprised, for example, when COVID hit, right? Because all of these rules that were chiseled in stone, suddenly, like it was like the tablet was smashed, right? And absolutely nothing matters anymore. And that was actually kind of a reinvigoration of the imagination for me. And, you know, maybe badly, but I was kind of a little excited by the chaos of COVID when it first hit, right? I mean, you know, obviously not happy that people were getting sick, the loss of life, the rest of it, but just the idea that for a brief moment, we could imagine society being fundamentally different. And all of these, like, you know, hard and fast rules were out the window and we're figuring it out again. And it seemed like there was a moment in there for something to happen. Absolutely. But within that, though, you also saw the human tendency to seek out safety and comfort. Yeah, right. So even if systems are oppressive, they're marginalizing people, perhaps, you know, not even optimal for humanity, we still wanted to retreat back into that. Because there was safety, there was comfort, there was a pattern there, right? And that's something that likely you have to deal with all the time. But maybe let's talk a little bit about, you know, how you arrived at the point of actually trying to consult with social impact organizations. But where was your first real start where you said, OK, here's an organization I'm going to work with and here's the change we're trying to make?

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Peter Wrinch

[00:06:09] Yeah. Before I answer that, I can't help but say one thing about COVID. So if you had told me six months before COVID that there would be some emergency in Canadian society and on a global scale that would cause the federal government to underwrite the economy by 75%, I would have literally laughed you out of the room. That, to me, to someone who's worked in politics, to someone who's thought a lot about economics, thought of a lot about economy, the idea that a federal government, government in Canada would pay 75% of payroll to save an economy was just incredible. So I think your point is really real. And it feels like justifies my thinking as well that nothing is as it is because it has to be that way. But to answer your question about and consulting with social purpose organizations, I think that I spent 25 years working in social purpose organizations from, as you said in the intro, as an executive director, as a CEO, but also as a development director, as a communications director, as an operations director. I had a short period where I worked for a tech company working on social purpose. I've been on board. And the thing that I have come to see as similar across all of that is that these impulses in social purpose organizations to create something new, to do something new, whether it's to tackle climate change, to get more youth involved in sports, to destigmatize drug use, whatever it is, it starts with this deep belief. And usually, a belief that connects a small group of people. And then as those organizations go on, the belief enrolls more people, gets more people excited. And then at some point, something happens. And I've been involved in it on all the levels where there's a moment where we start to compromise on that purpose. But that purpose is the power. And the more we compromise, the less powerful those orgs become. And so my, for me, I'm 49 years old, I don't know how long I'll live. And I felt like leaving the world where I was the operator of those organizations to actually work with those leaders to help them connect to that deeper purpose, that actually is their power, felt really important to me.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:09:19] And so you started, was it primarily at Pivot Legal Society or was it before then?

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Peter Wrinch

[00:09:24] Yeah, I mean, it's so interesting to think about that. I mean, I studied two things in undergrad, which was Soviet Revolution and Buddhism. Totally unrelated, of course.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:09:35] And both were solid career paths.

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Peter Wrinch

[00:09:37] Very solid career paths. No one told me that. No one told me that. No one told me that there was no career involved in those things. I had the student loans to prove it. And I really think about that as like Marxism in spirit or politics in spirit as a way of thinking about it. So I came out of university and then I went to grad school and I studied Soviet history. So I came out of grad school and I was like, I had all these student loans and I'm like, what the hell am I going to do with my life? Like, literally, what am I going to do with my life? Like, I started writing all these these cover letters where I was like talking about Stalin and like the Soviet 30s. And surprisingly, I got no callbacks. And Starbucks was like, well, you know, for an entry level position. Yeah, exactly. We're not sure this is going to work on the barista level. And so I spent a lot of time lying on the floor going, what the hell am I going to do with my life? And I happened to apply to a. So a volunteer volunteer coordinator role at this very new upstart called Pivot Legal Society in the downtown east side. And they called me back immediately. And I was so overwhelmed, so humbled that someone actually called me back that I I went in for an interview right away. And the funny thing is, is I went in this interview and it was amazing. It was it was these people who were doing amazing things. It was a small little office. They all seemed it was a startup, you know, not for profit social enterprise. And I thought that I thought the interview went really well. And then they didn't call me back. And I sat there for three weeks going like, what the hell? I can't even get a volunteer volunteer role. And so I was really ready to give up. And then I just thought, no, I'll email them one more time. And the person got back to me right away and said, oh, sorry, that person who was also a volunteer has left. But, you know, we'd love for you to come in. And really, that's how I got my start. And within three weeks of taking that volunteer volunteer role, it was organized. Seeing Pivot's volunteers, which were many at that time, I got offered a contract. And then Pivot went from being a one person founder, not for profit to five people. And and I was there for 10 years. And what did Pivot do? Right. So Pivot was the thing that I think was a really strong offering that Pivot was making was they were saying, look, in this neighborhood, in Vancouver, which is Canada's poorest neighborhood, but it's replicated across North America, you know, Skid Row in Los Angeles, the Tenderloin in San Francisco, different neighborhoods in New York, which had a lot of marginalized people, resulting from colonization, results of economic policy, results of globalization. It really; the founder of Pivot used to call it like a flashpoint of capitalism. And so the offering that Pivot made. That was quite special, is that they said, we're lawyers and communication professionals. We don't know better. We're actually going to interview the people who are living this marginalized life and take their stories that they're offering and take them as the experts. It's really this like meeting people where they're at and we will apply legal strategy and we will sue. And so it was a great opportunity for me to be able to be involved in all levels of government and to shift society towards more equality. And so I came in, you know, with this graduate study in Buddhism and Soviet history, and really saw the revolutionary impulse there. And so I was immediately working with our volunteers, as I mentioned, and then I took an operational role, and then eventually a fundraising and communications role. And then the last four years, I was there as the executive director. That's incredible.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:13:40] I mean, so Pivot must have established some legal precedents that must have fought some interesting cases.

