Guest: Sonia Clarke, Principle, Clever Manka (a boutique agency which blends strategy, storytelling and facilitation)
Published: February 19th, 2026
Subscribe: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube

Episode summary

A refreshing deep dive into why "friction" might be exactly what we need to bring human connection back to the workplace.

Sonia Clarke is the founder of Clever Manka, a boutique consultancy sitting at the intersection of strategy and storytelling. Self-described as "endlessly creative and somewhat disorganized," Sonia brings a unique blend of corporate strategy experience (Big 4 consulting) and mindful presence (she’s also a yoga teacher). She is currently writing a book on the future of collaboration, exploring how we can move beyond transactional interactions to unlock "group genius."

In this wandering and wonderful conversation, Sonia explains why the most differentiating skill in an AI world is the ability to collaborate, shares a fascinating MIT study on why we are "lingering" less in cities (and why that kills serendipity), and breaks down the neuroscience of why storytelling physically changes our brains. You’ll also get an immediately applicable framework for fixing your calendar: Scope, Objectives, and Givens.

Key topics

• 🧩 The Collaborative Differentiator: Why being able to work together is the only skill that matters in an AI-driven future.
• 🏙️ The Death of Lingering: An MIT study on walking speeds reveals how removing "friction" from our lives removes serendipity.
• 🤖 Fun Fact: The only word in the English language derived from Czech is "Robot"—and what that tells us about work.
• 🧠 The Neuroscience of Story: How "mirroring" allows an audience to physically experience a story as if it happened to them.
• 📅 Fix Your Meetings: The "Scope, Objectives, Givens" framework that stops aimless gatherings in their tracks.
• 🌐 Collectives vs. Companies: Why the future of work might look less like a corporation and more like a network of freelancers.

Top quotes

"Humans are hardwired to collaborate. It's literally within our DNA. It's how we evolved... And that ability and the space to do that is being steadily eroded."

"I don't think this idea of always removing friction... is necessarily a good thing because I think friction in your life is how you create moments of serendipity."

"If you put a meeting in the diary, you had to have Scope, Objectives, and Givens... If you bring that in, it streamlines everything."

"It's not differentiating now to be able to do something faster or more efficiently. That's gone. But the ability to work together... is how we can tackle big problems."

"When you're telling a story really well, the person you're telling it to actually thinks it happens to them... it changes the structure of your brain."

Resources

• Whitepaper: Beyond the trade-off: Group learning for a world in transformation
• Book a Platform Demo

Full episode

Mike Courian: Sonia, welcome to the podcast.

Sonia Clarke: Thank you.

Mike Courian: It's great to have you.

Sonia Clarke: My absolute pleasure.

Mike Courian: Where I like to start with all of my guests is finding out a little bit about them. And so how I like to ask this is, can you give me three words that you think speak true of who you are?

Sonia Clarke: Curious.

Mike Courian: Okay. You need to give me another one.

Sonia Clarke: Creative.

Mike Courian: Okay, and then there's going to be a triad. What is the other one? It won't be like those two. Those two kind of live in a similar neighborhood.

Sonia Clarke: If I was being honest, I'd say somewhat... I can be somewhat disorganized. Would probably be another thing, like if I was going to come up with something else. Which probably goes hand in hand with being creative. And that endlessly, like is three words maybe... or four words, five words be endlessly creative and somewhat disorganized.

Mike Courian: Do you know what? I think you win an award because you're the first person... this isn't entirely true because I was just relistening to my conversation with Dominic Price. But I would say that... but I think all of his words were meant to be affirming. Even though they weren't all necessarily like happy words. But I feel like you're the first person to put a fault in and I think there's a wonderful honesty about it. And so I'm so pumped you did that.

Sonia Clarke: That's probably a quite female and English trait, so I am somewhere in that Venn diagram and that would be why, unfortunately. So maybe self-deprecating is the last word.

Mike Courian: Yeah, I love it. So, can you tell me a little bit about your day job?

Sonia Clarke: Yes, sure. So, I am the founder of Clever Manka, which is a boutique consultancy at the intersection of strategy and storytelling. The name, I guess, probably sounds a little bit quirky. It's actually named after a Czech fairy tale about a girl who always had the right words. I'm half Czech and I definitely mine that side of my heritage.

We do a few different things. We essentially work with people and organizations on the strategy piece, so helping people work together better. It's often leaders working together...

Sonia Clarke: on a piece of strategy. But also on the storytelling side, so how can we then take that great work and make it land with all of the stakeholders and their people. Do that through design, collaboration design which doesn't sound like a real thing, it sounds like a made-up thing, but it is real. Uh, communications strategy and facilitation.

So that's a day job. Another day job is yoga teacher, which I guess is a similar thing in that you're kind of creating space for people to be their best selves in a different way. And I'm researching and writing a book about collaborations. So going into a really deep rabbit hole around that, building on some of the work stuff.

So maybe maybe I'm not disorganized. Maybe I just like doing different things. So I'm trying to put more of a positive spin on it.

Mike Courian: Well, I think it would be impossible to not be a little bit disorganized if you had a lot of doors open and so many things you were excited about. And there's just going to be a little bit of clutter that comes with that.

Sonia Clarke: That's true. Excited is a good way of putting it. I just know I see these people with their very beautiful Notion templates and I would love to be that person and I'm just not that person as much as I try to be. I'm a scribbling down a to-do list on a bit of paper kind of girl and I yeah, I think I just have to accept that.

Mike Courian: You said boutique.

Sonia Clarke: Yes.

Mike Courian: What makes you a boutique?

Sonia Clarke: Small. It's the fancy way of saying small, isn't it? Small by design. So I really subscribe to the Company of One ethos.

Mike Courian: Yes. Have you actually read the book?

Sonia Clarke: Yes, I have. And I really like the book.

Mike Courian: Yes, I do too.

