How to Be More Pirate | Sam Conniff Allende | RSA Replay

good afternoon everyone my name is Rowan Conway I'm director of innovation and development here at the RSA and I'm delighted to welcome you to today's RSA Thursday event before we can begin can I ask you to turn your Mobile's on to silent and today's hashtag is if you're going to be operating on Twitter RSA pirate which is probably the best one we've ever had but do giant join the lively discussion want discussion on Twitter I'm absolutely delighted to welcome today's speakers Conniff Allen Dame Sam is the founder and CEO of Liberty Liberty and yours gonna say that wrong Liberty Liberty and a multi-award-winning youth marketing agency which he has now moved on from and is now I think I'm going to call you the Godfather of rebellion you know actually inspiring people around the world to become more pirates before this he was work he's worked extensively with Google Unilever PlayStation Red Bull and Dyson and runs his unique be more pirate workshops and talks at these industry-leading companies he's joining us today to explain how we can harness the innovative spirit of the Golden Age pirates and create genuine personal and social good as a result at the moment I'm reading Goodnight stories for rebel girls and I am quite taken with grace O'Malley so I'm going to be channeling grace O'Malley when we have our conversation later but please give me a big join me in a big welcome to Sam Conniff allende thank you very much indeed grace O'Malley is indeed a good pirate but I'm often asking my favorite pirate is and it's a power cord and Bonnie not a very well-known pirate but easily one of the most fearsome and fantastic and infamous of all pirates but I'm here to talk about you you and how you can become more challenging bold courageous creative innovative fair equal diverse and more pirate words that aren't usually associated with piracy but that's because the Troublesome truth of piracy has been glossed over by the establishment that they threatened but it is time my friends to bring the truth of pirates back that's what I'd like to do in the next twenty minutes or so hello how are you thank you very much for coming I was quite nervous I've sat in those exact seats several times and wonder why anybody would come to speak to me so I have a dissected to the book that it took me all of last year to write that I've poured my heart and my soul in that is about to become my new career although I don't really know where that leads the godfather of rebellion is the best line I've ever had and I shall print up some business cards to say exactly that shortly the point of the book is this it's to get straight to the real challenge how many of us are caught up in the objectives and targets that we face that has to do with this quarter or indeed this project and they don't always ladder up to the scale of the real problem because the scale of the real problem is this you know this up here this particular pole Abair of course who who may or may not be a who knows and but the scale of the true challenge that we face you know how on earth is the the potential threat of in thermonuclear war back you know we didn't even come close to dealing with six million people migrated across the continent of Europe we're expecting 30 million to migrate across Europe just through the environmental crisis that we face and we have no idea where we're going from a political point of view these are the real challenges of our day this is the interesting times in which we live and if what we're doing is not in some way laddering up to a solution that might address that then what are we doing are we doing the right things or are we continuing to exacerbate the situation or accelerate the challenge that we face this is the question I think we must ask of ourselves these are the times were in and when the only certainty that we can point to that only certainty is ongoing uncertainty what is the skill set that's required to deal with that what is the discipline that helps us through totally uncertain times I think the only great mistake we could make is to continue to believe the lie that the only way of doing things is the way that they are already being done my whole career has been spent working around young people I think it is a lie we pitch weight to them all the time why are things done this way because that's the way they are I think that's one of the biggest lies we need to smash we need to smash it because nobody is coming to save us no one no one has a grand master plan I don't know how your experience has been but I look around and I do not see solace or leadership or strategy I see a vacuum of strategy I see a vacuum of imagination I see a crisis of imagination at a leadership level and nearly every single one of the institutions that is supposed to have our back I don't see rules that were made with my best interests at heart and I do not see statues made to people who followed the rules I think we need a really grown-up conversation about breaking the rules because the sense of resistance isn't enough now don't get me wrong I bloody love a Donald Trump meme as much as the next person and if you've got a good one send it to me and I'll share it with everyone I know but it's not good enough it's not going to get it out of the situation that we're in resistance is not enough I'm advocating a stronger word a much stronger word a rebellion is what we need and I know rebellion is a potent word and it's a powerful word and it's one I use with a great sense of responsibility but I do mean a kind of sexy cool Star Wars rebellion by the way I think there is a good way of approaching rebellion I think there is a practical way of breaking some rules I think there was a professional way of breaking some rules but who do we look to who are the rule breakers who are the modern mutineers that get it right who are the radical innovators who rewrite the rules and why again and again are we given uber as the example as the benchmark as the business model of everything the Huber ization of everything I'll be goddamned if I'm gonna give over as the benchmarks are yet another young entrepreneur with a world changing or world saving idea we have this short-term mindset that is too addicted to the notion of Silicon Valley but I see more horseshit left behind the unicorns that come cantering out of Silicon Valley than I do chances for positivity and optimism I think we need to widen our horizons and look further to history than the short-term view we too often have and if we do look to history suddenly I think we find a set of role models who are appropriate to the hour we find the pirates very glad to hear someone love iiiiii invites as much cynicism as we can possibly have because yes I am talking about pirates like real pirates and I know who you think of when I say pirates of course you do and so you should I'm probably most of us thinking about the kind of sexy end of pirates the Johnny Depp end of pirates the one that we've all grown up with you know three of the top 20 best-selling films of all time so of course that's influenced our view but it is not the whole picture not by a long chalk so let me introduce you very quickly to some of my heroes if the great the Golden Age pirates over here we have black Sam Bellamy at 28 he was the first billionaire pirates he was known more often as the Prince of poets because he was a radical enthusiast for equality of diversity and fairness and championing his team who were referred to as Robin Hood's men up here we've got Edward Teach a Kay Blackbeard the archetype of global pirate branding the first one to set light to the end of his beard with sulfurous fuses to cast fear into the hearts of his enemies so that he never actually had to kill a soul according to some historians over here we've got black Caesar one of the first pirate black pirate leaders but not but the only one by a long shore pirates were releasing him freeing slaves hundreds of years before the abolition of slavery and over here we have Anne Bonny the aforementioned pirate queen a legend among her time a fearsome pirate leader absolutely with full equality on the deck of a partnership the only place that that kind of level of equality would have