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Leadership Part 5: Leadership and Influence

From the Camp Fire to the Kitchen Table: A six part blog series on leadership and change practice. 

In parts 1-4 of this series we established that tomorrow’s leaders will be selfless, flexible and ready to collaborate. We discovered that leadership is about bringing the best of you to the table and about leaving your own ego at the door. We know that we are part of a vast interconnected social network that has more power than we could possibly imagine. We are now ready to join the dance and to influence the network.

How can we influence others?  How do we enable change? Unfortunately, “behaviour change” programs are often cringeworthy. We cannot change other people’s behaviour. People change their own behaviour. We can help to create the right conditions for people to change for themselves. To do that, we need to be open to learning, taking advice on our own improvement from others.  

People are complex. As we learned last time, what we believe and what we do are shaped by our social networks. But other factors are also at play, including our upbringing, our background, where we work, the weather, when our last meal was, what news we consume, how much battery our phone has left and whether or not we ran over the neighbour’s cat this morning. 

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In his book “Change or Die”, Alan Deutschman says that there are three ways to enable others to change, and three ways that we know do not work.  Deutschman uncovers that neurologically, fear, force and facts do not work. In fact, 87% of facts are made up on the spot (*joke*). It is now well established that when people are provided with facts or information that counter their position, they simply retreat further into their ideological position. People will deny facts, or misread, obfuscate or cherry pick data to suit their worldview.  Some even write like this in national newspapers.
Fear can stimulate temporary change, but at the expense of teamwork, confidence and participation.
Force creates enemies and a lot of long term pain. 

Neuroscience shows us that what does work is the three R’s: Relate, Reframe, Repeat. 

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  1. Relate

A master of change will first build respectful relationships. It does not begin like Charlton Heston on the hill. It begins with conversation and connection. With chat and eye contact and body language that gets our mirror neurons firing and makes us feel like we’re around the campfire. And speaking of the campfire, the modern version is the kitchen table and the modern tools are cake, tea, drink, music and the arts.  Becoming a master of change requires you to understand and use social lubricants, time, place, fun and conversations.

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Social Lubricants

Early in my career, I spent a decade watching and emulating Francis Ryan from Vox Bandicoot using, as the strapline said, a “judicious mix of science, humour, arts and common sense” to bring strangers together with great effect. Frank would talk about how people awkwardly enter a room full of strangers move carefully around the wall watching and sizing up the others. This is an evolutionary trait. Imagine walking into a room in England in 850AD and finding the strangers had beards, axes and horned helmets. You would need to run, and quickly.  So when we first enter a room with new people, we are cautious.

Frank called it the “sniffing” phase of a relationship, because the allusion to dogs sniffing each others’ butts made people laugh. With that humour, he could help people who had been strangers laugh together, breaking down the first wall of social awkwardness. He would then hand them a streamer and ask them to throw them together and follow their streamer through the crowd saying hello to people, introducing themselves and sharing stories. Doing this without a streamer is awkward. Doing it with a streamer is fun, engaging and makes people feel like they are back at a kids’ party. The noise level in the room goes up substantially as people begin easily chatting and building relationships. Frank used to say that, “A streamer is a social lubricant for the bedrock of culture: the conversation”. The conversation is where we find common ground, areas of mutual interest, locate people in place, find common interests and build community. Cake is another helpful social lubricant. Tea is a brilliant reason to sit down and chat. Someone playing a guitar is a wonderful connector and a glass of wine can lead to all sorts of fun conversations. I’ve lost count of the number of people I know who put up solar panels only after a cuppa and some cake at the neighbour’s kitchen table whilst discussing power bills, inverters and pay back periods. 

Our society doesn’t generally regard these social lubricants seriously. Frank was often accused being “kidsy” by “serious people” or, more commonly, by people who were worried about the potential reaction of serious people. Many times Frank and I were told that the Sustainability Street Approach needed to be more “mature”, despite the fact that ALL communities reduced water and waste and energy by at least 30%, built wonderful local relationships and created fantastic local projects. Other “serious” programs got nowhere near these results. We have become conditioned to regard ties and suits and barren meeting rooms as “serious” and communities meeting in lounge rooms with streamers as “trivial”. What needs to change is our attitude to change. Relationships work because they are powerful at the human scale. Arts and music and cake help bring people together to build relationships and have conversations that lead to change. It is therefore the “serious” who are blocking change. If we do want change, then we need to lighten up and go with what works: human scale. 

Time

Many leadership and behaviour change projects are too short. In creating and delivering the Sustainability Street Approach to over 300 communities, we found that community building can take 18 months for a neighbourhood. This is how long it takes to build trust, respect, common ground and to be working together with purpose. Frank created a metaphor to help communities understand for themselves where they were at on their change journey. Clouds, Rain, Rivers and Oceans:

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  • CLOUD communities are forming and nebulous. They don’t really know each other and have a low level of understanding of sustainability and change practice. They need time - an 18 month period of learning and development. They need hand holding and expertise.

  • RAIN communities are beginning to move. They are starting to organise and plan together. They are learning and growing and enjoying being together. They will be actively involved in planning their own journey, moving towards what they are passionate about.