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Peter Wrinch

[00:13:46] Yeah, I mean, it was remarkable, really. We went to the Supreme Court of Canada twice. We had two unanimous decisions from the Supreme Court. But it was at that moment where when we had those decisions, and they took 10 years to get there. It was 10 years of work, of bootstrapping, of working with marginalized populations, of fundraising, of communicating, where I really came to understand that the theory of change was off with the organization. So we went to the Supreme Court, and we had a win there for street-level sex workers across the country, and we decriminalized sex work in Canada. And that was a time when Stephen Harper was the prime minister, and the court gave the government six months to rewrite the laws that would protect street-level sex workers. And what the government did is they just came back and rewrote worse laws. And so, you know, I sat in the Supreme Court gallery with indigenous women from this community. And in 10 years of work and 10 years of story and 10 years of fundraising and then came to realize that. This legal strategy, which had so much promise, could not and probably should not overturn the will of the people. And so really, you need to have a political strategy as well, which, you know, drove me to leave Pivot and actually start working in politics, because I was like, you cannot have this legal strategy that can create these these tremendous wins. But if if without the political will, without the political. Yeah, exactly. Without the political will, you'll just have those wins eroded by a parliament. And that is probably right. You know, this balance between the court system and parliament. And what I would say is that what I came to recognize from my tenure as a Pivot is the most important thing was actually sitting in the Supreme Court with those indigenous women. The moment that they got to tell their story to the highest court in the land, even though it was overruled by by parliament. That's heartbreaking. Yeah, yeah.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:16:18] I can only imagine putting a decade into something and having it go so badly. Yeah.

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Peter Wrinch

[00:16:22] I mean, it's. I think for me, it was really clear and it and it spoke to me. About something that I think still permeates social advocacy space and not for profit space is, you know, when I started working at Pivot, I've realized this recently. I have a bit of a romantic view. You know, maybe it's the Buddhism, maybe it's the like romantic Marxism. But I was more of a romantic. And so that the. The tactical, the very. Hard. Driven work of politics seemed a little too mercenary, mercenary, exactly mercenary, a little too. I don’t want to use the word toxic, but a little too tactical. And many people that I worked in not for profit with or an advocacy with had that same view that politics was in some way broken, that there needed to be a third way. Sometimes you would hear this conversation, but the third way. But what I came to realize through those Supreme Court victories and then having that decision, that decision in particular not overturned, but the laws written worse was that you can’t ignore electoral strategy. You have it has to be part of the tool belt. And so that's why I went out to work in politics. Mm hmm.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:18:00] I mean, I've had some experience in social impact space, founded a couple of different nonprofits. And for me, originally, the social change and impact I was trying to create was, frankly, just to create space for myself and others that have my lived experience, you know, looked like me, walked and talked like me, came from similar communities as me. And it was actually after I'd moved back here from California in the early 2000s. So, you know, early on, also, I think it's kind of romantic. I believe that a small group of people can change the world to some extent. I think that's still true. Yes. But we started, you know, a lot of cultural production. Right. So, you know, Punjabi folk music and dance festivals. And it was an interesting thing for me because I never considered myself a social impact person. I wasn't, you know, but there was the thing that you want to see and there's nobody else doing it. So, you just get started on making the change. Yeah. And I would say till today, like most of what I learned about human dynamics, politics, and how to make things happen. Was actually through what was also a startup nonprofit, right? Which isn't for the faint of heart. No. Right. Because it's hard enough running a business and trying to sell a thing, and nonprofits, you know, you're trying to sell, you know, an idea, right? Concept. Concept and intention and working with, you know, donors and sponsors and funders of different types. And what I encountered in that space was that there's a lot of human dynamics at play, which can be incredibly beneficial, but also sometimes kind of lean into the damage and the toxic. Yeah. Right. And some of it's true for myself as well. So I'm not saying this in a judgmental way, but I think working in social impact, what I discovered, you know, after about a decade of just starting my own nonprofit and helping it grow was that some of the attraction for myself even was about wanting to have some access to like the agency of being a nonprofit. Right. You know, being able to feel like you're in control of your life and your environment. That's right. Right. And what would happen is over time, you'd also wind up attracting a lot of people, frankly, that, you know, perhaps had some demons. But we're looking for somewhere where they could feel like, you know, they mattered and they could affect something. And perhaps that's born out of this feeling that actually the world, the society we live in, we have no control; that in fact, we are disenfranchised. Yeah. And. So. A lot of these spaces. Wind up attracting a lot of people that just want to hang on to something where they feel like they've got meaning and they can make a difference because in wider society perhaps you know, you don't, yeah, yeah.