been seen in the early 1700s and if you want an idea of how they were seen at the time these people who were feared and revered and and loved and hated and hotly debated they were the front page news around the world they were the sandbags and the Steve Jobs of their time because these were the unicorns of their time this was the only place on earth that you could go and earn billions and have an amazing free lunch in these grand new exciting and interesting places and new rules were being written that's what they were that's how they were seen because at the time they were working class heroes and they sit somewhere between the the Levellers and plus believed in the suffragettes in the paradigm of of workers right through to social revolutionaries I can't I know that sounds like likely so let's just quickly take a look at the facts because when it comes to up which is a euphemism for innovation by the way pirates earned this moniker they earned their rights in Steve Jobs you know infamous quote which which fronts my book amazingly and still haven't gotten in any trouble for that whatsoever although this is beaming to the Internet so maybe now nonetheless there is a purpose for this pirates every single time in economic history and development when there is market failure when audience needs are unmet that's when pirates come onto the horizon because that is their positive function they challenge evolution and innovation to do more to be better and in the conflicts that they bring about with establishment forces they drive it further and faster the original pirates are testimony to this I'll run through these quite quickly global branding we think this was coca-cola in and around the 1880 s actually it was the Pirates of course because the first global brand that went viral that was a meme that delivered better profits was this gonna crossbones dual governance first really thin in the to half system in this country that was then taken to the states then we saw it in the first business banking act actually was seen on a pirate ship the captain on the quartermaster had complete equal responsibilities in power but one was in charge of cultural norms in charge of strategy and they did that for the exact reasons of dual governance to protect the power social insurance we didn't see it until the early 1800s and eventually became an amiable human right of course in 1945 but it existed on a pirate ship had you been wounded on a pirate ship you will recompense through a form of workplace compensation Pieces of Eight were rewarded if you did lose an arm or a leg or indeed an eyepatch universal suffrage the first place on earth where every single person was given an equal vote we think it was Athenian democracy but of course it wasn't Athenian democracy wasn't participative or representative it was only the white blokes who got to vote until of course you get on to a pirate ship where every single person had an equal say equality of pay and transparency around pay oh we can't compete on that one we haven't even got close to it but the Pirates had it they had a completely transparent sheet of how pay was structured on board a boat regardless of your gender or your ethnic background in fact when it comes to ethnic background pirates were diverse by design they knew if they were going to take on the world they had represent the world so they bought built diverse teams that represented the challenges they faced facilitative leadership self-organizing teams same-sex marriage but I got a system called Matty large that even had an inheritance Claud there and if that isn't enough to convince you my friends pirates invented cocktails true say Francis Drake rum some mint some sugar some limes it's a mojito so the need for pirates hopefully is beginning to be a little bit more established you'll believe me this Pitt system of innovation took place in 30 years I mean there's nothing really like it other than the perhaps the turn of the 19th century for all the kind of light bulbs and radium that were around or maybe the beginning of Silicon Valley when there was so much promise this is one of those pronounced moments in human evolution when there is so much innovation and there is something about the times that is so comparable to now a backdrop of international ideological conflict a generation facing massive redundancy through automation and kind of meaninglessness a kind of tyranny of a self-interested establishment that doesn't really have a handle on where to go next you know it sounds spookily familiar right and so the Pirates didn't just Ravel they rewrote they didn't just break free from society they wrote rewrote the rules of society and they didn't just challenge the status quo they changed everything and that's why I think there is something to be drawn for this millennial audience that we we talk so much about yet we don't offer much in terms of leadership to the pirates could perhaps fit that mold and when I look at the mold this is the model I see very clear defining features they challenge the establishment they are creative innovative and disruptive they are fiercely independent they are led by principles but yes of course they have a profit based model and they are highly talented but underappreciated these are the factors that led them to recreate and rewrite the rules of their own and these are factors that hopefully many of us feel familiar with and frustrated by because as I look out through the book I look back to the 21st century to find modern pirates that these Satan framework fits to and that the stage is a pirate changes I've identified in the book of five I start with Malala you know what better role model could we have that the book that you mentioned bro in the the same one that my little girl has scarlet that one of the first most incredible stories is this young rebel her act of rebellion is her acts of strength but I go on to then look at examples of how we've rewritten rules and this is happening all around us them chance the rapper you know the first artist ever to win a Grammy you know the highest music accolade in the world without ever releasing an album never actually had a record contract you know snap goes the business model of the entire music industry is all the young aspiring rappers who want to be the next challenge no longer pursue an avenue that was previously the norm and the rules are once again rewritten the notion of retelling the Pirates had this incredible approach to storytelling all of the evidence that I've seen from pirate economists and historians suggests that pirates weren't the violent Marauders that we think they are they were actually incredibly savvy marketeers and they advocated a less violent approach not a more violent pro today didn't have the resources or the ability to so they told these great fearsome tales created the viral memes of their day which meant that they went out to effect a surrender scenario and in many cases some historians would argue saved more lives than they did challenged does not say of course there weren't some absolute psychos amongst them and I'm not trying to cover off the morality of that but I think because we've become wedded to one side of the picture we've lost the other the organization is so pertinent and relevant now because pirates understood the paradox of scale here we are still drunk on the hangover of the 20-foot twentieth century business model where all businesses were in some way or degree based on exploitation 60% over the conquer their planets biosphere yet totally wedded to the notion of consumerism screwed because all of our businesses fill thing the main indicator of success is one of scale the Pirates were able to be nimble teams on average about 80 crew members yet they could assemble themselves in 2000 strung and sack an entire city no that's necessarily a good thing to do but they could take on the entire British Army and Navy and here we are still unable to break free of these large organizations that hold us back and slow us down and finally this idea of redistributed power because we know deep down that the power makes a golem out of all of us so if we're advocating new power structures and new ways of doing things what happens when have teams and when people do