Learning Series | Chris Jarvis & Realized Worth

Summary:

We speak to Chris Jarvis from Realized Worth on the importance of corporate volunteering. We discuss how to leverage corporate volunteering to drive systemic change at companies. A key trend is how companies can use empathy during hands-on and skills-based volunteering to create a company of impact.

Transcript:

WeHero (00:03): Perfect, Chris, thank you somuch for joining us on the we hero learn series. We're very eager to let ouraudience learn about you. Learn about realize worth, and hopefully give themsome really powerful tips on volunteerism and what's happening in the world ofsocial impact and CSR. So thanks so much for being here.

Chris Jarvis (00:19): Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks forhaving me.

WeHero (00:21): So, Chris, I think firstquestion, hopefully the easiest question. Who is Chris Jarvis? Who are you, howdid you get into this world of social impact?

Chris Jarvis (00:33): Yeah, that's a good question.Who is Chris Jarvis? I think I pay a lot of money to a therapist to figure thatout. So I don't know. I don't know how much I can give away here for free. Myjourney, this space that this is kind of the gist of the conversation began backin the nineties. And I, I was involved in some work at a small town outside ofToronto in a suburb of Toronto. We were starting to drop well, I didn't knowanything about that long story of how I even involved in it, but that was my,the beginning of sort of a divergence from what I had grown up, being taughtand told. And then some of the realities that I was confronted with when I wentto Toronto and met with some people who actually knew what was going around onin the city with homeless youth.

Chris Jarvis (01:25): So that was a bit mind blowingand then running the drop in was also mind blowing, just stuff that kids weredealing with at ages that they shouldn't even have to think about. That kind ofthing. And I know that's kind of naive and privilege to be able to say that,but that's where I was coming from naive and privilege. And I think that's agreat way to describe myself and began a journey. And in that journey sort ofrealized that I wanted to rethink everything about what I believed and it, andwhat I held to be true, challenged those convictions and my role in the world.So for me, it was very much about relearning kind of a worldview and being openand questioning absolutely everything, finding some people who could guide methrough that process and that, that began the new trajectory. And it wasthrough that, that I kind of began to understand the incredibly potent role ofthe simple idea of volunteering that you can go somewhere, be confronted with areality that challenges your beliefs about who you are and the world, and canbe can be kind of like an epiphany where you have this sort of, oh my God, whatam I, what have I been thinking? What have I thinking now? What should I bethinking?

WeHero (02:46): Can we pull a thread there thatyou mentioned Chris world view? I think so many of us are looking for thatright world view when we go and we talk about volunteerism, you know, in somecases we're trying to give people that, but talk about your process of, ofexpanding your worldview. You talked about meeting some mentors and goingthrough some steps, like what were those steps that you took?

Chris Jarvis (03:07): Yeah, there's kind of two, twoparts that I've come to understand this many years later. So that was early. Ibegan, I would say this journey of my life back in 92. Which is funny to notsay 2000 in front of a, a number is, is funny to me now, but 1992. And therewas this external sort of space that I was going to, or in and people who weresort of guides to help me navigate the realities of, you know, soup kitchensand men's missions and, and addiction issues. And then there's the internalprocess where I was re this is where I, now this many years later, havingunderstanding a little bit more about neuroscience, not being a neuroscientistand behavioral change. The, I was going through a process where my NeuroNet wasreconfiguring itself. And you mentioned the term world view, which is a niceterm kind of a psychological term to describe how we see and perceive theworld.

Chris Jarvis (04:10): But in neuroscience, your worldview is your neural net, and you can only see the way you see the world, theway your neural net is configured. You, you can imagine other ways of seeingthe world, but even in those imaginations, the constructs that you come up withare based on your lived experience and what, you know, you can't escape yourbrain and neither could I. And so I, if I was going to have not an enlargedworldview, but a radically reconfigured worldview, I needed to reconfigure theneural net in my brain. Now, again, I didn't know that's what was happening. Butthat's the process that I, I went through through these experiences over aperiod of time.

WeHero (04:52): So talk to us a little bitabout realized worth cuz from an outsider, look again, and hearing you talkabout that experience. It seems you have taken that experience you've gone to,and you're helping companies almost go through that experience if you realizeworth. Yeah. So could you share a little bit about realized worth with ouraudience?

