What were some questions that I felt like would be helpful to begin with? Or the questions that I put in the chat around like the you know the stories essentially what are the what do we need to say that is not being said? And what are the stories that we are telling ourselves in this moment and just kind of to ground in some of that reality of like, how each of us is feeling. I also like, like, considering the setup, maybe Jen and I should try to facilitate the conversation. Let me like take that away from you model. Okay. That's very hopeful that you're not trying to facilitate your own conversation. Okay, so ladies, it's been brought to our attention that there are some things that need to be resolved. And I know that we all love each other. I know they want to come through this on the other side of it. So can we start by discussing maybe we you can take turns. Like let's go if it's okay, Mata, Astrid, and then, Jen, if you have anything to add in there, or if I have anything I want to grow on top. We'll just do round robin of what needs to be said that isn't being said. Right now.
That's the prompt.
I will put that in the chat.
Okay, and the question for you and you're first on this front. Should we do it where everyone says what they need to be said without them responding to the person before? It's a one one round of just listening to the other person?
Okay. Versus I think we should just listen. And then that might be like, because I feel like responding might be better once we can articulate the stories and telling ourselves Is that okay with everybody? Or we could flip it and say it's stories we're telling ourselves and then what else needs to be said their preference?
Up to you, Madam facilitator.
Alright, let's go with the with the prop we have what needs to be said that isn't being said right now. Mata Astrid, Jen and the and maybe we'll just take a few minutes each or something which we just timetec Okay. So I feel like what I want to say that's not being said is this organization has like tremendous potential that sometimes scary how much is coming at us right now. And what I am not saying is, I don't know if I am the leader for that type of organization. And I don't know, like, I just don't know how to do it. So I feel as though like I've reached the end of my ability to do this. If that makes sense. Like, it's like I just don't even have the tools and people have known this right that like I'm good at starting things. And so I was here to sort of catalyze in the role of managing director, but I feel as though I've reached like the limits of my ability to perform anything that looks like quote unquote, leadership in this organization. And I think that as I begin to like scrutinize why it became, like really apparent that to me, what is a very fraught thing that we're implicated in is the ICC that we are trying to do the ICC and hoozy Brizzy unite. I have some legibility into what I believe zebras unite as an organization could look like. I have like some understanding of how the ICC in this in the sense that they're a membership of capital innovators is important to have and zebras unite. But where I feel a massive amount of like conflict and concern is that we are trying to build two organizations at once. And there's a bit of a there's just kind of a cognitive overload that is being experienced by the team, because it's like, are we building things like dazzle camp? And that's kind of one thing, you know, are we building a membership of the likes of which dazzle camp or the 10,000 members are in the mighty networks, where numbers and so where are we building products? And services for the people that for the last five years we've been telling, we're building this movement for or are we building things or emerging fund managers of color, who have just a foundationally different product need like product and market need? And I guess we're I feel like a lot of the conflict for me and for the team is related to the ICC. And it's specifically related to like anything ranging from very logistical concerns like I do not believe we have the team to implement what's been promised, nor are we delivering on what's been promised to the trauma that are that the people involved in that project seem to be experiencing that is like a weekly occurrence that just takes a lot of different flavors to the deep concern that I've raised before of how many white LED organizations are getting money from this project, to the lack of like, real resourcing and capacity of communities of color, from the resources that we have, just straying from very basic principles, like we had said that we were going to allocate a certain amount of the grant funding to bipoc led organizations that was going to come through and like that just hasn't been reality, to just like very significant fiduciary responsibilities that I think we're falling short on related to the EDA brand and what we promised what's being delivered. So I guess that's like one core set of things that I wish to say is, I think that i i have i have serious reputational concerns for the organization that we can like, do both of those things in interconnected fashion. I understand also, that this has like financial implications purely because he Brizzy Nate is a subcontractor of the ICC. And so the LCA relies on funding from an ICC project. So I guess it's like, the first thing that I feel like I want to say, I think then because of that, it's like a whiplash going back and forth between two very different markets of the 10s of 1000s of people that attract were attracted by zebras unite versus like bipoc fund managers just really different, really different needs. That whiplash and then the financial implication is essentially causing our team this tremendous amount of cognitive overload because they don't know which one to focus on. And I don't feel that it's responsible to simply ignore zebras unite members, and focus on ICC. Well, that may be where a quarter of the staff or you know, X 100 1000s of dollars is sitting.
And so what we're seeing is our staff essentially getting incredibly burned out, and then I just have to name that like, for now, over a year there has been these various promises of digital infrastructure. And the implementation just isn't there like we are not you do not have basic tools. I think that we need some type of accountability for what it looks like when those aren't there. And the team is just like we just don't have very basic digital infrastructure in place to meet our needs. And I just like want to state very clearly, probably as I can that I do not know that Armillaria has the capability to provide this type of implementation. And if that is true, I would rather just talk about it and talk about how we can actually like deliver rather than like sort of continue to kick kick the can down the road. And I also just want to finally say that like, this is not personal because I think one thing beautiful like I just can't overstate enough how much acid genius and contributions to the team exist in so many myriad ways, especially around the capital innovation stuff. Like it's really just watching like a genius at work. And so I think it's, I think in general, I'm just asking really good questions about like, what are our limitations? And what can how can we best show up? And, and can we be honest about our limitations and what we can actually handle in this moment? And what Astrid and I take on is going to be essentially mirrored and fractal a fractal pattern that exists in the rest of the organization. So what we model is really important to get right.
taking copious notes thank you for sharing that motto. Thank
you for your openness and your candor.