go up in this new generation find themselves in power how do we know they won't end up where our current leaders are the corruption the the the ineptitude and the flaccid leadership that we face well the Pirates built that into their models fundamentally fair distribution of power systems so in much the same way that Chrissie wrestling's in incredible business that has ended fire hose being a form of landfill by turning into luxury goods product in exactly the same way the Pirates had clear rules and guidance amongst their principles they lived and died by the protective and ocean of fairness this was their pirate code as much mentioned in the famous films and even in Treasure Island it's often mistaken as a set of guidelines it was indeed a law a government life or death these are some of the remaining and true historic articles and so you will see these really interesting ideas of Fair Pay how they were written down 300 years ago of holographic structures where everybody worked around a facilitative leader of workplace compensation I mean there it is actually written down true workplace compensation 300 years ago and the remarkable thing throughout this time is that it was never um you know you couldn't you can google pirate code there's no wiki pirate you know you couldn't copy and paste from one ship to another yet somehow the principles were so true so pronounced that across 35 years multiple crews and thousands of pirates the wording remains almost exactly the same pronounced and clear so I think there's a opportunity for something interesting to take place I'm very lucky that in the process of writing this book I went finding pirates all over the world from the townships of South Africa to the streets of Baltimore to the center of Athens areas where young entrepreneurs and young social entrepreneurs are propping up economies and rethinking society I tested this material to make sure that it was authentic and valid and there was something useful in there and by God what I found what I discovered was a pirate code 2.0 because the idea that we need a new system a new a new societal rules actually speaks right back to this day of piracy whilst they created this new framework on board their ships they eventually exported it onto land and not everyone is aware but there was a proto Republic in the middle of the Caribbean in Nassau in the Bahamas for more than a decade where these pirate principles of democracy and equality and fairness actually lived in a quasi utopia where where diversity and equality actually are stories that then span the world at the epicenter of the slave trade at the dawn of capitalism where we're there empires of the old world were stealing the gold of the new world this idea of fairness began to inspire the continent above it and those small flames eventually led to the notion of American independence but that is another story for now we need to worry about is that for a decade or so the Pirates had a fine old time in their in their independent democratic republic which leads me to this idea of a pirate code 2.0 if the backdrop is so similar if this notion of piracy is so similar if this framework of young changemakers and troublemakers is so similar perhaps there is a pirate code 2.0 and I've been looking for ideas that sound as potent as as perhaps 300 years ago a group of young people discussing the notion of fair pay or that there might be female leaders you know when these were ideas were seditious what ideas are out there now that are is big and it's troublesome and as potentially profound as those I've found some quite interesting ones and I've begun to a mass a pirate code 2.0 that hopefully similarily can be shared amongst pirates and there's several in the book means some of the newer ones I've been discovering the it fund there's a huge conversation about young talent how do we keep talent and organizations this one I found at Brompton bicycles to keep their young gendered entrepreneurial talent in the business they have a fund it's for relatively small amounts of money a few thousand pounds but if someone actually got the gumption and the idea and the energy to make their own thing it they say and they give them the money to make it happen that's how you keep your talent the board business plans are dead I found this once being some young social entrepreneurs in Singapore sitting down asking them about their business modeling processes and they says to me business plans grandad ouch they do manifesto jams they gather around a manifesto of such meaningful and pronounced purpose that is strong enough that they can make decisions on the back of it but in a tough day when they haven't seen each other for weeks or months they all know the general direction of travel and then when they do get back together they jam their manifesto to make sure it's up to date and of course they've got responsive measures and metrics they know what success looks like but do they have a business plan that was written really to convince someone else of something that they then routinely ignore no citizens not consumers and very interesting idea emerge from some pirates called the new citizenship project we all see and some of us aware we we see this name consumer about 2,000 times a day allegedly helps brainwashes into this very dangerous place the word itself you know represents the relationship that we have in a world of finite resources what does consumerism mean other than potential suicide their central argument really is that advertising non-circular products should very soon be considered a war crime but what happens if we were to think of ourselves as citizens in that matrix and that makeup in the world that we're living in and the relationships that we might ask for brands the no rule I really really really respect this one this is from a group of young businesses that are now spread across Europe do incredibly well and a single unifying principle across the whole business is thriving profitable successful business is just no there's still one thing that holds them all together and by large it may be incredibly successful and vibrant we don't work with us hospital employee ourselves we weren't sales of ourselves weren't any waste any time in ourselves after that pretty much everything is going to be alright seems to be working and so I'm sharing in this book and online and everywhere I possibly can these ideas these ideas that are beginning to replace the the business model because time and again I've sat in front of amazing young people with brilliant ideas to change the world and largely they get trotted out a hundred and twenty year old blueprint called a business plan and they suggested that they fill it in it is not appropriate for the time it is not appropriate for the future it does not come anywhere close to the talent the potential and the imagination that they represent it is time for a new way it is time for a code within all of this the the thing that still surprises me when I tell this story about pirates is the accountability pirates were one of the most accountable communities that you can come across because these rules were set by them so there they were governed by themselves by their peers and in the workshops that I run the suggestion is you find a rule and I would encourage you all to do this today to think of a rule or when you experience a wolf day that you really really disagree with that you break it fundamentally at work out on the street on your way home a stupid rule a badly made rule a rule that was made in a rush perhaps you know we know how these things happen we've probably made up so numerous rules ourselves a convention a model you disagree with and just break that from the heart and see what happens because probably you'll be fine probably no one's gonna die probably gonna feel a little bit stronger a little bit bolder and then you move into the next stage of piracy and you rewrite the rule you suggest something better and then you tell some more people around you that I've got this better way of doing things and before you know you've got one two three people and that is what I'm calling a mutiny and the workshops they run when someone has broken a rule in an organization suggested something better and they've