What does it take to create a workplace that’s not just productive, but truly beautiful? In today’s episode, we dive deep into building businesses with purpose, humanity, and soul. Our guest challenges us to rethink the traditional rules of work, exploring ideas like balancing human curation with AI, bridging global perspectives, and fostering connection in moments of crisis.

It’s a no-nonsense, thought-provoking conversation about how businesses can thrive by focusing on meaning and impact—one that will leave you reimagining the future of work.

More information about the House of Beautiful Business here.
More information about Tim here.

Transcript

*Please note that the transcript has been automatically generated and proofread for mistakes. But remains in spoken English, and some syntax and grammar mistakes might remain.

Elisa Tuijnder: [00:00:00] What does it take to create a workplace that’s not just productive, but truly beautiful? In today’s episode, we dive deep into the concept of building businesses with purpose, humanity, and soul. Our guest challenges us to reading the traditional rules of work, exploring ideas like. Balancing human curation with ai, bridging global perspectives and fostering connections in moments of crisis.

It’s a no nonsense thought provoking conversation about how businesses can thrive by focusing on meaning and impact. One that will leave you reimagining the future of work.

Before we dive in, you are listening to The Happiness At Work podcast by Management 3.0 where we are getting serious about happiness.[00:01:00]

I am your host, ER, happiness Enthusiast and Management 3.0 team member. In this podcast, we share insights from industry experts. Influencers and thought leaders about what it takes to be happy, motivated, and productive at work, so that loving your job becomes the norm and not the exception. We’ll be publishing every fortnight or Friday, so be sure to tune in and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome, Tim. Elaborate. Tim is a visionary in the business world, co-founder and co CEO of the house of beautiful business and advocate for a life centered economy. His work spans various domains, including technology, humanities, and the arts, aiming to create a more purposeful, inclusive. And sustainable form of business.

Tim, it’s such a pleasure to have you here on the podcast. Really excited. 

Tim Leberecht: Great to be here. Lisa, thank you so much for having me. 

Elisa Tuijnder: I love [00:02:00] your, your mission and, and what drives you and the, the, the events that you put on. So I’m really excited to jump into that, uh, in a second. But here on the podcast, you always have to start with the same question, and that is what does happiness mean to you?

Tim Leberecht: Ah, God, I wish I knew what happiness meant to me. I am actually right now in Istanbul. I’m looking at the Hagi Sophia. It’s 30 degrees. Nice. I think I’m very close to happiness right now. I’m working on a number of new projects. Yeah. I’m always very happy. I just wrote an article that was published. I’m always very happy when I create something and it, it resonates.

So there’s some kind of the world that, the, the world responding to it, that, that makes me happy. Yeah. But, uh, happiness. It’s not a very meaningful term for me. Not sure if happiness can be a goal or if the pursuit of happiness, which of course is, you know, in my constitution, I’m also an American citizen.

Elisa Tuijnder: Yeah. I’m 

Tim Leberecht: not sure I buy into that or that. Happiness is, equality is all that important to me. Yeah. So I, I think I look for other things, maybe beauty, [00:03:00] maybe enchantment or some other qualities, and you might file them under happiness, but I, I never thought about. Happiness is something that I personally or professionally, yeah.

Need to pursue. 

Elisa Tuijnder: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that’s a, that’s the interesting thing with, with the term happiness, right? It’s a catchall term for a lot of things. Yet somehow there’s a bunch of things in there that we cannot, or that we inherently know. ’cause it that you’ve already said it’s a pursuit, it’s there’s a journey towards it or there’s a movement in it.

I’ve actually just wrote a blog, I still have to, to, to post it about why happiness isn’t very much catching on in, in the business term, and they might have like semantically something to do with the fact that it has this sort of movement in it. 

Tim Leberecht: Do you think that’s the case? It’s not catching on because I feel like there’s been, there’s been this whole trend, maybe like 10 years ago because of the work that, uh, Zappos did.

Yeah, absolutely. The retailer, the happiness officers, chief happiness officers, and a lot of neuroscience on happiness and what work absolutely. Places can do to foster happiness, but it’s, you might be right, right. It was very trendy and it kind of dropped off [00:04:00] again. And now I feel also right now with the current economic climate that we’re in, at least in, in Europe, we’re losing, it’s a bit of back to the basics, right?

So do we have to happiness at work? Maybe we can’t afford it. You know, let’s be pragmatic about it. 

Elisa Tuijnder: I, I think the term or the, what we inherently preach in it, in the happiness at work sphere. Is catching on and is continuing to grow. The, the blog that I’m talking about is literally about the word happiness.

So like, we use engagement, we use wellbeing. So like I use in the, in the blog somehow, like, you know, a search on, uh, on Indeed on how many happiness officers there are available at the moment in Berlin and in New York. And basically how many times the word gets used. I think what we are. Preaching, what we’re saying here on the podcast is catching on and is growing with a bit of a drop again now.

But it’s that word happiness that sort of still feels a bit like, ooh, it’s too fluffy, it’s too, uh, okay. It’s too padded. Yeah. Uh, that, that, that doesn’t seem too. Be ingrained as much that engagement or wellbeing or, you know, all of these [00:05:00] kind of things that we seem to have adopted in the, in the business jargon.