Sonia Clarke: And so obviously as he says it's not actually about them being one person companies, but it's I don't really believe in growth as an objective in its own right in any context actually, you know, using GDP as a measure of a country or just using growth as a measure of a company. And for me it's about am I doing really great work, do I love my clients, can I work with great people and I just like I basically bring in curated groups

Sonia Clarke: of freelancers and people who work by themselves to do specific projects. And yeah, that's how I love working.

Mike Courian: Makes sense. Okay. You've got a few things going on. I'm trying to figure out on the fly which one I want to dive into first. I'm curious, has yoga always been part of your life? Or has it been something you've adopted more recently?

Sonia Clarke: Probably for the last 15 or so years, off and on, very sporadically. I moved to Australia about 15 years ago and I went to India on the way over and did my first classes there. And I was a very, for years before starting my own business, a very type A rushing around person, so it's a good balance because I tend to have a slightly racing mind with a lot of different things going on as you've rightly observed having met me for about three or four minutes.

Mike Courian: It's cool. So let's say somebody's never gone to a yoga class before. They have no idea really what it means. There's a trope that they have in their mind, but if they're honest with themselves they don't know. Can you describe what—I mean you've hinted at it already—but can you describe what it offers the ordinary person if they like to open their life up to it?

Sonia Clarke: It's really interesting because we have something that we say quite a lot which is how you show up on the mat is how you are in your life. And you can really see people the way they turn up and so the class itself, just going to a class, it's not the hour a week of the class, it's what it eventually starts to bring into your life.

And a lot of that is about being present with the breath, starting to block out the noise, which we just have so much noise today. Like it's unbelievable the amount of notifications and things that are going on and the news, and we've already talked about the news briefly before getting on this call. There's so much going on, it's just a tool that you can use in your life to help you slow down and focus on what's happening right now.

Mike Courian: I didn't know that my life was noisy until I've gone through two majors, I'll call them digital purges, where I've tried really hard to cut back.

Mike Courian: And I won't be prescriptive about what I've done 'cause then people kind of compare where they are on some artificial continuum. And so what I've done is not really important, but the first one I felt like was significant and blunt. And I was surprised at the withdrawals, I was surprised at all sorts of things I experienced during that intentional shift. And then I kind of let that become the norm. It sort of, I settled in.

Sonia Clarke: Yeah.

Mike Courian: And then I felt nudged to go for another round. But I didn't really know what another round looked like 'cause I thought, well, there's not much going on anymore. And what was amazing for me to find is that it just, as I went further up and further in, I just revealed that... it just revealed that there was more noise.

Sonia Clarke: Yeah.

Mike Courian: I had no idea and it was so loud. And each stage I couldn't believe how loud everything was.

Sonia Clarke: Wow.

Mike Courian: And I'm an insatiable learner and so before the change, like I had so many podcasts that I was keeping up with. And so it just meant there was like a lot of stuff coming in my ears all the time. Yeah. And I thought, well this is all good. Like this isn't detracting, I didn't think.

But because an internet connection is always available to us, because everything is downloadable and streamable now, because like cellular connection pretty much reaches almost anywhere now that we travel to or go, you actually have to intentionally exclude it because it's available all the time. And I've just... I didn't realize how different that was from previous generations.

And there will be different struggles that they... and different forms of this that they experienced during their time, but I've been really struck by that. And it's this weird, I don't know, experiment of one that I'm doing and trying to figure out what it means and where the sweet spot is because some of the things I love... and then you start feeling this weird hesitancy to reintroduce it because you know that it is noise, but some of the noise is good. I never have any...

Mike Courian: Any constraints around being in person with people, that's never something... that's... I never consider that noise. It's all by myself. Podcasts or books or...

Sonia Clarke: Yeah.

Mike Courian: ...whatever else. So, I don't know where that fits, but I've definitely been on that journey. Not through yoga, but I think there's similar crossovers there that are really interesting.

Sonia Clarke: It is interesting. I've done silent meditation retreats, so multi-days, where you are removing absolutely everything. All human contact, all reading, all technology.

Mike Courian: Yes.

Sonia Clarke: And it is amazing because you actually withdraw. Like you withdraw from dopamine.

Mike Courian: Yeah, the compulsions. Yes.

Sonia Clarke: And you do find a place of real stillness and calm. And it's interesting, I'll often go back into the world and have these great boundaries for a little bit around technology and everything else, and then they start to get chipped away and chipped away. I don't know if you've read any Johann Hari, he wrote a book about this. He also says basically, you shouldn't feel really bad about your inability to stay off technology or to look at apps or anything else. Because actually, the cleverest minds in the world are in Silicon Valley designing them to be like slot machines and for us to keep going back.

And a lot of corporate jobs now have an expectation that you are available most of the time and your friends have an expectation that you are available most of the time. And there's a lot of... there's a lot of systemic and societal things that are working against us, but we'll go, "Oh, it's my fault, I don't have the willpower. I keep on looking at Instagram." So I also think it's... it's hard. It's... I... you can't really give all that stuff up. To your point, finding the sweet spot is the key. And that's different for everyone and it's... it's hard to find.

Mike Courian: Yeah. This is cool because I feel like we've put a lot of chips on the table that I feel like I can tell thematically we're going to be drawing on this for the rest of the conversation. So I'm stoked with the work we—

Sonia Clarke: Glad you know where this is going!

Mike Courian: I'm stoked we've done the work so far. When you are facilitating, or leading a class, or in a session with a client, if no humility was allowed, what do you think are your su—

Mike Courian: Superpowers that you bring to the table.

Sonia Clarke: That was very clever to add in that interjectional "no humility" guard. I am genuinely really interested in people. And so because I am really curious, I often just really want to know what's going on. I'll ask a lot of questions, and I genuinely want to know the answers. I'm not putting it out there. And I'd say that would probably be the number one thing. I get told by some clients that when we're prepping for workshops, we'll leave a session and they'll say, "Oh wow, that was like therapy." I think, "Oh, I'm obviously not trained, but glad that was useful to you."

Mike Courian: Means you're being observant though, is what they're noticing, right?