Thank you. So the prompt was what needs to be said in this moment. That that hasn't been said. I'm experiencing a sense of deja vu in terms of where organizations and initiatives find themselves a few years in. We've, the, the the prevailing experience that I'm having is that there's just a lot of unspoken and undocumented assumptions that we keep unearthing and that the team is having to find the hard way. Right. Like there's a I think if I look at us for founders, we really did a crappy job of documenting our thinking and then sharing that and onboarding people into that thinking and into some of these early assumptions about how zebras unite would work and how it would begin to scale and how we would grow it as essentially a bootstrapped multi stakeholder cooperative right so we needed we needed we had some opportunities for revenue early on and we seized on them and and then at the same time, also brought on a ton of people about a year ago. You know, we went from very little staff to Bata being the first person on staff to me being you know, carving out whatever time I'm carving out to serve the co op to basically went from two people in an operator role to now 12 And I think there aren't as many my every time I talk to a team member I feel like I'm hearing another story about zebras unite, like I don't feel like the team is on the same page, or has ever been on the same page. Because I feel like we have not described that page for them and made it easy for them to follow. And so what I'm experiencing is this like there's a bunch of different stories about what matters what doesn't matter, people have rushed off. We've empowered them with a lot of agency in their respective areas of work. And they have basically created a narrative around how that relates to their competencies and their sense of fulfillment and where they want to direct their energy. And some of those efforts are just dramatically uncoupled from our financial reality. So what I've been struggling with is the sense of responsibility for literally everybody's livelihoods that I don't see I picked up on across the team at this very interesting conversation with my accountability partner that we're finally forming accountability pods, where one of my pod mates said something like I just don't feel I have the information for me to make a to step up to the financial stewardship of the coop. And I just sort of looked at her and I was kind of gobsmacked right because the information is literally right there. And I was reminded of my experience working with people like sailing, right like when you're the skipper and you have responsibility for a crew of people you want to teach them right. They're practicing their competencies as they go along. But unless unless you know how to read the depth measurement instrument, right, just looking at the ocean, you cannot tell that you're coming into treacherous shallow waters. And I'm really struck by this moment in time where people are showing up with the sense of like, oh, we need more spaciousness for these processes of the learning to play out. And I'm looking at the chart going and I see this shallows ahead of us. And I'm trying to reconcile that tension, right, because we want to be a learning organization. We want to bring people along. We're working down some operational debt, right. I mean, the reason we most recently put a pause on some of the implementation of things that we urgently need to modest point is because we recognized through the annual planning process, that there's a massive operational debt in terms of documenting and standardizing procedures and yada yadi, right, so that's where we're now emerging out of an operational chrysalis process that hopefully resolve some of the the tension between the coop writ large and the ICC that we're incubating inside of it as a revenue strategy, right. That's how it started out and in no small part. And so I'm I'm sitting with that with that tension, right. Like there's this sort of an I actually drew it out as a little two by two the other day, this this, this question of how do we accommodate people in their where they're at in terms of their learning in terms of the trauma responses that can get triggered? And agency if that's like one dimension, and then how do we, how do we live with like, some people get really indignant like things are being done to them somehow.
