The mind once enlightened, cannot again become dark

During our lifetime we may be fortunate enough to receive lenses that provide deep understandings of how things work. Those insights provide models of continuous learning that inform, nourish and sustain us. As a Noble Peace Prize winner said, “It felt like god had revealed a small part of how the universe worked’ adding he was not a religious man.

The point is what has been seen cannot be unseen.  Such meta understandings help us on our pathway towards enlightenment.  Of course, humility and openness are key ingredients to ensure ongoing learning, otherwise we run the risk of becoming dogmatic zealots.

The meta model of understanding human capability, work and the evolution of human value systems were such lenses. What a fantastic journey that has proven to be –  it led me to interview and analyse the most interesting people, and allowed me to assist many and diverse enterprises.  These lenses have stood me instead over multiple decades.

I also know that those lenses have been shared when I hear others encouraging their teams saying these lenses will alter their worldview and help their careers.  Mark Milliner, Ian Stone and Jacki Johnson were the most recent. Thank you for the affirmation in understanding.  Now as Billy Boyd says, I must bid you farewell and in closing I would like to offer you the following insights;

  • Work is a treadmill, but with different and exciting carrots on offer. Fast, fun and challenging.  Our work journey is driven by our deep need to actualize.

    Our need to be of value is enduring.

  • Work can be very satisfying, but while our capability is the driver, our current mode of transport is an old outdated dinosaur called capitalism. There are no free rides, and no one is exempt from travel. It is not a felt fair system and is a value detractor. As Muhammad Yunus says, future business will need a social license to operate.
  • A consultant is a role with accountability and no authority.
  • Work that detracts from planetary, regional and local sustainability cannot be tolerated or supported.  Irreversible damage is caused by companies and governments that have lost their ability to regulate for the common good of all -we need right work.
  • Consulting has allowed me to travel and work in many different and exotic places.
  • As a road warrior I have been equipped with the latest tools of the trade as they evolved… but the problem is my e-wastage mound grows. Full value chain accountability is needed.
  • Consulting has given me time to lead a personally rich lifestyle and get to know my kids – a real blessing… there was a financial sacrifice, but it was worth it.

    “My partner (also a consultant) and I agreed that one parent would always be fully present for the kids (we now have three beautiful adults).  We took it in turns.”

  • It has allowed me to write and publish two books, the third an adventure which sits on the cusp of the new journey and provides a segue to the new future.
  • The right mentors come when the pupil is ready for them.  Gillian Stamp, Don Beck, Malcolm Hollick, Robin Mills – thank you for believing in me.
  • It has led me to renounce the “short-termism” of the free market system, especially greed.

     The word ENOUGH does not exist in business vocabulary.  There can never be ENOUGH!

  • I have lost faith in accountability. I see too many overwhelmed, overpaid and incompetent leaders escaping censure.
  • I am grateful to all my clients who believe in us and were willing to experiment with us.
  • Relationships are frail and need constant tending, trusting and sometimes clear tasking.
  • Look after your networks, friends and family.  Also members of the same family are often not born under the same roof.
  • Thank you to my current team, I am privileged to work with Adam Thompson, Tim Levett, Verena MacLean, Bruce Whitby, Samantha MacDonald, Tanya Brockmeier, Amanda Johnson , Brent Sheridan and Sam Wilkinson.
  • In retrospect, although it did not feel like it at the time, I have learnt more when I have failed or been in conflict.
  • My corporate consulting journey has driven my need to understand other ways we could better organise, for fairer and more just outcomes for all, not just a select few.

 The transition beckons.

I have seen a different world, running on a different operating system and that is now my Call to Adventure. What is seen, cannot be unseen.

Aluta Continua!!

 

GEN=Plan B

A exciting, sustainable, and bold parallel universe exists in our current time and dimension.  And we can all find out about it and be part of it if we choose.

Have you heard of the Global Eco-Village Network  (GEN)?  Well I am an ambassador for this movement and I really value my role.  Why?

Because I am privileged to be able to offer another viable option to an overheated world that allows humans to live differently, sustainably and far more happily.

I am not an ex-hippie, nor do I even hail from a community background. Quite the converse in fact. Elon Musk offers humanity another option as well, a plan to colonise Mars, because we stuffed this up so badly.  Global Leaders have no answers to the wicked problems that overwhelm them.

Their mantra is the same;  growth and jobs (never mind business is cutting jobs and AI looks to replace 35%+ of known jobs).  Market capitalism and the consumer model is terminally ill and will never deliver what we so badly need which is not more jobs or more growth.

GEN is a global body, representing the regions of the world in a loose affiliation of networks.  It is a parallel world that has developed independently and runs counter culture to the consumer, market driven economy.  Its focus is not growth but about mindful living at a human scale and creating sustainable, resilient communities in the process. It is innovative, resilient and its teachings and practices are increasingly becoming known.