got some people around them to do it they start to take it seriously and that's the age of responsibility or the the system of accountability that I think is getting us towards perhaps where we need to go not waiting for answers to be handed down that we don't really necessarily even believe in but to start to take some ownership of the problems and challenges we're in this is not an exercise in value setting I do not trust any organization apologies to any of you who work in these places that have to write honesty on the wall in three-foot letters that is the exact embodiment of the kind of see through values that we need to move away from and the ownership of professional rule-breaking that I think we need to step towards and I have taken a great step towards this it would be completely inauthentic of me to spend so much time writing this and advocating it and then not live with myself so in December I left my darling business the Liberty that I've lived and loved and set up and run for 17 years in new hands and I am now finding a rule to break and my suggestion is we find those rules to break we make them better and we do it together so my book came trundling off the press a few weeks ago in fact is about to come tumbling off the press again next week we're in the fourth edition already it's been doing really really well which I'm incredibly humbled by proud of but what's gone on before in addition to that is something I didn't expect and I don't think any author Beks anyone's turn around next stay away quite enjoyed your book it's a real surprise I mean even though I've put my all into it but I've written a book about breaking the bloody rule so of course what was gonna happen if someone started to break the rules and this is the first email I got I've handed in my notice quoting back to me a lion from my book this is now one of more than 50 emails I received I have resigned the responsibility could feel quite immense but actually I've resigned to do the right thing I've resigned to follow my passion I've resigned to begin something new so something's occurred to me too I'm gonna try and find a way to fund my life for the rest of the year so that I can be either Godfather of rebellion so I can breathe some wind into the sales of these rebellions because most people resigning although I think that could potentially mean an awfully good thing it's it's these you talk about pirate rule Ian spirits pitch for the role people who then accelerated their careers with their project pirate presentation it's these I've just seen the article on be a magazine it's the campaign for real bread that to teach people to make their own bread and ditch the mass-produced corporate site available in the shops right I think you have your inspiration for the book as I said it really helped me to think differently about the way that we've approached a fellow's immigration case from building her profile in the media to finding our crew who would support her case and as a result we've received coverage in two national newspapers already as a full result of this story actually oppelo this young lady who'd been illegally detained has now been released the level of responsibility of opportunity have been the power of breaking some rules and standing up to conventions is actually huge and it's happening books only been out three weeks numbering more than a hundred rebellions those 8000 of them out already has another 3,000 going to print it's quite big for book numbers what's the rebellion rate what's the return on rebellion that I could be trying to aim for that's my new goal the return on rebellion of this book so I am advocating as incredibly young woman who helped this young lady to get free to any else who I can find to help me break some rules and I'm going to break them too I tried to get the book into into water stones you know when you're a new book it turns out the water stones only stop one book until they can test how that works I don't know how you can test when you've only sold one book it's not a very good number to test on so I popped in there to have a little look at what it might look like you know just displayed some of my books you know where I thought they should be on top of Jordan Peterson perhaps and then I got a bit involved I thought perhaps they'd look it in the window turns out they look really good in the window but then when I went back to moving around a little bit from the window it looked a little bit like I was shoplifting so I was rugby tackled on Piccadilly having left the display with my own books I took it at some stage further a new book from a new orthodontist it likely I've got a brilliant Tina penguin who give me incredible resource but still not money money for real advertising this is the front office this is the front of penguin Random House in Vauxhall Bridge Road and numerous lanes of traffic this great big windows the size of a Routemaster bus I'd back into my old club promoting days and I measured it up that's huge I found out how much it would cost to fly post it in bright fluorescent pink cost about 1,700 pounds I was really lucky to be invited to meet Tom Weldon the chief exec at penguin he's an incredible you know innovative leader I was asking my opinion as an entrepreneur coming at author what does I think I told him on my views this is great would you come into a talk so do you have loved to use it I said but I have to charge you a fee so don't well okay maybe how much I said 743 pounds he said what are you going to do with that I can't tell you so we turned up with our high-vis vest and the clipboard with a fake letter from Tom and some have white helmets and I got away with this enormous hardy banner on the front of the offices of penguin Random House and luckily they saw the funny side of it because throughout that day I got picked up and media eventually Richard Branson tweeted it we were a best-seller before the end of a and the top hundreds which thing was bigger than anyone expected and knocking numerous heroes of mine from simon Sinek and others out of the charts and hit number one so you know the power of rule breaking the risk of rule breaking the opportunity of rule banking became completely clear but I am willing to put my neck on the line and I am willing to back others I'm really interested in the notion of rule breaking I genuinely mean this we have to try something else the solutions aren't there when I say no one is coming to save us I don't mean to be pessimistic I am NOT I am deeply optimistic this book is drawn from the story of thousands of young entrepreneurs that I've seen but they're like pirates to me because they exist on the edges they're not necessarily being listened to but in the dark in the freedom of the of the liberating shadows that they are in new ideas are forming and the world were in I think that's a currency that we cannot afford to ignored so it is time for all of us to be a little bit more pirate Oh sir see my children watch this on youtube and I'm gonna be like mum use of the f-word so I'm going to say yes but that's because I was being more pirates along the way so thank you breaking all that already and that was that was a right rollicking run-through of the history of pirates excellent I do have an eye patch as well but I just can't see I might put it on justice just to add there here we go say being more pirate there you go so [Laughter] but I actually can't really see and you did say we needed to have a grown-up conversation about how to rebel and a professional way to break the rules so I'm technically breaking all them rules of what to do when your chair yes yes I'm gonna stick with it for a short while and then when I go to the audience I'm definitely taking it off I'm gonna ask you a couple of questions first so you talked about scaling and the nimbleness of this new generation and i want to understand this kind of mutiny I'm gonna take it off too so I can actually read my question the mutiny that you're trying to get to it has a lot of a start up start up feel about it and and I think you've definitely been working with a lot of startups and and you also talked about never getting bigger than you are by collaborating you know pirates make networks they don't scale in this kind of