Sonia Clarke: Potentially, yes.

Mike Courian: Yeah. Okay. Interested in people. Any other things that you think contribute to you being able to do work that's valuable for clients?

Sonia Clarke: I think I'm able to make connections between different things.

Mike Courian: Great.

Sonia Clarke: As I can see that you are because you're... I can see your brain working away as I say different things and you're adding them. And that's probably the thing that I love the most, just looking for unexpected connections. I think that's probably my number one favorite thing to do.

Mike Courian: I find I have the best conversations with... They might not have done CliftonStrengths, but those themes, one of the themes is called Connectedness. And it's one that I have in my top strengths. And I've always clung to it as speaking a real truth over my experience because I just... I feel it palpably and it's why I enjoy this format of podcast, especially with guests that I've never met before. Is it because it's like the most raw form of having to connect like, am I going to get lost and figure out and run out of things to talk about? Or am I going to be able to piece the puzzle together and keep building it as we go? And so it's like... it's like laying out the pavers that you're about to have to walk on. So I can already sense it in play, Sonia. So thank you for having it also because it makes these conversations a lot more fun. So...

Mike Courian: Talk to me about how I just want to get a sense of what problems most clients are coming to this boutique consultancy with.

Sonia Clarke: There's definitely a few things. It's either we have to do this difficult piece of work that means that we have to work together and we kind of have to be aligned around it. And we're really struggling to work it out ourselves. Like we need someone to just come in and facilitate us to work out what it is because we're not quite landing it.

Mike Courian: And can you give me some examples of what those difficult pieces of work could be?

Sonia Clarke: Yeah, so it might be that they know that they need to pivot a business but they're not entirely sure what direction. Or they know there's these prevailing strategic headwinds but they can't quite look into them. And it's really hard and you'd know it in your own business, it's hard when you're in a business sometimes to see the wood for the trees because you're so focused that you do need someone else to come in.

Yeah, it might be that they need to have a new strategy or re-engage their people. Or actually the leadership team isn't working very well together and it's clunky and they're not sure why. So it's generally something like that. It's often they're not quite sure what it is, but they know that something's not working and part of the job is to get there.

Or they have this great new thing and they're really excited about it, but they cannot articulate it because it's too technical or they're too focused on the product and they don't actually kind of know how to speak to people about it. Again because they've been so deep, deep, deep in creating it that it's really hard to think about how you have a clear compelling story that takes it out. Those would be the two main things I would say that people come to us for.

Mike Courian: And as I'm imagining it happening, you are saying that all that observation leaves people feeling like you've had therapy. It probably would feel like therapy because I so keenly know that feeling you're describing where I've had to be at the high level of this thing and I've had to go right down to

Mike Courian: ...the doing and the detail and every single dotted i and crossed t, and I just am discombobulated.

Sonia Clarke: Yeah.

Mike Courian: That, that's what ends up happening. You're—oh, it's almost like I'm just full. Capacity's full, and I just need an external person to be observant to the detail—all the details. I can give you all the details. And I just need you to be observant and help me do the Venn diagram. Start piecing out the core themes. Give me some structure. Help me reorder and make sense of it. So meaning-making, I was just thinking, is obviously a big part of what you do.

Sonia Clarke: Funny that you say that as well, because I had a very humbling experience earlier this year when I was doing my own brand. And I was, I had a friend working on it who I've worked with for years, who is amazing. She's an amazing art director and brand expert. And I realized that I was a terrible client. When I was trying to articulate what I did and what was different and everything else, and it was so useful to be on the other side of it and to really understand the experience of that. And I get it even writing bios, and that kind of thing. Whereas friends of mine find it really easy to write a bio for me. I think it can be very difficult to look at yourself or look at your own business and pull out that really succinct pitch, but it'll be quite obvious to someone coming in just listening and observing you to start to see the patterns. It's really interesting. It's kind of a very interesting, very human thing about us, I think.

Mike Courian: And can you tell us again the name of your consultancy?

Sonia Clarke: Clever Manka.

Mike Courian: And this is obviously from your mum's heritage. Am I, am I right? Yeah. Okay. And so how did this story come into your life?

Sonia Clarke: So, my mum always used to tell us Czech fairy tales when we were younger, and they're really funny. They're very, very different to the stuff that you might get in Western Europe and culture, and they're quite dark a lot of them, which kind of fits. And when I was starting to think about the name for the agency, I started to go...

Sonia Clarke: ...back and look at some of the old stories. And I just came across this story and I thought, "Oh, I absolutely love this story and what it means." And it felt like it was just very me and very my background and quite specific.

And the other thing about it as well is actually for an agency like mine, the name can kind of be whatever you want. Like I say that to clients all the time, you know, Google's a terrible name, Apple's a terrible name. It's actually what you put around it. So if it's something that you really love and you believe in and there's a story behind it, I think you can always make it work. That would be the advice I give to people starting their own businesses.

Mike Courian: And Clever's obviously an English word. Or is it like one of those words that can cross languages?

Sonia Clarke: It is an English word. Yes.

Mike Courian: Okay. Okay. And then the Manka part, is that the Czech part?

Sonia Clarke: That's her name. Yes.

Mike Courian: Okay.

Sonia Clarke: Yeah. That's her name. Fun... actually, did you know there's only one word in the English language derived from Czech?

Mike Courian: And what is it?

Sonia Clarke: Robot. How random is that?

Mike Courian: That's so interesting, especially if the robot apocalypse is nigh.

Sonia Clarke: Yeah. And the Czechs caught it first. And the only reason I know that is because I got it wrong in a pub quiz once years ago and my mum was absolutely mortified and my friends were horrified. So it's one of those facts that I will now take to my grave and I like to tell people about it.

Mike Courian: Hey, well, I think we can maybe end the podcast there because that is going to be the random fact that everybody's going to add to their memory banks now. That is so awesome. I love it.

You just casually dropped "I'm working on a book." I would love to dig into that for a while. Does that feel like a crazy project? Or...