Tim Leberecht: It might also be a bit, it might, you know, as a, as a German, it’s still a bit of a, a sense of discomfort, right? Yeah. Because that work is still something that is not absolutely happy. It maybe sounds too joyful, too playful. It’s something personal. Yeah. You know, so purpose or Yeah. Temporary satisfaction.

It’s maybe a more, an easier to digest term compared to happiness. Right. It seems like a tall order. 

Elisa Tuijnder: Yeah, absolutely. In the article, I basically go into the three directions, sort of like the, you know, the, uh, the looser and pr Pakistan sort of view of it and, and, and how that still feels hard and, and then sort of the semantics and the linguistics sort side of it.

I need to make sure that it’s published before him, before me, this one out. I didn’t just putting lost hands to it. But we’re not here to talk about this one. We wanna talk about your house of beautiful business. Right? And what led you, first of all, like what inspired you to co-found it. We always want to know sort of who are you as a person and what sparked you to, to do something so cool.

Tim Leberecht: Yeah. I was inspired to have found it in, in 2017 with [00:06:00] my, my, uh, colleague in long time friend Till who lives in uni. For two reasons. I think one was deep frustration with business as usual. I was, at the time I was chief marketing officer, I had left a design firm, a great firm that was owned by private equity.

Um, I was part of a planned IPO, so I was sort of exposed to these frictions between, on the one hand, creativity. A very creative thought. On the other hand, like absolutely ruthless, number cruncher or number crunching investors. So I was just really frustrated with all the, the rhetoric and the reality Facebook businesses I founded, and especially after, um, spending many years in Silicon Valley on the one hand, a very driven romantic in, in a sense of wanting to change the 

Elisa Tuijnder: world.

Changing the world, exactly. Yeah. But then also, but also make a lot of money at the same time. 

Tim Leberecht: Yeah. Ultra capitalist and, and yeah, you know, really governed by this, this really brutal optimization and performance machine. So that was, on the one hand, it was really this frustration that led me to, to want to change gears and, and seek new, new Tehran.[00:07:00]

And on the other hand though, I had spent enough years I felt in corporate. In corporate AM America. You 

Elisa Tuijnder: knew that you knew how it ticked. Yeah. 

Tim Leberecht: Yeah. No, also that I felt like I felt the courage to then speak up and do something different. Mm-hmm. And I, I had begun to write, uh, blog posts and. So I felt like it’s good.

It’s, it’s a good time to, to write down my truth and see what it does. And that led really to the book The Business Romantic, which came out in 2015, which was really a, a, a rally cry against efficiency and the kind of Silicon Valley data obsessed culture that I was really so skeptical of at the time after being exposed to it for many years.

And, and that was really the spark for the House of Beautiful Business. So we wanted to create a community around this idea that enchantment. That beauty, that different qualities that you would rather look for in the arts and the humanities are also possible in and through business. In fact, they should be.

Elisa Tuijnder: Yeah,

Tim Leberecht: in unison. Then we had a first gathering in the community group. So, and, and then that’s what we’ve been doing now for, for seven years. 

Elisa Tuijnder: Yeah. And, and doing very well. I might add, [00:08:00] if anybody hasn’t, uh, seen any of the events that, uh, Tim and and his colleagues put on, you should definitely do yourself a favor and, and look at the beautiful videos and, and, and, and, and things that they do around it.

It is a piece of art, uh, and it’s business. Yeah. Coming, coming together in a whole new way or, or in the way that we both probably think business should be and, and, and not as dry and, and. And inspired or number crunching. Yeah. So let’s talk a little bit about what beautiful business is. How would you, at least in broader lines, define it?

Yeah, maybe let’s highlight exactly what the change is there for you. 

Tim Leberecht: So we, we, we coined the, this organization, this community, beautiful business, or the house of beautiful business because beauty is such a catchall, uh, projection field. Everybody wants to have a beautiful life. Everybody wants to live more beautifully.

So a lot of people can project different expectations and hopes onto it. So it’s not controversial. It’s a very universal term, and it’s at the same time, still a little bit of a thorn in the side of business at beauty. That’s not what I would, I wouldn’t look to business to create beauty necessarily [00:09:00] aside, maybe from, from products and cosmetics and beauty products, but not in a, in a more holistic way.

So what do we mean by this? I mean, we, the, the goal of the House of Beauty business is really to help shape and enable. The life centered economy. It’s not a term that we invented, it’s been around for, for decades, but we, we feel like it’s really, its moment has come as the successor to the human centered economy, which was all about human convenience and human comfort and human factors.

Uh, the design industry I think, really blossomed in the context of the human centered economy. But now we’ve come to realize that. In fact, us being at the center of the universe and the center of all economies is the very problem that we need to have a much broader understanding of, 

Elisa Tuijnder: yeah. Of 

Tim Leberecht: stakeholders life around us.

Very narcissistic views. Yeah. And, but also life, like really embracing life in its myriad forms as far as not just like the, the. Efficient, productive self that is expected to show up consistently at the workplace. So it’s both the life around us, but it’s also more life inside [00:10:00] us. So we, we like this, this calling card, the life centered economy and beautiful business is more than how, so how do we do it?