But it may just be on the other extreme of that continuum of that axis. Maybe they just don't know yet. Right? I call that the you know, the the axis of indignation, but ignorance. Is somebody doing something to you or do you just not know and are still learning? And so I've been I've been, like, trying to sort in my head like how we can, how we can help the team gel and come to a shared understanding of what we're doing and why we're doing it and how we're doing it. While also navigating these. Yeah, this combination of challenges and opportunities that we have at this moment in time, where we're actually getting close to placing some of the capital products in the market, led by the capital products we're developing in the ICC container, but to me the ICC has always been a US domestic expression of our larger mission. And we're at the same time pursuing conversations with partners in Europe and Southeast Asia about doing sort of analogous work around mobilizing capital in those regions where it won't be through a racial wealth lens, but it'll be through a different lens that also aligns with the zebra principles around how we support the next generation of entrepreneurs that are building the businesses that are better for the world. So for me, I experienced the tension between the ICC and the Z MCU writ large a lot less. I understand where the tension comes from. And I think a lot of it I I've been reflecting on is sort of our failure as founders to document our processes and assumptions better and earlier. Okay,
I was taking notes as well. I am just to get our doula doc to have like bullets. I feel like Gosh, more than anything. I don't know that I have personal frontline observations, because I'm not in the day to day but just maybe more observations or questions as it relates to what I've heard so far. And then what I've witnessed just on a board level and you know, working with individuals, but it does sound like there's clearly coming from a lot of different angles and also just the fact of some retention issues we've been having, is that there is there's people aren't it sounds like people are not feeling like there is stability in the organization and they don't feel equipped to handle the emergence on some level. Everyone how stable they need things to be in order to feel good at work and how they're perceiving that stability is that that might be an exercise for the facilitator because like, you know, we all have our own risk thresholds and tolerances. And I know, like, you know, thinking about moto just specifically in terms of jazz and improv and being really comfortable in that space. It's amazing and not at the same comfort level with kind of like that emergence, but also I think a lot of people who know that you don't know the answer, as well, but maybe don't have that same comfort that model others might have or sassy with like, you know, just part of it. So, I don't know, to me, it's sounding like there are a number of factors at play here. That are intention and that are causing. It sounds like a lot of efforts to be born and half kind of strategize while then other things are forming at the same time. It sounds like there's a lot of things at once like I don't know if that's the right metaphor is there's a kitchen that the zebras unite kitchen has like 10 different meals being planned right now and cooking. And some of the ingredients are still like yet to be determined what they are going to be some menus are already set. And some people are waiting for their food, and they're getting it and it's cold and they're pissed and it's already ordered. And we really need to figure out like what is on the menu here of what we're serving and how to make sure whoever we're serving has that experience that they're expecting to whatever degree you have told them they should expect versus what what they're expecting in their own mind. It sounds like there's a lot of expectation expectation that needs to happen so that there can be in understanding from whoever those expectations are coming from. If they feel fair if they feel right and that they are able to be next the end of the day because it sounds like there are contracts and obligations that aren't up for negotiation necessarily. It's like no we said we would do x and it has not happened therefore what so I hear from both Mata and Astrid, that the ICC is on one hand, a great asset for us and an exception and on another hand, not yet a credible model that sounds like could be expanded because it's not yet functioning. So I feel like we're also people are at different stages. Of being able to see the vision for the future and feel like we're confident that we'll fill in the blanks along the way and other people feeling like I very unconfident that we can fill in the blanks along the way based on track record or based on capacity. And capability. So I don't know if this is helpful or not. I'm just trying to reflect back a little bit of what I'm hearing and naming some of those things. That there's, there's like the structural level of who's doing what and how our staff are supposed to be spending their time accordingly. And then there's probably the sort of personal and like Soul level of what it is that zebras unite is standing for and how do we show up for each other and how do we care for one another, especially in in trauma situations? And then there's the like, straight up Strategy and Financial Are we meeting the demands of what we are paid to be doing? And if not, then what are the repercussions? So I don't know. Those are some of the bigger buckets that I'm hearing. And all I know is that like shit. There is so much potential and so much prosperity ahead. If we can get some of the stuff right. And maybe you've decided to say NO or pause on some things for a bit, but I know pausing or saying notice some things. Inevitably, someone's pet project or someone's deepest desire and that will maybe have second implications as well. So
anyway, that's my ramble. And yeah, I can take notes for your thoughts.
Yeah, also, can you just for sake of ease link me to the doula doc and I'll drop in what I just noted from your comments. So I think like because this is the part of us like saying things that haven't been said. I feel like I'm I'm going to try to lean into that a little bit. One. I want to say that I know that Martha and Astrid, the two of you have very different personalities and leadership styles. And I think that in a weird way, it kind of reminds me like it's it's different, but like, situationally, I think about like my relationship with Marco because I feel like Marco and I are very different people like we're very different people. And there are so many ways that like, the ways in which we're different show up in this kind of like beautiful like, Yin and Yang type of like harmony thing where we just like make each other better and make each other stronger and then there's like, places where it just like causes all of us if I can try to go back to like the sailing like just lots of choppy waters. And like sometimes the boats are like bumping into each other and one of us is like hanging off the side like oh shit, I might drown right now like it's crazy. And like we have to try to find a way like back to each other. And I feel like I have have seen little like fragments of that between the two of you and I think that it is a very natural like thing that happens with human beings, especially when we have to show up with the kind of commitment that we have to have to each other. Like I view my co founders as like pseudo spouses. And like I think that like the commitment is real. It's not an easy thing like we are, we are legally bound to each other in a different way. It is not easy. To just be like fuck this shit I'm out without having to then untangle a bunch of like things that are like contracts and shit on paper registered with state and federal governments. And so it's like it's really real. So I just want to like kind of, like name that like I know that you two have done so much work as the four of us all have done so much work to just be in good relationship with each other. And I, I really, I believe that there is there is a way a path forward that we're going to find the other thing I was gonna just say, which like maybe this will kind of bridge the gap into from like, what Jen was saying into the stories that we're telling ourselves like one I think like, one of the things that I am also hearing here is that thing that like we talked about like this, it's the marriage of people purpose and profit, right like we are in pursuit of finding and trying to maintain like the balance between those three things. This is very much an uncharted course like trying to do this. I would argue like in the world of business period, but also like trying to do this in our modern working context, which like, we are all working in a very low trust like environment. We're working in a time where there's very low trust in institutions. There's very low trust in systems there's for for the right reasons. And like the it is, like the headwinds are very strong for any of the things that we're trying to do. We are trying to do something radical. And like, if it was easy, then it would have already been fixed. So I think that like I just also want to like keep that in perspective, too. So like, just to try to transition a little bit into the stories that we're telling one another and then maybe we can go in reverse order, Jen. Good motto is that there's two tour stories. That I'm telling myself one is about like all of this is like bringing up old like, things for me where I'm just like, we're doing too much. We're always doing too much. I also am like, one of the self professed queens of doing too much but like I feel like it is I feel like the doing too much thing is like a little bit of a demon that like lives in each of us.