Chris Jarvis (05:10): Yeah, that's that is a greatinsight Ben that I don't think most people understand is that all I have beendoing since day one, either for myself or then working with nonprofits and thenstarting to work with companies is working to create space where other peoplecan have that moment of epiphany and challenge what they believe to be true andhow they see themselves and how they act in the world. And so that is yeah,that's the complete process. Now we can get into the details of, of how I, wedo that realize worth, but just for listeners who may not have heard of usrealize worth is a, a, a small firm that works with very large companies ondesigning and implementing employee volunteering programs with the goal thatyou take a transformative approach, which means creating space for that tohappen versus a transactional approach. And I, and I do want to clarify if foranybody who's taking a transactional approach to volunteering, which means theprimary goal is the task and getting the work done. That's not bad. That'sgood. It just leave to a lot of value on the table in terms of what youremployees are experiencing and how they're being changed.

WeHero (06:26): The question I have for you is,you know, you've been doing this and, and kind of taking everyone through thejourney that you went through. Do you think, you know, you compare it 1992 tothe two thousands and today, has it gotten easier or harder to take peoplethrough that same journey

Chris Jarvis (06:40): Easier? Now, I, I will sayeasier from a, a systems and sort of a global consciousness perspective. So CSRhas evolved. I think most people use CSR and ESG interchangeably. We tend touse the term corporate citizenship, cuz we're talking about the human quotient.The, the individual employees who are the actors to actually do the work. Theyactivate the work they're ambassadors. They can speak to the work and they areauthenticators. So they can tell you whether what the company's talking aboutand its press releases is a real deal or not. And I, and I mean, let's behonest as employees, when they read in the paper, what their companies aredoing, they roll their eyes and go, yeah, whatever, right? Because they'rethinking about the last interaction they have with their manager, which isreally what the company culture is like, but they're not gonna put that in thepaper.

Chris Jarvis (07:31): So and yet the geopoliticalclimate is saying private sector, take a bigger role in diversity, equity,inclusion, human rights, health and safety fair wages. And so with, you know,let's, let's face it. Most religious leaders are sidestepping that cuz theydon't wanna get pulled into it and political leaders can't I mean, Joe Biden'spresident Biden's 1.2 trillion infrastructure bill like that was 50, 50 tillyesterday. Right? So it it's very hard I think for politicians to lead. And sothe private sector is stepping into the gap in these areas. And so to answeryour question that does provide a better door through which to talk about howare people, people changing their points, their views, their beliefs, are theychallenging their biases? That is, people are quite open to that. Whereas earlyon it was like, oh that's nice. We'll get to that. If we have lots of extracash in time.

WeHero (08:35): Yeah, no, it's a great, greatfeedback. And I imagine it's so much contagious, you know, if you takeemployees through this process, you know, if they transfer to a differentcompany, I imagine they can share that it may not be as effective as theirfirst company, but it it's somewhat contagious through, through the effort.

Chris Jarvis (08:51): Yeah. I, I would agree. Andthat that's kind of the trick of the transformative approach is once it'sinternalized you don't just turn that off anymore than if you if somebody youreally cared about passed away, you don't just turn that memory off. Thataffects you the rest of your life for time, you fell in love that affects yourrest of life, your baby, oh my gosh, that, that definitely affects see the restof your life and this kind of experience. If it's transformative, it, it doesaffect the trajectory of your life.

WeHero (09:22): Chris, when you're, when you'retaking companies through that transformative process, what are like some of thelargest Roblox that you notice? What are those sticky points in the processwhere it's like, oh, this is gonna take some time to resolve I'm I'm I'mcurious what the moments are and what those roadblocks are.

Chris Jarvis (09:38): So the roadblocks to takingthis transformative approach, okay. The number one roadblock human beings hatethe concept of time. We never have enough of it. We're running out of it andeverything takes too much of it. So this kind of work takes years. Companieshave a mindset of a quarter, right. And companies tend to, okay, I'm not surehow the audience will deal with this, but the company concept of time is moreakin to a goldfish. It feels like in that, and that's also the public sentimenttoo. You're only as good as your last quarter. And then if you're not good thisquarter, I don't care how good you've been for the past decade. We're gonnapenalize you for what you did in the last three months kind of thing. And sothat applies to a lot of things. Some of it has been POS PO positive. But inthis case human behavior change, neural growth takes time. It just, you needcontinual exposure to experiences over a period of time. And so I think anumber of people that we work with gung ho at the beginning, love the concept,sorry, how long is this gonna take? Like we're not seeing the results that wewere hoping for and it's been, you know, three months. So that's, I would saythe, the biggest obstacle is time

WeHero (11:08): To, to help with that. Whenyou're meeting with companies, do you have, you know, you realize work, thishas been doing this work for so long. Do you have case studies of companiesthat are, are doing this really well, that have gone through this and you'reseeing them perform at an optimal level when it comes to engaging employees andvolunteering and giving in a powerful way?