Well, we want to do business more beautifully. And that’s not just a, an invitation or a luxury. Uh, in our view it’s a must because as machines take our jobs. And automate them and do them more efficiently and everything that will be can be done efficiently. Meaning the creative ones around it. Yeah. Yeah.

It will be done more efficiently. The most important work for students is the work that must be done beautifully. So creativity, I’m not even so sure. I think creativity is also partly, I mean, I don’t think that’s necessarily a human ex exclusively human domain, but I think it’s, it’s definitely imagination fantasy.

Lessness, it’s play, it’s empathy, it’s moral imagination, even, uh, compassion, intimacy, true intimacy, vulnerability. I think those are, those are inherently human traits, and I think those are some of the qualities that we look for when we say doing your work more beautifully [00:11:00] or leading more beautifully.

And we, we try to bring this to life in the gatherings and the experiences that we create. By, yeah, by giving, giving people a taste of that. So whether that is silent dinners or eye gazing exercises or other rituals that we, that we conduct, you know, we wanna bring the body into the equation. Somatic awareness.

We wanna bring emotional emotions into the equation in a very different way. And everything we do, we try to design beautifully. And I think what, what is maybe the, the unique differentiator is that people who come to our gatherings or are part of our community, that they feel like it’s very kind. It’s very intimate.

So there’s, there’s an intimacy and emotional intimacy even among strangers or especially among strangers that they wouldn’t find elsewhere in other business communities. And intimacy is so important as the key to, to being more life centered and connection and overcoming loneliness and social division.

It, it’s not even love or it’s not even penis in my view, it’s just closeness to people mm-hmm. Who see you and [00:12:00] recognize you and that with whom you can be vulnerable. And I think that. That’s the kind of like flavor that we want to create in a, in a modest way, occasionally with, with what we put on. 

Elisa Tuijnder: Does it for you also center in like, you know, we, you just touched on it briefly upon AI and doing it more efficiently and in essence sort of work was, had a purpose to feed us, to sustain us whilst more and more things can be done efficiently and, and, and, and more, more effectively.

Does that also center in like us having to re-look at business, like at work in general as what does it service? ’cause technically the robots could all, all sort of feed us with less actual labor. Uh, so what does it bring to us? What, what does it give to us? Does that also center for you around that point?

Tim Leberecht: Yeah. I mean, work is how we. Still work is very much how we gain and, and evolve our identities and how we integrate into society. So, and with work comes also political capital. So I think this is the big problem of saying that automation will allow us to do more purposeful meaning work that is not [00:13:00] dangerous dollar or dirty to, to put Andrew McAfee, but that’s actually meaningful and based maybe on universal basic income or other.

Sociopolitical instruments. But I think the problem is if, if that happens though, the power will be with those who create the revenue, create the money, create the profits, and, and so if we drop out of that conversation and we do very meaningful work on the side that maybe is intrinsically motivated and is compensated with the universal basic income.

I think we do give up though some of the capital that we have to drive change to have a say in the the, the societal conversation. And I think that worries me a little bit. So work is, isn’t that 

Elisa Tuijnder: always been the case though? The power’s always been with a very select amount of people. It just shifts out to who those people are.

I. 

Tim Leberecht: I mean, the, the power in, in capitalist societies has always been very uneven and of course tilted towards the top. But at the same time, you could argue that the sort of broad swath of knowledge workers and middle managers and knowledge workers and, and, and also just entry level workers, the moment they are part of a system and they, they’re part of an organization, [00:14:00] it comes with power, right?

It comes with some say it comes with a paycheck, it comes with social benefits. So I do think that, that these workplaces and organizations as communities. Of practice that those who participate in them have more power than if you completely cut out of them. I mean, it’s hard in a way, I find for also for freelance workers right now, I think it’s sometimes hard to be part of the conversation or to still find, I.

The, the meaning or the social connection that you would find at the workplace? So I think so that, that, that’s the thing, right? So work gives us, it shapes our identity, it gives us political capital in varying, I’m not romanticizing it, but just, but in various forms. And it does give us meaning and purpose and it does give us social.

I. Interaction and it gives us social interaction with people that are not necessarily handpicked by us. So it’s one of those few places where we’re still exposed in our very curative filter bubbles and echo chambers that we live in. 

Elisa Tuijnder: By 

Tim Leberecht: design, we’re still ha having to deal with people that we may not like or that might not be our best friends or that might not share our interests of [00:15:00] political values, social values.

And I think that is actually for our society to, to function really, really important. So the workplace and work is such an arbiter of meaning and social integration, Deb? 

Elisa Tuijnder: Yep. 

Tim Leberecht: I have a hard time seeing that. Go away. I’m not sure. I, I, I have an alternative to that. 

Elisa Tuijnder: Yeah. I think this is the start of that conversation, right?

Or we started this a few years ago, but I think this is really now coming to fruition with the, the materialization of it. But yeah, you’ve pointed out something that I haven’t considered yet there. This sort of the, the echo chambering of society that has. Skyrocketed in the last years due to social media, et cetera, that that might actually even then go even further than, so DE barely have to talk or interact with anybody who is outside of your stratosphere or is outside of your intellect or, or interests or passions or anything like that, and that that is a problem that needs to be definite.