unicorn type style but I'm interested to understand you know what does this tell us about what business growth should look like if you had a conception of what the alternative is that what I do like about your your growth your your rebellion if you like that you're trying to instill is not just break the rules but make a new one yeah so when you're making a new one and you talked about profit still has to sit in there what do you see it looking like so I am NOT anti capitalist or anti business in any shape of the argument but I think that we it's bust this business model that we've had for over a hundred years has always been based to a degree on exploitation and the growth only comes through some degree of building it on somebody else and and that was fighting a globalization did many good things it got us through the latter part of the 20th century with nanotechnology the internet I mean you know the Spice Girls all manner of amazing things were born of this business model but it's we're out of resources simply put there was 60 percent over the current biosphere of the world so to be advertising products and that they're made in a non-circular fashion that people don't really need is akin to a war crime I think you know your your people they're the the the results are life threatening growth for growth's sake in medical terms is cancer so yet we still have these businesses that are just growing they're just putting numbers on because there's some shareholders at some point through the process and we haven't understood that the profit the small margin of profit that comes off all of the costs that are actually facing a real world in real crisis and we're so wedded to that model is so hard to break free from in the second you start talking about D growth which is you know it's a very good strong case for it of subsistence existing businesses of sustainable models it begins to feel very anti-capitalist and radical I think that conversation just needs to mature really does then the notion of business and the shape of business something very interesting is also happening behind the scenes so if we look at a really long term trend not just my ideals of pirates but 1965 the average life cycle of a business was 75 years that's how long your average business lasted 75 years in 2015 the average life cycle of a business had dropped significantly to 15 years so that's a nearly hundred year trend so it's a pretty reliable data set over the same period of time the volume of businesses in the UK had gone from a couple of hundred thousand to over five million so what you're gonna get push that forward another ten years so to 2025 it's that same decline in business average business life expectancy continues you're talking about sub 10 years maybe a seven or eight year which link of a business there's a very short amount of time but you're also talking about much more you might hit 9 million so the idea that you'd have one job for one organization at once it becomes increasingly unlikely that you'll have multiple feet in lots of different projects and they're overlapping and shifting and merging between one another becomes far more realistic so to be wedded to and aware of how to operate in a modular networked agile system it feels really important and we don't have many precedents for it all we have is lots of lots of large corporates having a narrative around how do we be more entrepreneurial how do we be more agile but 300 years before those things were were buzzwords there is a system that's got a proven track so pausing on those large corporates for a second I was quite taken with if you just your description of the kind of pirate model in NASA which must be very nice where they can approach is hyped democracy and then it took off elsewhere I see that kind of modern-day equivalent happening a lot in terms of labs inside large organizations like the Eagle labs at Barclays and Unilever has a lot of the foundry at Unilever I mean to a certain extent you're almost seeing that these organizations are all Rik's pleating yep startup culture but in your book you talk about things like you know how pirate you know everything from pirate radio to Napster created the disruption to the status quo you're created the challenge of business we see that a lot now and lots of things but then ultimately becomes iTunes and you know is the rebel always destined to be co-opted by the establishment and how do you actually change the establishment if that's the case yep so I think that the pirate change model is effectively in the most simple terms is you kick as hard as you can at the edges and the waves you create end up influencing the center that seems to be the notion so it's a form of kind of cultural influence so these this this Democratic Republic was legendary I mean travelled the world you can you can read reports by the by the color that the Lords of trade and they're clearly terrified of this place where you can get paid fairly and there's a sense of democracy and camaraderie and and the free-flowing rum I mean that's how they describe it and it's in the Caribbean I mean it just sounds great right and if your equivalent at the time back here you know life was brutal you know public execution was there was a kind of public entertainment you know if you were in the Navy chances are you didn't intend to be there with chance are you weren't gonna get paid it was a very very tough circumstances so the idea of fairness and equality did become incendiary ideas that took off and gradually over time there's in the idea that became so popular and powerful they had to become absorbed and taken up if them if the establishment was going to counter them and that's the case each and every time so pirate radio yes the the time we had two radio stations in the UK and that had been the case we had a complete monopoly by the BBC and two stations didn't serve the needs of the audience and market failure in mid 1960s then the musical explosion wasn't being served they they sailed the boats just outside of the legal order of the UK and began to broadcast within two years they had a third of the country listening to them and they were making revenue so their BBC had to open the doors and they created Radio 1 radio 2 so huge cultural influence and change and then in the pirate radio movement continues to to challenge and champion and thank good they thank goodness they do because it brings an awful amount of creativity into the space right through to iTunes the other one you mentioned when Steve Jobs was pulled into the room by the assembled music industry in absolute fear of Napster who are these pirates taking all of our money and you know the stealing from the artists what they were giving was a digital audience access to the music that they wanted mark Hickman teens were failing dramatically Jobs famously tells them the solution is iTunes they can't get their heads around it they do a deal which allows him to have full ownership and a plan that they should try to sell a 1 million units within the first six months and I think they sell six million in the first week and then iTunes owns it of course Apple is no longer a pirate organization absolutely Knights it's completely the Heartland at the institution in the establishment no matter what adverse to tell you but now on the edges they're the new breed of pirates and they were once again push it further forward and that is the the role that we need to celebrate and understand that constructive conflicts that pushes innovation that asks questions that encourages - you know always challenged assumptions that's how it pushes it always forward there's something there as well though about how maybe the the establishment can potentially innovate as well or can actually embrace the concept of being an a force for innovation and change I think in many instances we've seen resistance to change or upholding a status quo so as to quell the fear of the unknown but as you say uncertainty is the new certainty we live in in kind of polarized times we've just released a podcast on that called polarized which I think goes really deeply into the place we are now so this you know you referred to is that the citizen shift I think that we're where can we see democratic structures