  • RIVER communities are flowing together. They know each other, know who they are and what they want and they are going for it.  They are creating projects and plans and have purpose. They will tell you what little help they need, be it a contact or a grant or a venue.

  • OCEAN communities are wave makers. They have completed projects together, have solid relationships built and are now using what they have learned to educate the surrounding community. Oceans can do great things in six months.  They just need you to clap your hands and look excited and to say “go for it!”

Once you know which phase your community is in, your community can organise together how to spend your time. Clouds need more education time and Oceans need more gatherings to plan. All groups need to continue to focus on building and maintaining relationships. They all need cake and tea. 

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Place

Communities who are a local social and geographic unit are much more likely to succeed together than a group invited to the town hall from across a city or region. Sustainability Street worked because people were over the side fence from each other. Relationships, once built, were kept up easily over the watering, the school walk, the local shop walk, bin night and all the other small interactions that happen on a street.  Sustainability Street communities reported feeling safer, healthier and more connected than they had been before the program. Each of the Victorian State Government social indicators rose during the projects. Place based relationships were central to success. Conversations happen first and communities come out the other end. 

Fun

The good news is that what is required to relate to others is deeply ingrained in our humanity. We’re social animals who love being together. The environmental movement is a people movement. We need to bring people together and get them talking, sharing, experiencing and enjoying each other. The process should be participatory, open ended and fun. Be the Guide Beside rather than the Sage on Stage. We are all teachers and learners. None of us know exactly what ideas will be needed to create a sustainable future. We need to encourage many people and many ideas to emerge. One way to do this is to teach people that common sense and everyday action is as important to the solution as an environmental degree. Another way is to prioritise having fun together. As Frank Ryan said, “If we have fun saving the world, the world will be saved.”

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Conversations

Conversations for change are a Frank Ryan special. According to Frank, there are three steps to a conversation for change: 

Small talk is big talk: saying hi, smiling, making eye contact and chatting about the weather or the footy tipping is how respectful conversations begin.  Mirror neurons begin to fire and we begin with a sense that we have common ground and a shared humanity. 

Nobody interrupts the flatterer: just try it. A positive comment about a person’s work or a recent achievement or a recent family event is the way to a person’s heart. 

Offer to help: Now you can hone in on what needs to change. This person can enable the change to happen. So mention what it is and offer to help them. You’ll be amazed at the difference this makes. 

Relating is Nurturing, not Controlling

Controlled leadership is the brochure and the lecture. These are simple and traditional, have their place, but largely do not work. The behaviour change effect of a brochure is nearly always zero and we are likely to forget much of what is said in a lecture. The Guide is a big step up. The guide walks with learners, having conversations and building relationships. It is harder and deeper to be a Guide. To be a Nurturer is the goal. To nurture someone or a group is complex, messy, risky and powerful. The metaphor is having a baby and bringing it home wondering how you are qualified to look after it and then nurturing like crazy for twenty years after which you have a functioning adult.

Unfortunately, governments tend to fund brochures when they should be funding nurturers. Nurturers use social lubricants, time, place, fun and conversations.

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Whom should we Relate to?

Who should we attempt to relate to? Below is a chart showing a bell curve of society with a small group of innovators, a larger group of early adopters, the early majority, late majority, laggards and skeptics. It’s called The Law of Diffusion of Innovation. Many people think that to create change we need to convince the late majority and laggards to change their minds. What we actually need to do is work with the early adopters, or the people who are ready to change. It is the early adopters who have always created change in every social movement throughout history. They inspire the early majority, who pull the late majority along. Work with the purple people below! Skeptics almost never change, but that doesn’t matter in many cases because the world has left them behind. So consider this: We do not have to convert deniers, delayers, lobbyists or Kev at the pub! What we need to do is to have a chat to the smiling person at work who wants to change.  Frank would always say: “play to the smilers: they’re the ones who are ready.”  It is important to say, alongside talk of values and vulnerability that we should never aim a program at the lowest common denominator: the people who do not want to know or learn. They will not create the change our society needs anyway. Politely ignore them. We want to bring the change agents with us; the early adopters and the front end of mainstream society. Think about this next time someone says “you’re just speaking to the converted”. As Annie Leonard, creator of the ‘Story of Stuff’ once said: “the only way the world has ever changed is when the converted get together and make change happen!” 

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2. Reframe

Reframing is helping people move from an emotional state to a thoughtful state. Picture an angry Basil Fawlty becoming Rodan’s The Thinker. The best example in popular culture is in Disney’s the Lion King, where Rafiki the wise baboon helps Simba to move from angry and defiant and guilty to thoughtful and purposeful and ready to change. He does this with humour, silliness, by asking questions, and by creating a theatrical journey through a forest to a mirrored pool where he recognises his father in himself. He teaches Simba that the past can hurt, but the best way to deal with it is to learn from it. Simba was then ready to change of his own accord.

Masters of change use stories and support techniques to help people.