Writing about it, and I think it's easy for us to get like folk back down to the like, I could solve this problem. I'll just whip up a solution over here and they don't have a solution over there. And then next thing you know, you're like, fucking crushed under the weight of all your goddamn solutions to all the problems you're trying to solve. And like, I think this is like this is our eternal struggle as individuals and as a group and I think that we have like, spread it to the organization to try to like, find an antidote very quickly. Which I think really is just going to be like, again, coupled with hard choices. I'm not going to like beat that horse because you guys hear me talk about that shit all the time. But that's the one story in my head. The other story in my head is particularly as it relates to the ICC like I have always had like a little bit of like nervousness about you know if it if it doesn't work out the way that we thought like having the IPTV run or at least like powered predominantly by like white people, like a blow up in our faces. And like, I am like, story that I'm telling myself that like maybe this is a thing that like, I don't know, I think that we shouldn't have taken this on because maybe like if it wasn't going to always be like very centered on even people of color running it. Like we were inevitably setting ourselves up for failure. Like I'm telling myself a story about like, and I'm like, forgive me for saying this because it's gonna come out maybe a little bit harsh, but like just white people having an inability to like, see the same problems and the same ways that people of color do to be able to come up with the solutions that they need. And I don't know if that is fair or unfair, that is the story that I'm telling myself. But I think that like at the end of the day, if we were fucking killing it with the ICC, and everybody was getting what they needed, and it was being run by white people, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Like, I don't think anybody would care. But the minute that it goes wrong, everyone's gonna look up and be like, that's what happens when you put white people in charge. And so I think that like that is like a thing that's like screaming in my head and I just want to like air. My personal like, like, pulling right now is towards like, how do we make sure that this doesn't become a big like fucking expos a that's like zebras is a sham. Because whatever. And I think that it would be very much representative of who we are and what we are actually doing. But I think that that is a story that the public would love to tell about some people like us today. And I would very much like to prevent that from happening. So with that, shall we just transition fully into story time? And yeah, now
you've got me really worried. Because you write the story, you just told us the story that I could see being very powerful story at this point in time. If there are some corrections which it sounds like you need to be made really, really quickly and maybe, I don't know if just if it's corrections, apologies plus different strategy. I don't know I'm not close enough everything to to to have a recommendation there but you saying that just kind of raised my my arm hairs to be like, Oh, fuck, yeah, sounds it sounds like there's an emergency here. Or something very close to one that could could become one. myself too, related to what you said. The tendency to do too much. Is that because we can sometimes see how we get from point A to point do we then go, oh, yeah, we can do that. And we don't take the math out. And this is something I do myself. But I feel like there's a sense of all of us. To a degree of being people who have experienced and done a lot of shifts and done it successfully. So you have a lot of models we can look at and choose from. Yeah. I can make it happen. But then failing to maybe account for the human time I've made in the final eight people, get them on boarded, get them comfortable, getting supported and doing the work always takes like three times longer than I expect, but at least three times longer, maybe five and there's always the possibility that once they get the podcast Yeah, once they get up to speed that they might be like, You know what, this isn't actually what I thought it was. Don't like it and you might need to them, find someone else and then that was all down. So I think just maybe being overly optimistic. And I can understand why because we have like incredible networks as individuals and then within zebras right, I mean, exponential networks. So it's like, we know that people are out there but maybe I don't know having some kind of thing like some rural that any project in any timeline has to be extended by five. When it comes to like people involved in making sure they're ready, because we just feel like we want our people first values to come through and that's required when we move too fast. People get understandably frazzled. Start telling different stories aren't able to stay as connected and then get more stressed out and have a bigger sense of puking up whatever it is that we're trying to deliver on that, like I said, could become a very public and unfortunate. So I don't know if that's the story I'm telling myself is that we're all kind of I shouldn't say well, I just know that I do this and I see signs of it and in one another to some degree. I think another story I'm telling myself is that that just based on you know, this is like maybe a board member, vague level, but like just based on looking at some of the budgets and seeing where some of the money is going to different projects and what's coming in, is that like there's there's so much going to Armillaria which I don't have like a theoretical problem with but I think again the question of capacity and delivery and then also how this looks for other partners who are trying to come on is something that could also put us at risk. And I understand like if you're there in the room and you know how things are going it's so much easier to like put your hat in the ring and do that work, but it does feel I don't know if we can see even a breakdown, like where how much was going to each kind of like an organization, but it does feel like it's quite a bit in that it could it could become something that gets under scrutiny by by more than the border or others as well. But that's again, a story I'm telling myself without having all the data in front of me just from like the marinade of looking at spreadsheets and hearing who's doing what projects were in and he's applying for what money again, they want to say this that like raising money and being in those rooms and make those proposals That's fucking hard work. And it's not like it should go to a bunch of people who weren't doing that work. But there is something maybe about the structure. And I know we've tried to approach this from a few different angles of like, well, who's scoping and who is part of that and how do people that time so I don't have a great answer for it. I think India just got me thinking about what are things that could come back to bite us. So sorry, my calendar beats Astrid, do you wanna go into stores? You're telling yourself