learning from this kind of I think you described earlier to me as a millennial Mutiny what what kind of participative democracies you know could we start seeing if we start thinking a bit more pirate I mean I think so I see them everywhere now now I've opened my mind than I think part I think part of that not to get too self help about it but the the first rebellion the most important rebellion is liberation from our own limitations you know the self-imposed limitations and understanding what it is we do that gets in the way and then just stepping outside and that's why I really do advocate a healthy degree of rule breaking - absolutely every single one of you today you know as much as you should eat an apple before the end of day or your five or get some exercise and we'll get off the bus that's definitely all those useful things that you do building your rule breaking muscle because the day is surely upon us when breaking the rules will become the right thing to do now we live in the historic times we totally know it and we know that in history those who broke the rules become our legends and our role models and our heroes and those who were just following orders where we judge them very dimly I think the time is upon us when those kind of questions will be asked of us or will be asking them of ourselves should we be following the rules when they're no longer fit for purpose and people are at risk so yes I look out now and I say I see examples of this again and again I think the the women's March at the beginning of last year is a fine example you know it's begun in response to a political set of circumstances it was been in response to the the the the nation nature of some of the comments made and before you know it a few small hubs of social media outrage became a very well organized and then the largest mobilized civil demonstration in history yeah absolutely totally outside of convention in response to a political reality I see it's in Thailand you take this all the way through the the sunflower Revolution in Thailand recent relatively recent democracy about twenty years you know with the grand history of being very undemocratic a group of young Millennials led by an incredible woman called Audrey Tang decided that they should enter into a system at participative budget setting not just top-down budget setting so they fought the main government website which means they made a URL that looked a lot like the government website so the traffic went to a place we said hey this is the budget that we're currently setting where do you think it should be sent and the largest-ever to that time exercising participatory budget setting took place she's now the digital Minister for the country and they are now rated number one in terms of transparency around the world but calendar are playing with it Australia primacron got to power you know he's made his entire manifesto through three hundred and fifty thousand participate read data points so there's a lot of examples of it being incredibly successful and the question is more so in my mind why aren't we updating our other systems you know there's so many parts of our life where we used to and we expect a level of technology and a level of responsiveness yet it fails us in other areas it fails us in youth work it fails us in education it fails us in in politics if the level of systemic failure that we see for example in education you know running at such an out of kilter pace with the rest of Technology and economic advancement where else would you accept where else would you tolerate that you wouldn't tolerate if your iPhone only ever ran at 50 percent of the pace of the rest of the world would be an outrage yet it takes place in other areas of our lives and it's those areas of mutiny that's what I'm deeply suggesting that we need to start getting construct angry about that the practical and professional sense of rebellion that requires action and I'd take it right the way through to the big organizations because yes absolutely use a lot of my inspiration comes from startup culture that I've been in but like I said I took this on the on the road to develop it to make sure it was as useful as it could be and probably the biggest pushback i got from audiences was great but i'm not a pirate i work in a large organization i want some of these principles but i don't want to lose my job so those ideas is really some of the most exciting ones that i've seen you know incredible young wannabe pirates really deeply frustrated with corporate culture who want to make a difference who then begin the mutiny within not just one organization but multiple organizations and i've seen it from you know challenging young creatives who wanted to challenge a big brief they knew that was coming down from one of the world's largest energy companies together they spanned some of the largest media companies in london collectively their opportunity to reject a brief to demonstrate this mid-tier town doesn't want to work on that kind of project when it moves together they can't shoot us alright is incredibly strong but i've seen it go right through to meeting culture and one mutiny group that we ran just yes about the way the meetings were run the young people get spoken over that it's always blokes pontificating that there's no it's just a waste of time so they wrote their new meeting manifesto and agreed that if the meeting wasn't well-run they would stand up and walk out you know this threat was amazing but enough of them willing to do it what the effect of that is that meetings start to be well run so i don't mind where the level of rebellion is and like i said i advocate a daily bit of a daily dose of rule breaking because not everybody is gonna be the story of aleppo some of them is just gonna change the way my organization works build your pirate muscle but pirate for good i think is what we need to keep going it's the rewriting of the rules that's exactly the moment when this really began to make sense to me because there are pirates throughout history and we're not talking here about Somali pirates or Chinese pirates or a number of different parts we're talking about the Golden Age of pirates where the Millennials of the 18th century frustrated by a broken system rewrote the rules of society it's that act of rewriting them but I think we've got much to learn from ok can I come to the audience load in front first and then key put your hands up and I'll come to you my name is Geetha and I very much enjoyed your you talk just that you know it's like the crazy ones the Steve Jobs dad yeah yeah it's just sounded like that so a couple of things we don't buy from Amazon ever so slightly disappoint to see that you would delight of hitting number one on Amazon because that's kind of a rule so I'd like to ask you I've got a book with me the of written yeah and I'd like to swap it with the book of yours and not pay for the book until I decide what u s-- worth totally now with that totally and anyone else he's going yeah I've got a bag of penguin are gonna stop loving you quite so much so the thing that I was told that I couldn't do was there's an author you're out to buy your books at a certain price half price why not tell you the truth but if I sell any books they don't count to book sales so for us as author write you out you make such a small money on you make about ten percent of the book sales so it sells ten pounds I might get less than a quid and then it usually Amazon said it for much less so you get much less so there's no chance of being able to fund the rebellions that I want to do by doing that so for me actually the bestseller is really important for another reason because it then it gives me more chances for more platforms to then hopefully be able to cross subsidize that if I can get to a place where I can actually make a rebellion fund you know this is where my my thinking is that so it's important to play the game and the Pirates certainly played the game you know they challenged the Navy they've stole from the Navy they did what they can and the stuff that the games that I'm having hopefully with with waterstones and Amazon are with some degree of respect but hopefully you know challenging and and provocation as well and I think