Reframing through stories

Reframing in real life takes time. And that starts with conversations. Consider a far right wing politician on energy. They can sometimes think that renewable energy is a hippy, communist, one world government subsidised hoax. That can be easily reframed in their language of “jobs and growth” by telling a story of the local renewable energy jobs and growth that will be created by building a new energy network that is locally owned, everywhere, in real time and online. It’s had to argue with a big exciting new project that will be the economic engine for the next industrial revolution in their electorate. Most electorates do not have fossil fuel jobs anyway. There are fewer and fewer jobs in the old energy system anymore and plenty available in the new. 

Helping others Reframe their thinking

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The neuroscience of leadership says that in order for people to change we can help them focus on solutions, help them create their own answers and help them stay focused on their own insights. You might have noticed that the ego of the leader must remain at the door. Telling people what you know about the answer is unhelpful. We’ve already established that the Charlton Heston (the mostly old, mostly white, mostly male standing on a hill telling us what to do and think) doesn’t work. The entire process is about the learner and where they are at. With support and encouragement and time, they will reframe their thinking themselves.

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Reframing and Community Development 

The concept of reframing aligns perfectly with community development processes created in the 1960s.  The community development process is to start where the learner is at, to hand over control to them and to make yourself redundant. Once again, your knowledge about the subject is irrelevant. Your knowledge about the process is everything. Northcote Community Development legend Caty Kyne once told me the story of the jug and the mug. The jug, filled with all of the knowledge, pours it into the poor mug, the empty vessel who must sit there on the table and take it. This is the opposite of community development. As a leader your job is to nurture people as they go on their own journey and to pull back when they are ready to step up. As the anonymous quote goes, you walk with them and then you watch them dance. You may have lots of hand holding and encouraging at first or you may not. Depending on where they are at, you may be able to make yourself redundant in a day, week, a year or a decade. This cartoon perfectly reflect this leadership journey: 

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Ultimately, if the education is relevant to people and they have control over the process and the outcomes they will make it fly. Helping others reframe their thinking means asking them questions, not providing answers.

“when the people create the program, then you get action.”
— Malcolm X

3. Repeat

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Practice, Repetition and Priming

Have you ever seen a three year old wanting to read the same book again and again? Or balancing a stone on the wall again and again? How about a musician practising for a decade before joining a symphony orchestra? Or the Beatles playing ten hours a day in Hamburg? Thomas Edison tried over 2000 times before a light bulb lit up. The more you practice the more you see answers. Frank Ryan used to call this phenomenon the Blue Volxwagon theory. If you owned a blue Volxy, you saw other Blue Volxys everywhere. If you didn’t own one, you never saw them. In neuroscience language it’s called Priming. Our minds can be primed with a small number of subjects uppermost in our consciousness and if we see something related to these subjects in the world, they jump out at us and are noticed. If you want the answers to being a leader in the sustainability movement, then lift sustainability up in your consciousness by thinking a lot, practicing a lot, trying a lot. When you’re done trying: repeat.

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Practice hardwires change

Neuroscience tells us exactly what is going on in the brain and how important repetition is for change. The first time you discover something new its exciting. You have a moment of insight. This is sometimes called an “AHA!” moment. You have probably had lots of them: at conferences, at school, at work in a meeting, on the way home or in the shower. In the brain, there is a high energy burst and connections form across the brain. It feels great. But only practice hardwires the change. In other words, if you pick up a tennis racquet for the first time and hit a few balls and then don’t do it again, your brain will forget how to play and you’ll be a beginner again next time. But if you practice again the next day and the one after that, the links in your brain become hardwired. In an expert, a chemical called myelin has formed a sheath around neurological connections associated with the expertise, hardwiring them in and allowing them to travel 10,000 times faster than a beginner. If you can match practise with talent, you’re more likely to be a star. 

“Concentrating attention on your mental experience, whether a thought, an insight, a picture in your mind’s eye, or a fear, maintains the brain state arising in association with that experience. Over time, paying enough attention to any specific brain connection keeps the relevant circuitry open and dynamically alive. These circuits can then eventually become not just chemical links but stable, physical changes in the brain’s structure.”
— David Rock and Jeffery Schwatz, the Neuroscience of Leadership

Time enables the contemplation that leads to mastery

Repetition as a change process is also important because change is not a linear process over time. the beginning is slowest. A learner must first decide to change, then try the new behaviour out. After they have tried for a while they enter a period of deep thought. How have I been going? How could I improve? What should I try next? There is then a time of trying and thinking some more. Only after much trial and testing and thinking and effort do we reach a moment of mastery. And only after that can you take your learning and create something new.  

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In conclusion …

To influence others we can build deep relationships, build community and create the space for others to think imaginatively and critically and to try, fail, practice, learn and to grow for themselves over time. To influence others we need be a nurturer who is there for the long haul. Frank Ryan would say that a nurturer is an expert on tap, not on top. A tap can be turned on by others when they need it. He often said that when you are a nurturer, the camera is never off, meaning that what you do and what you say is always being watched and is therefore always important. What can you do today to nurture someone you know?

Here endeth Part 5 in this Leadership and Change Blog Series. Next time we’ll complete the journey from the Campfire to the Kitchen Table, with some words on what is possible when we come together in community in local places, with purpose, to build a better future. 

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The 5Ps of Presentation

Preparing a brilliant short presentation video notes. For schools … but geez, adults need more help with this than kids! 