You may not know that GEN is a UN recognised body. Since 2000, GEN has had consultative status at the UN-Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) commission, and is represented at regular briefing sessions at UN Headquarters. GEN is also a partner of the United Nations Institute for Training and Research, UNITAR.

GEN is concerned not only with supporting and developing ecovillages, but urban eco-communities. It represents a range of diverse communities, some very advanced and some still forming, some in the rich old millions and some in the hungry billions.  At its heart each community is bound in one or more ways to the following values:

  • food, water, energy access and security
  • sustainable environments – through restoration, management practices
  • Land use and permaculture
  • education for sustainable development
  • developing circular economies
  • community health and wellbeing
  • stakeholder participation and community management skills
  • women and girls empowerment
  • technology innovation
  • acting locally, reaching out

I  want to draw your attention to two powerful large scale change initiatives.  The first is the  Pan African Ecovillage Development Programme, a model to change the dynamics of developing regions, and the other an educational model, a true ecotourism opportunity.

My new book (Enough) is coming out in December 2017 and I mention this because, back in 2007 when I started to write it, I envisaged a programme for the rejuvenation of Africa, which I called the African Ecovillage Development Project (AEDP).  Little did I think then that in 2017 GEN would be asking for funding to help send delegates from the Pan African Ecovillage Development Programme to COP 33 in Bonn.

What a wonderful and powerful initiative.  Astute leadership in some African nations have seen this as an opportunity to build resilient and self sufficient communities. Let’s look to help it grow and to hope to see such programmes emerging elsewhere, rather then putting faith in the old broken paradigm of growth.

The other initiative emerging from GEN Australia is an educational initiative. We want to make our GEN member’s assets available to people to visit, to share, to be part of community and to experience a different way of living.  We are, with GEN International and our network, going to present a wonderful and thrilling GEN eco-tourism experience from a once off trip to a world tour from which you can return and start living differently, in a community or not, but as a member of a different human destiny.

Next steps

CHOOSE LIFE.

Think differently, take a dare to be different.

Life is short. Remember, we all have all the time there is.

Life LIFE!

 

 

The Most Influential People in the World – Stranger then Fiction

I FINALLY submitted the manuscript of my new book ‘Enough’ yesterday.  I started it in 2007 after a dinner conversation about how each person’s unfolding capability was the secret engine that provided the energy for their working journey.  And this happens without most of us having a clue about how it works.  One of Nature’s best kept secrets.

The conversation moved to high mode individuals whose working journey’s impact others (like our boss maybe) and to those, whose journey impacted increasingly larger groups (political leaders of substance) and to those fewer still,  whose actions affected and impacted millions.

Finally we ended up chatting about that tiny, tiny group who create legacy, so powerful, so pervasive, so strong;  that their names endure through history and are today household names. Be it for good or bad.

It was then the idea of my fiction thriller book began to grow. What if one such person was born in the 21st century? What would they be like? What would they do?

My work as a Career Path Appreciation practitioner had provided a rare and wonderful insight into how people’s cognitive capability grew and the science behind actualization (we call it flow).  Elliott Jaques Growth Curves gave me a rational, logic tool for understanding and predicting.  I could  explain why,  how and when. I was not only intrigued, I was hooked on how high potential individuals manifested

Over the period 2005 – 2016 I reached out to some well known leaders and was fortunate enough to be able to chart a number of work journeys from a capability growth perspective – (Muhammed Yunus, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Nelson Mandela, Ayan Hirsi and James Lovelock) and I even did an historical piece (Evils vs Good: Similarities between Adolph Hitler and Nelson Mandela). These individuals were on Growth Curves that marked them as unique, extraordinary human beings.

I avidly read  ‘The 100’ – a ranking of the most influential people in history by Michael Hart – and he drew up his list according to some criteria – influence the key one;  not only rear view mirror but windscreen as well and influence NOT through  a movement or event, but individual, personal influence. Hart goes on to say influence is ranked by their individual particular achievements. This is not a general condition applied and he disregards the argument, ‘it would have happened anyway.’

I think Michael Hart missed out one other factor, and that is their creation of a new language, symbols, and practices that forms with their legacy.

Evidence is that many of the people in his list did create a new language for large parts of humanity  – for example – Muhammad (1), Isaac Newton (2), Jesus Christ (3), Buddha (4), Confucius (5), Albert Einstein (10), Euclid (14) and Darwin (16), not to mention Karl Marx (27), Adam Smith (30) and Henry Ford (91). They all created a new language.  Interesting the first five slots are occupied by thought leaders on religion and spiritual development.

So the new book is about a small girl from West Africa who is one of these leaders destined to make it into the first five slots of Hart’s book and I have made her a Mode XVI on our Growth Curves.

She is possibly a human mutant and  may be a force for good or evil.  I originally called the book ‘Prime Legacy’ but changed it to match the name of the movement she would go create – ‘ENOUGH

I hope you will enjoy it… it was one of the toughest and most challenging, yet humbling commitments I have undertaken.