I was mainly told I can do as it was become a bookseller so I've worked very hard to to make part of my website a bookseller so I've put the best books that helped inspire me to write be more pirate and I'm selling them alongside my book which now means legally I can be entitled as a bookseller so the books that I do sell can count towards overall sales units so if you go to be more pirate or calm you have an option it says buy here for Amazon if convenience and cardboard is important to you or if you prefer people who pay your taxes you can buy directly from me there you go so there's some in there there was a lady in the back cover and then we'll go to this side for the you - hi I wanted to ask if you could talk a bit about how you go from the initial mutiny the awareness-raising campaign will hit on me - for the sake of argument and to coming up with solutions because you've obviously discovered a whole load of people who are talking about certainly finding solutions to things so how does it come from you know a big movement that everyone thinks is catchy - something that translates into into something real that changes something it's a very good practical question and I think the the answer was momentum so it's bending some rules firstly why are we doing it like this why are we doing like this then you push and you push and you push them then you realize you just doing lies cuz somebody thought it was a good idea some why I go you know we've most of us have all been in organisations you all had that feeling right when you meet the people in charge like really and then you you know you get to another organisation then you meet the next step you know what and then one day you might meet like someone in government you get to the top of those organisations says like what you know fire found that you know the few times it was inviting so I'm continuing for the the secret cupboard of ninjas who really know what they're doing and actually what you discover is most of the rules that we follow were worked out by some blokes you know on a deadline without some completely thinking it through and any before you know that I got signed off rarely has the rules that we've all I've been really deeply thought through for all of our collective benefit that's not discredit like though the wonders of the civil service our infrastructure in other areas but by god I think quite a lot of the stuff that we put up with isn't necessarily fifth purpose and hasn't fully been thought through and deserves a bit of a challenge so with that notion in mind the beta testing stages you know how could we do this better how could this better suit me how this map might this suit someone else just to let that become a natural question you know just constantly challenging the first assumptions why why is it like this and how could it be done differently that I think is just a healthy first state and it might be that you ask all the questions and actually the way it is make sense but in that bita space at the edges when you start kicking things around when you when you play with them you know the reason why so many organizations have made laps is to try and affect that space with a bit of imagination and creativity the thing that makes the difference is momentum so you need so you need to literally raise the flag and see who wants to follow this idea you know that meeting example early on that would have completely died if it didn't connect with the feeling that everyone else had one that consistently comes up when I run it is about the the time at which we will start work you know a generation totally is ridiculous that we were should turn up at a certain hour and be governed by different hours when our working day is elongated through digital technology this is crazy and particular you've come from University where you're treated like a grown-up you're given a goal that you have to achieve and it's up to you how you get there and suddenly you know the pressures on to sit in this desk for a certain amount of time because it's crazy and what seems to happen when you push back on these rules is they yield the ones that weren't weren't good all right for you disappear you replace them with something else and then it's about that small group that follow you but if they don't you keep developing you keep pushing at it one of ones I talk about in the book that's one of my favorite all-time rule breaking notions is music loving couple frustrated with Simon Cowell's dominance of the charts every single year realizing that Simon Cowell is once again again beat me number one they thought gosh I've had enough of this and so they decided that the most anti Simon Cowell record they could find and they just started a Facebook campaign to against rage against the machines you I won't do what you tell me to Christmas number one because it really made them laugh but they tested it they found the safe spaces tested in community forums tested and the right music sites to go and test it in and you know people began to follow that rebellion it could have stopped there and then it could have just made them laugh one evening but they built and they built and they bet and I think that that is the notion of good ideas I think that imagination can pounds in exactly the same way that money does so you take that notion that you'd be tested you put it into various areas and before you know it you've beaten Simon Cowell off the Christmas number one with a song with a great big f-bomb in the middle of it which is exactly what they did in the second I really enjoyed your talk including the bad language use several times use of the phrase young entrepreneurs and you talked about Millennials a lot yes um I'd love to be a young foreigner but missed my chance I'm afraid uh um I do get the impression that your book is aimed mainly at young people yeah just fine that's where the change is gonna come from definitely but there's a lot of old farts like me who you know would love to be able to contribute to this um how do we build some sort of maybe cross generational idea people retired careers they've got lots of ideas lots of energy I don't feel that I'm being addressed by your book in a sense I'm not part of that audience was that your intention in writing a book or what's your name please sir my name is Clive hello Clive is a really really good question a really important question I'm grateful for it my book is principally aimed at that generation yes that's why it has the cover it does it's why the people are paying when back to me to not be hardback first to make it like $59.99 notes it's very you know I work with a platform so that it's available for free you know a synopsis version of it in one week after launch that's really really important to me this is generation the view this that not a call book buying audience the notion that radical ideas held in books a is the fundamental reasons upon which penguin was built but it's so important it's so important now and I don't think that conversation is having it happening at that level as much as it should do I think they're routinely patronized I think it's a generation that's been missed sold its own future and it doesn't have access to opportunities that previous one did and I think that needs balancing out so that's why I'm staunch Lee in defense and in service to that generation however there is a second audience to my book and it's really important is you Clive absolutely and me too I'm 42 now so I'm definitely not young and I think we do have a role to play it is totally intergenerational but we have to accept there is something different every generation wants to rebel against the last and every generation of pirates becomes you know the norm of the next but something has shifted and I've worked day in day out with young people I'm very lucky to have done so and I joked for many years that when I was 40 I'd be too old to run Liberty because that's cuz I was young and I thought he felt like it would never happen and then it turned 40 and it turned out wasn't a joke but the last three years of my time that liveth he's something profoundly different was was was clear about this generation of young people and it wasn't just the natural rights of passage to rebell it was the it