Embellished by me after learning from Frank Ryan of Vox Bandicoot, who was taught it by Steve Van Matre of the Earth Education Institute.

A ten minute presentation can be brilliant. It can also be totally boring and not even worth having stood up. We’ve all been there haven’t we. When someone delivers a really boring presentation …

So you have a topic. You might be speaking about your worm farm or your solar panels or your dual flush compact fluorescent toilet with bluetooth enabled flushing. Your topic is the easy bit. How are you going to reach an audience? 

Lots of people are scared about public speaking. They don’t like being the centre of attention. They’re worried about looking a bit silly. The funny thing is, nearly everyone gets nervous speaking.  That’s fine. It even helps. It makes us concentrate. The thing to remember is that the people in the audience just want to hear what you have to say. Your presentation is for them. Thinking about making it interesting for them stops you worrying about you. That’s why the 5Ps of presentation really help. Instead of thinking about you, they help you think about how you are reaching an audience. 

The 5Ps of Presentation

  1. Preparation:

  • Who is your audience? What sort of presentation would they enjoy? 

  • Bring the best of you. Are you:  a singer? A storyteller? A poet? A guitarist? funny? Silly? Then bring that to it!

  • Please don’t tell the audience everything. It’s totally boring. And they’re clever people. Put there just a spark. In one sentence, what do you want you’re presentation to say?  What three things do you want the audience to remember?

  •  Use powerpoint only to add to your presentation. Please don’t write every word in small font and then read it out. You may as well sit down and let the audience read it themselves. Use it for images, headings, short videos, quotes. And check in with the venue to make sure you have the right program and connections and then get there early, plug in and check it works. 

  • Only use a few notes, if any. Practise a lot, so that your presentation is not about remembering the content, but about how you present and how you reach the audience. 

  • Have a timekeeper at the back who can tell you when you’re half way, when there’s two minutes left and when you need to wrap up. 

2. Projection

  • Fill the space with your voice

  • Clarity of voice

  • Touch people with words

  • Tonal quality and volume

3. Position

  • Stand where every eye can see you

  • Spring on heels

  • Sparkle in the eye

  • Push it out with the whole body

4. Pace

  • Speed/slow

  • Loud/soft

  • Rhythm

  • Get on/Get off topics

  • Open and shut the gate for audience: they are a bit like sheep …

  • Start with a flourish. An audience makes up their mind about you in the first minute. A quote … a story … a joke … 

  • Whisper device

  • Pause

  • Close with a story or quote or a call to action

  • Handouts and questions at the end (they kill the pace)

5. Pulse

  • The feeling in you about the earth and natural systems that you are going to reach out with and touch the audience with. 

  • Art, poetry, stories, songs help to enrich the message

  • Collect feelings about nature

Responding to the brilliant students striking for climate

Today in 1600 places in 105 countries our kids are striking for their future. They are filling us with hope and the fact that they need to do this is embarrassing for every adult on the planet. 

We need to respond.  

Most Australians agree with the need for climate action. Many of us have and are trying to find solutions. I have spent my entire life attempting to create an economy and society that looks after the earth so that it will look after us. My message today is that none of us have done enough. We haven't managed to cut through. We’ve been up against the largest, most expensive fossil fuel funded PR campaign in history. A study in the early 2000s showed that whilst 97% of scientific papers supported the consensus on climate change, 53% of newspaper articles said climate change wasn't real. A more recent study found that the other 3% of scientific papers all had basic flaws.

Have you seen the last few days of climate related media?

  • Journalist David Wallace Wells is speaking everywhere about his new book that connects the dots between climate science predictions and society. It’s called “The Uninhabitable Earth”. It is incredible reading.
  • Yesterday National Geographic reported on a study that found we have to stop using fossil fuels by 2030 to avoid two degrees, or "catastrophic warming” as the UN calls it.
  • The Reserve Bank deputy Governor gave a great speech on monetary policy and climate change.
  • A new report found that one in ten Australian homes will be uninsurable by 2030.
  • Lenore Taylor wrote about the sad history of Australian inaction on climate and why it has occurred.
  • The ACF released a website to see how hot each postcode in Australia will be. It is very limited in that it only looks at temperature and therefore not at any of the other climate impacts. It only looks at the middle of the road predictions. But what it says is that Bendigo wont have a winter anymore by 2050 and that we’ll have a new season called new summer, where the average temperature from mid December to mid February will never drop below 30 degrees.

And our kids are protesting in the streets. What they are saying with brutal honesty is that pragmatic incrementalism is not going to cut it. Their future is at stake. And we need to solve the climate crisis before they finish uni. We need a million solutions. We cannot tell our kids that their future is ok anymore. It is not. They have just lived through the hottest summer on record. By the time today’s school students kids reach 50 years of age, either we will have ceased using all fossil fuels and changed our economy from consumption based to circular or civilisation will be collapsing as the planet becomes uninhabitable. Global warming and all of its solutions and impacts will be the defining issue of their lives.

It is worth checking in with this movement and where it started. Here is sixteen year old Greta Thunberg at the United Nations and her ted talk and at DAVOS speaking truth to power.

