Justin: Welcome to the responsible supply chain show where we explore the world of responsible sourcing and resilient supply chains. I'm your host, Justin Dillon. And in each episode, we'll dive into real stories from some of the world's best business, government, and thought leaders protecting people, planet, and profits. Let's get in. Alright.
So what's going on in my world? Two things, golf and RFPs. Yep. Anyone who knows me knows that I, for obvious reasons, do not belong on a golf course, but I just spent a week in Maui on golf courses every day. One of the best pieces of parenting advice I got, when I was just starting a family was whatever your kids get into, you need to get into.
And, sports and golf are a big part of our family. Two things that I knew nothing about. True story. The first basketball game I ever watched in its entirety was my son's basketball game when he was five years old. So that I just I don't know a whole lot.
I know a lot more about sports now, but I didn't when, when I didn't have a family, and I sure didn't know anything about golf, but my son has taken up golf in a big way, and now he's teaching me. And he, you know, he's a good teacher. I love being taught by my son for golf. I don't love golf yet. Yeah.
I but but listen, any activity that guarantees four hours of uninterrupted time with your kids is worth pursuing. So I see a lot of golf in my future. I don't see a lot of me playing golf well, but I do see a lot of golf in my future. I'm just glad he didn't get into, what's that? That where you catch a fid noodling.
Where you catch a fish with your hand? Where you those prehistoric catfish where people just like grab on. I'm really glad he didn't get into that. Also, it seems like everyone wants to buy responsible supply chain software. That's not a plug.
It's just it's just, it's just the way things are. RFPs are how request for proposals are kinda how or RFIs, my favorite. RFQ, I'm sure we'll figure out another RF something is coming out. There are lots of companies buying this way, and I just gotta say, it's a terrible way to buy. Listen, I get it.
It's hard to buy something you've never had before. I just bought, an ice cream maker, and I've never had one of those before. But I have this feeling it was a lot easier to buy an ice cream maker than it is to buy supply chain with software. Here's two things I'm seeing that people are doing. They're designing One, they're designing really kind of impossible RFPs.
It's like wanting everything in one software. And as great as that is, look, we as a company, we buy lots of software. I would like one thing to do everything. It doesn't. It doesn't do it.
And here's the crazy thing. You're buying software for something you've never You're not replacing the software. It's not like you've ever had this. So it's the first of its kind inside of the companies. And I think these RFPs, I think people feel like they've got to figure everything out before they've had it.
It's a big mistake. You're gonna learn. Once you have supply chain intelligence, you're gonna learn from that. And really, you should be building a strategy from that. The other thing that I'm seeing companies do is they're buying from, they'll tend to go with the safe choice, which, look, everyone's learning when it comes to supply chain transparency.
Technically, is no safe choice. And buying from a company that's been around long before this problem has been around or long before supply chain transparency needs have been around, that's a huge mistake. A lot of these companies that have legacy brands, that people are just buying for them for for for safety. So and I get it. I get it.
We all buy with fear. We're all afraid of getting in trouble for buying the wrong solution, but it's just too early for that. My take buy my hot take? Buy a few different solutions. Try them out.
Build a strategy on top of them. Give you give yourself a year to learn what you wanna do and go from there. Speaking of, my guest today is photographer and humanitarian Lisa Christine. I know what you're thinking. Talking about photographs on a podcast, we It's only episode 12.
Are we that far down the rabbit hole that we can't Yeah, we're gonna talk about photographer or photographs on a podcast, and it's gonna work. It's actually works really well because Lisa is a visual storyteller. And so we're actually today gonna be talking about how storytelling can enhance your career, specifically a career in responsible supply chains. Because I don't know if this statistic is true. I dug into it.
I'm gonna go with it. 20 stories are 22 times more memorable than facts and statistics. And that sounds roughly accurate. Stories. Our brains are made for stories.