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Peter Wrinch

[00:20:42] Oh, there's so many things in there, there's so many things in there. Um, so at first the first thing that came pop to mind when you said that is I think everyone has demons and I think that we play out our demons in different ways and definitely the communities that we end up in, whether it's work, social, or otherwise, I think that I've really started to think about this recently. So there's, there's almost like these two sides, and there's probably multiple sides, but there's like this community of practice that often shows up in social purpose organizations, and then there's the the drive for impact or whatever you know, you want to say there can be like a crass view of it as like a product or an offering, it's another way of saying it. But I think that they, they work together. You know, there's this community of practice so you know whether it was Pivot or Hollyhock or even Nation Builder the tech company I worked For um, there was an attraction and enrollment to bring people into this community of practice. We're doing a thing, um, that maybe no one else is doing. We believe that we have a unique offering and the offering is towards a towards an outcome, but really, really what matters is this day-to-day community of practice, this day-to-day way of relating. I think the challenge often with social purpose organizations is they've taken on um, and I, I've been an advocate for this often um, they've taken on um some parts of the business world, so this, this outcome measurement, this, this drive towards um a thing, you know outputs. Sort of these kinds of local changes based on some of the service that's been shown these other things, so I think to me these things are amazing. Tiger are looking for something where Mr. Moon is an élite or somebody to you know race-based as they're seeing, or to slay. In. On. Gary. To the mission. They're attracted to the purpose. They're attracted to the vision and they're attracted by the people. And yet they still have to operate towards some form of outcome. And so I think this balance in social purpose organizations is a really hard thing to balance. And that's where purpose comes in. I think that if we can be really clear about the purpose and make it a living purpose so that it lives, not just, I mean, people say this all the time, but not just as mission and vision statements on the wall, but it's like in everything we're doing, we're living this purpose in the way we treat other people, in the way that we write our employment contracts, in the way that we enroll people, in the way that we fundraise. These are all the things that really matter to a purpose-built organization that is so much more than, you know, I mean, corporate social responsibility, these types of things. And I think that that is the direction we're going. But those dynamics are so, so real and so deep and often can be, can feel heavy. You know, I recently, and by recently, I mean, the last four years have really come into working with the Enneagram. And so the Enneagram, it's a system, it's like a personality for lack of better term system, sort of like Myers-Briggs, but it shows, you know, your, your generative state and your stress state. And so I identify in the Enneagram three category, which has this real drive towards, you know, achievement. And most of that's built out of my own fear of failure and I'm worthless. Am I worthless in the world? And, oh my God, I have to do this thing. And so I have to achieve and that's how I'll have value. And this universe. And I think that that energy, that, that Enneagram three energy, and there's lots of different things you could call it towards achievement and driving and impact is real, is a really important energy. But there's also this Enneagram nine energy that is more about finding common ground, finding, building these communities of practice, seeing things from multiple different angles that, you know, in my earlier career, I would, I would drive me nuts. Like, I'd be like, what do you mean? We have to like, uh, contemplate how we're doing this. We're just doing this. Let's just go. Um, but I've come to really a depersonalize that energy. So I'm not looking at someone and going, why the hell is this person getting in my way? But instead just going, oh, right. Yes, Peter, you have these ideas for driving forward, but actually this other person who's bringing this more nuanced, this more, um, thoughtful energy, let's, let's engage this a little bit because let's not engage it to stop us from making nothing happen, but let's engage it so that we don't go out in the world and really put our foot in our mouth or do something that's going to create harm upstream or downstream.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:26:11] And I think sometimes that energy, um, the more methodical, the planned energy, I'm not familiar with Enneagram, but I'm very familiar with the behaviors that you're describing. Yes. I feel like I'm still Yeah. challenged about these days because I'll have what I think are fantastic ideas and I want to see them implemented yesterday. Immediately. Uh, yeah, immediately. Um, and, and I work with a managing director who is very pragmatic. She cares about people's feelings and budgets and things, which is important. Right. Um, so there's, there's a constant resistance. Um, but sometimes it's also challenging understanding whether that's a useful, productive resistance. That's going to, you know, kind of put some structure, like give a, you know, put the flame inside a lantern so that. Yep. The light can be protected. Or whether it's, um, I sometimes, you know, and this is from, um, Salim Ismail. Um, he described new ideas entering an organization as sometimes being regarded as a pathogen. Yep. And the organization will send in antibodies to. That's right. Kill off the pathogen. Inoculate against the new. Yeah. And so I've sometimes also had a challenge myself with recognizing whether it was that sort of, you know, productive structuring energy. Yeah. Or whether this was just, you know, organizational antibodies. Coming in to you, know kill me off as a pathogen, yeah right, yeah, and that's that's that's a struggle, absolutely. And it's especially, you know, so in organizations I think that that have been around for some time because, as you know, like we're speaking in the context of Vancouver, you mentioned Pivot Legal downtown Eastside, we've had a number of charitable organizations that you know has some controversy made the news over the past, you know, many decades, yeah. Because of the fact that you know they were there to take care of a population to bring healing, to help them come out of poverty, help them come out of addiction, and what's happened is that entire sort of area almost kind of became its own economy, yeah, and these purpose organizations kind of became self-perpetuating, yeah. And you know like I can't speak to, I was never remember these board meetings or you know where the decisions were being made but even just looking at it externally it's like you have a stated purpose and you're meant to heal, help house you know this this you know population of people, but when you actually look at you know why you've been. controversial yeah where the funding is gone what's been you know going on with you it seems like at some point the focus kind of flipped into we need to make the nonprofit really well funded yeah we need to pay a lot of salaries we need to kind of become top heavy yeah and you know I think it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's and that purpose thing that impact thing yeah it happens it happens but like you know we've got we've got bills to pay right whoa when yes yes like play with a little nerve there yes yes you are you know and I don't think that happens overnight, right? No, no, but there is something that over time, you know, sends even a purpose-based such a heart-centered organization towards that. Yeah, and it's you know the tension of saying we need to create an impact, but in order to do that we need to, um, corral and marshal resources. Yeah, and then eventually it's just marshalling resources. I'm gonna reference, um, something you wrote on LinkedIn recently, yeah, and it was a great article and you gave me a bit of a cameo in it, thank you for that. You're welcome. Uh, but I thought it was just a fantastic sort of allegory where you talked about the