"Some people say that I should be in school instead. Some people say that I should study, to become a climate scientist so that I can solve the climate crisis. But the climate crisis has already been solved. We already have all the facts and solutions. All we have to do is to wake up and change.  And why should I be studying for a future that soon will be no more, when no one is doing anything whatsoever to save that future? And what is the point of learning facts in the school system, when the most important facts given by the finest science of that same school system clearly means nothing to our politicians and our society?”

- Greta Thunberg

By being involved in the climate strike our kids are learning public speaking skills, teamwork, science, event planning, civics and citizenships, writing, reading, communication, critical thinking, problem solving, geography and science.  This is the most authentic education they can be part of right now. 

A big Bendigo response to our children?

We should bring all levels of government together with business, the community sector and students to run a year long Bendigo Climate Summit. We need to come together to draw a line in the sand, hear the latest science and plan for zero emissions and beyond to a time when we are drawing carbon down from the atmosphere.

The timing is good here. We have local, state and federal government representatives that understand the need to act on climate, if not the urgency.

Drawdown, by Paul Hawken is a great framework to use because it is positive, because it involves every sector of the economy and because its the only long term goal that makes sense. Here’s Paul’s Bendigo talk from the beginning of last year.

This future is coming whether we like it or not. Bendigo can either play a leading role and ensure we have a future, or we can just let the future happen and not have a future. There are cities around the world who are ready for action, for investment and for government support. Bendigo needs to plan, design, fund and build a new transport system, energy system, food system, consumption system, housing system, water system and more. We also need to restore our local ecology so that it protects us from the coming heat and we need to strengthen and renew our social sector to ensure that heat stress and climate breakdown do not create a new underclass of poverty.

Wouldn’t a Bendigo Climate Summit be a great response to our children today?

The other response is simple. We need to turn the upcoming federal election into THE climate election. We need to campaign and vote like we are living in a climate emergency. Our political parties are not like our footy teams, to be stuck with through good times and bad. They can wreck the joint. Vote climate!

In the meantime, I’m so proud of these brave young people telling it like it is. All power to them. 

Leadership Part 4: Leadership and the Others

From the Camp Fire to the Kitchen Table: a six part blog series on leadership and change practice. 

In part 3 of this leadership series, we talked about Leadership and the Self. Part 4 focuses on something far more important: Leadership and the Others. Most of us spend far too much time thinking about ourselves. So enough about the self! Self-reflection and improvement are only good up to a point. I would put that point at the moment when you are standing in front of the self-help section in a bookshop. If that happens to you, my advice is to run quickly to the counter and ask for a book by Hugh Mackay. 

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Belonging is central to who we are

Legendary sociologist Hugh Mackay has been researching Australians for over fifty years. In his book The Good Life: what makes a life worth living? He argues that the question we all should be asking ourselves is not, “Who am I?” but, “Who are we?” Desmond Tutu put it similarly when he said,

“The truth is that we are BECAUSE we belong.”
— Desmond Tutu

We belong in community and community shapes who we are and who we become and how we influence on the world around us. Our leadership cannot be separated from the others.

When scientists analysed the social networks of every type of great ape, they found that our species, homo sapiens have the largest communities. Throughout history we have had around 150 people in our closest social network. These people are our village (and are not to be confused with Facebook friends, who we may see infrequently in real life). 

In the last century these villages have been breaking down as we tend to move neighbourhoods and towns and countries more often. Most of us build houses for single families, more of us live alone. Very few of us sit on the front porch waiting to chat with people as they walk by. Many of us have moved our living areas to the back half of our homes, separating us from our neighbours and village gathering places. Fewer of us are actively political citizens, and more of us spend our time buying things. Social media has led to polarised views. We’re at risk of totally losing the ability to converse, argue and work together constructively.  Across the board, we are now more socially isolated, anxious, depressed and lonely than at any other time in history.

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Socially connected people are healthier

Professor Lisa Berkman of the Harvard School of Public Health found that, “People who are socially connected are less likely to die from just about any cause you can think of.” She also found that people with deep social links in their community add ten years to their lifespan and that its better for your health to be socially connected than it is to give up smoking, alcohol and fat. 

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Stable social connections are crucial from the day we are born. A study of brain scans of three year old children found that brain size in emotionally nurtured children was twice that of neglected children. It wasn’t just size. The part that doesn’t develop when neglected is the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain where neocortex region of the brain, where all social cognitive processing occurs. 

We need to be loved and nurtured through close social connections. That connection deeply shapes who we are and the type of influence we have in our communities.

Our social networks shape who we are

Dr Nicholas Christakis, the network scientist, has demonstrated just how connected we are and how our connections shape us. His analysis of the Framlingham Heart Study formed the basis of his book Connected: the surprising power of our social networks and how they shaped our lives. He found that if you have a friend who is happy, you are 45% more likely to be happy. He found that if you friend’s friend is happy, you are 25% more likely to be happy and incredibly, that if your friend’s friend’s friend is happy (think about this, you probably don’t know them!) then you are 10% more likely to be happy. Happiness is influenced to three degrees through our social networks. He found similar links with influence and distance from your house, meaning that a happy person living within 1km of you makes you more happy. He used happiness as an example, but says this hold true for other socially influenced factors like happiness, heart disease, smoking or depression.