Our brains can only hold so many facts, and we tend to, when we're doing something really important, we want to bring all the facts out, all the statistics, and all the reasons, and all that stuff matters. But it'll matter 22 times more if you can wrap it into a powerful story. And Lisa is gonna share how her storytelling has led to some pretty big events in the world. She has been described by the former head of photography at the Tate Modern in London, which is like, ugh, Tate Modern, if you haven't been there. That is if I honestly, I think people, when they're in cities and they they have like a little bit of time, if they're on there for if you're there for business, you're in a city, people like, oh, I gotta get fish and chips.
Oh, I gotta go see Big Ben. No. For me, if I have one hour open, I will go to the Tate Modern and just revel in that temple. And the former head of photography there said that Lisa's work is a testament to truth and insightful and inspiring body of evidence which should never and can never be denied. Big.
Her work has, been endorsed by figures such as people you might have heard of, like Pope Francis, Dalai Lama, Amnesty International. She's been featured on CNN, National Geographic, Atlantic, all the rest of it. There's even a movie made about her. She has done some really interesting work with some of the biggest brands in the world as well. So let's get into this episode that I know you're going to enjoy.
Lisa, good to see you. Good to hear you. How are you? Where am I finding you?
Lisa: I'm so glad to chat with you. It's been so long. I'm in my studio today and, you know, working away and having a break chatting with you.
Justin: Well, I don't wanna you do important work, so I don't want you to take too long of a break. The world world needs your work. Where's your studio located at?
Lisa: Oh, it's in Marin.
Justin: We're not a travel show, but, you know, we'd we'd like to be one day as a as a podcast to be more about arts and leisure. But, you know, it's just another reason to visit Sonoma is to go to your studio and see these phenomenal pictures, which I I I I was just standing outside of your studio a couple weeks ago looking in and and seeing all these images. So I am so delighted to get to introduce you to our audience who are interested in the topics that you and I have been chasing for a long time. Right. Your photography Yeah.
Has brought modern slavery into probably more than any photographer Right. Into the public view. So a question I have for you is, like, what impact? And you do this because it's it's I know that it's it's part of who you are, but I know I know you're a pragmatist as well. Like, what impact do you feel like this awareness has had specifically on corporations and consumer behavior?
Lisa: I think that the wonderful thing about the visual art and and a photograph when when done in a specific way really becomes a vehicle that transcends language and it allows for someone to to commune, if you will, or view an image or more specifically a person in an image. In the case of my work, perhaps somebody that's in a horrific challenging situation who is enslaved. But what I'm interested in photographing is their dignity. So I guess I feel like when a viewer is able to to to viscerally connect with that person in the photograph that they'd be inclined to want to do something. You know, I think of it kind of as a portal.
And we have so many stories and we have a lot of statistics and we have a lot of, you know, laws we wanted to to pass and things like that. But what I think the image allows us to do is to get us out of the head and into the heart and actually do those things.
Justin: I mean, it's just amazing how stories can unlock halls of power and unlock the hearts of people in halls of power. Is there any stories that come to mind of you getting to share the stories behind the images in some of those places?
Lisa: Yeah, the wonder I think about living in one's truth or purpose or craft in my case is really doing it from an earnest place about wanting to make a difference. And then having that work have its own relationship with whoever happens to see it. And then all these invitations pour in. So yeah, I've had the opportunity of having Pope Francis inaugurate and launch my exhibition at the Vatican. And I've spoken there many times and it's been meaningful because, you know, whenever you can get around somebody like that who has such an impact on society on such an epic level, It just I always think of the pebble getting tossed into the lake and how, you know, the ripples reverberate out.
And that's the power of what we can do with what we do, I guess.
Justin: It it it's to me and and again, we're talking about photography, but we're talking about stories, and we're gonna dig into how you tell a story with an image. Powerful images are one of the most economical vehicles to tell a story. And I I had the privilege years ago of recording. I was making a movie at the time and I brought together a Sudanese child soldier who was like a rapper in East Africa. He was really popular.
I brought him and Moby together to make a song in in New York. And and it was like, I'd once I I realized how ridiculous it was. I just put them together. I'm all, make art. Do something.
And they're like looking at me and looking at each other. And it wasn't wasn't it wasn't vibing initially. And Moby kinda like kinda like because there's just these two worlds colliding. And I remember sitting down with the the artist, the the rapper, and saying, well, tell me a little bit more about your process. And he said this thing.
