We don’t work with big corporations or the government

Because... we don’t want to. It is actually less about who we do and don’t want to work with and more about how we choose to work. We are feeling a little burnt out, and when we look back at why, it is our previous experience working with corporations and government. There is a culture in those spaces that just doesn’t seem to fit with our vibe. We work to listen to humans and the representation of non-human beings. When we listen, we sit there and work out how to turn what we’ve heard into action—the doing. We then work with our clients to 'do,' making sure what we have heard is not forgotten.

We have worked with the big guns across government and corporate and our work even recently jointly won an award for one of our research approaches. Most of the work, because of our creds and experience, was in spaces where people have historically not been heard. Think listening to people who are refugees, migrants, experiencing social hardship, food insecurity, homelessness, or health problems, chronic illness, and those living with disability.

We have the experience for this stuff, decades of it, and we're bloody good at it, but our hearts are hurt. It is probably as simple as that. Doing work that only lasts a few weeks and the expectation to spit out insights that most times people don’t even listen to, where what they have been listened to ends up being deprioritised due to budget and time constraints. Or when we are told there is work to be done, we waste time on meetings where people steal our knowledge for free in exchange for promised work, only to be haggled even though they have the money or told last minute they decided that work is not important anymore.

We are also conscious and aware of how politics plays a role when a project is completely government-funded. It sits uncomfortably with us that the future and rights of humans, as well as the representation of non-human beings, are often skewed and tainted by political agendas, supported by mainstream media. This is why we are very cautious when working with government money or with corporations that have strong political ties.

Right now, this heartbreak has caused no interest in working with government or corporations because, even when promised the work is going to be different, in our experience, it never is. It is pop-in and pop-out, it is tick off the box, just for the department or company to look good, and when it comes to doing – it never happens because, in the end, actually listening and doing through actions becomes too hard (too long or too expensive).

We are currently putting all our energy into powering and mobilising individuals, projects, initiatives, and small local businesses in communities across all regions of Australia, including our regional and rural friends. We know that the work we do is usually not available to them due to hefty consulting fees. This is where we are focusing our energy.

We are called to listen + do.

But here are some things we know people might be thinking:

“Working with government and corporations is where the money is at and where you can make large-scale change.”
We believe that working with government is not the only way to create large-scale systemic change and reject the mindset that "something is better than nothing," which is often used during a project when we start to realise that the words of the people we listened to are not going to be actioned or remembered, and that the action may only lead to something small. We’ve seen, with our own eyes, and in projects we’ve led, the mobilisation of movements that create large-scale change and hold curiosity for new emerging systems or actions of agency within existing systems.

“Bringing the voices you listen to inside the government is important to change it.”
There are many people already advocating very loudly within our dominating systems, and our hats go off to them as we know intimately the challenges they face and the heaviness they live with. We just don’t believe that our purpose and resources are best spent joining that. We sit very comfortably exploring (somewhat unknown) ways to use voices for better representation in different ways. We’re simply not interested in barking up a brick wall.

“It’s less about who you work with but how the work is set up.”
We’ve spent and built good relationships with many people working with government and corporations where we have aligned values on how the work is set up. We know there are good people within these spaces, but our experience is that budget and time always trump these good conversations.

“So you won’t work with people who have accepted money from government or corporates?”
Not true. We will not do work that is completely funded by government or corporates where they can interject with their own agenda and make any final decisions. As big engines of the economy, all money that ends up in our pockets has been touched by them. We just don’t want to find ourselves in meetings with them.

Final word*

We get stuck in this work because it is important, but we must all remember the impact it has on our own individual, often quickly-lost human experience. We must consciously decide how we play in this space and how much human energy we are willing to gamble with. We have hope for returning in so many ways because, as much as these dominating systems have power now, they haven’t always had it. Our beautiful Earth, which is 4.6 billion years old, saw the first hospital in Sydney, in 1788, just over 230 years ago. That means only a few generations before of us, we had different ways. This speaks to the great-gut feeling of disconnect.

This tells us that the dominating system we gamble so much of our energy and time on in Australia is only a ‘big baby.’ It gives hope for so much room to grow if we can look behind us and grab hold of our Indigenous histories. But it also suggests that if all the focus we give is only directed towards this ‘big baby’ (probably more like a tanty-throwing teenager), this dominating system will only continue to grow. We at listen + do are leaning into curious ways of shifting towards more equal balance systems and relationships. While acknowledging the power that exists within our dominant system, we are even more conscious of the billions of years of wisdom, power, culture, and systems that came before it. We are interested in energising and elevating a more true representation of the needs of both humans and non-human beings through listening and activating this by doing within and outside this dominant system. But at times, we must remember to turn our heads and look in a different way.

We must also recognise that when we gamble too much energy changing these dominant systems, it’s often a trauma response to the pain we’ve experienced at their hands. Every meeting, every interaction, triggers a physiological response in our bodies. Our bodies don't distinguish between a person in a meeting—someone masked with ego and a desire for power—and an actual threat like a tiger. The same hormones are released, and the same fight-or-flight response is activated. From our own personal experiences, we know all too well that this constant stress takes a toll on our health in many ways and makes us sick. We say no thank-you to that.

At listen + do, we’ve hold gratitude for time spent of hearing from people nearing the end of their days. They reminded us how short life is and how not finding a balance between work and truly living—exploring and experiencing this precious human life—can lead to death and regret. Those voices sit on our shoulders as we build listen + do and here to give us a nudge when we are at risk of losing our way.

This is a big part of why, beyond everything we’ve said before, we (right now) choose not to work with government or corporates.

*When we say "we must," we’re speaking about ourselves—not you, the reader. It is also not the royal “we,” nor do we encourage forced or ‘bullied’ collective perspectives, thoughts, or experiences. This is simply ours, at listen + do.