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I sent Nicholas an email to ask how many people we influence in our lives. He replied, “Everything we do effects not just ourselves, not just our friends and families, but tens, sometimes hundreds and possibly thousands of other people.”

What this means is that who we are and what we wear and how healthy we are and what we buy and what we talk about and what we do  and how we feel are all contagious. We are constantly being influenced by our social network. And it goes the other way. If we smile at people and say “hi” we can spread friendliness through three degrees of our social networks. If we frown and get angry we can spread that just as far. Think about the person you have been in the last five years and think about the impact that has had on three degrees of your social network. This is an immense responsibility, it’s almost too hard to bear, but it’s also very exciting. We are more powerful than we imagine. 

We are more powerful than we imagine

My mentor and teacher Francis Ryan, of Vox Bandicoot fame, used to tell me that as an educator, we have to behave as if the camera is never off. What he meant is that every day, at every moment, we are all teachers and we are all learners. Education isn’t about what we say from a podium or in a lecture. It is who we are at all times. We cannot opt out of this as it is simply reality: what we do every day has a powerful impact on our world.

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We don’t realise how powerful we are because we can’t see this network operating around us. Attempting to influence someone can feel a bit like tossing a stone into a still lake. The ripples head out in every direction and sometimes we don’t know where they land and to what effect. A good example of this is the influence of the Victorian Women’s Trust in the 1990s on the participatory democracy process that led to the election of Cathy McGowan. The role of Indi Voices and the community led campaign that resulted in the election of the independent Cathy McGowan to Federal Parliament is well known. What is less known is that some of the locals who built the Indi Voices campaign had been trained years before in kitchen table conversations through the Purple Sage project in Melbourne, a project that had been established by the Victorian Women’s Trust in response to frustration with the Kennett government. While many other things will have also led to the Indi Voices campaign, Purple Sage supported 6,000 women to hold deep conversations about what mattered to them. It was obviously a powerful process and the outcomes are still reverberating in society today. This story is a good example of what French sociologist Alain Touraine wrote about in the 1970s when he wrote about the days of revolution being over. He said that society transcends itself through small social movements.

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In his 1998 book Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam wrote about social isolation and the breakdown in community in the second half of the 20th century. He identified two types of social connections, Bonding and Bridging. Bonding connections are those that exist within a social grouping, like those within a cricket club. Bridging connections are those that span across social groupings, like the Rotarian who plays cricket, or the Sustainability Group member who is also a CFA member. Bridging connections are very powerful agents of social change as they lead to the spread of new ideas. Bridging connections help to create what’s known as a Small World Network in which influence travels far.

“Nothing travels faster than the speed of light, with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws. ”
— Douglas Adams
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We have all seen social networks operate in this way!

Nature Collaborates and Cooperates

Social networks have the same structure as ecological systems, with bonding and bridging connections. The connections seen in nature are fascinating and instructive. Biologist Suzanne Simard has been studying the movement of nutrients through forests in Canada and through the underground network of fungi, called the mycorrhizal layer. She found trees at the top of forest collecting sunlight, turning it into sugars and sharing it through the soil with trees in the dark valleys. She found trees in the valleys collecting water and sending it up the hills to the parched trees on top. She found carbon exchange happening across great distances and between species of trees and shrubs. She found trees with wood boring insects releasing a chemical mist that travels through the air in the forest alerting other trees who put up their chemical defences. Simard calls this network the “Wood Wide Web”. 

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Biomimicry is the practice of learning from 3.8 billion years of design success in nature. For over thirty years, Biomimicry founder and author Janine Benyus has been studying nature and how it might teach us to build more a more effective and fitting civilisation here on earth. Benyus is reviving an old biological debate, thought to be long won by the “survival of the fittest” and “nature competes” philosophy. What we are learning from biomimicry and other ecological studies is that nature collaborates and cooperates for the benefit of the whole system. So my survival is tied up with yours and everyone else’s. It’s a huge comprehension shift for our society as it contradicts the popular worldview that underpins the structure of much of modern politics and business.

Change coming? Join the Dance!

All of this means that processes of change are much more tied up in our relationships with other people than we realised. Change moves through society like ripples on a pond. As philosopher Alan Watts said:

“The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it and join the dance.”
— Alan Watts
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The best visual of the perfect dance of a social network is a starling murmuration. It is a huge cloud of small birds making amazing ever shifting shapes in the sky. There can be hundreds of thousands of individual birds. It turns out that every bird is influencing and being influenced by every other bird as they fly together. Everyone is in it together, and you can’t spot a single (white male) leader. A starling murmuration is like a huge social network with no one blocking change. Everyone bird is going with it and joining the dance.  

People, you may have noticed, are a little different to birds. 

In 2002, I was at Vox Bandicoot when we began working with a Sustainability Street community in East Keilor, Melbourne. The first meeting was held in a bus shelter, as the community were too unsure of each other to offer to host the meeting in their homes. Six months later they had set up a community garden together on a vacant patch of land and all their meetings were held in each other’s homes. They’re still going. No one at that first meeting could have imagined the journey they were about to take. But they all joined the dance and changed each other. 