He's like, look he's like, I believe that music enters your heart and mind without asking permission. Tell me a little bit more about this subject matter was something that you decided, as a very accomplished photographer, that you decided to pursue so many years ago.
Lisa: Well, you know, the overall umbrella of my work, which has been made over the course now over the last forty years in over 150 countries was really based on celebrating unity and dignity and sort of pulling up the strings of, no pun intended, but, you know, in our differences, we are one. Like this society of celebrating one another. What would the world be like if instead of being afraid of one another's differences, instead we were curious or full of wonder. Right? And what the photograph allows specifically in that context is the ability to pause and stare.
We can't stare at each other's differences, which makes us perhaps afraid because we don't have the the ability to to sort of take things in and we go to this initial judgment. And I always felt like photography is a bridge builder in that way. Now, because of that work, I'd been asked to be the exhibitor at the Global Peace Summit hosted by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and other Nobel laureates. And there I was approached by a woman who was a big supporter of the organization Free the Slaves. You and I are both very familiar the notion.
And you know, I certainly knew that some trafficking existed, but I assumed it was only sex trafficking. I assumed it was also in really small numbers. But when I learned that at that time there was some, you know, 27,000,000 people that had no control over their lives. In the most dire way I could imagine that was affirmed by this supporter, I really was taken aback and staggered. I like many thought this was already taken care of.
Right? And it agitated me in a way that I get asked to do lots of causes. This somehow just agitated me. It was like, I never felt like I chose to do it. It was kind of like I couldn't sleep.
And I had this idea which I basically already shared, but it's essentially that if I could go on the front lines of slavery and I could photograph somebody no matter how dire or horrific that situation was, but I could focus on their dignity. I had an instinctual notion that a viewer at a later time could stand before that image and really viscerally attach themselves to the human being in that image want to do And I think that has proved right again and again. We don't look for it.
Justin: That's right. People think that they have to stop doing their jobs to make a difference. I'm like, oh my gosh, no. Keep doing what you're doing. Just find that overlap.
And it sounds like you did that. I've always found that when you talk about difficult subjects like modern slavery to folks, it's really easy to get, or relatively easy to get one's pity. But what you're really looking for when you're sharing this information, these images and stories, is you're looking for parody. You're looking for someone in the Vatican or in a company to see how their lives are similar to theirs. Like, pity is is is is great.
It's it's it's heart, but it's like it's a one way stream. It doesn't have it does there's no shared commonality. Can you talk a little bit more about how first of all, am I off by talking about parody? For the viewer and the So just, you can shut me down there and I'll just edit it out. But can you talk about that?
And then if so, how do you chase that?
Lisa: Well, I think what I'd like to reflect on is the word pity. And I feel a grave disheartening, soulful drop sometimes in these situations when I'm on the front lines and I see people forced to do things under such conditions that it just takes a carpet from out of your under your feet because I know I can walk away and they can't. But pity to me is a call, it's like a judgment and it's a, you either elevate or you know, one declines. And I don't want, I don't see those people as pitiful. See them as actually extremely powerful people in the way that they are enduring and managing on a moment to moment basis to survive these moments and to do the best they can in that survival.
And they don't have the luxury to turn around and walk away like I do. And so I really, I always say that the people I have the opportunity of photographing aren't my subjects, they're really my mentors. So I feel like I've learned so much from them, not to mention the heroic acts that so many, and I know you know this already, but those who for by whatever circumstance have been brought out of their circumstance and now they're no longer in this forced labor with whatever they're doing often will be the ones that risk their lives and turn around and go back in and help bring others out. And that's heroic. And it's need to be around traffickers.
It's so frightening.
Justin: So you just took it a step further. I said, don't wanna, let's move from pity to parody. And you said, let's move from parody to being taught and mentored. That's a whole another level of, by the way, it's not lost on me that we're on a podcast talking about images. So so we're gonna figure out how we're gonna point everyone, make sure that you you've got a flip book that you can listen to this podcast with.