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:29:41] Rolling actually, I'm not gonna do any spoilers here but it's you basically talked about social impact organizations and the Rolling Stones, yes so let's let's let's tell that story 

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Peter Wrinch

[00:29:52 yeah I mean mo there's so many things you just said that are are so um I think that one thing I've really come to be more comfortable with is that there's all these tensions in the world that exist and that it's very important to be able to hold those tensions and to see them and to not jump into um and I have to measure this in my own self jump into a sort of European enlightenment like there's there's a solve here there's a solve here um I think that I just want to make one comment about the Downtown East Side and what you were saying there because for 10 years I worked in that neighborhood, I worked with amazing people who were who were so amazing, meaning driven they so they so wanted to see real change and I I think that you know I go back to the founder of Pivot John Richardson when he used to say that the Downtown East Side represents a flash point of colonization and capitalism, yeah and you can't solve that problem with more colonization and capitalism exactly with more colonization and capitalism and you can't solve like Vancouver can't solve that problem, British. Columbia can't solve it possibly Canada can solve it but it requires such a coordinated effort, but it also requires like really leaning into shadow. What does that if that's a flash point of capitalism? Why is it so and why what what what shadows of capitalism live inside of all of us? You know, are we living the life of capitalism? Are we living the lives that the universe intended for us? I mean not to get too left coast woo, but are we living the lives that the universe intended for us? Is this the way and it comes back to that first comment is the it are the are things the way they are because they're the way that they should be you know. these are big questions in that neighborhood it's not it's not simple you know um but yes so when um you know when i think about purpose and and how purpose erodes i couldn't help but think of mick jagger and i'm not sure why like i'm not sure why mick jagger just kept popping into my head but i just thought it i i think i've been struggling with mick jagger for years quite frankly with this this idea of a rock rock star and i use that term like so lightly um at 80 you know like is is that is that really what that is and so for whatever reason i've been you know really thinking about purpose recently and i just kept having mick jagger in my head and so this idea that the other thing i've been really fascinated about recently and bear with me here hold on hold on absolutely is the big bang and so you have this big bang and i don't know much about it but what i do understand is that it's energy pushing out from a center and so we are all representations of that energy and at some point all organizations all organizations in the downtown east side all environmental organizations all organizations across canada social purpose organizations and many businesses started with this an idea probably around a kitchen table or or you know a fire somewhere that we could do a thing and that we're we're the ones who can do this thing because we have something special and to me that's that's like grabbing that universal energy that's still expanding from the big bang but i can remember this moment of pivot when i was the ed i was sitting on a beautiful couch like this one donated by a wonderful man named toby and um i was looking out across our open concept office much like this one and i was the ed and i thought oh my god every single person in here is doing amazing work and i need to make sure i can raise enough money to keep them all doing that amazing work and so there's this tension that Ed is getting where they're like, I know that I'm not; I know that I need to be a visionary leader that holds purpose, like the flag of purpose. But I also need to make sure that all of these people who I believe are instrumental in driving that purpose stay employed. And oh, by the way, we live in a capitalist system that is constantly trying to poach these people for way more money than we can pay on our non-profit salaries. So, I have to be constantly working this angle to increase salaries, to increase benefits; and the challenge that I've often found at not-for-profits and social purpose organizations, advocacy organizations. Isn't that people want to work last, so you know there's these people who believe that people want to, you know, if you do, they work from home; they're not really working. My my experience in every single social purpose organization I've ever worked in is the exact opposite: You actually have to find ways to help people stop working like, to put boundaries, and so they're also burning out. So, for me it's always been it felt like a fundamental responsibility as a leader for an organization to make sure that we had as best of health care that we could provide; to pay people the best salaries we could provide, which are always. Um, not good enough, and so this push towards trying to be like capitalistically competitive, yeah, exactly, while, while holding purpose is a tension that I know keeps EDs up at night all the time. It kept me up at night for the last 20 years, you know. It's why my hair is the color it is after seven years at Hollyhock. It's how do we raise salaries and hold purpose while not bloating out our admin so that we just become a shell of ourselves? And I think that this is um the reason why executive director and CEO jobs social purpose organizations kind of suck. It's really hard, and I love when there's um funders and there there are more and More and more, who are starting to really understand this, they're starting to really understand that these organizations are their people. And I know I'm going on a bit of a rant here, but one of the things that I'll say is that was a major realization coming back to Covid for me, you know, in Cove when Covid happened, 2020, at Hollyhock we shut down all of our programming; never in 42 years had that happened. Hollyhock, the history of Hollyhock is a lot ups and downs but never had it cancel its programming so Hollyhock has a leadership institute in British Columbia, it's a retreat center, it runs programs, that's right, works.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:37:06] With many partners, that's right. So it's a very in-person activity for people to come and experience some level of transformative change, that's right. But if you're not in purpose, yeah, or if you're not in purpose, you're not in person, yeah.