the story I'm telling myself is that I feel misunderstood. It's quite likely feel very mischaracterized the single largest beneficiary of contracts in the coop a second news, just to say that I the story I'm telling myself is that I'm people are reverting. I see people I see it in this group today are reverting back to fear based narrative at a moment of great that feels like great peril and I'm again I'm gonna go back to my my sailboat. You know, there is a when you're sailing hard against the wind, like boats lean. And if you don't know the physics, it feels really unstable. Because most most boats most ocean boat going sailboats are designed to have what's called Low primary stability and large secondary stability. And I think we're in a moment where the boat is leaning. The crew needs to be sitting out on the outside rail just to provide some counterweight it needs to you know, there's there's not Now's not the time to do dinner planning. Now's the time to sit over with your legs. over the side of the boat to create some balance but our secondary stability like the bones like we're not actually going to capsize like the secondary stability is incredibly high in this organization. And I'm again I'm so the story I'm telling myself is that this is the first ocean going sail journey. For many people in the steam and what they're experiencing and what they're perceiving is a partial reflection of the actual reality. Right and so, so for every everything that I'm hearing here, there are perfectly logical and obvious explanations but again, it may be one of those things where people even when presented with that information, they may not believe it because their sensation and it's a visceral sensation when you're on a sailboat, that primary stability if when it goes it feels incredibly unsettling you feel like you're gonna get you know it in your body. You're about to capsize, even though you're actually not like there's no truth to your expand. It's bizarre like and that's the story I'm telling myself. I see a lot of people sitting on our little sailboat, we know we're headed, we're heading into the new economy, we're no we're gonna have to do some tacking and jibing like you can't sail into the wind. But I actually feel that we have some following sees and an eyes back when picking up because of some of the things that we that we figured out recently. So the other story I'm telling myself is that we've been we're attracting incredible people, right like I mean they who can lean in, who know how to turn, like crank the winch when it needs cranking, who need less on the job learning than other team members, but those team members who need a lot of on the job training are not less valuable, right? They just have a longer learning horizon and some of them have really surprised me in a really good way recently, like the way Nadja is leaning into her learning, for example, to be the leader she wants to be for the ICC is actually really inspiring. And so I think there are some, you know, I think we have begun to figure out how to talk about the relationship between the ICC and Zhi Yu er writ large that I you know, again, I don't recognize the narrative of how it's a white LED organization because I know of some of the the staffing plans that she has and some of the how we can solve for the very clear capacity need that is there. So I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm I'm encouraged, right, like I saw the story I'm telling myself is that we have this incredible secondary stability of our little you know, dazzle LCA, sailing vessel heading across the Pacific, and also that I can see some of the the following seasoned and fair winds that are about to fill our sails
say thank you for the primary and secondary stability metaphor. I've never heard that before. It's really it's really interesting.
And I would love to all we should all go sailing sometime you have to experience it. It's really the first time you experienced it like you know, in your bones you're about to go in the water and they're only there to the tribal kinds of people that's actually not unlike a trauma response. They're They're people when you when it first happens to them who shut down who go into fight or flight question, you know what the skipper is telling them what have you. And then the other people who just laugh because they they get exhilarated they realize they have a the like it turns something on in their brains and they go oh, I get it. And I have sailed with all types so I'm not I have a the other story. I'm telling myself is that this is sort of a necessary part of our growth and evolution. It doesn't. It doesn't annoy me. It doesn't scare me. I don't take any of the things being said about malaria, particularly personally. It's It's just what is at this point in our emergence
I just want to say that I didn't realize you
knew that much about sailing, and I'm learning so much.
Yeah, this is all really illuminating. I mean, I think to ask this point it's like, the reality is if you have the majority of the crew that wants to run for cover, when that primary stability goes, that is what the organization is, for better or worse, you know what I mean? So there's like, what we wish them to believe and then what they're actually experiencing, and I think you know, a lot of what Brene Brown was talking about around trauma response and anxiety of one of the main things that we can do is to tell them that that feeling doesn't exist, you know, and so that feeling isn't real. And what I've just observed in the organization is that no amount of like, logic or documentation or reason, is getting those people over that hump. Right. So it's, you know, it's things as simple as, like, all of us have been in a position of having to find $10,000 in a month, right? That's not the position of many people. And so that's for us. That's that. We don't our primary stability doesn't turn on in that moment, because we just know we have to hunt for it, you know. But then I think there are other so I guess I just want to say that like, there's the there's theory and practice and there's the theory of this which I believe and understand and have come to feel myself and especially appreciate working with you Astrid and then there's just the reality that if the majority of the team is huddled in a corner on a sailboat because the winds are tippy, it, even if it's not real, it is in fact the organization's reality, for better or worse, you know. And so I guess I'm just trying to like, hold that, that. I don't I mean, you know, you could imagine scrapping are not scrapping, but certainly greatly modifying our corporate structure. So our stakeholder group includes employee owners, and those employee owners have a more significant stake and voice and so then we begin to screen for Okay, those are going to be 10 people that will have demonstrated that primary stability is not a necessity, right. So I guess I'm just trying to like reflect back that. I just don't think that like all the metaphors make sense. And I understand it intuitively intrinsically, and it still doesn't alleviate the pain that the team is going through in the process, which is this feeling of the ground sort of shifting beneath their feet constantly.