Sonia Clarke: 100%.

Mike Courian: Okay.

Sonia Clarke: And the reason that I've started to tell people about it, even though I'm very, very, very far from a finished manuscript, is to force myself to finish it and to do it because I've been chipping away at the idea for the last couple of years. And I keep on just freaking myself out essentially, because it is such a big scary goal. So I...

Sonia Clarke: I am quite determined now to keep going.

Mike Courian: And if, if I like, a very high level mapped out sort of the flight path of ideas at your best guess at this stage of how the structure of it might come together in terms of what you're trying to say to the world. Yeah. Can you give us a little flight path of what that would look like?

Sonia Clarke: Oh, I like the idea of a flight path as a contents page. That's brilliant. So, really what I'm looking at in terms of the problem that I'd like to solve... I guess the starting thesis is that humans are hardwired to collaborate. It's literally within our DNA. It's how we evolved. It's how we've created civilization, every major creative scientific breakthrough, everything. Which is wonderful.

And that ability and the space to do that is being steadily eroded. And it's something that's happening quite fast and there's a few different reasons behind it. We live in obviously a much more individualized, atomized society. I think people are really lonely. Technology is meant to help us collaborate, but a lot of it's very shallow and transactional. And so a lot of the research and this is the thing that I'm really digging into is showing that that is becoming a real challenge.

And as AI becomes even more important, the ability to collaborate is the most differentiating skill that we can have. Because it's not differentiating now to be able to do something faster or more efficiently. Like that's gone. So just being able to do this one specialized thing and do it really, really well, that's declining. But the ability to work together and bring in your unique skills, experiences, backgrounds, perspectives with a group of people not only makes us healthier and happier, but I think it's how we can tackle big problems.

And so the book's really kind of setting that up and showing how people can come into collectives and work together and some of the mindsets and practices, essentially how we can intentionally design collaboration back in.

Mike Courian: Spoke with this wonderful couple, they live in Portugal, Beverly and Etienne Wenger-Trayner. And I don't know if you're...

Mike Courian: I'm not familiar with their work but they're social theorists and Etienne and another person actually formed this idea of social learning theory and communities of practice. And so, communities of practice have become part of the, I would say, business vernacular. And what I thought was really interesting speaking with them is they were really specific about the taxonomy of the different words that can be used. And so, I'm curious when you're talking about collaboration, is that different than like a community? Is that different? I'm curious what you mean by it and if you're kind of aiming readers towards a sort of specific idea. Or you're like, no, it doesn't matter, people just need to get together.

Sonia Clarke: No, that's brilliant. I... It's so interesting because I actually think collaboration as a word really repels people some of the time because it's been kind of co-opted into corporate jargon, which has made it meaningless in a way that many other words in corporate jargon, you know, synergy and transformation and other things. But when you go down to it, because I spent a lot of time thinking about this, it's the only thing that I think really captures what I'm trying to convey, which is bringing a group of people together to create, to work together to create something that is bigger than the sum of its parts.

And it's this idea that Keith Sawyer calls group genius. And it's that idea of unlocking group flow. So everyone knows this idea of you're in flow, there was obviously this positive psychology movement, and time's just flying and you're focused. And then group flow is this beautiful idea that you can design where you have that as a group. You're in flow and you're working together and you're coming up with wonderful ideas.

So that's the thing that I'm really passionate about. A separate thing, I think the communities of practice is wonderful and funnily enough it's what we have in the collaboration design world globally. Because people who go into that field obviously kind of like working with each other, obviously. You have these really wonderful communities of practice where you have...

Sonia Clarke: Creating unconferences and sharing mechanisms for people to put ideas out there and none of it is for commercial gain. It's all about how we can just improve the quality of what we do, which I think is wonderful.

And then the other thing that I'm thinking a lot about is collectives, as distinct from both those things. And and really that's about having people who are freelancers or solopreneurs or work for themselves in some way, forming looser networks which aren't companies, but do have, you know, rituals and connections and some degree of mutual reinforcement, because I think that's going to be a really important trend going forward.

I mean all the data is showing more and more people are going to be working for themselves and taking on portfolio careers and everything else. And it's funny that we think of companies as one of those things, like many other things, that we think, oh they've been here forever, but they're literally like two or three hundred years old. They're since the Industrial Revolution, which in the grand scheme of humankind is obviously nothing. And I think there will be a rise in this idea of collectives and working by themselves but in community.

Mike Courian: Is it important that there's sort of some sort of like shared responsibility when it comes to a collective? Is there something that anchors them together and they become accountable to them? Or is it quite organic and the only accountability is really a relationship?

Sonia Clarke: So interesting. This is exactly the thing that I'm working through at the moment. I'm talking to lots of people doing different things in the world to look at it. And what I've seen so far is, I think there's a few different things.

So, just like with a company, it's the Simon Sinek thing, you have the why, the what, and the how, right? And so you have collectives where maybe people just do the same thing. So maybe it's PR professionals around the world and they can refer work to each other and they're kind of bound by skills.

And then you have the how, so how people want to work and what that looks like. And there's a couple of really good collectives like Hoxby...

Sonia Clarke: Mash, which is a global creative agency of people who want to work on their own terms, but they want to work with people and they're at a certain stage in their career. I think the really good ones are the ones that have a shared purpose.

There's one that started in Australia actually, but it's across all of APAC called Rise Collective, and they are all about climate change. So they're a group of professionals right across the region, they're really great at their jobs, and they're all in advocacy and policy and narrative development.

And I think models like that are quite interesting where you're bringing together experts and they have a really clear shared ambition. But I think there'll be lots of different models that emerge. So it's something that I'm really interested in because I don't think there's been a standard thing that's been landed yet, but there's a lot of really interesting experiments going on.

Mike Courian: Well, I'm so interested when you sort of decide that you're at the end of your research and it all comes together in the book. I'm really interested to hear about what those methods are that people are using because I think...