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Peter Wrinch

[00:37:15] Then what are you? And for 42 years, it had um, you know, run somewhere between 60 and 100 programs in a six-month season on a remote island, 300 kilometers north of British Columbia, or sorry, north of Vancouver, which required travel, which required intimate spaces, which required people getting to know each other, um, meeting each other. And all of a sudden, March 9th, 2020, we come to the realization. That, that's probably not going to happen this year, and we have a staff of uh, we had a full-time staff about 25, and we had a um seasonal staff that brought that full-time full-time number up to 85. And I came to the realization that basically we were not going to be able to hire all those people back, but we are also not going to close completely and lay off everyone because what actually matters in this time. Because I had no idea, I mean you remember the beginning of COVID, we were spraying our groceries like we had no idea whether we were all anyone was going to make it through this, but I just knew leading through. values and purpose that we had to keep our people together because what if all that external impact didn't matter, what if the only thing that mattered was the way we treated each other day to day, that community of practice. Um, and I think that those two tensions between like this community of practice, how we treat each other day to day, how we pay our people, what kind of benefits they have, what kind of work, um, what it feels like to go to work. What if that is as important as this external impact that we're chasing?

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:39:04] And so you were at Hollyhock Institute for seven years as the executive director and I know that you know from our conversation i know that you're going to be a part of the conversations um you know you the the ceo executive director challenge intention that you're describing a lot right because you're trying to drive um change and ensure that people that run their programs and uh arrive at hollyhock for all of its promise feel that and get that while also maintaining relationships with funders and donors who i'm sure all have their own opinions about how things can happen and you know um donors tend to have a lot of ideas right they do yeah especially stripped literally Ingredients bouquet especially major donors yeah Um, so you know why I made the decision to leave and how do you navigate that for seven years, yeah? And we're gonna bring it back to MCJagger after this because totally, totally you went to 13 billion years ago, yeah.

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Peter Wrinch

[00:39:57] But we got to come back to MCJagger, that's right, that's right, that's right. Um, so, so one of the things I'll say about Hollyhock in seven years is I never experienced as much generosity from donors as I did at Hollyhock. Um, you know I was a person growing up, I didn't know any wealthy people until I went to undergrad and then, you know, I started meeting wealthy people when I was working at Pivot. But the level Of generosity I saw at Hollyhock was remarkable because there's something that Hollyhock does, there's something that all of these centers do, that is deep transformation. I mean, I sat on the deck at Hollyhock, um, almost every day in the summer for seven years and I heard the conversations that people were having, you know, things like as adults we never get time for this, this is the best thing I've ever been to, I can't believe the friendships I'm leaving with, I can't believe the insights I have, the new businesses I'm starting. I mean, there is such deep transformation happening there; um, that to make the decision to Leave something like that is very hard and it took me a long time and a lot of, a lot of grief, and a lot of moving back and forth, um, through that decision. But one of the things that Hollyhock did teach me is, is, um, you know again I'll go back to this Enneagram three energy like I'm a very strong narrator, I near, I think I narrate with my head, I don't really feel my body; I'm very, like, you know, white in that way like I'm very disconnected. Um, I once had an indigenous mentor and she said, um, and this was not, she wasn't dissing white people, but she said we had a word for Europeans in our language and it just translated to disconnected when she Said that I was a white man, I was a white man, I was a white man, and I was said that to me. I mean, I've been thinking about that for seven years like that really hit me deeply because I was like, 'Oh yeah, like I'm, I'm actually really often disconnected from my experience of the world; I can narrate it, but I'm very disconnected. And so last year in November, I went to New York City. I was a little tired; I was a little irritated that I was there. I don't love New York, and I was walking around doing donor meetings. I was meeting with donors, and I got there and I was like, 'Okay, well you're here, man; like, just you're here; there's Yeah, I just did it. So, I made this decision just to walk around. I was just like, 'I'm not gonna take Uber. I'm not gonna take the subway.' And so, in four days, I walked 70 kilometers. I had four donor meetings across the city. I learned to really love New York because walking in New York is amazing, but I had this really strong body sense. I was just like it was like my body was just telling me very clearly that I had to make a decision and I was like, 'I'm not gonna move on from Pitt from Hollyhock that I' and that this was a purpose move for me that I at 49 am no longer um I no longer should be the CEO of these types of organizations. I have to work with These leaders, um, that is my purpose now. And and this was a body realization, and I'm not good at listening. Like even when I was getting the body, I was like 'come on'! So when I got on the airplane on my way home, I actually typed out my resignation letter because I was so clear that I would chicken out as soon as I got home, like I would just be like 'no', and narrate it away. Um, and so I gave my notice in February, my last day was July 31st. Um, I had an amazing colleague and friend Heather Deeth who was our Chief Product Officer at Hollyhock, who is now the Interim CEO and they're looking for a new CEO. Um, but for me this was a really strong purpose. Move and I'll tell you one other weird thing that happened to me so, I'll use the word 'purpose' but the word I was actually using was the word 'dharma', and um, you know, dharma comes um from Sanskrit, it's through Indian traditions, through Hinduism, through Buddhism, the Jainism, through you know, it's part of Indian um, religious history, and so I was really, I was using this word 'dharma' and so I went to a conference in in April in San Francisco and I got into the hotel and my hotel room and I put all my stuff down and I opened the blind and on a building huge sign that said 'Dharma', it was like the Dharma College or something. But I couldn't see the word 'college'; all I could see was 'Dharma' and so I'm really for me my purpose journey is about really knowing where to look. I follow this um this meditation teacher named Light Watkins, um sort of a little pop a little pop meditation but Light Watkins is a brilliant teacher and he talks about knowing where to look. And so that's part of what I think I'm going through on my own purpose is like just understanding that there are tons of messages in this world and if you if you start to open up to them they're there for you. And so that's kind of what happened to me in in New York City, yeah that's incredible um what