Chris Jarvis (11:27): Well, you know, that, that kindof depends because everybody has a different understanding of the termengagement and a successful program. So if you're we break down companies intofive stages of citizens ship in the third stage, you're kind of serviceoriented. You are like doing a month of giving or a day of giving. It, and it'sabout participation. How can we get a lot of people to participate? And you'reservices to your employees. It's kinda like a benefit thing. And when they talkabout engagement and success, how many people, how many hours, how much money,how many nonprofits, it's a very output oriented, you know, success once you,if you spend a little bit of time in there, the obvious question, unless youjust sort of bored it and kicking back and phoning in your job and you, youdon't really you're doing it.

Chris Jarvis (12:16): It's fine. But most peoplearen't like that in these roles. And they think, well, it feels like we couldget more out of this. Like I'm glad, you know, we have 30% participation andwe've got a million hours, but I, I don't know if I know what that's doing. Andso they start to think about engagement in terms of something that can be moreinternalized, something that can change people's perspective. It's not quitethe fifth level, which is transformative, but it, it it's at that level that welike to work with companies to help them see success because they're already,they've already decided that they wanted find success and engagement beyondthat. Now you asked, do you have any good Mo good models or good examples? Onlyin terms of companies that have reconfigured their approach to account for theirrational choices that human beings make, right?

Chris Jarvis (13:09): Like we're not all rationallyweighing. Should I go volunteer? Should I volunteer? That's not how we makedecisions. So they've adjusted the decision making model or choice architecturemodel. They've also thought through their systems and they have a, a, a clear logicmodel and an approach theory of change. They've begun to ask better questionsabout engagement. I'll give you an example a way better question about realengagement is I'll give you three. Okay. Ben, number one. Did you enjoy yourtime here? Volunteering today? Do you feel you made a meaningful contribution?You're gonna say, yeah. Yeah, sure. I did. Do you how likely on a scale of oneto 10, are you to talk about this event with friends and family afterwards? Oh,it was pretty good. And there was that thing with the paint. Yeah. 10,definitely gonna talk to people about that.

Chris Jarvis (13:59): Cuz I have to explain why myshirt's covered in paint. Okay, great. Scale of one to 10, how likely are youto VI involve a colleague and bring them with you to the next event within thenext quarter? Oh, I DT know everybody's so busy. I don't know, maybe six orseven. Well we know in a net promoter score, that means not good enough. Right.And it needs to be engaging enough that it was so valuable that I tell otherpeople in the same way as I have a good restaurant experience. And I just blaabout it to everybody, no emails to remind me to do it. Nobody's paying me.There's no incentive, there's no reward. The restaurant won't even really knowabout it, but there's enough inherent value in that sharing of that, you know,opportunity that it makes me, it elevates my status among my peers to sharethat good information. And that's the level that these experiences need to getto. And we do have some companies that are doing much better at that.

WeHero (14:56): I, I have a, an interestingquestion for you. And if you feel free to push back on this question, Chris,but to give people some ideas of what an experience could look like or avolunteer experience, look like I have a question for you. So if you putyourself in the shoes of a volunteer to company, what is your ideal volunteerexperience? Walk me through that hour or two hours. What are you going toexperience? What are the chapters of that experience? I, I just want tounderstand in your eyes, what's that ideal volunteer experience you as thevolunteer going through that, what do you,

Chris Jarvis (15:25): Right. Okay, well, let's, let'sdo an, a B version of it. The, the a version is a typical one. I go because myfriend at work has asked me to go so many times and for whatever reason, I'mjust like, oh my God, I'll go. Okay, fine. I'll go. Like, I don't volunteer.I'm not a bad person or anything, but I'm so busy. I, I, I don't evenunderstand how my friend has this much time, but it's my friend. So I'm gonnago. So I'm extremely motivated. Number one. I'm probably gonna show up late cuzI've got other things going on and honest to God it's volunteering. So ifanybody complains that I'm 10 minutes late, I will lose my mind. Cuz I showedup on a Saturday for the stupid thing. Three I just show up and I'm given arole and told where to go and I do it and I have to keep checking.