We'll figure that out. I've gone undercover. I've done a lot of this. I've been around it. And I've noticed that when the few times I've gone on a raid or gone out in the boat in Ghana or whatever it might be, I just feel like this just this a little seasickness inside of me.
I just feel disoriented a little bit.
Lisa: Yeah.
Justin: And it's not fear. It's though that's real too, because you're in dangerous places. But I just feel this dissonance. And honestly, Lisa, your images are the only I've watched all the movies, I've seen everything. Your images are the only things that brings up that kind of holy dissonance inside of me when I see that.
And I mean, you're telling stories that are uncomfortable, but yet people are attracted to it. Can you tell me more of it? I mean, tell me, how do you do that?
Lisa: Here's my philosophy. Life is perception. We are how we perceive. And we will be, as you mentioned the word invitation or like how a sound can just make its way in. I actually don't think that it goes in without an invitation.
I just think that the doors are open in our self in order to let this sound or image come in because it has a certain resonance or frequency that we're drawn to and curious about. And so the way that I look at imagery, as a whole is, well, I mean, first of all, if you just think of photography in general, the whole vocabularies around shooting. Are you going out on a shoot today? Are you going to capture this image? Are you going to take this?
To me, it's about creating and making and it's definitely a collaboration. And to me, perceiving someone in a really uncomfortable situation that frankly is very dangerous often, where I'm feeling the danger and perhaps they are obviously as well. I guess I just feel like I'm innately drawn to some sort of balance in it. But I'm not trying to take something from somebody in order to exploit them for the betterment of a cause. I'm really trying to show this person that could be you or me, you know, out there in the world suffering.
And to create that sense of balance in terms of dignity, that everybody can relate to and then go, damn, that's not right. Let me, what can I do? And so it's an innate instinctual feeling for me when I work. My work is made very quickly in those particular environments because there is no time. I mean, a lot of the body of work are made in ten minute or twenty minute segments because of the lack of safety.
But it's really honoring those people. And I speak a lot about that. And I've helped write this whole guidebook on dignified storytelling. And I think it matters. People aren't in the world to be exploited or used for a headline.
They should be really honored.
Justin: Speaking of that, I've been thinking a lot about work. You have a have a body of work. I saw some of it in your gallery the other a couple weeks ago. Right? You the and and everything behind that work is, like, years and years of skill and travel.
It's a body of work. It's a body of effort. And everyone has a body of work. It shows up on their LinkedIn or their resume. Here's all the things that I've done.
Here's all the things that I've applied myself to. And we all walk around in life with this body of work. And yet you have experienced people who have their own body of work that looks so much different than ours. And yet it's still a body of work that they can't, that they've applied themselves to. Does that ever affect you when you're doing your work alongside someone else who's working at the bottom of a supply chain doing their work?
Has that ever given you like a holy dissonance? Or like a sense of like, wow, this is their work and it wasn't it's not something that they signed up for.
Lisa: Yes. I I think about that all the time. I think about that all the time that their life is utterly and completely different than my own. You know, we all know suffering, whether it's from our childhood or from many traumas or big traumas, you know, we all have that. But when somebody has no control over their lives, yeah.
And honestly, like when I was just writing that piece this last week for Substack, know, I was recalling these stories and I was thinking about going down those deep mine shafts where those abolitionists who were my translators and guardians and guides that brought me in, they wouldn't even go down those holes because it was so scary and they collapsed and they're they're horrible.
Justin: Let's talk about that. Can you talk can you talk specifically about that? Because that that's on my list of things to talk about. But Yeah. You just wrote a substack about about going into a gold mine.
And and I think the term gold mine is its own, like, power.
Lisa: Illegal gold mine. But
Justin: Illegal gold mine. Yeah. Put that word in front of it. What tell us tell us that story and tell us about the the the man that you met there that affected you so deeply. Yeah.
Lisa: Well, going into these illegal gold mines, simply at one time, many of them were legal and they were they were being used by big companies. But once they sort of, excavate as much as they can out, they sort of move on to other mines, but they still own the land. But traffickers will come in and use these illegal gold mines that are to whatever degree depleted and they will get people who are enslaved to go down and continue mining for ore, stone containing the gold, you know. And
Justin: And this is where? Where in the world are we talking about right now?