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:44:57] You're describing is pretty much my lived experience as well. Um, I've got I think really good friends, advisors, coaches around me, um, and the constant advice I get is uh to explore somatic therapies to get in my body because I also very much treat my body as just you know transportation for my head basically right it's the thing that carries my brain around and most experiences for me are cerebral yeah and like six months after I have an emotion yes, I was like oh that was that was the feeling I was having back then um totally um but you know so you, you have this embodied thing, you left Hollyhock and now you're essentially uh.

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Peter Wrinch

[00:45:37] consulting with social purpose uh you know impact focused retreat centers organizations and but what are you trying to do with them yeah well that's a great question I think that part of what I'm what and I'll just be honest like I'm I'm nudging towards you know I'm nudging towards an offering but what I can tell you is in the last three months I have had some of the most remarkable conversations I've been that I've ever had mm-hmm because what I'm trying to do is help organizations get to that honesty about where they are from my own lived experience on both sides of that you know I've been in that startup phase of organizations In fact, before I worked at Hollyhock, every organization I worked at was in that startup phase where you're standing you're sitting around a kitchen table or a you know a used board room table or a fire and you're talking about purpose; this is why we're doing this thing, and the question is: how do we how do we bring this purpose to life? And that includes how do we communicate it about it, how do we fundraise, how do we enroll more people in it, how do we staff it? And I've also been in organizations where you get you start to tip towards administration, like over administration. I would say and I I don't I don't come by this easily like I think the balance is really hard and so, what the conversations I've been having with um organizations are to really help them find that enthusiasm, find that life, find that like you know Big Bang Universal life force that they had at some point or decide that it's time to die, that it's time to hospice, that it's time to wind down. We have a lot of words for this but that it's that it's played its role, you know. Sometimes I think about that in some of the organizations I've been part of that they were started with a great intensity with a great passion with a great drive and sometimes they, they've served their purpose and they don't need to continue I was talking to someone a few months ago um and there's some of these funders around now they don't fund organizations anymore they just fund campaigns because the campaign is more important than establishing an org and it's got a focus and intent and it's got a beginning and an end that's right yeah that's right and that's hard I mean that's hard um you know one of the other conversations I've been in quite a bit is with foundations who are spending down you know there's a lot of Foundation spending down because they recognize the um the regenerative moment we're in or the poly crisis there's Lots of ways of talking about it where you have, you know, existential threats like climate change and inequality and and Trumpism and fascism, um, and they're spending down, this is not a time to hold money in endowment, you know, they're spending down. One of the conversations I find most fascinating in those is, I often am like a little sheepish or looking down when I say it but I'm like, 'What about your jobs?' And and and I, I'm, I'm so um, confused that people actually have answers and they want to, oh yeah, like, no we understand that our jobs will end at the end of this endowment spend down, um, and so I'm really interested in that. How foundations and philanthropy are activating not just the interest on their endowments, but their endowments because they recognize the existential threat.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:49:25] And that also seems to be a realization of um the natural sort of um you know inertia and malaise that a lot of organizations can settle into after some decades of working on some sort of movement right yes. And I'm going to reference um Charles Hugh Smith who outlined the life cycle of bureaucracy, he called it and it was fantastic because I saw myself in it, and the organizations I've been a part of. I know it really resonated with you, but where he started was he basically In this diagram, I depicted the launch of an organization. Right, so it's this big um blue circle which is all purpose and the center of it is a little green dot which is the bureaucracy and that's the launch period right, it's all purpose and a little bit of what we need to get it done. And then there's a growth period where you're still working, working purpose it's still mostly blue circle uh but that green dot's a little bit bigger because we're in growth phase so we're hiring staff we're getting more powerful what we're doing. And then there's a maturity that he describes as basically being kind of like 50 right, it's like There's a blue circle purpose, but now there's a pretty big bureaucracy that is holding it as a as a mature organization, um. But in your article, you actually extended it and this is I think where we really saw a lot of organizations that we worked with in the past which was there's a period of bloat where administrative costs keep rising, um. You know the blue purpose is still there, but the green center is quite large now, right? There's a point of reduction where perhaps the organization is going through some sort of crisis, perhaps leadership has left, and now the administration is trying to hold on to the organization that's being. Held which takes their focus off purpose to a large extent, right? And now that blue circle is even thinner, the green is even larger. Um, and then what you described as a zombie organization, yes, which is uh, the way you said, uh, purpose is a farce and now it's all bureaucracy and the purpose is like this fine blue membrane kind of sitting around that center, yes um, and that's the sort of uh place where the organization is not dead but it's just kind of lurching forward and it's just trying to be certain self-perpetualized right? And I think it was that type of organization is what I was referencing and talking about some of what we've You know, seen with organizations that operate out of the downtown east side. Yes, you know, not questioning any of the you know the passion, commitment, and heart that many people bring to their roles. Absolutely, but that this bureaucracy at some point kind of becomes self-perpetuating, and so it is pretty encouraging to hear that there's foundations and organizations out there that can actually contemplate their own demise; yes, that can actually say that that could be a regenerative thing that we need to build into this um, and and how do you communicate that? Like, how do you how do you go in as a consultant and basically be

