TVC078 Emergent Stephen Scott Johnson
Welcome back to my Influencer Series episodes. this time talking movements, culture and the ripple effect, with Emergent author and culture king Stephen Scott Johnson.
A genius in the world of creativity, innovation, advertising and creating movements, Stephen is passionate about helping people connect with their purpose and igniting that in people and organisations.
How do companies and people can create a sense of shared purpose that unites collaboration and connection on a large scale. How do they do this for meaningful impact?
Emerging Creative Insights and Connection
Whether it was business or personal, it was about movements. What aligns with your purpose, and what you stand for as an individual?
When we first met Stephen and I started talking about creating insights and connection for people to accountably live the life they want to. “What if we could have a conversation? Actually really connect with these people, and what would that look like?”
Stephens journey and the focus of his work for the past 20 years has been around fuelling stronger and more authentic engagement. The movement focus started on a non for profit mission years ago.

Blending Purpose and Projects – Where it began and UNICEF 
Passionate about the environment and people having access to medicine and health services, Stephen was invited to help out on a project with UNICEF. The goal was to distribute insecticide impregnated mosquito nets. That’s, he says, is where it all really started.
With a million infants dying a year from malaria, part of that problem was getting the nets to people that needed them the most. In the really remote places in the world.  The UN had an agenda to distribute 20 million nets by 2012. 
Unfortunately the fund raising channels in not for profit were all competing against one another, so it was this dying model within an even bigger dying model. Stephens answer – what if we could get them all connected and working together? They found a way to leverage the principles of movements, to connect them all to each other, for extraordinary results. 

 This movement became the Undercover Movement, and it became the UN Malaria Envoy, the World Malaria Envoy, which delivered it’s 20 million nets two years before it’s target.

Making A Movement At Home and At Work
So how do you translate shared purpose when you’re working with organisations.  How do individuals find their purpose in a company and at home?
When co-creation of a higher purpose that we all believe the perspective shifts, there is an opportunity and an invitation for organisations to ask

Are there social problems that intersect with our business?
If so how can we address them through our operation?

Then the importance of getting staff, clients involved and all their partners and suppliers involved in co-creating that higher purpose. This is when you create critical aspiration to something that’s bigger than you or me, and the organisation.
Moving from Selfish To Selfless
There’s a well known quote from former AFL coach, Neale Daniher “It’s not what we say, it’s what we do. It’s not being selfish, it’s being selfless.”
When organisations move from being selfish into selfless, and when individuals do that, the connection to the greater purposes.

It starts at home.
It starts within you, and it’s the conscious leadership, it’s actually how you bring yourself to a situation first and foremost. 
Then how you do that with one and two and three people, a few other people and then how does that impact the culture of the place you’re working in.