What Kind of World Are We Building? David Butcher’s Episode

By Sandy Glanfield

Some guests come onto Let's Reboot the Future with a clear brief. With David Butcher, I knew I wanted to speak to someone who had sat at board level in financial services and had chosen to do something different with that seat. Not to close things down, but to open them up.

David has spent a lifetime being drawn to the more compassionate way of doing things. You can trace it all the way back to a young man stepping up to manage the stage at a Jimi Hendrix concert on a Baltic island, discovering that kindness and curiosity got better results than barking orders. That moment seemed to confirm something in him about the kind of leader he wanted to be, and he never really let go of it.

What struck me most in our conversation was his observation that people in boardrooms rarely have a clear vision of what they are actually trying to achieve. In an industry that runs on process, checklists and proof points, it is easy to feed the machine without ever stepping back to ask what the machine is for. David's gift, and I think it genuinely is a gift, was using his position and authority to create a different kind of space. To slow things down. To take the bird's eye view. To ask the question that sounds almost too simple: what does good look like here?

Those questions are deceptively naive. But as David argues, that is precisely their power. They invite people to lift their heads above the detail and think more broadly about what they are trying to build, and for whom, and why. In a world that rewards busyness and complexity, that kind of question can be quietly radical.

It feels entirely natural that David has since become a coach. The thread running through everything he described, from that festival stage to the boardroom, is a belief in the power of questions to help people find their own vision, bring more heart to their work and connect more deeply with what matters. That is not a small thing to offer people.

When we create space for people to ask what good really looks like, we are also asking what kind of world we want to build together. That feels like a question worth asking in every boardroom, every meeting room and every conversation where decisions are made that affect other people's lives.

This episode is for anyone who works in or around a board, or any organisation where the process can sometimes crowd out the purpose. What would change if you created more space for the question: what does good actually look like?