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Peter Wrinch

[00:52:11] like um yo i want your organization to die and here's when it should die yeah it's not very popular i think like you know this goes back to what we were saying what the joke you made at the beginning about like i'm studying soviet history and buddhism you're like not really strong career paths i'm not sure this purpose thing has that either um because yeah no it's not very popular when you tell someone they think you're organized organization should die i think that you know what i what lights me up or gives me hope about this is that when organizations get to that thin membrane of purpose around a bloated internally dead administration, no one's happy, no one wants to do that, and so, and, and I think that that's where the opportunity lies. And you use this word regenerative. I think that that's the opportunity that we have right now. So, there are a number of organizations, ways of doing things, that need to regenerate; they need to be composted; they need to be recycled, whatever your metaphor is. And why they hold on is actually like so one one major insight I've had here is that there are very rarely um bad actors in these organizations. They all it's a lot of good people doing a lot of good things, and they all want life force, and they all want energy. And they, they, they often all really believe in the purpose, but they're weighed down by what they can see happening, which is talking about purpose but purpose not arriving or not arriving and so I think that's a really good point, and I think that's a really good point, and I think that's a really good point, and I think that's a really good point; or purpose not no outcomes, and so it creates this thing that I've really started to see is this incoherence. You know, I was talking to um an organization recently, or a couple months ago, and and I said to the person, 'I said how would you feel about being the person who composts this organization Like, like, how's that going to feel for you? Like not necessarily about impact or anything, but just can you be that person? And I think that's a really good point. They were asking me my advice, and can I help, and all these things. And, and, there's something liberating about that for that person, I mean it's terrifying. And I've been, I've had many sleepless nights about being the person who has to compost an organization. And I've had friends go through It and I've seen things, um, happen. It's devastating, you know. It's devastating. But I think that we're at a point now with a lot of sort of organizations that were formed in different times with different realities that are asking these questions or should be. Um, I was talking to someone else a few months ago and they said, um, they were talking about their organization and they were saying, um, we've basically just become an arm of government. And I was like, 'Oh my god there's something you you basically couldn't say anything worse, you know? If you're trying to be an advocacy organization. I mean, you know, I'm a big fan of government. mostly um but if you're trying to be an advocacy organization and and you have the tone of of government um there's probably a lot of purpose work that needs to be done there or or composting and that's okay it's just that how do you transition this whole community of practice into something else which i think is is the fear that eds are walking around with um that not a lot of people talk about or they talk about um and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and talk about in ed peer groups but not publicly that sounds to me like i haven't done the research around it necessarily but um it's it just

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:56:08] Seems like it's so necessary and is likely the largest gap in a lot of these impact spaces, um, you know there's that Steve Jobs quote where he says that, um, death is nature's best invention, totally, and we're all going to die, absolutely right, and is necessary, we are, and we wouldn't evolve without that, yeah. But we do start companies, organizations, and we just don't even perceive their end, yeah, for some reason, yeah, and maybe it's a discomfort with our own mortality, I don't know, but the mortality of an organization does need to be addressed, absolutely. Um, so why do you hate Mick Jagger?