Chris Jarvis (16:09): Like I run outta things to do.And I'm probably standing around talking, which is fine, cuz a bunch of otherpeople that I know. But in the end I think did they even need me? Cuz I, I likepainted for 30 minutes. Couldn't somebody else have done this if they wererunning this better. And then afterwards everybody's high fiving and thanks forpainting. And I do feel good about that. Remember I'm not a curmudgeon and I, Ifeel like we get some good stuff done. And I guess it's a hostile for youth orI don't really know if somebody said something, they gimme a lot of stats and Igot to keep the t-shirt I'm outta here. Good done. That's my one time a yearI'm done ticket off the box three hours. Am I gonna log those hours? Are youkidding? I gave you three hours. I'm not gonna spend another hour to try andfigure out how to put hours in for the company who cares. That's your typical,right.

Chris Jarvis (17:00): Okay. A good one would be billinvites me to go. I go because he's my friend. I don't have time. I'm too busy.I show up late cuz it's my first time. They better be thankful that I showed upat tall. Nobody ever to complain. But when I get there, there's a brief, that'sgonna happen in 10 minutes. So they're having it at half past the hour toaccount for people like me. And then we get into the brief and we talk aboutwhat we're gonna do, how we're gonna get it, done safety protocols and allthat. And then why, why does this matter? And then the why they do, they dosomething where they create proximity to the beneficiary. So they talk aboutwho we're helping. It's not a list of bullets or stats. It's not how well thenonprofit is done. It's not how many youth are living on the street.

Chris Jarvis (17:44): Honest to God. That's importantinformation. But remember, I don't care. Like I've got nothing to, there's noplace to connect that to in me. Like I care, of course I care, but I don't carecare. So what they do in the brief is they tell a story about a kid and whathe's facing and what he's doing. And, and in that storytelling, they tell methat, listen you're probably wondering how paint he helps his kid. His, hisproblem is not his lack of high school education or no work skills to the factthat he's been dealing with addiction and tell you what his number one problemis. He thinks he deserves bad things in life. Like absolutely everything badthat happens. You're screw up. You deserve it. So we bring them to a beautifulhouse and we paint the house. And when they look at this beautiful trim thatthe volunteers come in and make clean and the windows that they wash and thethings that they repair, they, we tell them, you know what?

Chris Jarvis (18:36): This is a beautiful place,isn't it? Yep. You deserve to be here, whatever. No, no, you deserve to behere. You're working hard. And the community came in because they think youdeserve it too. You deserve it. We got your back. His biggest obstacle, thatkid's biggest obstacle was the belief that they don't deserve it. And paintinggave them dignity. The ability to believe that they do have value. This iswhere we get our name realize worth, because if I can realize my true worth andlive out of it by contributing and giving to others, what they need to surviveand thrive that I live much better life than I was before. And so they do thebrief, which they've explained the significance of the task. And they've told astory where I can imagine what it would be like to be that kid.

Chris Jarvis (19:22): That's, that's the thing. I haveto be able to imagine the mind of the other. And then we do it. Bill keepschecking on me. Do you have enough to do this? I I'm, I'm never standingaround. I get to talk to people, but I somebody's always making sure I'm doingsomething because my default setting is, if I'm not contributing, if I'm notproductive, then how valuable was it? It's a thing that the west has developedover time. Just being doesn't have much value in a awkward. And then at theback end, a debrief and two simple gets the all in the kitchen. Two simplequestions. What did you experience was what you expected and there, those twoquestions. What did you experience? Was it what you expected creates cognitivedissonance. I thought it was coming because of these reasons and this it'suninformed.

Chris Jarvis (20:07): I'm just sense making with whatI have. And then I have this experience and they filled in some gaps and thesetwo things crash into each other. I was thinking these kids on the street arelazy. No good. They should get a job. And now I'm thinking, wait, that's notright. And if that's not right, is what I believe. Right. And if what Ibelieve, isn't right. How wait, how do I act when I walk by them? I mean, it'schallenging everything and I've gotta resolve that. And then I leave and hereand a key is to be able to revisit it again within a month, two months, I needto revisit those pathways and I need ongoing discussion. I need to be able tothink through what that is, that through rational discourse and then go backand have an experience. Again, that's a great employee volunteering experienceversus come do a task, keep the t-shirt thanks for coming. That's a helper, youknow model. This is a belonging model,

WeHero (21:03): Great anecdotes kind of thecheck, the box, the, you know, what I think of as really a value add experiencethat creates the promoter attitude. Yeah. yeah. You know, one of the thingsthat popped up as you were sharing those anecdotes was the responsibility ofnonprofits in this. Yeah. And you know, I think we all work with bothnonprofits and companies and so we see both sides, but I'd be curious you know,you're take on how much, you know, should nonprofits be driving this? Do theyhave the resources to drive a lot of this versus a company really driving it,given they have more resources?