Sonia Clarke: Well, I may never be at the end of my research. I'm touched that you think that's a possibility. But yes, at some point hopefully I'll get to a point where... there's some... I have some clearer perspectives on it, yes.

Mike Courian: Okay, let me ask a different question. Who's your collaborator on this book project then?

Sonia Clarke: So many different people. It's really interesting. So I'm... obviously a book is a solo project and it's a lonely project because you are constantly doubting yourself. I've been doing it in public, partly because of what we talked about before, the power of social shame I suppose, and accountability.

And partly because I started just putting stuff out on Substack and LinkedIn and I've had so many people contact me and say I want to have a chat about this, I've got a really interesting view about that. So I'm chatting with a lot of different people, some of whom I know really well, and some of whom I'm just meeting for the first time through the project. Which is awesome. And actually how this podcast came about. Funnily enough.

Mike Courian: Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly right actually. That was through my co-founder Dan noticing some of those things you...

Mike Courian: Putting out into the world and going, hey, this is really interesting and curious, let's talk. And I've been noticing, it's always been there. I think it got rebranded to marketing at some stage along the way. But when people openly share these voyages or these quests that they're on, it creates a flywheel around itself. You'll be getting more leads to go deeper into your research. You'll be getting feedback on it. You'll be getting encouragement to keep going. I want to know where you get to.

Like, and I just think, wow, it's so amazing because if we followed... I don't know, for some reason it's this strong narrative I have out of my just cultural mush that's in my brain of like, no, it's a book. You like to slog away on the research, you go into your den and you do your number of pages a day and then you work hard with a copy editor and I'm like, that just doesn't make any sense in so many ways. And the other way is so beautiful and is so symbiotic.

And so, how did you start doing that? Like, it's in a lot of ways it's kind of counter-cultural, even though it's becoming more common and people are doing it more and leaning into it and Substack's been this amazing gateway for written work to go out into the world. But was there a nudge?

Sonia Clarke: I was really interested in Substack and I wanted to... I've written for years and years, mostly non-fiction, but I never published anything and I got encouraged by a few people. And so I started and I was absolutely terrified. And I think it's like anything where you're putting yourself out there. You do the first one and you think you're gonna throw up when you press publish and then you're like, okay, I didn't die. This is good. Continue. And then you do the next one and you're still alive. And the next one.

And then some really beautiful things started happening. I've had some really interesting people reach out to me and I had some really great conversations, I've made friends. And then I thought, well you've been trying to come up with this book idea for years now...

Sonia Clarke: Maybe try and do this in the same way. And so I just decided to do it on a little bit of a whim, to be completely honest. It wasn't that well thought through, but I'm glad that I did it because I'm meeting really interesting people and it's really helping the research in a way that wouldn't—wouldn't be the same as just me, you know, trawling the internet and just cold emailing a million people. I feel like once you start showing up as yourself online, you meet the right people. The right people are just kind of drawn to you and you're drawn to them and it sort of works. That's at least what I found so far.

Mike Courian: It's so cool. I love that you're on it. Does it feel like it's feeding into your agency's work? It feels like it really would be. Or do they feel like they're separate worlds for you?

Sonia Clarke: They feel slightly separate. And it's really interesting because my clients are all really supportive of the side projects and very open to them. And definitely all the people that I speak to, I get new ideas about facilitation and how people can work together. So it definitely feeds the methodology. It's absolutely not a business development or marketing piece. And if it was, it would have the most insanely bad ROI for the amount of time I put into it compared to any other marketing activity I could be doing.

But I—I personally think that having different strands in a portfolio just makes you better at all of the other things because like teaching yoga makes me a much better facilitator because it's made me much better at feeling calm in those moments. You'll have found this when you're facilitating when it's a difficult moment and you need to create the space for it and you need to be quiet and pause. And I used to find that really hard when I was just running, running, running in corporate. So I think everything, it's—the flywheel is the perfect way to put it actually.

Mike Courian: And I'm thinking through your work history. And I'm curious, is there a certain inflection point where you went, "You know what? This isn't working for me. I'm going to try something really different." I feel like Company of One is kind of the...

Mike Courian: The antithesis of somebody going through that transformational period. Is it that, or is it actually no, not so much, I've been drawn towards this idea of collectives and collaboration in a different way? And where I'm going to, just so you know, is so I'd love you to answer that, and then where I want to kind of go to is how does a leader, a senior leader in an organization, receive everything we're talking about and they're going, "This is totally different from anything I experience on a daily basis." So that's where we'll go. But I guess I, to start, I'm really curious about was there an inflection point or has there just been this natural gravitation in this direction?

Sonia Clarke: I think it's been a natural gravitation. And it's interesting because when I was in corporate and I was in a big—I was in a Big 4 and we had a really big collaboration design and facilitation practice. It was the largest, definitely in the Southern Hemisphere in a consulting firm like that, possibly the world. So I actually felt like I was in a collective within a big company. And I had really interesting circles and great people. I definitely wasn't one of those people who hated corporations. I loved my job and I really liked all of the interesting people. So I don't think that you have to work in this way to have that feeling of community and collectiveness.

You can definitely have that in a big organization and you can have really interesting circles and you can have communities of practice within a big global organization and have special interest groups and that stuff can run really well. And I think some places do it really well and some places probably do it less, but you can always bring it in.

I also think the way that the job market is at the moment, everyone would be well-advised to see how they could broaden their network and the things they found interesting beyond the company that they're in, even if they are really happy there. I read something, I can't remember where it was, but it was talking about social capital and that you can really focus on kind of within a company or broadly and beyond. And it's just an idea, I think to make sure that you're...

Sonia Clarke: ...doing both. Like you're not putting all your eggs in one basket and you're thinking about some of the other communities that you could be a part of.

Mike Courian: I mean, I feel like that's going to spring us off into a totally different direction because I am interested in like... One thing you mentioned in our conversations before this call was about how there's a crisis of loneliness that we're experiencing. And it's in your research so far for the book or outside of it. Do you have any signal on how it is that we're in this crisis? Because I was just thinking about how people actively join in to be part of things, be part of communities, be part of networks—why has it become something that we don't naturally do as much?