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Peter Wrinch

[00:56:42] Uh, so, let me just say one thing before I get on To Mick Jagger again, um, when I was at Hollyhock, um, we used so much of Hollyhock on 48 acres of beautiful, um, second-growth forest on Cortez, and we're going to be doing a lot of research on that and we're going to be doing a lot of research on that and we're going to be doing a lot of research on this island, beautiful island, um, up the island, up Vancouver Island, and um, we would well, I, I spent a lot of time walking in the forest and I would use it as a metaphor; it is a very popular metaphor to use at Hollyhock, um, and one of the things that I came to realize, you know, I think you know, I was born in a suburb, I grew up in cities, but um, you know over the last 10 years Spent a lot of time in the forest, and I think that I often thought, um, forests were places of life, like, they were alive, you know, and certainly they are. But they're also places of death. And I think that when you, when you're in a forest, and you look around, you know, again going back to like Watkins and knowing where to look, you see all the cycles, the new, you know, the beautiful cedar trees here on the west coast that have their their babies beside them. But you also see the dead cedars, those ones are growing on top of the nurse logs. And I think that, to your point, exactly like we create these organizations that were created in conditions And we assume that they will just go on forever, but they shouldn't, like I fully believe they shouldn't. Well, especially if you're an impact organization exactly because you would hope that you've changed those conditions, exactly you know there's that like famous idea of in Marxism, that you know, you eventually um, you know the party eventually becomes irrelevant because you know we're a socialist society, you know, you know never worked out um, but um, you know if you're driving if if your only outcome, the only outcome that you're looking for is um, shareholder profits then you should maybe continue on indefinitely, but if you actually exactly want to change the conditions by which you were started to change then maybe the the the better way of looking at social impact organizations as it is as campaigns or that you're looking at bitgo is to be really selfish um and to think about what makes you like what makes you happy when you can just forget about everyone and start thinking about how exhausted i am but i i agree it makes you reply to me it it i feel like people don't always appreciate um when you're talking about social media more than you ever do when people get everything you know the media you not everyone understands the social Stops often coming at you like the little tricks, that they use or never preferred, that’s what um it's not what do the people call it, what do they do their power to get away with it, it's not what it's about, what mostly As Mick Jagger continued to dance around on stage, I started and, you know, I've been to a Stones concert. I think I went to the Voodoo Lounge tour in the 90s, BC Place. But the more I sort of watch the Rolling Stones, the more like cringe I feel. And this is all to say that there's something wonderful about the idea that they are still doing that. But how dangerous are you as an 80 year old rock star? Exactly. Like, there's a lot of danger. There's a lot of danger. There's a lot of like clearly it is a money making machine. Like, there's there's not a lot of purpose. I'm not saying that there's none and there's occasionally good songs. But that is, to me, the archetype of something that started with creative passion. I mean, these guys, young men, young white men coming out of London wanted to, you know, really into R&B music and really wanted to bring that. To, you know, the white world; they clearly had a lot of passion and creative energy. And you can really see that in there, the late 60s, early 70s. And then it just all turns to excess, in my opinion. And so, you know, maybe it's it's just a really easy target. I, you know, I still I you know, one thing in writing that piece, I really enjoyed actually learning a lot more about the Rolling Stones and listening to their music. But so I don't hate Mick Jagger, you know, I don't want any haters. But. But. But I it's definitely a bit embarrassing for me, for everyone involved, in my opinion.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[01:01:03] Well, I just I love the metaphor because, you know, for the era that they began in, like their sort of point of genesis, they would have been that creative, dangerous energy and a force for change. Absolutely. But for a period. Exactly. And after that, they became a machine. Yeah. And now they're very much a corporate entity. Right. Totally. How much change are you creating? You're not dangerous at all. In fact, you're. You're quite innocuous. Right. Exactly. But you've got a great following and you've figured out how to basically become self-perpetuating. Right. Exactly. So the Rolling Stones and their and their moment of change was probably for a couple of years. That's right. 60s, 70s. That's right. And since then, they've been this this corporate mechanism.

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Peter Wrinch

[01:01:44] That's right. And somehow, you know, through circumstance and personalities and possibly Yoko Ono, the the Beatles ended in 1970. Of course, John Lennon was assassinated in 1980. And so they can never be again. And in a way that allows them to live in this space of perpetual creativity, you know, White Album, Abbey Road, let it be the end of the 60s and 70s. And yet the Stones are able to continue, even though they had deaths and they had, you know, tragedies. But exactly. They've just become Rolling Stones, Inc. You know, and and I think that this is the challenge with organizations as well is because I've been there. You know, both in sales when I worked at a tech company and in fundraising, everyone loves getting the million dollar donation. Everyone loves getting the $10 million donation. But what's the cost? What's the cost to your purpose? And how do you when you start enrolling people, when people are enthusiastic about the solution or the the thing that you have, how do you remain grounded in purpose? And and to me, this, this idea that's coming through really strongly right now in all these conversations I'm having is it has to be an embodied living purpose.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[01:03:06] You know, I'd be interested to find out how many artists, creatives, musicians. Cite the Beatles as being an early influence versus the Rolling Stones. Yeah, totally. Because in death is quite interesting, right? Because when that thing has made its impact, it's inspired you and it's left. Perhaps it creates a lot more room. For you to actually imbibe that influence and carry it forward in some wonderful way. Yeah. Whereas I wonder how many musicians or artists are out there right now that would actually cite the Rolling Stones as an influence. I'm not sure, but I'm making a bet here.

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Peter Wrinch

[01:03:40] They're there. Exactly. They're there. And and and so if you say the Rolling Stones, you know, what I've heard people say over the years is I've been engaged in conversations about music is early stones. They often say early stones, you know, early stone epics and eras. Yeah, exactly. Early stones. They're not talking. About Voodoo Lounge. They're not talking about a bigger bang or whatever terrible albums they made in the 90s. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[01:04:05] Well, Peter, thanks for coming to High Agency. This is a great great chat and really appreciate it, man. Yeah. Thanks so much Moe. This was so fun and I love the work you're doing here. All right. Thanks man. Thank you. Well, hopefully we've given you a lot to think about that was High Agency like and subscribe and we will see you next time.

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