Lisa: Where I was was in in Ghana, in an area called Ashanti, where there's a lot of legal gold mines and also informal labor informal labor as well as, you know, slavery, forced labor. But but just in in terms of going down that mine shaft, nobody would go. And I remember I wrote on my hand, do it for them because I was afraid to go down. But I also could think of what you've got, do it for these people because people will not know that this is happening unless I can make photographs to show them because seeing is believing. Now those folks that were down in that hole.
I mean, remember when I was first going down, I had my camera and there were some guys that were down below me and then I was coming down. But these mine shafts are held together by these very slick tree limbs. It's like 36 by 36 inches say something like And they go straight hundreds of feet straight down into the earth. And they're very, you know, you have this idea of being underground as a certain something, but the truth is it was very hot and it was very, very wet. So these limbs that you're going down kind of like a makeshift ladder that are holding up the whole thing are very slippery.
And, you know, I remember slipping and just kind of hanging on as much as I could in my cameras flailing around. And and I and I remember in that instant thinking of a guy I'd met a few days ago who had fallen to his near death and was so damaged his legs. I mean, I can't even believe he survived because these mines being illegal are not, you know, they're not service. There's no air being pumped down into the mines. They collapse and there's not, you know, netting or something that that will, you know, catch people if they happen to fall into the earth and there's no ropes.
They go down there with three things. They go down there with these old flashlights tethered to their heads. They have these primitive tools and they have these empty sacks. And the hope is, of course, they're gonna break the stone off the wall with the tools, put the stone in these sacks, and they're gonna come up with a full load. Right.
But it's it's it's no small thing. These these guys work down, I don't know, forty eight, seventy two hours at a time. And by the time they ascend from those mines, they are soaking wet. So they've been in a pool of water like they're just soaking wet and exhausted. And you really feel it, you know, like talk about feeling somebody's labor, you know, they're it's intense.
Justin: And that gold's going somewhere. It's probably a small amount of the total gold that's being mined in the world, I get it. But we have no way of knowing.
Lisa: That's And
Justin: I think that's the part now. And since you and I've been working on this for so long, the world is organized through laws that says, you need to know now. I've seen you know, you've done TED Talks. You're diplomat's diplomat for this issue. You're the perfect storyteller.
So I want you to imagine yourself in a boardroom with the chief procurement officer, the person involved of the supply chain or partially in charge of the supply chain of a company whose products have this gold. Walk me through how you would walk them through some of these images that none of us can see on this podcast. But walk me through in this board in the boardroom of, like, how you would tell that story because you are not you're not judgmental when you talk about these. You're just bringing the life together. So I'd love to like imagine what how you would walk a chief procurement officer through the story of this gold mine.
Lisa: Yeah. Well, what I would do is I would let my images talk to them. Mhmm. But I could express what those images are. And the main thing is that I would suggest to everyone is that every single one of us are participating in slavery.
This is not an issue of you are damned and bad and your company is bad and must change. It is not that. It's that we are all participating and simultaneously we all have an opportunity to help change that. I mean, I don't know if I told you about this, but I did a big project with Hewlett Packard Enterprise this last year. We did a really wondrous, amazing project on the supply chain of technology over five countries on three continents.
We met with activists and migrant workers. We went to dormitories. We went inside factories.
Justin: When you say we.
Lisa: Well, agent Anne, I like to call her Anne Iwasechko, who works at HPE.
Justin: So HP employees.
Lisa: Yes, sponsored this. HPE Foundation sponsored this. And the COO who you have to have on your show, John Schultz, is a riveting, amazing power.
Justin: He's a legend. He's an absolute legend.
Lisa: A legend. And as you know, like I was on the board of the Thomson Reuters Freedom Awards jury. And before I even knew John, they had won that award twice for HPE's dedication to look into their supply chain, but they don't just talk about it. Really live it. They have you know, not just the rhetoric in paperwork, but they have trainings for the different tiers of the supply chain.