Sonia Clarke: Yeah. So it's interesting in the research, basically since the pandemic, in virtually any research that you would find—and that's globally, that's virtually every market—employee engagement has gone down. And mental health measures around who's kind of seeking mental health support, anxiety, depression, everything else has gone up. So the data is pretty clear. I don't know, and you know I'm not...

Mike Courian: No, I know you don't know.

Sonia Clarke: ...I'm not an expert in this. I don't know if anyone really knows. My best guess would be that there were some trends that were happening already that have been exacerbated by COVID. So definitely the technology piece, because you can feel connected and like you're on social media, but you don't necessarily have as much of the in-person human connection.

I actually don't think this idea of always removing friction, which obviously designers talk about a lot, is not necessarily a good thing because I think friction in your life is how you create moments of serendipity. It's normally when you're lost or you're waiting around for something and you're not on your phone, and so you strike up a conversation with the person next to you or you go a different route.

I actually saw some really interesting research the other week from MIT and they had looked at a number of different American cities, I think it was five or so cities including New York...

Sonia Clarke: ...30-year gap between them and they'd used AI to track people's movement patterns around the city. And they found that people were lingering a lot less. Lingering, great word. About 15% less. And that people were walking, like, 15% faster. And I think that's probably, again I don't know, but that's probably a really strong metaphor for what's happening in other parts of our life, that you're just going directly from A to B and you're perhaps not being able to see the other stuff.

Other things, obviously a decline in some of the kinds of big social institutions that used to hold us together, such as the church and other community organizations that are just less powerful than they used to be. There's definitely been more of a trend towards, I guess, individualistic societies since probably the 80s. So yeah, it's a few different things but it feels like it's coming to a head now. And you see all the data but I... I just have so many conversations with so many people who talk about struggling themselves or their kids struggling or other things going on that it just feels like an important thing to look at at the moment.

Mike Courian: And do you think this strange, alien technology that's just bound its way onto the scene at a very coincidental timing with all of that happening... is AI a threat and it's going to make all this worse? Or do you actually see AI as neutral? Or do you see AI as being able to counter this?

Sonia Clarke: I won't have a hot take. I'll try and have a warm or tepid take. It's really interesting. I don't think technology, any technology, is inherently good or bad really. Apart from maybe the atomic bomb. But it's how you use it and how it's integrated into other things. So there's really wonderful things about AI. I mean if you can be systematizing routine tasks and using it to support your research and kind of help you think things through and be a bit of a sparring partner and help you make connections and manage other parts of your life, like, that's absolutely wonderful. If there is a situation where we're completely reliant on AI and it's at the expense of human connection then that would be bad. But...

Sonia Clarke: I don't really know which way it's going yet, and I can definitely see opportunity and some challenges.

What do you think about this? Sorry, I know you're meant to be asking the questions, but I'm curious 'cause you obviously are in tech and...

Mike Courian: From a Makeshapes point of view, really at the heart of our platform is to get people talking. And so in the building of an experience and the designing and the ideating around how to... what's the best question for this particular discussion or can you give me a few ideas? All that sort of bouncing back with a sparring partner, I think is going to be a great use case and we're actively working on and thinking about how we can bring that in. But at the core of what we do, it's kind of irrelevant.

And we'll be surprised at the ways it comes in the future. But right now, the most important thing is quite simple elements: getting people in the room together, like kind of almost the admin of that, making that very low friction, and then as quickly as possible getting them to the point where there's an opportunity for them to be discussing it.

And those are kind of the core elements of what we're trying to do with Makeshapes. And yes, there's all these amazing things that it offers organizations in terms of delivering a consistent message, whatever that topic might be, engaging a variety of learning styles and a variety of social dispositions.

That's one of the things we've been most surprised by, that if anybody wants to immediately sort of demonize technology or throw the baby out with the bathwater, this was one thing that I've really changed my opinion on because I felt like for it to be very human and conversation-centric, tech was going to get in the way. That was kind of like my blanket hypothesis early on.

And one of the things that's been this remarkable surprise is because there's a wide continuum of social dispositions. Some people love to start speaking the moment there's an opportunity, and they'll figure out how to make it be something that is worth saying. And others are going, "The last thing I want to do is share something out loud."

And what's been really interesting is people are actually...

Mike Courian: ...far less concerned about the discussion, if they've had a moment to prepare. Just allowing people a little bit of space, even though you might be physically sitting in a meeting room together, or you could be on a call like this, it just opens up a lot of equity for sharing. And I think that has been such a wonderful surprise to see it's the on-the-spotness that we're realizing is actually more the problem in a session.

Sonia Clarke: It's really interesting because we, quite often if we're working on something like a vision for a strategy or thinking about a really big piece of work, we'll often do a period of inputs and letting participants play with possibilities, but then we'll send them out with an individual perspective. And they'll have about 15, 20 minutes to individually reflect on something with some questions. Often backcasting, so kind of putting themselves into the future and looking back so they can think a bit more expansively.

And then put them in groups of two or three to debrief. So again, it doesn't feel too threatening. You're kind of working with a small group to start to synthesize your perspective and then coming back into the big group. Because exactly your point, if you try and just sit down with 15 people and say, "What does the future look like?" often the most senior or confident person talks first. And the conversation's then anchored to that. And it's very difficult for someone to come back. So it's, yeah, thinking of that bottom up.

And it's brilliant I think that you are feeding that into the technology because often this is in-person sessions or basically taking an in-person session and putting it into a virtual environment. But with any form of collaboration design, thinking about how you can give everyone a voice, doesn't matter how introverted they are or what level they are in the organization or, to your point, some people love just showing up and talking and some people really need some time to gather their thoughts.

And I also try to shy away from pre-work because half the people do it, half the people don't. Some people age, some people don't. It feels like extra pressure, it feels like an admin. So try and integrate it all into the session. Yeah. I could geek out on collaboration design for ages.