And I think what is challenging is the two different votes of the ICC and the deacon zebras unite are very different looking boats. They're just very different looking vessels. You know, if you were I know that there is a circle of Capitol innovators that should be leading the ICC in a more direct way. And we don't know what their needs are in order to do that. But we had a hypothesis that like first we need to actually resource them like we need to throw some money at them for their time. And it's different than a circle weed. It's like, might we have 10 to 20 people who will build you know, who will be directly working on this capital project? I don't know. I just I guess I'm trying to say that basically, what we have is, on the one hand, the ICC, which to me feels like a small limited number of members presently who really get it that have the time and bandwidth to devote to it that desperately needs to be resourced both personally and organizationally, whose efforts and energy can best be spent and advocating for capital products for their own liberation. That makes a lot of sense to me from the strategic plan and from the strength that you have Astrid and then we have this global movement of 20,000 other people, you know, that we have promise products to and who are cancelling every day because they haven't seen the value of the organization and they don't understand what we do. They don't they don't have a member directory their basic you know, technological functions that they're not getting. They feel like it's too much about like, you just need to build this plane with us. They aren't seeing ROI. And again, we know that the ROI is kind of capital there. So I guess just as somebody who feels like extremely dedicated to the culture community of what we build zebras, you name it, really. That's it especially. We are now sort of lost in this like infrastructure operations. morass. It feels just like this never ending. And we're not actually like doing we I feel like credibly responsible for the lack of stewardship and member experience that we're delivering to people who we've been talking about this organization now for five years or so. I guess I just would like to be able to do something well, you know, and, and I just feel like I just feel like I'm taking a lot of personal responsibility and just like disappointment in myself that for better or worse, they're just not channels right now. To the degree that I would hope there would be for everybody to show up and feel like they're doing something well, because everything feels so interdependent on one another, right. It's like, well, we can't have the CRM until operation chrysalis is done after we have the hiring process and that has to take place on May 24. And then, meanwhile, people parents are dying and you know, it's just like, there's so many interdependencies that are so overly complex and and maybe it's just my own. My own experience and gifts are better positioned, to sort of like bring people in, help them feel, help them feel that there's a place for them, and then be able to have the confidence that we can deliver. Like my my design ethos comes from switchboard of like a, you know, an offer on every ask and a comment on every offer. Like I'm really interested in building marketplace dynamics of incredibly healthy well served people where it's not dependent on massive operational systems for that to take place because they're immediately into greater potential and creative capacity. That's not possible what our director of membership is doing an ICC chiropractic, the process, that process is impossible when our entire organization is going through resource that process is reset. Like that process isn't possible when our operations team is focused on just like for months on end, resetting all of our operational processes and so where I'm experiencing a tremendous amount of like personal tension and sadness is like the we're losing a lot of money. It feels like we're losing some momentum. And we're losing some some key buyers like we're, we're, we're just it feels to me like there's just this massive energy dissipation. I think 20 is quite because we are doing so much and I Yeah, and I guess it's just also to the point about Yeah, it's, it's
it's just very hard. I don't know that I have the ability to substantiate who is benefiting from all of these contracts and all of the contracts that we're taking on, because I don't feel that we've included founding members as much as we could in this, like we have. I don't know that we've brought people along as much as we needed to. And then in the meantime, like it just keeps snowballing. We just keep taking on more projects and more projects because we're trying to meet these revenue goals. But I don't know that the answer is like, documentation. I don't hear the word documentation from people I hear. Like, that's not the need that I'm hearing. It feels more like a lot of other words, but don't know where I'm going here. I think it's just that. I have their different altitudes and what I'm feeling and one is just extreme compassion for what we are doing. To people, which I think is actually quite cool. I think that if people are saying that the primary stability is not there, I don't know any other way but to believe them. And if the primary instability is not there, people are showing up in sort of trauma rooms, and I just don't know that I can continue like, I don't feel that I am positions to be able to continue to get people to buy into that. You know, like when we when we throw new processes at them, like the participatory budgeting process or whatever. It's like, everything just happens all over again. You're asking so much of people and then the sub primary rediscovering it, again, the primary stabilities out there, right and then we have to go in and like build these stability structures. And so if there's a repeating pattern of trauma that's happening, that I feel personally responsible for inflicting and and I just feel really bad about myself. I feel really bad about myself for perpetuating that. I feel bad about myself. Prompted I feel bad about myself, but like the way that I would solve it doesn't seem sometimes to be believed, which largely has to do with investing in like you in, in in user a member experience and just the human emotion that people feel when they walk into an organization not being thrown 35,000 different tools. But yeah, I just feel really bad about myself because this isn't actually the way that I want to show up in the world. I don't want to get people to believe me that something is stable. And I don't know how to do it. You know, I just don't know how to do it. And so a lot of it is like, Well, what I do know how to do is help people feel that they're cared for and then there's concern and that we're invested in them and that we can show compassion for their experience and we can create a container of like conviviality. And safety and they can find their peers. But all of that is right now, not at the forefront of the organization's priorities, because we have this Whack a Mole with like, is it the ICC members or is it zebras unite members or is it Yeah. Powerful stuff. I feel like okay, so it's 206 I want to just like call where we're at on time. I have like 10 more minutes before I have to jump on a call with Paige. And like, spam
in terms of when I have to go, Yeah, okay.