They have audits, of course, but then they have, surprise audits. Then they give these people that are working opportunities to make changes. This is not, I think if we come at this as a damning of others for the wrongdoings that they're executed on, we're not really getting it because we should all be tied up and in jail if that's the case. Because it's really about inviting people into operating differently. And noting that behind every piece of data, there's a human being on the other side of that supply chain, many of whom are suffering badly.
I mean, especially like you know, we'd go into these factories that you know, you've been in factories, I'm sure, but you've got your booties on your hat, everybody in there is, I mean, you're in this pristine hyper clean, vigilant area where everything is perfect. And it's very hard to see or imagine that slavery would be happening there. But you have to beg the question, is this person being pressed to work too many hours? Are they being paid adequately? Have they are they under some staggering debt of recruitment fees, which by the way are illegal, but so many people are under this debt.
Are they in control of their own passports? Do they have those? I mean, no matter what the situation looks like, we have to ask these questions in press. But we went to these big landfill sites, you know, because the supply chains, I mean, think about fast fashion.
Justin: Oh, sure.
Lisa: And certainly technology, which also ends up in landfill. It was a fascinating journey. And we did a big splash in Davos actually.
Justin: With HP?
Lisa: Yeah, it was, we did an event at the Kirchner Museum. We had a launch of my work that I'd made in collaboration with Hewlett Packard Enterprise Foundation. And we had the managing director of Davos. We had former prime minister Theresa May, and John Schultz, who's the COO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise and myself. And we did this amazing event.
And John beckoning for other organizations to share data. Think about if we share data or if organizations share data, how much more information they can get on slavery supply chains. You think about like, you know, the virus that came out during the pandemic when all of those medical institutions worked together, those scientists worked together, they very quickly came up with a solution.
Justin: Wow. This is the I've known about this project, but it reminds me of just what bravery looks like. It is brave for you to go down into a mine and gone. That's incredibly brave. It's also brave for HP focus on this, to invest, to put themselves, to put their brand at at in in harm's way because you immediately solicit the irey of people going, well, you've got issues and you've got it's just that whole what about ism.
It's brave to step out into that as a company. I think people don't give people I don't know. Screw do it. People who show up in YouTube comments, whatever that is. They don't give they don't give brands enough credit when they do step out.
And they and and and it always impresses me when a company says, hey, we're working on this. We're not perfect. We have a long way to go. How little attention that gets.
Lisa: Yeah.
Justin: It it just it it just ridiculous, but it's it makes it all the more all the more brave. And and, I'm such a fan of of of how they've done that. And there's other other companies that have done that as, things similar to that as well. And
Lisa: it's so vital. You know, we have an opportunity to ignore the situation that is occurring for every company or to be somebody who shows up with good character and incense and become an example of what is possible. And that's how I see Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Like it's wonderful. And I think like you're saying, many corporations are starting to step up and good for them.
There's Joseph Campbell saying, it's one of my favorites, but when you take one step toward the gods, the gods take 10 towards you. And, you know, we when we do more than what is necessary for our own immediate life and pleasure and safety Mhmm. I think a lot of gifts come our way. A lot of gifts
Justin: 100%.
Lisa: Can't even imagine in your fulfillment and wholehearted living.
Justin: When you show bravery about something that is important far beyond just your own economic viability, the world just seems to things just seem to do well. And I I wish more companies understood that about being brave about their supply chain. About being brave about what they might find. Yes, there's difficult stories. You will
Lisa: find it.
Justin: You will find it. And there's tons of stuff.
Lisa: Great. We're gonna find it. What can we do?
Justin: That's it.
Lisa: How awesome. Let's find it. Yeah. Let's try to find it.
Justin: Yeah. And get a hold of it and you're not gonna fix all of it. But being a part of that solution, think, I'm still here believing that to your point, HP's vision of sharing data, we're a data company. It's like, we believe that there is a point at which the data becomes so prevalent, so open, that we can actually start to address some of the world's greatest challenges, like exploitation and climate change and all the rest of it, because we can see everything. Yes.