A person who shall remain nameless once approached me after my leadership and change workshop and said, “This was great! I’ve been wondering for ages why everyone I have been talking to about sustainability hates me!” I imagined them walking into a coworkers office, switching the light and computer off and raging at them about their impact on the climate before storming out. If we really want to enable change, information is not enough. We must understand what makes people tick. And we must understand how change occurs. We don’t have to worry about changing the world: Jason from the first Sustainability Street community in Coburg once told his neighbours that he had stopped thinking about changing the world. What he was interested in was changing the world around him. That’s where to begin. 

Part 5 of “From the Campfire to the Kitchen Table” is all about Leadership for Influence and change practice. Using a mixture of environmental education theory, neuroscience, community development, sociology and the teaching of Rafiki the baboon from the Lion King, we’ll learn what the Blue Volkswagen theory is, find out the behaviour change impact of a tips brochure and discover whether converting sceptics is worth the effort. 

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Leadership Part 3: Leadership and the Self

From the Camp Fire to the Kitchen Table: a six part blog series on leadership and change practice. 

In part two of the From the Camp Fire to the Kitchen Table blog series, we looked at Tomorrow’s Leadership Skills. Today the focus is on the individual.

In my leadership and change workshops, I never spend long on the Self, as too much of this gets in the way of focussing on purpose and collaboration. However, we do spend some time on the Self, as having a good understanding our abilities, skills, passions, purpose and time are crucial if we are going to help create action that is regenerative for people and planet.  In Leadership and the Self, I teach five elements of leadership that relate to ourselves. And then I quickly more on to connection and community, where the real stuff happens!

So let’s go deep inside and look at what we can develop as individuals. Here are five ways to improve yourself as a leader:  

  1. Become “leaderful” not ego-full

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We have already established that the “mostly old, mostly white, mostly male standing on a hill telling others what to do” leadership model doesn’t work. So where does that leave those of us who want to develop the skills to be a leader?  What does that mean for personal development?   The answer is that we an still develop ourselves, but we need to shift our focus from developing our ego, to building our skills. This shift is better for us and our health and our personal development anyway.

We spend far too much time thinking about and worrying about our self image and how we are viewed by others. Social media has confounded this further by showcasing the curated Facebook and Instagram lives of others as we scroll down. The self help sections of bookshops are not a nice place to find ourselves either, offering ways for us to maximise, fix and win.  And the content stream of white male “leaders” in politics and business give the impression that unless we are like them we cannot change the world. Many people, once confronted with the climate crisis, feel like they need to grab a lance, jump on a horse, give a Mel Gibson as William Wallace style battle speech and ride off at the head of an army.  But as we’ve learned, tomorrow’s leaders will be flexible, selfless and collaborative. How do we develop these leaders leadership skills? 

We can do it by leaving our ego at the door and working with others as equals. The late Frank Ryan used say that the key is to step off our pedestals and to recognise that we are all teachers and all learners. That we all have much to give and that true learning and change occurs via two way relationships. Our focus should not be on becoming the one true leader (which is a medieval idea), but on realising that we all need to be “leaderful”.  To be leaderful is to be full of the characteristics of tomorrow’s leaders. To become leaderful we need to understand what skills we have and what talents, time, purpose, resilience and courage we can contribute to leading change. Leaderful leaders know when to step up, and the know when to step back and give space for other leaders. A leaderful leader is always focussed on what’s best for the end goal, it’s never about their own ego or self recognition.

2. Focus on purpose

Driven by purpose, not leadership training …

Driven by purpose, not leadership training …

Too many leadership courses focus on the individual task of “becoming a leader” rather than helping individuals to identify and work towards achieving their purpose. Being clear about purpose helps us step up when a moment requiring leadership arises. 

Malala Yousafzai had no leadership training, but she is now a global leader. Her story is of course, inspirational but she did not become a leader by becoming more confident, or leaning in. She had a clear purpose, to go to school, and her parents backed her in. When the Taliban shot her in the face, she did not disappear but rose up and led change. As she says herself, the day she was shot, “weakness, fear and hopelessness died; strength, power and courage were born.” Malala stepped up because her upbringing and her community bought her to a deep sense of purpose, and so she was ready.

Each of us faces many of moments in our lives when we can step up and lead if we are ready and if we choose to. Think of the time at school when another kid was being bullied and you watched, or the meeting at work when you let a sexist comment go, or when you were walking the dog and someone said that climate change wasn’t real because their uncle said it was also hot when he was a kid and you nodded. We need to be clear about our purpose and our selves so that we are ready to step up and lead when moments like these arise. 

3. Understand that failure is the best teacher

All failures …

All failures …

The third lesson is that leaders must be prepared to fail, a lot. Failure is looked down on in our instagrammed, success driven society. When we fail, we feel like a loser. We feel like others are successful, because we don’t see them fail. But great changes have always come from failed and varied attempts. The research on failure shows that we learn far more from failure than from winning straight away. 