Chris Jarvis (21:38): Yeah.

Chris Jarvis (21:40): I, I think the companies aremoving out of a time where they were fairly infantalized by the civil societyidea of the nonprofit sector. Nonprofits would look at them as, you know, aresource for cash and skills when and where that was necessary. But I mean, volunteers,what a pain, like I gotta do volunteering cuz you're not gonna gimme any moneyotherwise, but I could, if you just gave me the money, I could hire somebody todo it and it'd be quick, are more efficient. Right. But that doesn't changesociety's perspectives on these issues. And, and until we internalize and say,you know, what, if we ever get to a place in the United States in Canada wherewe could look at homelessness and say, that's not right. That's not normal. Weneed to get rid of that. Like we did with, I don't know, sending kids to theminds when they were 10 years old, it's legal now. Right. So we can change it,but laws will follow perspective of individuals and our, my perspective's nevergonna change if I never have an experience with it and begin ask new questions.So so that's part of an answer, Andy. What was the other part of the question?Do you recall?

WeHero (22:50): Well, yeah, it was really aGenesis of, you know, should nonprofits be recognizing yeah. The change thatneeds to happen just as much as companies now.

Chris Jarvis (22:57): Yeah. So but the other part ofthe equation is companies haven't really owned their responsibility to runevents and or, or to train their employees. So we do have some, the very largebrands that have taken their champions or ambassadors through a trainingprogram, they get certified and they know how to find a nonprofit, how to puttogether an event, how to recruit people, how to get everybody to, to recordtheir hours. And they've, they work with thousands of employees across ahundred thousand size employees at a company. But a couple thousand would becertified as these tra champions. And they basically make it happen. And therole of the team is to make sure that they have the resources of what theyneed. So that gets the company up to a performing level, as a true partner.And, but the nonprofit sector is not getting the investment.

Chris Jarvis (23:49): It needs to meet that. If youtalk about things like dollar for doers, 95% of nonprofits that I've talked toover the past three years, when I asked for a show of hands, how many peoplehave heard of that? They don't know it. And so because of that double thedonation figures four to 7 billion, doesn't go a community investment cuz employeesaren't claiming it, nonprofits aren't getting it. Which is significant becausethe nonprofit sector contributes 4 billion to national giving in the UnitedStates. Sorry, 4%. It's, it's more than that. It's close to 20 billion, butit's only 4 cent. It's not much. But I think you've hit on something. I feelpretty strongly, but that the nonprofit the, the private sector should beinvesting in their partners to get their capacity up so they can meet as peers.And right now there's way more money and people than there's a place to go.

WeHero (24:45): Yeah. That probably gets you from,I think you called it stage three of corporate citizenship is when they'returning to the nonprofits and saying, Hey, we need to do this event. We'regonna have 200 people. That's good. Yeah. Output, Y versus start going to stagefour and stage five, your partners to try to drive overall change.

Chris Jarvis (25:01): Bingo. You nailed it. That'sexactly right.

WeHero (25:04): Great concept. Yeah.

Chris Jarvis (25:06): We've been actually toying withan idea around this. I'm I'm calling it. I don't know what we'll call it, butright now, skill sets, volunteering, which is, could you bring a couplecompanies together with different from different industries, say tech andconsulting and say, what problem do you wanna solve? And find a third nonprofitpartner who can be the voice of the community that's being affected by thesocial environmental issue. And then all three of them as a triad, at leastwork on solving the problem rather than the older model, which is how can wehelp that nonprofit. So again, just that mindset change. And if you put twocompanies with each other on Agon, the performance goes up because well, whowants to look like an idiot next to your peer company? Right? And, andhonestly, some of these companies are working with each other already, so you,you gotta make it, you gotta make it brilliant. So I think that kind of dynamiccould be something that really ups the game.

WeHero (26:09): Yeah. I'm just reflecting onthe PA the past conversation, just thinking about, you know, what we're talkingabout in regards to storytelling and empathy and just the challenge fornonprofits, cuz we lean on nonprofits so much for that aspect. Right? Like wealmost can't go anywhere else. It's really, we really, and we see that timetime again, where we're talking nonprofits, they're strapped for bandwidth andin some cause areas it's like, it's kinda like you're it, you're all we haveto, you know, really convey the stories really help us understand and beempathetic towards the individuals that we're gonna impact today. So Idefinitely see that in just how we need to get companies to invest behind thisnonprofit so we can do more of that for more long term impact.