And we're not gonna have time to get into like the what needs to happen immediately, but I actually think that we have uncovered a lot. I feel like we've excavated a lot of thoughts and stories to maybe sit and think, and maybe come into next week's conversation and picking up in that place. I will only ask Astrid and Mara to both. Promise me that whatever it is that you're thinking about you will just think about it and maybe jot it down and not start actually pulling any levers over there. In like the real shit that's happening, that we try to keep it contained until the four of us can talk about it next week. That's the only thing I asked but I also just want to kind of open it up for like any other thoughts because I feel like we've been kind of going round robin. I actually have like, if I could ask like for one simple story, I think it will be helpful for me and Jen. Like Mata about Astrid and Astrid about moto like to know the stories that you're telling yourselves like particularly about the intentions of your counterpart like right now with like leadership of the organization. I think that that would be really helpful. I say that with the context of knowing that we all have deep respect for each other but like our other stuff without reconciling that.
I guess the story that I'm telling myself about Astrid is that the I don't know that Astrid can believe some people when they say that what we perceive as the problem is not the problem. Like I feel as though people are saying, and, and I am this this for myself, this story that I'm telling myself about myself as a leader too, is like I don't know how much to both believe and support our team. But what I'm hearing is that they're in a lot of pain, and it's not processes that are gonna get them out of it. At the same time, I feel like the story I'm telling myself is that we are
not able to simplify. Like we're not able to, we're not able to say, this is what we're not doing, you know, like we can't take this pause on any number of things. And that takes a lot for me to say because I'm, there's anybody who's a proliferation of stuff. And I guess that's the story. That I'm telling myself this that I don't know, if you I don't know what circumstances it would take for you to break the break glass and emergency. Like I have seen you be so unflappable in any of these circumstances that I I just would like I don't know what like how bad things have to get. I feel like your optimism is incredibly powerful and motivating for me as a leader, but also like I don't know how bad things have to get for things to sort of like experienced dramatic changes.
Well, I came into this meeting today, being surprised by the framing around this being a conflict between Mara and me. Pence my little monocle guy emoji when you put that up in in Slack, I thought we were aligned. I thought we were moving and committed you know like, to these organizational processes that we've identified with the team. Right. So I feel like team members have really taken on the responsibility to untucking the organization right and, you know, have either self appointed themselves or have been asked by the team to do it. And now we're letting those processes play out. And so one of the things that I'm that I've always tried to do is, you know, respect people's leadership when they when they take it right and and, and support them and where I'm experiencing a disconnect and now profound just misalignment is I, again, I feel misunderstood like people infer that I don't care or I don't see their pain or I don't care about it. I'm what I see is, you know, if we don't center the ICC inside the EU, we will have to let people go. Lots of people and I feel really misunderstood about the the tension I've been trying to draw to the you know, how how people's time is actually funded to build the coop Right? Like yeah, some of us are getting contracts, other people are on staff. And this distinction and you know, tight is really simplified and say you were either on margin or you're on project funding, and all the infrastructure funding all the ops funding, lots of it. The vast majority of it is coming through the ICC. And so that's the that's the tension I'm sitting with, right like I hear people talk about, oh, yes, we want to do XY and Z. Great. Let's talk about the use of funds. When we have a financing event. But as of today, right, like, the group of people we need to be most concerned with are actually the members of the ICC. And I can see the disconnect, I can see that that is not computing for people, people keep saying treating it as two different or two separate organizations like they're completely different things and to me, they're just not but I feel this tension around. You know, let's build a whatever made picket like parental leave policy or bringing in this external facilitator, all these things at the moment come out of margin margin that we don't have, unless we figure out how to put products and services in the market that generate enough revenue to generate that margin. Right. And who fulfilled the project is actually I mean, about half half a dozen the founding members have have participated in in in service delivery. And that's fine. It doesn't matter. You know, in my opinion, how much goes to any one founding member or eventually any one Co Op member? What matters to the mothership is the margin coming out of those contracts and with Alyssa CELP, we're getting very good at dialing in those margin rates. And even then, it's not it's going to be really tough to get to the margin we need on advisory projects alone. Hence the focus and pivot to capital projects of capital products and the ones that are mature like this quarter happened to be the ones that we've been developing under the ICC banner and so um, that's that's the tension I'm experiencing. The you know, like I understand that people that that power show up you know, can be harmful. It can trigger people that can do all these things. And also, I don't, I don't, I don't see enough of the team connecting the dots of like, even their own livelihood, they're very concerned of the things that they need from the organization, actually being materially tied to the projects that we have committed to and or the margin that we're able to generate out of things that we're selling. And we have come to the conclusion as a team, that we're not selling individual memberships at the moment. Right, so then, so then we have to sell something else. We are
selling them they're just automated and that's even more risky because now we don't have
to but we're not I mean, we've not I mean we've we've we've we've given up the notion that membership sales are going to be a drive off revenue this year. To the tune that we need.