was the opportunity in the sensibility of potential and I think my view is that this is Maslow level so you know this notion of Maslow that over time we all get to a certain point when we can self articulate that the simplified version is it's not so we've got the food and shelter that we can go and get jobs and life that then eventually we've made some money then we give back I perceive a generation who is not waiting to give back they're not going to take in the first place they are not going to accept the kind of business models that we grow up and fought our way through so then get the top so then they can be benevolent back to a community they were refused to build things in that way and I've worked with young people in rural areas and urban areas educated and completely onlya fringes and this sense of commitment a dedication to a more positive philosophy of being of benefit and service to their community whether that's their street or the world their sense of ambition and scope and and understanding and awareness of the changes required is frankly phenomenal and causes me deep optimism and and every single time I try and test it I'm proven right find I mean let's do our the depending something's in the room okay so not too many of them so is there a twenty something in the room who doesn't have some kind of side hustle on the go outside of their main day-to-day occupation no they don't they don't exist thank you very much it's a live test now you won't find them so there is something going on and I think it's to do with the you know we evolved as humans based on our circumstances that's why we you know we've still got nipples and eyebrows and the rest of it this is a generation who've evolved with the level of information at their fingertips that's a superpower yeah so they're there their view on the world is affected by it and this has never happened before and I think it's it's so potentially power and so dangerous to be wasted and so I think the message to our generation is to learn to gracefully lean out you know this is a moment to use the emotional intelligence and the leadership and all the knowledge and experience that you only get through the battle scars that you and I have got you know the the the instincts but to demonstrate the the respects to a generation who is more technologically advanced than us whose whose view isn't governed by left-right politics is governed by international versus national and mindset you know it's an evolving generation and I think it deserves a shot and I don't think we deserve having to wait another generation of you know latent 20th century thinking until things get back and bottom line could they do a worse job so we have one more question I think I've given someone the microphone and I'm really sorry but we're running over so that's gonna have to be our last question and Rama yeah I'm a fellow of the RSA and I've working innovation just deserve the Maverick thinking it's not a new concept I was tortured at university in the 1990s by Tom Peters and things the problem I would like to talk about at the differentiation in terms of this maverick thinking and breaking rules because breaking rules led to things like Enron it led to things like uber it did lead to things like air B&B and there's some real issues there because the people in those organizations call themselves Mavericks they think they're breaking rules to pay tax offshore so I just want to see how you're differentiate between positive pyrrha seas versus people just breaking the rules for and they will call themselves Mavericks over to you last question this is great questions thank you very much I'm sorry it takes me so long to have enough time and so I've got a real problem with some of those actually I think that's you know Airbnb and uber and you know the ideas that you mentioned you know the promise there was what we call it the sharing economy now what bollocks was that you know it was just innovation in further exploitation it's the same business model but the different people to exploit exploits but new technology that will allow me to exploit more people you know more intelligent sophisticated ways the promise was really short-lived google have just dropped their don't be evil line haven't they the technology will save us is such a misleading ideal I saw all of those examples I think we need to really watch watch out for firstly and that though we default the Silicon Valley as the the benchmark of innovation and creativity is dainties dangerous frankly and and like I said as much as there are good unicorns so my definition of pirates what's really caught my eye about this and I mean this very specific Golden Age of piracy is they're not just rule breaking they're rewriting them so the stratified system of the Navy where they were unlikely to be paid unlikely to be bullied they create a system where everybody had a vote over the captain's continuance II so if the captain if there's any chance of power corrupting the captain everybody could vote now now imagine that imagine the accountability I don't who can vote their boss out at any moment do you have that cause in your team vote you go out at any moment would it keep you on your toes oh I'm kept on my taser anyway by my team you know the if any if there was any theft onboard a pirate ship you some of the codes you would have your ears and nose slit and be left on a sandbank you know apply that to the banking industry so there are these really interesting systems where as much as there was you know what seems buy through the lens of moral relativism pretty tough there is distinct accountability and absolute transparent fairness at the height of the financial crisis the the ratio between the highest and load the lowest paid people was part of a lot of conversations you know as an indicator of how out of kilter we've got on a pirate ship it was usually never more than a degree of about six times ratio so the captain would have six times the lowest paid person but this was all agreed before they set sail on the adventure so you say no that's that's not given it's so there's transparency there's forced fairness it's it's written in a set of principles that everybody collectively agrees before you go out and responsibility is shared so I don't think it's just about breaking rules I think it's about rewriting rules I don't think it's it's good enough just go mmm that's the terrible way we've done something here's a nice technology you overlay now we'll just do it even more than terribly and I don't think it's okay to build models that aren't fair you know for a deeply unfair world we have to rebalance this and in all of their systems fairness was was was was absolutely thoughtful and forced into it thank you I know there's lots of people who would like to talk more with Sam and I think Sam's going to be outside designing some of his books and maybe swapping them and what however you want to rebell you have your moment when when he's out there there later I'm I just loved all of this it's been fabulous I minded of actually that you can Ravel within systems as well because I had an uber driver who didn't charge me because the app broke and we couldn't we couldn't pay and he said you know what life is more than money did you see the bus drivers in Japan no so they're going on they're going on strike but not stopping so they're not taking their pay there's a huge demonstration but they continue in to keep the buses moving so it doesn't there's a kind of morality unto the rebellion I'm loving that that's that kind of gives sense to the godfather of rebellion Monica that is now yours forever but many thanks to you our audience in the room and online for this fantastic conversation I've really enjoyed it as I say Sam will be signing some books outside in the foyer but before you dash off to do that please give a final big hand to our fantastic speakers [Applause] you

Channel: RSA

Views: 9,456

Rating: 4.8823528 out of 5

Keywords: Pirate, Rebels, disruptors, innovators, creatives, How to Be More Pirate, radical change, Sam Conniff Allende, royal society of arts, rsa events, rsa, rsa shorts, talk, debate, lecture, event, the rsa

Id: 79d9E-z0Mj8

Length: 60min 54sec (3654 seconds)

Published: Thu May 24 2018