Matthew Bishop (MB): Hello, welcome to Books Driving Change. I'm Matthew Bishop, and today we're talking with Paul Shoemaker, who is the author of Taking Charge of Change: How Rebuilders Solve Hard Problems. Paul is a podcaster, activist, philanthropist, founder of Social Venture Partners International, which is a network of philanthropists, and has been really involved and an activist in change for many years. 

Paul, our audience is really people who are feeling a calling to get involved, in trying to build back better, trying to make the world a better place. In a sentence, what's your elevator pitch to them? Why should they read this book?

Paul Shoemaker (PS): Because I'm identifying the leaders and the leadership traits that we will need to meet the complexities and reverse the inequities in America for the decade ahead.

MB: The book was written before COVID, but clearly anticipated many of the topics that we've been talking about in terms of building back better. And what I really like about it is you have five leadership characteristics that you identify, and you put people to each of those characteristics, people who are actually doing change on the ground. And I like the fact that your five things are not obvious in some ways. 

You do have authenticity as your first one, and I kind of inwardly cringed as everyone is in favor of authenticity at the moment. And I think it is a bit like what Groucho Marx said about sincerity -- it is the key to success in public life, you can fake that you've got it made -- and you wonder whether authenticity is the same. But then you go into the things like complexity, having a complexity mindset, and being able to deal with cross sectoral complexity, to be very data centric, things that aren't so obvious to people who were just sort of picking the five characteristics. 

And I wonder how you came to those five, what made you pick those? And the other thing you do, which I love as well, is that you have a downside to each of those five as well. So many leadership books just talk about the virtues and they don't say well actually some people who are data obsessed are quite a pain to deal with or these cross sectoral people may not really get it in depth enough or whatever. So how did you pick those five?

PS: In 2018 while working on a project about poverty in America, I was studying different aspects of inequities that affect poverty, race, health, economics, social, etc. In the middle of that project, what slapped me in the face was, while I certainly understand we have inequities in America, I did not know the pace and the downward path of economic, social, and health inequities over the last 25 years in America. And I think people think 2020 was this year of inequity, but this has been building for a generation. And so that's what I finally recognized. And that follows 50 years in America where we were slowly, haltingly, unevenly making progress. And we've sort of gone back down the other direction. So that was my original sort of motivation. 

Then I said, okay, how do I think about how we're going to reverse these inequities? What kind of leaders are we going to need? So I took the next six months, and I did three things. One, I talked to nearly 100 of the best leaders I've worked with over the last 30 years, and several traits and characteristics started to sort of fall out of that. Number two, I was also looking for evidence of programs and organizations where there was also true social impact. The ones that were starting to reverse that 25 year trend going the wrong direction. And then number three, was understanding the complexities that are coming in the decade ahead. This is the most insanely complex, not just inequitable, but complex decade, I think America has faced in at least 75, maybe 100 years. 

And so if you think of those as three overlapping circles -- leaders, impact, context of complexity -- the intersection of those three things, yielded those five traits for me. So it was a very well thought out, subjective, qualitative process that has a prospective point of view that I feel very passionately about, and think that these five traits are going to make a huge difference in the decade ahead -- 24/7 authenticity, generosity mindset, data conviction, capacity for complexity, and cross sector fluency. 

And the last thing, in terms of downsides, a good example of 24/7 authenticity, which is in bleak short supply, these days in America -- I have several examples in the book where standing up with integrity and honesty, and particularly with personal accountability, will cost you in the short term, and it may cost you a lot career wise, by making some enemies, etc. But in the long term, I think it's an enormously important leadership trait.

MB: A lot of people have been forced to confront the inequities that you've written about, and that you and I have both been working on to different degrees over the years to address, but have been forced by COVID to address them, and are now thinking, how do I get involved, I'd like to get involved in in some kind of public service trying to make the world better. And yet they find it a kind of intimidating world. A lot of people who have been in the business world may be thinking, it looks like unrewarding difficult terrain and so forth. What do you say to them?

PS: It is absolutely difficult terrain, as you well know. At times, it will be deeply frustrating. And it will be occasionally, hopefully, enormously rewarding. The challenges we've got -- whether you want to think on a local or global level -- climate, geopolitical, cybersecurity, rural urban divide, go on and on and on. These are generational kinds of challenges, and they are at real inflection points. 

So for someone to feel daunted is honest and correct. What I hope people don't feel is hopeless. Because you can make a difference. The book is full of 38 people who have found ways to make a difference -- some of them on a local level, some of them on a national level, some of them at the top of an organization, some of them in a medium part of the organization, or on the street in a community. So part of the reason to write the book was not just to have a point of view, but also to tell 38 stories of people who are making a positive impact, and how they're doing it, and how that positive impact reflects those five qualities that I think are so important.

MB: And there are some great stories in there. The person that you start with is Rosanne Haggerty, who I know as well, and has this extraordinary record of actually figuring out how to get to zero homelessness in a number of cities around America. When you see what she's done, what can we learn from that in terms of how we could achieve real, dramatic change? Because I think homelessness has been an issue that no one really ever believed you could solve.

PS: Particularly on the West Coast. I'm sure it's true on the East Coast, but on the West Coast it's just absorbing us.

MB: And you were quite honest that you were involved in Seattle in trying to solve homelessness and couldn't do it.

PS: I will say my case study was of Seattle, I wasn't directly involved in it. That's not letting myself off the hook. I'm trying to find an entry point in Seattle about how to be involved, because we do have a new housing authority that's trying to go after it. 

So what do you learn from someone like Rosanne? I would say a couple things. One, the people in this book, every one of them, sort of exemplifies one of these particular traits. And I think all of us, we have to be multifaceted. But there's also something about us picking a particular principle, or a particular strength, that's going to guide our work. And it needs to represent who we are. 

So in Rosanne’s case, what she exemplifies is what I call the generosity mindset. And it's because she told me that phrase. She has to walk into so many communities and deal with some of the most complex, contentious issues there are. And I just said to her, how the hell do you have a chance? She says, I have to have a generosity mindset. And we went on to have a whole conversation about what that is and what that means. But she has a grounding in that approach and that strategy. So she doesn't randomly walk into a community to do this. She doesn't just say, I'm gonna do my best. Generosity mindset is a strategy. It is a hard-edged strategy. 

So I say, the first thing is, as a leader, we need to have an approach. We need to have a mindset. We need to have a particular leadership strategy that we're going to lead with that represents who we are and what our strengths are. 

The second thing to learn from her story is that literally from the day she got out of college this is what she's worked on. Now, I'm not saying everybody has to commit their whole life to it. But there's definitely the story of when people hop around to different causes and different issues, you're just staying shallow. If you want to make a difference, you have to pick at some point -- a place, or an issue, or a cause to go deep on, and stick with it, and go hard, and go deep. That is the one where you have a chance, that's the second thing I think you learn. 

And the third thing you learn from her example, and it's reflective in the trade of cross sector fluency, is everybody from every sector has a role to play in this. So if you're in the private sector, and you feel like homelessness is hard to solve, believe me, we need you. If you're in the public sector, and you feel like nobody cares about homelessness enough to really do something about it, that's not true. What her storie