Sonia Clarke: We probably don't have time to get into the intricacies of designing a session, unfortunately.

Mike Courian: No, I love it. But do you have any tips for an organ—if an organization wants to bring more collaboration into their ways of working, do you have tips that you give to support that?

Sonia Clarke: Yes. Yeah, it's interesting because we always start with the objectives, so actually what you're trying to get out of that. Getting really clear about the givens or mandatories, so the things that actually can't change in the organization, you have to keep as is, and then what you're trying to get out of it. So why do you want people to collaborate more? Do you want to create more moments of serendipity? Do you want people to be happier? Are you trying to get to some kind of outcome?

And then from that would think about... think about it through a lens of people, place, and process.

So for any specific thing, who are the right people? How are you going to put collections of people together? Is it to do specific things, specific tasks? Is it rituals and practices and how do you bring them together?

Place or environment, both virtual and actually in a physical space, so what does that space look like? How can you encourage people to work together better? Probably not in cubicles where they sit all day, which obviously isn't really the case these days. And how can you... how can you put them together when they are working remotely?

And then process, where you could go down a whole huge rabbit hole, but a lot of that is around exactly what we're talking about. So how can you build trust? How can you help everyone put their perspectives across? How can you give them meaningful work to do together?

So creativity loves constraints, right? So rather than throwing people in a room and saying, "Collaborate," what's the injection of inspiration and context setting that you can give them? And then what's a game that they can play to look at the strategic possibilities, or how can you create a framework for really good conversation where they can actually really test some different assumptions and ideas?

So there's a... there probably isn't just a really simple "this is how you can... how you can collaborate," but those are some of the dimensions that we would start to think about with a company.

Mike Courian: Yeah, no, I think that's given a really helpful structure. I mean, there’s a lot you could think about all those things.

Sonia Clarke: There’s a lot, yes.

Mike Courian: There’s a lot, but I love that you’ve been able to articulate it really clearly because I think people can take that and start processing it in their context and their organization. I'm wondering, is there an anti-list? Like, of what crappy collaboration looks like? What is the anti-list?

Sonia Clarke: So I think the anti-list... I think if you're just getting, like if you're in a big organization and you're just getting the same people in every time to solve a problem, and it's not really representative of the organization or bringing in fresh thinking, that would be... Anti seems harsh. That would be less useful.

Mike Courian: Yeah, good, good, good.

Sonia Clarke: I think that... that being too inwards looking. And so not bringing in external inspiration and ideas and kind of looking out to the market, is also probably going to impact your ability to collaborate.

The space, as I said, so if you're not intentionally designing the space and there aren't those opportunities for people to have those moments of serendipity and see each other, that's also not ideal.

And there's a lot, and we've probably all had them, there's a lot of meetings where people just turn up and there's a meeting because there's just a meeting in the diary. And there perhaps hasn't been the thought that there could be to what that structure could be asking, what you could be getting people to do, how you could be getting them to meaningfully contribute rather than just listening.

And the other thing that I think is quite... do you know what the actually the number one thing I would say would be they're not intentionally designing it in. If you just think it will just happen in these massive businesses where a lot of people are working remotely now, it... it won't. So having someone or multiple people whose job it is to think about how they can bring people together, and what's the work that they want them to do and how can they help them to do that work, is probably the single biggest factor of success, I would say.

Mike Courian: Something I had a little epiphany a few...

Mike Courian: One of the conversations ago was about how that shared purpose, even if you're only gathered together for an hour-long meeting, can just add so much momentum to the conversation. And allowing those that are interested to lean in further, and allowing those that were kind of not really wanting to be there to possibly find a reason or a motivation to engage.

And I've just been thinking about how we can layer that into Makeshapes? It's already there implicitly, but how do we explicitly really allow the group—or how do we form almost practices, little rituals that happen in most sessions maybe, that just allow for that alignment? And just, you know, I can imagine even if you took two or three minutes, it's probably going to pay dividends the whole rest of the time that the group is together.

Sonia Clarke: Do you know what's interesting? We were working on big ways of working transformation at a big telco, and one of the things that we put in place, which is incredibly simple, is if you put a meeting in the diary, you had to have Scope, Objectives, and Givens.

So Scope: this is what the meeting is about. Objectives: this is specifically what we're going to get out of it. And it's fine if your objective is "we need to connect as a team." Like, that's a very different design to "we need to align around this document" or "we need to be really clear on what the strategy is looking forward."

And the Givens, or the things that are not up for discussion, so that you don't get stuck into rabbit holes. If you as a group are having the same conversation every time you have a meeting, and you're having the same argument and you never get through, you go, "Do you know what? We're just going to agree that people are not happy that we don't have enough resources. So we're just going to park that and work with what we can work with."

And just that one thing, I think if you bring that in—because it means for anyone to put a meeting in the diary, they have to have thought about those three things. And to your point, when you're accepting that meeting, you are signing up to those three things. So you are agreeing to go into that meeting. And that alone streamlines everything because a lot of... it's funny you... I realized...

Sonia Clarke: ...left corporate that I had not actually been managing my diary for years. It was just inflicted—it was inflicted on me. I just went to things because I was like, oh, I'm meant to go to that thing. And sometimes it's not useful. And sometimes you can go to other things where you're adding so much value and it's something that you're really passionate about. So I think that's probably the number one thing.

Mike Courian: So you saying doing it ahead of the gathering is another interesting layer. I'm like, oh, I love that 'cause maybe on the spot is like dropping somebody into the discussion without time to think. And so I love the idea of it even coming beforehand. That really sparked me.

Sonia Clarke: And you can have a tiny little bit of pre-work when you get in, right? So, say you've got a really specific objective. Maybe the question to everyone when you first get there is like, what's holding us back from achieving this?

Mike Courian: True.

