We knew we were in trouble when our guest took over the intro one second into recording. Martyn Clark - who Martin with an I met nearly twenty years ago in Edinburgh - joins us from Marrakesh, the morning after a Sahara sandstorm filled his pool with sand.
Martyn’s path runs from a Presbyterian manse in Northern Ireland, through physics at Edinburgh (where a tutorial with Peter Higgs broke his working philosophy of the world), satellite data and opera, to running a voice clinic and, eventually, working with boards as what he calls a corporate philosopher. Along the way he wrote Love Incorporated, his case for how corporations could become more human if they served what people need rather than money alone.
In this conversation you’ll hear why Martyn stopped trying to fix corporations about ten years ago, and what kept getting in the way when he did - the shareholders nobody will ask, the deals that can’t be renegotiated, the lobby two steps beyond anyone’s influence. We talk about leadership as midwifery rather than navigation, why “externalities” is a convenient way of not taking responsibility, and why efficiency as a guiding force might be the most foolish thing we’ve built our organisations around. Martyn sketches his idea of pairing a corporation with a foundation built to last 150 years, and we wander through Wipro’s family ownership, Asimov’s Foundation, Jamie Dimon, and Andy Burnham’s way of saying “I’ve decided”.
There’s also a taxi rank under a palm tree, wolves that only turn aggressive when boxed in, a piano in the boardroom, and a fair amount of Gen X soul-searching about whether we spent too long running around in the woods. As usual, we don’t arrive at an answer - but Martyn makes a strong case for being comfortable without one.
Mentioned in this episode
Martyn Clark — corporate philosopher; founder of Gadfly (Gadfly Consulting Group) - www.linkedin.com/in/martynclark/
Love Incorporated — Martyn’s book on making corporations more human - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Love-Incorporated-Business-Martyn-Clark/dp/1916249701
The Sun Inside — Martyn’s forthcoming book on accepting life as it comes
The Gadfly Foundation — Martyn’s concept for a long-term leadership foundation paired with a corporation -
https://gadflyconsulting.com/
Peter Higgs and the University of Edinburgh — Martyn’s physics tutor and the “only possible reaction is confusion” conversation
European Space Agency — Martyn’s work on orbital mechanics and multi-channel satellite data
Royal Bank of Scotland — where Martyn’s board-level leadership work began
B Corps — and why Martyn sees them as polishing the edges rather than rewriting the basis
The RSA — as a model for a long-lived institution guiding a transition
Wipro — and its majority ownership by a family foundation
The Gates Foundation — on whose philosophy a foundation aligns to
JP Morgan, Jamie Dimon and the Business Roundtable statement on corporate purpose
Andy Burnham — ownership, communication and “I’ve decided we’re going to do this”
Isaac Asimov’s Foundation and Hari Seldon’s psychohistory
Externalities — the corporate term for what isn’t our responsibility
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Find Martin on LinkedIn - www.linkedin.com/in/designled
Find Brian on LinkedIn - www.linkedin.com/in/brianhoadley