To be considered and that I hadn’t yet fully incorporated. So thank you for that. Really appreciate that. So let, let’s, let’s kind from, from this concept to the application and maybe I think the best one to use, maybe see your recent [00:16:00] event into engineer because it was very interesting you explored poly opportunity there.

And, and again, like we just said, all these things that are coming in, I think it’s perfectly Liz liaison from that. Do you wanna explain to us what that concept is and how you kind of played with that in this event that you, that you created there? 

Tim Leberecht: This was we, we host an annual gathering for 600, 700 people every year.

Some people have been going for years. There’s also of new people of course, joining every, every year and the spring in. We went to Africa for the first time. We had hosted these gatherings in Portugal before and in Spain, and birth long, the very beginning, but it’s the first time on African soil and we were very drawn to Morocco and very drawn to 10 such special 

Elisa Tuijnder: place.

Yeah. 

Tim Leberecht: Specifically because it’s a very ous place and with so many different influences and tener. When I went there for the first time, I realized how, how beautifully aligned it is with, I think the sentiment that that is typical of the house. So the motto that the slogan of the city is between the two UR because it is, yeah.

Sitting at the top, of course, of, of North Africa is just, uh, with an eyesight of [00:17:00] Spain. It’s between Europe and Africa. It’s between the, uh, uh, it’s, it’s basically what the Atlantic meets the Mediterranean. Different influences Arabia. Yeah. Yeah. So many different, uh, cultures come there together and we realize that this is, in many ways, like the epitome of our time, right?

Where we’re mm-hmm. We’re constantly between two. We have to hold multiple truths at the same time and still retain the ability to function, as you know, to, as, as Scott Fitzgeral says. So, and Hanji really in a, in a way was, has been a very modern city all along because of that. And there, there had been these, the influx of Bohemians and Western writers, such Pauls and others, and it’s going through these cycles, but it’s also very real of course, because it’s also the point for which refugees then embark on their, their horrible journey across the Mediterranean to European shores and.

So there’s a lot of grid and imagination and all that coming together and, but the house, we’ve always been in this, in this role of building bridges between the arts and the humanities and business between beauty and, [00:18:00] yeah. And, and performance and profit. So it really fit us. And, and that was also the theme between the two of us was the theme of the gathering.

And we, we tried to spend an arc from, you mentioned PO opportunities from the PO crisis or this. Idea of many crisis now really accelerating and compounding each other. Climate, mental health, social divisions, the erosion of democracy. So we, we addressed them, but we also really wanted to create hope. By introducing and featuring pioneers and change makers who, whether that is feminism or degrowth or more culturally diverse AI or more responsible venture capital.

Yeah, I mean really from, from parts of business, but also beyond philosophy, who each represented one opportunity, one trend that actually should make us feel more hopeful. That’s what we call the poorly opportunity in response to the poorly crisis, and we did it. I mean, it was the most diverse gathering that we had for sure.

Fantastic. And to get brought together voices from, from the [00:19:00] continent of Africa, Europe, elsewhere. And at the same time, I, I have to say, we, we only di up toes into the water there, right? So we scratched the surface. It was four days. And so there’s so much, um, that we still need to process, but it was a really.

Really, really beautiful expense. 

Elisa Tuijnder: I can imagine. You know, Morocco, I, I went there for a work thing and, and I was incredibly impressed by it. Like, it, I, I loved it. I loved the vibe. I love the energy coming from Belgium. We, we have a, a big Moroccan community. I saw what kind of new source, like the, the, the food and, and, and, and how friendly the people are.

It’s such a beautiful place. And like you said, also these kind of visionaries, like Jimi Hendrix spent some time there and, and, and, and to kind of wrote, wrote some, some of his lyrics there and, and you can feel that energy and that beautiful nose. And, and I can totally see why you chose, why you chose it.

It’s, it’s, and, and the crossroads, right? It’s, it’s such an important thing. Does your workplace feel. Duck in a rut. Our silos and outdated leadership styles [00:20:00] stifling creativity and collaboration and management. Three one oh. We understand these frustrations. That’s why we offer tailor made training programs designed not just to enhance skills, but to transform entire organizational mindsets.

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So do you wanna highlight, maybe to make it a bit more tangible for our listeners, I wanna highlight one of the, one of the personal experiences or, or something that you heard from, from the participants that sort of really bridged that perspective between global, north and South and, and, and the reason why you put it there.

What embodied that? [00:21:00]

Tim Leberecht: Oh, so many things. We, there’s so many. Yeah. I, I think one of the most inspirational speakers maybe was t Koya. He’s a, a chess master from Lagos, Nigeria, and he had just broken the, or had just set the new Guinness Book record of nonstop chess marathons by playing 60 hours nonstop at Times Square in New York City.

And then he came and he talked about his nonprofit, which is called Chess in Slum. So especially using chess as a, as a catalyst for social change to. To empower and, and yeah, I think integrate children and teenagers and lift them out of poverty. And, and he’s basically now touring to raise money and, and get people on board for his study.

And so he talked about his mission, but then afterwards, uh, I will never forget this moment. He was playing, uh, uh, simultaneous kind of blitz chess tournament with kids from the, so from the local chess club. And they were, I mean, to them it was like a huge day. They were playing an actual chess master.