Sonia Clarke: What are we getting wrong? Or there could be something, if you're looking for connection, there could be an exercise where you're really specific about people sharing something more vulnerable with each other in smaller groups because you know that actually the purpose of that—I love that you call it gathering not meeting, actually. I don't know if you've come across Priya Parker's work?

Mike Courian: I have. I've read most of or all of—it was a long time ago—all like Priya's book and I love, yes, I love what she has to say.

Sonia Clarke: I love her—I love her approach and I love how accessible she makes some of these collaboration ideas. And yeah, The Art of Gathering, I think is such an elegant way to put it. So yes, gatherings not meetings is a good way to think about it.

Mike Courian: Priya, if you're listening, I'm on the hunt to get you on this podcast, so one of these days. As we come to a close, one area that I feel like we haven't talked about at all that I would love to just touch on a little bit is storytelling. Something that we've noticed with Make Shapes, we call the process of—there's learning design is traditionally what's done for e-learning modules and various types of learning in the corporate world. But what we call the session that people are going to gather round, we actually call them experiences in Make Shapes. And so I've been playing with this idea of calling it experience design.

Mike Courian: ...is the act of building one of these sessions before it's delivered to a group. And something that's been really interesting that we've noticed is it feels more like designing a narrative arc than it does sort of objectives... I don't know, I don't know I... Sorry all the learning designers out there. I am not actually a learning designer, so I'm gonna butcher the methodologies, but there's a methodology to it. So we actually call the earliest step in planning a session—an experience, storyboarding.

Sonia Clarke: Yeah, amazing.

Mike Courian: Because we think it has, it's got more connotations to that because there's this element of there's a video component component, there's audio component, and you're trying to take people on this journey. And I think all learning sessions or facilitated sessions are trying to take people on a journey but we're having a lot of fun whether it's novel to us or not but playing around with this motif of sort of film and how those stories were brought into the world. So I've just thrown out a whole bunch of random things about storytelling. What lands for you or what did it spark for you?

Sonia Clarke: I really love that. And the reason why and it's the same way that I think about internal communications. People always used to think about internal communications as this completely separate thing from broader communications, but actually humans learn and absorb information through stories. And it's not like you go into your work, you turn on the computer in the morning and all of a sudden you're this automaton that now only absorbs information in bullet points. That's not how we work.

There's really good neuroscience around it. I mean there's so much history and culture, look at indigenous cultures and how they spoke stories and how they passed down information over generations, but there's now really good neuroscience that backs that up that your brain literally reacts when—it lights up when you're being told stories. It releases endorphins, you have dopamine, you have cortisol when there's something dramatic. And because it changes the structure of your brain that's what makes it memorable. There's even this thing called mirroring with neurons and this is super interesting so if you're telling a story...

Sonia Clarke: ...you're telling it really well, the person you're telling it to actually thinks it happens to them. There's a reaction in their body that is as if it happens to them. And so interestingly, when people then go on to tell your story as their own—and we've all had that where someone's kind of telling your story back to you—it's actually really flattering because it means that you've done a really good job in telling them.

And all of that is a very long-winded way to say, I think stories are absolutely critical in business. So learning design, absolutely, you know, how you win hearts and minds of people, how you create a movement behind whatever you're doing, the ability to tell stories for that. And communications. So if you're going out to your people because you want to get them on board with a new strategy or a transformation or something else, you need a really compelling story for that. And you also need your leaders to be able to tell that story as well. So in case it wasn't clear, I emphatically approve of your storyboarding technique in learning design, and I think you should absolutely run with it.

Mike Courian: And when you get skepticism—if you're in a session...

Sonia Clarke: Yes.

Mike Courian: ...and you're getting skepticism from somebody about like this fluffy story, how do you win them?

Sonia Clarke: I bust out the science that I just told you. That's why I have that really embedded in my head because I have—I've taught this, I've taught storytelling to people in really technical industries, like engineers, accountants, and you can tell that people turn up thinking, "Okay, have been signed up for storytelling training. Cool. Need to tick a box."

So really talking about the science, giving them the rational reason to believe it. But then I also think once people have started practicing it, we'll give them a kind of narrative arc and have them play with it. And they've seen how they felt telling a story that's meaningful to them, and how they've felt having one of their colleagues or peers telling a story back to them, and what that means now about their perspective of people. I think it's learning by doing. So trying to win them over with the science and then the learning by doing is the plan.

Mike Courian: Sonia, this has been very fun. What I love is if I just lifted the lid on the right thing, you had all...

Mike Courian: You were like exploding with all these interesting rationale and facts and people you've spoken to, and I felt like it really matched this curious, creative person that you described at the top because it would overflow. If the right little latch got unlocked, all these things would fly out in this happy way. And maybe it speaks to the disorganized as well. It wasn't disorganized at all when you shared, but it was just like, whoa, here they are.

Sonia Clarke: I love a rabbit hole.

Mike Courian: So, thank you for... thank you for taking us down some of your rabbit holes. I can see, hopefully, people listening are going to be able to 'cause I can see so clearly that these strategies are actually really broadly applicable. There's not a stream that these all fit nicely into, and I think that's why you find your agency is working on such a broad range of tasks, is because they can all feed on these different areas that you've become really gifted at. So, yeah, thanks for sharing some of your wisdom with us.

Sonia Clarke: Thank you so much. That was such an excellent conversation and I really appreciate how open and warm you are in drawing some of these crazy rabbit holes out. So thank you. I had a lot of fun.

Mike Courian: And that wraps up this episode of Shapeshifters. Thanks for being with us. We really want this to become a two-way conversation, so we would love for you to send in any questions or comments that this episode has prompted. You can do that by emailing shapeshifters@makeshape.com, or if you're listening on Spotify, you can drop it into the comment section. We'll be incorporating these questions and comments into future episodes.

Remember, if you want to stay up-to-date with the podcast, go to the Shapeshifters website, link in the description, and sign up to our community.

I'm grateful for all of you. This is a real joy for me to get to do this, so thank you for your support. Until next time, I'm Mike Courian, and this is Shapeshifters.