And we can So that's the thing. And it's my point about why your work is so important. It's like, Oh, we can see through photography, through supply chain trace, we can see these problems. Do we have the bravery to sit inside of an image like yours and sit inside of that holy dissonance and go, I'm gonna let this affect me as a company or an individual, as a consumer, and I don't know exactly what to do and I can't fix it as I'm standing in front of Lisa's gallery, or I can't fix it when I'm sitting on top of the supply chain, but I know I can take a few steps forward. I think that's all we're trying to do here.
That's the movement that we believe is brewing. And you've been such a change agent for that. Guess in closing, is there any encouragement that you can give for people that are working inside of companies that want to move their business forward in this that need some help in terms of of telling stories? I think we're all a little bit tired of all the statistics and all the numbers. Numbers kind of wear out over time, but stories have this magical influence.
Do you have any guidance you can give people that are listening to this podcast about how they can start to incorporate storytelling into their own work?
Lisa: Yeah. I think they should call me.
Justin: Okay. How about and read your substack, right?
Lisa: No. No. What I was gonna say is it's really about sharing with companies and having them feel something without an agenda. I think they would find, I think companies will find and I have experienced it that when you can involve your whole staff and knowing what you're about in terms of the goodness of the company and what you're standing for, the people inside the company feel all the better for working there and rally all the more to be a part of a movement beyond just the product that they're making. I really do.
I mean, I think it's a win win win. I really do. And the work that you're doing with that is is just just truly amazing.
Justin: I Thank you.
Lisa: Seriously. You
Justin: inspire me. And and and I think your your your suggestion there is I want everyone to hear this. If you're working on responsible supply chains, bring Lisa and her work in and have a lunch and learn at bare minimum or a full exhibition in your lobby. You just your brand will just become an absolute freaking hero for just doing something as simple and human as that. And, Lisa, thank you so much for your work.
I'm so excited for all that you do. Please don't stop. I know it's hard. I don't even know how you get paid for this stuff, but, like, you're just doing it. And it just it's so inspiring to me.
It's it's driven in in some of my lower moments, it's you you've been an inspiration that's this that's encouraged me to keep going. So thank you so much.
Lisa: Thank you. Really. Thank you so much.
Justin: See you soon.
Lisa: All right. This
Justin: is the one thing, the part of our show where we take one idea or one concept and dig in a little bit deeper. Lisa mentioned a quote from Joseph Campbell, which says, I have found that you have only to take that one step toward the gods, and they will then take 10 steps toward you. That step, the heroic first step of the journey. I'm not sure if any of you've seen the Netflix show Adolescence. I've talked about it here in the show before.
It's something that I'm I've I've been moved by something so much. This show should have been summarily ignored by most people, just because it doesn't have all the trappings of what a big, big show would look like. Not a big budget, not big stars, very difficult subject matter. There's a lot going against it. And yet, just this week, it has been confirmed that this show is Netflix number two most watched popular English series of all time.
I believe that the reason that this show has done so well is because of what Joseph Campbell said. They took a heroic step forward to talk about a topic that is very difficult but very necessary to listen to it, and they did it in such a way where they made it not only compelling, but art istically a high bar. They did this thing in it where they every show is shot in one take. What one take means is that there's there's no camera cuts, which which is essentially a play, a one hour play. If anybody screws up with the lighting cue, screws up whatever, you start over.
You go back to one. You start all over again. That's very hard to pull off. So they picked a difficult subject matter, and they did it in such a way that they knew would get the best out of them. It wasn't designed for commercial success, but it has been not just a commercial success, but an artistic success and a humanitarian success.
The impact that one company can make with their responsible sourcing practices can affect thousands of people. The bravery that Hewlett Packard has taken in not only looking at their supply chain, but getting out in front of it with their executives, taking their team to look at it themselves upfront. All of this was driven. All of this was driven through story, through people at the top and the managers and the directors understanding the story of what they want their supply chain to be. Supply chain is a story.
It's a reflection of who your company is. The producers of adolescence took the Joseph Campbell first step and the gods walked back towards them. When companies like HP take that step of courage with vulnerability, they get back more than they put in. The same is true for your company. That is just how the world works.
It just requires us to take that first step. Thank you so much for listening. Please don't forget to subscribe so that we can get more episodes to you more quickly.