Yeah. I was just so, I just loved how he engaged with them and I loved the look on their faces and how [00:22:00] seriously. How, how like serious everybody was about this. 

Elisa Tuijnder: Yeah.

Tim Leberecht: And, and one of them drew with him actually, and I could not believe it, right. That he, he hadn’t Oh, hadn’t, is that is pretty. And yeah. And I, and I think it was just a beautiful, I mean, chess is also just this game between two beautiful minds.

Right? It’s a ational and also again, 

Elisa Tuijnder: was sort of a very classically western mm-hmm. Game, or at least originally as. Seen as that. So again, that duality and that is, is also really interesting. 

Tim Leberecht: Yeah, that was really beautiful. And then we talk a lot about regenerative economics, and I think we learned from this was unfortunately that that person wasn’t able to then make it onto Sage.

But we had had interviews before with, uh, local, a tech entrepreneurs or someone who’s actually, um, a Morocco legalized farm, the production of h um, last year, who’s now working with a local cooperative basically to. To produce that legally. And so there’s this very interesting, frugal, regenerative circular economics in the agriculture sector at work that that are quite [00:23:00]interesting and that are really pioneering.

So we had conversations about that. We had conversations about social change and transformation and different approaches to that. I think also just. Maybe in, in some form less, I think this, this realization, right, that our western way of finding solutions is still, even though that is changing as well, but it’s still so, it’s so shaped by our very rational approach to things.

You know, it’s still this, what one of our speakers mean as Islamic called the Europe patriarchal, uh, notion of knowledge. But it’s very rationality, very enlightenment based. Whereas I think hopefully. In, in our community, and then definitely in, in Ji. I think there’s so many other intelligences or other, so many other intuitions that you also can then point towards a social or a business challenge.

So I think that was also very, a very salient theme throughout the, the program, throughout the 

Elisa Tuijnder: thing. Yeah. Mm-hmm. I think that that’s, and that’s amazing. Like, so that’s something what I’ve been working on throughout my whole life. I think I, I always [00:24:00] say my, my life changed when I read the book Orientalism by Edward Ed, and that was the realization of.

We would benefit a lot from bringing everyone to the table, really bringing everyone to the table, and all cultures, and all and all ideas. Absolutely. So the, all these dualities, they shape our current global landscape and they feel like the friction. But you said also it’s a message of hope. Where do you see the hope in, in, in that friction sort of, of AI versus humans growth to degrowth?

What of peace, like all of these thing, capitalism, wellbeing, like where do you find the hope in what is in. At least sort of like a clash or dichotomy. 

Tim Leberecht: Yeah. I mean, it’s hard to find it, right? Yeah. I mean, yeah, it’s tough. Yeah. Predict, I think that, uh, it’s really hard to find it. I mean, it’s very easy to find voices who predict a dark age or dark century and the world falling apart.

And if you, if you just look to the statistics, it’s, it’s fine to, it’s hard to find positive trends. With that being said, I, I mean, two things give me hope. One is that, that there is what appears to be a collective awakening. So it’s, it’s stark contrast to some of the back to the basics [00:25:00] retro, uh, movements that we’re also seeing.

But, but I do think there’s, there’s a, there’s an awakening, there is an embrace of the life centered economy of regenerative economics. There, there’s an embrace of spirituality again, and moving that into a business mainstream. I’m a much more conscious or heightened. Sort of understanding of, of what it means to be alive and with, in a way, humbled maybe because of the, the pandemic and other things that have happened in the past few years.

So that gives me hope. I think there is definitely a new, we’re sort of reaching the end of a cycle, the end of an era, and we don’t know yet where it’s headed, but it feels like it’s a painful rebirth. Something new is going to emerge collectively. And then the other thing that gives me, quite frankly, is just the fact that 700 people come to Tanger and, and, and talk about these things and are, are curious enough.

I mean, for some people it’s a long journey to come there, commit to this. Yeah, 

Elisa Tuijnder: yeah, yeah. 

Tim Leberecht: Uh, listen to voices. Maybe they otherwise would not, uh, necessarily encounter, spend time together and come at the very small level, a very [00:26:00] interpersonal level or in the form of more, uh, formal cooperation. To do something.

And there was a beautiful story by, it was a ra, a Palestinian peacemaker who was really a bridge builder and was working with both Israelis and Palestinians. And, and, and springing is trying to foster compassion and empathy through travel. So that’s essentially his mission. And he was there and he quoted the Israeli writer ammo Oz, when he was asked about by the moderator, what, what can we actually do looking at this conflict now in particular?

And he said, well. When a house is on fire, you can, you can throw a basket of water at it, but if you don’t have a basket, you, you get a, you get a cup. And if you don’t have a cup, right. At the very least, bring a spoonful of water. 

Elisa Tuijnder: Yeah.

Tim Leberecht: And, and I, I think everybody was quite touch with that. So the question is, what is your spoon?

Elisa Tuijnder: Yeah, yeah. For everyone of our own, what 

Tim Leberecht: is your spoon? What can you contribute? Is it money? Is it an idea? Is it your ability to gather people? Is it, is it your ability to, to empathize? Only can you, can you, are you a good storyteller? Everybody can bring something to, to a challenge that we’re [00:27:00] facing. And I think that’s a, a small way into big societal change, but it’s one that’s tangible and that resonated with the people there.

