Last Saturday, we had the privilege of hosting Awakin Call with Rob Lippincott.

Rob Lippincott is birthright member of the Religious Society of Friends, striving to bring Quaker values to business and education. Inspired by Quaker collective decision-making processes, Rob says, "You can ... move a project and a corporation in the right direction, if you listen to all, capture their unity and use their collective strength." He has devoted his career to innovation at the intersection of learning and technology. At PBS, Discovery and Pearson, he led the creation of media and technology products that are used in more than half of U.S. schools. He has served on the Board of Sidwell Friends School and Cambridge Friends School, and has taught at Newtown Friends School, Abington Friends School and the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Currently, he serves of the board of living community planned for northern California which is striving to incorporate governance practices from both the Quaker and Zen traditions.

Below are some of the nuggets from the call that stood out for me ...

• I'm always happiest when I'm learning something new.
• I went to school at a little school called “the chicken coop” in the little town of Rhode Valley in Pennsylvania.
• Early on I became fascinated with the role that technology can play in growing education. That became my career.
• In the small community where I grew up, everybody was a Quaker. But later, as I moved into the larger world, I learned that I was odd, I was different. That was very helpful, very important in my life.
• I grew up with the values of simplicity, kindness, and service. It has been my path to do what I can to bring these values into the world of business.
• In college I craved being normal, and being a regular guy. On the other hand, I didn't feel I had to compromise the traditional values that were part of me.
• If you really believe that there is a spark of God in every person — with the values of kindness and silence and reverence -- you have to eventually encounter the world out there that doesn't appear to run with those values.
• The distillation of what are really Quaker values has become a very visible activity in the world lately.
• An important part of Quaker education is inquiring about values. For example, think about integrity. What is integrity?
• The first core practice of Quaker schools is 30 - 60 minutes of silent worship each week. That can be a challenge for little kids.
• In most Quaker schools less than 3% of the students are actually Quakers. Quaker schools are not evangelistic. They are not madrassas for turning people into Quakers. They're about introducing people to the values.
• With the Quaker Peace Testimony we utterly deny the morality and effectiveness of war. We initiated Conscious Objection in England in the U.S.
• Quakers have no formal reverence for any text or creed. It's about the light of God in every person. There is no king, pope, priest, or anyone who is closer to God than you are.
• There are many people who say Quakers abolished the priesthood. I turn that on it's head: I say we abolished the laity!
• The doctrine that I hold most dear is Continuing Revelation.
• My relationship to the New Testament is there is beautiful poetry and ideas and values expressed in the name of Jesus. Whether I personally believe in the virgin birth, the resurrection from the cross, etc., is a different story.
• Quakers have been successful in businesses that avoided, war, alcohol, etc. Cadbury Chocolate is one good example. Quakers came to America to do good. Quaker values are not always compatible with the values of US capitalism as it is practiced today.
• One very successful Quaker business family was Macy family. They started off in New England in the whale oil business, and later founded the Macy's Department Store chain. Among the business values to which they attributed their success: speaking truth; adherence to your word.
• The legal phrase: “do you swear or affirm to tell the truth…” came with Quaker input. Quakers don't swear but we do affirm; we tell the truth.
  There are, I hope, a lot of lingering ideas and principals of American life that come from Quaker ideas and principles.
• My business career was launched because of my excitement about technology, and how it could advance education. I became the video guy at Lotus, an early digital technology company.
• You're not in the new media; you're in the new me!
• A couple of examples of digital technology in education today: Discovery streaming and PBS Learning Media. And there are others. These systems, high quality, highly curated, are used in over 50% of US schools. It’s about supporting teachers, helping them do what they do, which is helping people understand things. Teachers can use these tools very quickly to enhance what they are presenting to kids.
• In the U.S. generally, we’re stuck in the education world with a 19th century model of what & how kids should learn. So much has changed in our world, but education has been relatively untouched.
• The evolution of learning is happening much faster outside the classroom than inside.
• I’ve been connected with the San Francisco Zen Center, which I’ve found very resonant with Quaker values. “Beginners Mind” is a lot like “Continuing Revelation.” Approaching life with an open heart, an open mind. I see this is a “Zenification of Quaker values.”
• My own experience has been that people are very accepting, very open to the process of being invited into making a decision together. Of course in mainstream business practice "the boss" decides and that's how it works . But there are more interesting business decisions where Quaker values can be helpful.
• Collectively, we try to make a decision (eg on school boards, Living Village, etc.). In these kinds of organizations the decisions won't endure if the boss just says "here's what we're doing.” That will create teams or sides or adversarial sides. At best, it's a compromise.
• Quaker decision making holds that a collective decision can be reached where everyone is a stakeholder, called to participate in a meeting that clearly lays out problem.
• This is a challenge of both leadership and followership, a test of values. At best in this model, a leader is not the decision maker, but is the manager of the meeting, the manager of the decision.
• In meetings run by the values of Quaker spiritual circles, the leader doesn’t use Robert's Rules. it's not about reaching a majority vote. It's about reaching not just consensus, but unity.
• If you can phrase the problem properly and truly invite and truly listen to different perspectives (I have done this in PBS and Pearson) -- i.e. making sure everyone gets the microphone — the quality of the decision will be immeasurably improved. You can create a unity.
  If you think people around you have wisdom, and you actually seek their wisdom to incorporate it into the decision, you end up with an enduring decision and a better solution.

Lots of gratitude to all the behind-the-scenes volunteers that made this call happen!

Aryae