Chris Jarvis (26:50): Yeah. And on that storytelling,it's interesting. Just a quick story. We flew into Denver, we met a a team fromball Corp. We were working with them at a for a while in Denver and we went toa food bank and we showed up and they were gonna have someone there who couldtalk about it. That person was the custodian. And we said can you share alittle bit about this? And he went, oh hell no. We were like, okay. So we, Ihad done a little bit of research before, so I said your champion, they wereall champions. What you need to do in this situation is have done some work onyour own, read up, read some stories out there. And then I just shared, and Idid that whole brief and debrief that I described earlier. And that may be thelevel of ownership that companies need to have until, until the nonprofits canget there or it, it may be in those situations. It that's, that's the levelthat I think companies need to be able to of responsibility to step into.

WeHero (27:53): You know, it's, it's funnybecause I think back, you know, the human mind reacts to stories, you know,that is what drives us. And every other part of the business world hastransitioned. Marketing is now a storytelling job. Yeah. You know, finance istelling the story of your accounting system. So you know, what, what, what tocreate in the next year, what you can't afford to create. You know, it seemslike it's almost a natural transition in this, which is a more nascent part ofthe corporate structure.

Chris Jarvis (28:20): Yeah. I, I agree. You know,it's interesting. Human beings only learn I was reading this in, in Dr. Eman,he's a neuroscientist David eman and he was pointing out that the way we learn,let's say you and I were gonna learn Andy, how to fly a helicopter an old Hueylet's say, and you grew up riding horses and I grew up driving cars. Your wayof learning would be scaffolded onto a horse riding. You would learn all ofthat information on top of your neural net that had the information about horseriding because it's scaffold memory building and I would learn it differently.And that kind, kind of diversity, that kind of way of learning andunderstanding is really important because when we tell stories, we free up thebullets to fit the individual's diverse experience. And so you can take a storyand make it your own much easier than just this many people, this many hoursit's that, that kind of a thing. It, it really doesn't have anywhere to go thesame way. It, it, not that it's not important, it's just not compelling.

WeHero (29:37): Well, you probably get a muchbetter reaction to those bullets after I've already been home. Oh yeah. And canenvision

Chris Jarvis (29:42): See that's right. Yeah. That'sexactly right.

WeHero (29:48): Chris. I think, you know, wehave a lot of folks with, you know, purely human curiosity, wondering what thenext few years are gonna look like. And I think we're all curious what the nextfew years are gonna look like. And I'm, I'm curious on your take in to what isexciting you right now about corporate citizenship. Like, and when you look outone year, five years, like what's getting you really excited right now for thisindustry.

Chris Jarvis (30:12): I, so this is gonna seem alittle bit I forget what the term is, but I'm about to compliment hero. We hearand and it is, it, it, there's a point here. There are more organizationscoming in with more ideas and more services and more support for the sector.It's absolutely critical. So what you are doing at your company and creatingconversations that are accessible, like this is part of a huge movement that Ithink is creating ground swell, insight, knowledge, resources that are so muchbetter than where we were 10 years ago, 12 years ago. I think the second thingis it's going to become more intentional. So I see sort of a divergencehappening on the one hand, the recent C E C P C E C P report giving in numbers2021.

Chris Jarvis (31:14): For the first time listedsomething called total social volume. Now companies like Salesforce for thepast year or so, I have been talking about the social volume of thecontribution. They have the one plus one plus one. So they do a good job of countingnon-financial contributions to kind of show it's, it's a big deal, but they'renot in financial contributions. Aren't don't necessarily mean free. They couldbe a reduced cost or something like that. Plus they count, we're doing thiswork internally around health safety and whatnot. So C ECP has included anyinternal efforts around DEI, health and safety. Those kinds of things thatnormally would've just been, if you're a good business, you'd have thesethings, right. And, but now it's being folded into total SI social value, whichI don't think is bad. But if you equate community investment in dealing withissues too, we bought slightly more expensive pencils because they're organicor ethically sourced that is not a one to one trade.