Yeah, I agree with that. But like the reality remains that in public and in all of our documents, and in everything we say we are a multi stakeholder cooperative, and that cooperative has the ability to join and own the coop. And the there's the thing that you've clicked by now, and those people aren't having a good experience. And we've pivoted to focus on certain revenue streams by virtue of where we see money coming in, like the ICC and consulting. But what I thought we were interested in was actually building a movement of value for more people. I mean, like we are, we're a movement organization that happened to find grant funded projects and consulting as being the largest ticket items. But if we remove our eye off of the membership ball, I don't think that we are fulfilling our promise as an organization.
Yeah, I totally agree. But the question is, how do we fund that membership activity, right?
Well, I think it's like a chicken and egg to some degree because it has to do with offering value in any I know you have to run Yeah, I have to run and I was like, I'm sorry to cut you ladies off but Jen and I have to run and I think like this is a was actually a really helpful like note for this to end on for me because it gives me a lot to think about. I just want to also thank everyone for showing up and being like, so wonderful today. I'm looking forward to us continuing this conversation if we want to I mean obviously we have slack if we need to send messages in the meantime, I am processing I also just want to say that like I'm hearing like there's a conversation to be had about the ICC relationship between the ICC and zebras in general. That's one thing we have to pick back up next time. Also just looking at the like context of Armillaria contracts. And in general, and then just wanting to make sure that we are patching things up and airing out whatever else needs to be aired out between Mata and Astrid. But I think after we saw these other things, something tells me we'll probably be back on the right path. And then the last thing is just about the doula seat, which we have three more weeks to kind of figure that part out. But it sounds like the ICC slash zebras relationship is probably the first areas thing to untangle among the different things we talked about today. If that sounds right,
yeah, and that's what we've you know, put front and center with cargo proxy process and finally have a go. External facilitator join us in two weeks time.
Okay. Is there any other like top line issues aside from the four things I mentioned that we I think is it just pretty much ICC Armillaria contracts? Leadership? Like?
Yeah, I don't understand the thing about I mean, are we are we asking the I like Yes, sure. Let's talk about the amiloride contract. That's important.
Okay, um, okay. I also was gonna say so Oh, sorry, if I can just like throw one really random thing in here, which is like related to this last point, but like, I just like, I don't know, because it's something I'm excited about. So right now I'm working with Tara, I'm going to talk about this in the luminary convening. By the way. Mata. I'm talking to Tara Reed right now, like after that code Tara. She has this other company that she spun out called growth spree and she's doing this stuff with like, micro private equity. And right now I'm planning on giving her this contract to run some experiments. She's like, basically a question has been acquiring these like small businesses that like have like her whole thinking is like, bypass the like struggle bus part of entrepreneurship. You've already figured out something. They're like small enough that like you can acquire them for like she's acquiring them. For like less than half a million dollars. And like she's doing these experiments and stuff. So she can like basically grow and scale them like a PE company, but like in this other kind of context and like working with like, much, much smaller businesses. So part of the contract, giving her is to like run some experiments. So we can basically come up with a playbook to do this through the lens of like a responsible like, tech ethical, like zebra kind of company. Like can we acquire these businesses and then metabolize them through an entity that turns them into like, zebra type of like, or you know, mutualistic businesses that are revenue, like profit center type things. And I'm, like, super excited about like running these experiments. But I just wanted to mention that because I'm also just like, I don't know what we're going to learn, but it's also not a bad strategy for zebras to consider in terms of just like acquiring small profitable businesses and like metabolizing those as revenues enter so fun times, food for thought for the weekend.
Yeah, it's actually one of the things we want to explore with Mandela if she if she's, I mean, she's apparently you know, shutting down founder Jim completely and has not had any acquisition offers, but she could conceive an
offer from someone she didn't get an offer.
Of what I know from what I've heard. And so one, one of the things that we're trying to suggest to her is like, Well, maybe you should just donate those assets into a nonprofit like the Zbc Lightsey. Three and then we can build on on on that right for course offerings, etc. instead of reinventing the wheel in any kind of anyway, it's a consideration and she would she would get the benefit of the tax write off.
Yes, that's interesting as well. So there's something to noodle on over also just acquiring other assets and making them assets because I think like a skipping the struggle bus part sounds kind of nice, but
I'm all for skipping the struggle bus. That's what it feels like one right now. As a bootstrapping. multistakeholder friggin cooperative. I want to get if this struggle bus right. Bye