Elisa Tuijnder: Yeah. And I think that is definitely something to, to hold on to. Yeah. Like you said, we’re, we’re changing in Dutch, we would call it, it says usually is what is when you go from one part of the, one part of the, the, from the middle ages, the new age or those kind of things, from one big, big chunk of, of time to, to a new one.

Uh, and that comes with tur, but also. The fact that we are seeing that and the fact that we are opening our eyes to, like you said, this era of awakening, you know, the problems were there before. We just didn’t, we just didn’t address them and we didn’t see them. And the fact that they aren’t in the open, this, the 1 0 1 for psychology or, and or, or, or going to your psychologist, like awareness.

The fact that we are seeing and then that we’re addressing it should actually inherently, although it is very scary, uh, is actually the hope itself because that means that we can change it and that we’re not ignoring it.

Tim Leberecht: Yeah, I mean, I think two things are really important. One is that. We don’t miss miss ideas.

So I think there’s a little bit of this [00:28:00] climate also sometimes where we say, well, it needs to be impact driven. If there’s no specific action, that’s really worthless, it just talk. I, I think we have to be careful that we don’t discriminate against ideas. It’s so important even to, I mean, the very point of ideas is that they might not fly.

Yeah. That they might not convert it to action. And we need a hundred ideas to maybe then have one action coming out of it. So that should not be the sole metric. Ideas per se. Change minds and then lead maybe to, to action. And I think the other thing. That is right now really worrisome. It’s this whole cancer culture.

It’s like this, this public discourse that we have, unfortunately, where we’re so quick again. 

Elisa Tuijnder: Yeah,

Tim Leberecht: yeah. Where we’re so quick at marginalizing and, and, and de platforming and, and abandoning and, and separating when in fact we should engage and we should listen and. And both is making the, the playing field smaller, right?

It’s this, this impact obsession and it’s this canceled culture obsession of ours that is actually really narrowing the arena for real exchange change. And it, it allows fringe 

Elisa Tuijnder: cultures to exist and, and mm-hmm to, to, to, to spring up and, and to try all of the sudden out [00:29:00] of left field, nowhere like, you know, Andrew Tate movement, all of these kind of things, right?

That is a, that is a direct result, uh, of that. And, and, and we should be more careful or more, more understanding of these things, I guess, like you said. Absolutely. Hey, I also wanna talk a little bit, uh, about your new book, which I, I am actually really excited about and read the blurb, or I read what you posted about it and I was like, Ooh, I wanna pick your brain.

And funnily enough, the title is Picky. Yeah. And it, and it’s about, you know, curation, uh, in an era of too much information because Yeah, that’s, that’s the big challenge now, right? Everything’s everywhere. And, and how do we approach that? So can you tell us a little bit on, on what we can expect here and how you’re approaching this?

Tim Leberecht: Yeah. Yeah, I have to be a bit careful because I, I, yeah, because I really just think, no, it’s also just because, I mean, I’m drawing from my experience as a curator of festivals and gatherings, and we, we curate. Teams, but I’m also just beginning. I’m, I’m really trying very hard to like start writing now.

This is, this is my, my goal for this month. Um, my publisher is expecting something in a few weeks. Um, yeah, the book will come out probably in [00:30:00] 2026, so it’s still a long journey. But the idea really is in a nutshell, is that, that curation is a superpower. And, and I think what I’m trying to do with this book is to both lift it out of the trivialization that has now occurred through social media where everybody who has an Instagram feed.

Things like, okay, I’m a curator. Right. The word has been tribulous. Absolutely. Yeah. And at the same time, it’s also traditionally been this elitist terrain of art curators and, you know, I’m a curator. I, I have taste and you don’t, and I, it’s a very exclusionary, 

Elisa Tuijnder: yeah,

Tim Leberecht: I guess task, but can be as, as well. And I’m trying to find sort of a middle ground.

And curation is something that we should all learn and and appreciate and specifically as we lead and inspire and build teams and work and perform. That, that will become so important, not just in terms of our diet. Like what do we, what’s the input, right? Data input stories. Relationships, like how much data, how much, how many experiences can we actually input and process?

So there’s a, this is also an act of curation. Now, a bad Absolutely data and bad data out. But then [00:31:00] I think it’s also like how do we, how do we design gatherings? How do we craft stories? How do I design my life? How do I live a relationship? How do I lead a team? Like what matters and what doesn’t matter?

And how do I constantly build relationships to things that people. That are really deep and meaningful. Right. That’s really, I think curation comes historically from the term it’s Latin, it means to care for. Mm-hmm. The original curators were caretakers of objects or real estate and Rome or ancient, you know, and, and then basically it became this arts term.

But I think at the, um, at the core of it is this care. So you care for something so deeply that other people that you can, with confidence and, and knowledge, you can recommend it to others. That’s, I think, the act of, of a curator. And I’m, I’m, I. I’m beginning to unpack this, I, I will be talking to a lot of experts and people will notice more better than I do.