Chris Jarvis (32:18): Right. and so the divergence Isee are some companies saying are you kidding? We can count the things thatwe're doing already. And it totals this much money. Let's just do that, right.Cuz it's numbers and it's big. And everybody wants to see it and they'recounting it now in CCP, over here, you, you see sort of that kind of trend is,well, we have a mandate. We are not just private sector over here, gettingstuff from society, civil society contributing to society. The blinds areblurred in everything we do should be contributing to society and we wanna rampup and we wanna move to stage four, stage five in our citizenship. We want tobe transformative. We want a, to give people the skills they need. So whenthey're dealing with issues like Mira, they can help people move to ananti-racist point of view and they guide them step by step through experientiallearning to challenge biases in a way that doesn't make them feel ashamed orthreatened. It does, but it will move them along. So you're gonna see two kindsof companies and on paper, I think their contributions to society could lookpretty similar and it won't be until you open the door and walk inside, youyou'd be able to tell, okay, these people just put out memos and press releasesand these people are actually doing the hard work. And I suppose maybe that'sno different than previously, but what's in that equation is, is quitesignificantly different. I think now than say 30 years ago,

WeHero (33:46): You know, as I think about youkind of being this leader in converting the minds of the volunteer at thesecompanies, you know, if you could find a way to quantify the percentage ofempathetic employees due to volunteering, I, and have that be a metric thatwould probably define it, but you know, everyone likes metrics, I guess.

Chris Jarvis (34:05): Yeah. It's, it's interesting.You say that because the we're, we've launched a program through the RWInstitute, which is nudge the good, which is introducing behavioral science tonudge those who don't to try it, either giving a volunteering and to nudgethose who do a little to go further and that to where you can get intoexperiential learning through volunteering towards DEI or towards some otheraspect challenging bias and that kind of thing. So with that in mind, the, mylong term plan, there's no it's not fixed or set or anything, but I would loveto reproduce the a bit of research called the knowledge out of the UK wherecabbies have to spend four years memorizing the maps of London. And this hasbeen reproduced a number of times and you can, you can actually put them in anMRI and then give them some street names and whatnot.

Chris Jarvis (34:59): And before zero light up,obviously afterwards, boom, big light up, right? So the brain has changed itnow recognizes and responds quite differently. I'd love to do that withemployees who four years ago, didn't know anything about homelessness beganvolunteering with the company and then show them pictures of homelessness,homeless people later, and see how their has rebuilt itself to see the worlddifferently. That to me would be like this is the best proof possible thatthis, these, this approach culture is just the external construct of ourinternal worldview together. So that's, this is what really needs to happen toshift culture of a company.

WeHero (35:43): If you, if you ever do thatexperiment, Chris, let us know happy to volunteer my brain, if you wanna memore than happy to commit to that.

Chris Jarvis (35:51): Yeah. Well I think the firstfew, few versions when we're baselining be really disappointing for people,cause we're gonna take a page outta Drana Harris's work. You can look that upor I can send some notes that you can include where he puts people in MRI andshows them pictures of people and the medial prefrontal cortex lights up quitenicely, cuz that's a part of the brain in one 17th, million of a second, Ithink recognizes humans versus non-humans. But then you're throw in pictures ofhomeless people. Doesn't it doesn't activate unless you have an experience witha homeless person. It never activates because they're too far from our ownunderstanding of what a human being is. And this is why ultimately this is whyhuman beings are susceptible to genocide because we're easily manipulated bypropaganda. We can dehumanize those people because they're a threat and we needto get rid of them. It just happens over and over again.

WeHero (36:50): There's an incredible Netflixdocumentary coming out that they just released the trailer called lead me home,which I'll send to you to, to you guys. It's one of their feature documentariescoming out this year and it's all about the stories of homelessness to, tocommunicate what needs to change.

WeHero (37:06): Okay. And, and so it'd befascinating study to run before you see the movie after you see the movie.Yeah. but overall, you know, further to the point of, you know, people ofrecognizing this, the potential of stories. So

Chris Jarvis (37:17): Please do send that. That'svery interesting. Yeah. Yeah.

WeHero (37:20): Final question I have for you.I'm sure. Ben may have one more if someone were to hand you a thousand dollarstomorrow and say, you can only give it to one nonprofit, which nonprofit wouldit be?

Chris Jarvis (37:33): Probably the RW Institutebecause I have to raise money for that thing.