Elisa Tuijnder: Yeah. From 

Tim Leberecht: various fields and I, it’s, I’m very excited to learn more about it and then, then present it to the readers. 

Elisa Tuijnder: Does it, does it for you also, like lead in from our [00:32:00] last point that we were seeing the, the bringing all, all, all of the sites to it? Or is that sort of a different, a different thing for you?

Tim Leberecht: Yeah, I think it does. Even though, I mean, curation is always, at the end of the day, an act of exclusion. An act of 

Elisa Tuijnder: exclusion. Yeah, exactly. You have 

Tim Leberecht: to say, this doesn’t matter, or let’s focus on this. And instead of having, I mean, this is, uh, something I, 

Elisa Tuijnder: I, in, in order to digest it, we need to condense. Right.

Yeah. We’re not the AI that can do everything. It won’t go. Yeah. 

Tim Leberecht: And it’s tough choices and, and it’s so hard. I know this curating opposite festivals and events myself, that it’s relatively easy to have 80 speakers covering 80 topics, but what are the 10 topics and the 10 speakers, right. That’s always, that’s the act of curation.

That’s the discerning eye. That’s how you look at the word. And that is a quality. I think that that is really that, that we need to develop, because otherwise it’ll be just this somewhat arbitrary mix of. Voices 

Elisa Tuijnder: had you, how does the, how does AI come into play for you there? Because actually what we do now a lot is, you know, I use [00:33:00] AI on a daily basis 80% of the time in my work, I, I try and be very careful and I look at original sources.

I tend to use perplexity and those kind things. So I can go and have a look again at, well, what, what the original writer said. In, in essence, it is giving me, it is curating for me a bunch of, a bunch of sources that he thinks is, that is essential for me to know about this certain topic. So are you gonna be sort of addressing that as well, or?

Yeah. 

Tim Leberecht: Yeah. Well, I, I don’t use AI at all, at all, at all at the moment. Yeah. I, I tried it. I, you know, played around with Jet GPT and, and Dali and, and the team. We, as the heart of business, we’ve worked with clients and used it for events, for narrative development. Yeah. And we used it for communications. I still haven’t quite found the use case personally for me, where it’s actually helpful.

So if I need some logistical information, I still go to Google. I still have other apps for creative acts of creativity. If I have to write something, I, I just don’t need it, you know? I sketch to my notebook, I Google some research. I, I would never turn to. To which [00:34:00] GT or others, the AI assistance. This is interesting.

At the same time, I’m really fascinated by it, and of course it is absolutely game changing, life changing and all of that. I think the key thing will be, I just came across some, some research. I, I didn’t read the full study, but just the, the abstract that basically says that the, the various AI models, the large language models that we have, that they’re converging in their representation of reality because they’re, they’re based on the same digitized.

Absolutely. Information about the world. They’re now producing synthetic data. They’re being content that was created by them in the first place. It’s becoming this kind of, yeah. Regeneration. Eating 

Elisa Tuijnder: themselves almost of 

Tim Leberecht: content is, yeah. It’s becoming even more of a house of mirrors than it’s already been.

Elisa Tuijnder: Mm-hmm. 

Tim Leberecht: And so I would not, someone said this in tangent, van Kwe German professor of organization behavior is that every single question you could possibly pose every piece of knowledge in the same way as, as search engines were able to do it. Even more so will be answered by eye. There will be a, an answer to everything.

Elisa Tuijnder: Mm. 

Tim Leberecht: But the, the human bastion will be to ask the right, the right, [00:35:00] ask better s questions, new questions, be,

Elisa Tuijnder: and be like the very critical of, of the 

Tim Leberecht: beautiful questions and, and just come up with, with new questions to ask. And, and so curation is something, of course, it can enter what are the, what are the 10 interesting voices on.

I don’t know, degrowth and limits of growth and why would, would I hire them? Why would I recruit them for, for my book or so? But it will not have the, the, the qua, and it will, it will not have that. And I think something is interesting. Because it is quirky and because it is offered, because it’s not to be predicted by AI now.

Mm-hmm. The only question is how long will that become relevant? So we are now part of the generation, of course, that is, that still appreciates a world outside of AI and understands 

Elisa Tuijnder: mm-hmm. And 

Tim Leberecht: understands it and, and, and says, oh, AI will not be able to design. I look to my friends for that kind of. But as we grow up with AI, and more and more people are, are turning to, by the way, interesting, very interesting statistics in the us.

20% of, of, [00:36:00] I think 20% of the population are now using Jet GPT instead of Google, or instead of search engines at the same time, 40% of Americans have never heard about Jet GPT. Yeah. Never heard about it. So it’s also interesting to see this like there’s, there’s also this new. Divide that, that’s just widening.

And so I’m worried about a world where we rely so much on AI that we don’t even appreciate anymore, that there’s another reality, and then another voice, another form of creativity that’s possible because we’re so, we’re so converged in our thinking that we can’t even break out of it anymore. There is no alternative.

And so this sounds a bit dystopian, but I, I think that’s also the fight that we’re fighting with the house or with creation. It’s like, no, no, no, there is. It’s almost like you have to frack it. You have to undermine it with truly human ideas rather than just following the ai. So I’m, I’m worried about a monochromatic.