Chris Jarvis (37:40):Selfserving selfserving that wasthe term I was looking for. What I was talking about. We here is a littleself-serving to talk about how great you are when I'm on your, your interview.Yeah, so, but there's another one that I might consider. Let's say I had a goodmonth at RW a ladders to the leaders here in Baltimore. There's an individualworking with a number of people in the community, but I, the phrase heintroduced me to and I love now is returning citizens because in America weincarcerate more of our citizens than any other com country in the world. Andwhen they return not to not to see them as, you know perps or convicts orcriminals, but returning citizens, then he works with them. Take, get them backon track. I definitely would give that to him.

WeHero (38:31): And, and Chris, I don't havefinal questions. I have like 10 or 20 more questions I ask you all day. And ifwe

Chris Jarvis (38:36):I'm good to go, let's, let'skeep

WeHero (38:37): Going. If I had a glass ofwine, we'd be here for four or five hours plus. But no, I, I think my lastquestion, is there anything else that you'd like to convey to our audience and,and including that ways that people can continue following your work findrealized worth, how can people stay in touch with the work you all are doing?

Chris Jarvis (38:54): How okay. My advocation wouldbe the, there are two parts of your company and they're blending more and more.And I think that's a good thing. So I'm not against the total social value ideaat all. I just wouldn't wanna see, you know, organic pencils as an excuse toignore a bunch of other things. But the work you're doing on the citizenshipside, creating space for people to have epiphanies and realize the true worthand live out of it, it is not the car you own, or the amount of money in yourbank or the size of your house. It's and it is not how much you buy sell. It'snot how fast you are pretty. You are. There's a value that you have insideyourself that can only be found when you give what to somebody else, what theyneed to have agency and move forward in life.

Chris Jarvis (39:44): That's when you realize what itreally means to be a human being on this planet with the rest of us. And so wenamed it realize worth. And so while everybody else may be buying sellingwidgets and making widgets, which is important, and you should do that, thepeople on this side of the equation are building nations. We're not building acompany. Your work goes well beyond what's happening in that quarter or thatyear, or that decade. You are giving people experiences that lasts the lifetimeand translate to their friends and family and that in the perspective of thenext generation and set the course for humanity. So they're building a company,you're building a nation, hopefully a, a global world connected world as well.So my advocation would be, be more intentional move past the outputs of howmany people, how many places, how much money, how many hours, and think moreintentionally about how to create space. So people can have an aha moment andask really important questions about themselves, what they believe and how theyact in the world that saves the species. And that's the role, that's the jawthat I think most CSR managers in this role, that's the job they have. And sojust own it, lean into it, take it on and understand what's at stake. And and thenlive with that as opposed to stage three, which is which you gotta go throughgood event. There's nothing wrong with that, but there's so much more,

WeHero (41:24): I love that. I we've been onphone calls obviously with CSR leaders every week. And one of the things thatwe've started doing is saying, thank you, we appreciate you. And some of 'em gowhy? And I think it's like, the conversation is you do so much and your job isso hard and there's so much you're capable of doing. And you've been giventhis, this power, this ability to use the voices and unite the voices ofthousands of people. Yeah. And there's a huge power to that. And I think it's,it's just something we'd start saying. It's like, we appreciate you. Thank youfor doing this work. Yeah,

Chris Jarvis (41:53): Yeah, yeah. I agree with that,

WeHero (41:55):Chris, this has been amazing.How can people, again, follow you realize worth worthy. Can they find you

Chris Jarvis (42:02): Yeah. Realize work.com or youcan check out more of the frontier thinking crazy stuff on rw.institute. If youwanna make a thousand dollars to donation so I can donate it to somebody likethe suit. That's great too. You can find it there. We have a couple differentkinds of newsletters that go out. One is a list of all the online events andrecordings like this one here, whenever we can find them the other newsletter,we promote a little bit of RW stuff, but usually we feature the work of otherorganizations like we hero and some others to just create awareness of the, thebroad field. So you, yeah, you can easily find us there,

WeHero (42:41): Those watching and listeningand that wanna make a thousand dollars donation. We'll

Chris Jarvis (42:46): Links in the blog

WeHero (42:48): Aligned with this. Also, we'vecovered a lot of different topic areas today and we'll make sure we providelinks and resources in the blog following up on this. So, Chris thank youimmensely again, Andy and I, you know, we, as we've talked before in the pastthat we've been following your work for a long time, and we just appreciate youbeing a thought leader in this space and helping more companies do this work,cuz we think there's great long term success to come from in. And so weappreciate you and thank you for giving us the time today

Chris Jarvis (43:14): In my a pleasure. It's great tobe on the road with people like you. Thank you.

WeHero (43:18): Thanks Chris.

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