Multidimensional world of ai, but it’s also very nostalgic. Right. I think in, in 10 years from now, I think that term will not even exist anymore. Artificial [00:37:00] intelligence, one of our speakers, the Nigerian philosopher bio, I call him office, said he, he claimed that intelligence was never ours to own. So he’s a post humanist is saying, agency is just an illusion.

We don’t have much agency and a subjective agency, and AI is reminding us of that. Right. It’s just sort of another entity. 

Elisa Tuijnder: Yeah.

Tim Leberecht: We’re part of something, an ecology of, of, of becoming, as he calls it. That transcends our own agency and this hubris that we have, that we are the center dinner and we think that we know that.

Yeah. And AI is just like, almost like another species, right? It’s another, it’s a, um, the head of, I think Microsoft AI called it the digital species. Right. And I think we’ll, we’ll see that happening too. And I, I, I, I think that’s also very, very exciting and, and an evolution that I, I think we can reverse.

I’m, I’m not a doomsayer, I’m not like anti ai. I’m just saying. I, I, I think it awareness, it will narrow our world, but it will also expand it tremendously 

Elisa Tuijnder: at the same time. Yeah, it’s a, it’s another dichotomy there. Another duality that, [00:38:00] that, that we will, will see how it plays out. And, uh, I’m keeping my fingers crossed for, for the best, but understanding that humans also have a tendency too.

To do, to take good, good things sometimes and, and, and do bad even. Yeah. What was the name of the philosopher again? I really wanted, because I, I have some of those ideas myself. I’d love to check out his work. 

Tim Leberecht: Bio Ola. He, he was a philosopher and residence a couple of years ago at the house. Yeah. He’s a wonderful, yeah.

Intellectual and brand. 

Elisa Tuijnder: Definitely, definitely, definitely gonna figure out to look at that. So we have to wrap up ’cause we’re getting into the ends, but we, we always really like to leave our listeners with like a tangible practice. We’ve talked a lot about what the world looks like and all these big ideas and the dualities and all these kind of things, but.

Let’s try and leave our listeners with, with something practical that they can do to make their lives better. Well, in my terms, happier in your terms, more beautiful or in, in the terms of the podcast. Not necessarily personally, but can we distill something that we can leave our. 

Tim Leberecht: So, uh, three things. [00:39:00] First of all, come to the house of Beautiful Business.

Elisa Tuijnder: Yeah.

Tim Leberecht: Enter the house of beautiful business. Do it online. We o we host open house online sessions regularly. That’s very easy. If we come join us in tangent next May, that’d be amazing. Subscribe to our newsletter. Become part of our community. The doors open. Secondly, I would say pay attention. Pay attention.

So, um, and, and, and God, not that I’m that good at this, uh, try to figure out and read things that maybe are not your interests. You know, when you’re at a conference, go to the session that interests you least try to meet other people and try to just break out of your, your own little bubble. Again, I know exactly how it is.

I’m also very LA and complacent, but whenever I do it occasionally, it’s very rewarding and I think it’s, it’s really important that we do that. And the third thing. I would say is actually advice from one of the speakers in Tan Amy Elizabeth Fox, who’s the CEO of Mobius executive Leadership. Um, trauma-informed leadership is, is in a way the practice that they’re bringing to organizations.

And she asked the audience in a form of [00:40:00] meditation and a number of questions, and one of them really stuck out for me. I mean, many did, but this one I wanna repeat here, which is she asked, what is the conversation, the, the, the most audacious and honest conversation with someone in your life that you haven’t had the courage to have?

Elisa Tuijnder: Yeah. Um, 

Tim Leberecht: and why are you not having it? And I think if we, if you had that conversation or you become aware of what that might be, maybe that’s also really tangible step to, to more happiness. 

Elisa Tuijnder: Absolutely. Uh, and, and also be like the, to try and get out of your comfort zone and like, I, I know myself easier said than done, but when you do it, it can be, it can go really wrong.

It can be really boring, but it can also be that the rewards are big when you, when you, when you get there. Tim, we, we’ll definitely be linking, has a beautiful business website to our, to our show notes, but I’m sure, I think it has beautiful business.com or 

Tim Leberecht: glit. It is, yeah. No, as easy as that. Yeah. Very straightforward.

How it deal business.com. 

Elisa Tuijnder: Tim, you can find you on LinkedIn, I’m thinking as well. Mm-hmm. Like people wanna follow your blogs or, [00:41:00] or any other things that you put out there. Go there. So, Tim, this has been a really, really, really interesting conversation. I wish we had more time or if wish we would. I was there with you with some, made some tea and a, and a nice back love and looking at the hi of Sophia at the same time.

Uh, that would be amazing. But, uh, unfortunately we are far away from each other at the, at the time, but, so thank you so much for, for having this. Thank you so much. It’s been real pleasure. And, uh, yes, hope to see you at one of your events soon. And any of our listeners, uh, as well there. So thank you. 

Tim Leberecht: Thank you so much.

Elisa Tuijnder: You’ve been listening to The Happiness At Work podcast by Management 3.0 where we are getting serious about happiness. Be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and if you enjoy our shows, don’t be shy. Write us a review. Share the happiness with your colleagues, family or friends. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn under Management three.

[00:42:00] Oh.