In fact, most people we today recognise as successful have failed on the way. Michael Jordan was dropped from his school basketball team, Paul McCartney and George Harrison were told by their music teacher that they had no talent, Einstein didn’t speak until he was three and was too much of a dreamer for the education system, John Cleese was told at school that he wasn’t funny and Oprah was told that she wasn’t good looking enough for television. Apple sacked Steve Jobs, JK Rowling was rejected by twelve publishers, and it was only Thomas Edison’s two thousand and something-th light bulb that actually lit up.  

In our society we  fear shame. As Brene Brown puts it in her book Daring Greatly:

“The fear of failing, making mistakes, not meeting people’s expectations, and being criticised keeps us outside of the arena where healthy competition and striving unfolds.”
— Brene Brown
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If we are to lead, we must risk failure and step into the arena.  

4. Do Something (together)

A meeting that discusses the need to DO SOMETHING but doesn’t. Brilliance from Monty Python’s Life of Brian

Which brings us to the fourth lesson. Leaders must actually DO SOMETHING.  Bob Brown got arrested on the Franklin and set up the Wilderness Society and the Greens. Olegus Truchanus gave photography lectures around Tasmania, Rosa Parkes sat in the wrong bus seat on purpose, Jane Goodall left the forest and began an annual 300 lecture world tour, Maxine from Bendigo Community Health Services organised a first meeting of a Green Team, Colin spent 10 years building solar panel programs and Jodi started a community project to plan a lemon tree in every street. 

No one has ever changed the world without doing something. As Lao Tzu wrote “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”  In doing things, in actions, we build momentum, learn a lot, feel better, achieve more and inspire others. I put the word “together” in brackets, because every one of the people mentioned above worked together with others, had support of others, were mentored by others and acted together with others. 

5. Offer the best of You

Many people I work with think that they don’t have a lot to offer others. They are wrong. Cake bakers can really bring a group together, those with time can letterbox flyers to the neighbours, those with a large living room can host a meeting and the tech savvy can help organise everyone’s diaries. Everyone has skills they can offer a group. 

But going beyond skills, the best of you is being in your element. Finding your element should be a fairly important focus in life anyway. But in sustainability and change its crucial. You need to bring the best of you to the table. 

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Educator Sir Ken Robinson wrote the book about finding your Element, i.e. finding the link between what you love and what you are good at. He says this changes everything in your life. So when I am (often) asked by young people what they should study to help build a sustainable future I tell them to find their element. A sustainable world requires accountants, politicians, builders, teachers, nurses, business owners, workers and everyone else to help create it. 

Jane Goodall found hers at a young age and has stuck with it with the support of her mum and her mentors all the way past eighty years of age. Her book Reasons for Hope, clearly shows that she has spent her life in her element. In one story, she relates how David Greybeard the chimpanzee first permitted her to approach him:

“Forty years later it is as vivid as the day it first occurred. It was just he and I in the quiet jungle by a stream. We looked at each other. David had taught me that as long as I looked into his eyes without arrogance, he did not mind. I picked up a ripe, red fruit from the ground and extended it to him. He reached out, took the fruit, dropped that but kept hold of my hand. To this day I remember the soft pressure of his fingers. I felt a bridging of the two worlds, human and animal. I felt like we shared a language of our ancient common ancestors. I felt a sense of calm, a sense of this as why I was put into this world.”
— Jane Goodall
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Cathy Freeman had a different spin on finding her element. When asked about the pressure of running at the Sydney Olympics she said,

“I think it comes back to the fact that I loved running. I loved it so wholeheartedly and so purely that it helped me transcend that pressure. I didn’t feel in my mind that I had a lot to cope with because I was in a euphoric space every time I ran.”
— Cathy Freeman
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In my leadership work, I ask workshop participants to have a good think about what they love doing and what they are good at. If we can support people who want to lead environmental change to make the link between those two things, then world will have powerful allies.

In next week’s blog we leave the self behind and go deep into community, connection and the others. We learn just how connected to others we are and how much we influence and are influenced by others. We’ll learn from a legendary Australian sociologist, a Canadian biologist, an American network scientist, a zen buddhist philosopher and my favourite British author …

Leadership Part 2 - Tomorrow’s Leadership Skills

From the Camp Fire to the Kitchen Table: a six part blog series on leadership and change practice. 

In part one of the From the Camp Fire to the Kitchen Table blog series, we looked at where leadership began: around the campfire. We compared the campfire model to many current leadership models that are about self promotion, individualism, transmitting information and the short term.  In part two, we will look at the skills the leaders of tomorrow will need. 

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In 2013, social scientist John Gerzema asked 64,000 people in 13 countries to identify the qualities they want in their leaders. What they found is that we want tomorrow’s leaders to be Flexible, Selfless and Ready to Collaborate. This is far closer to the campfire vision of leadership than that of the Charlton Heston image in part one: the mostly old, mostly white, mostly male standing on a hill telling everyone else what to do.  

A flexible leader is an action researcher, who constantly improves processes and adjusts goals on the run. When you are flexible, you are open to new ideas. You’re open to changing the process and the expected outcomes in order to achieve change. A flexible leader recognises strengths in others and goes with them. A flexible leader responds to change like a jazz musician.

A selfless leader leaves their own ego at the door and lifts up others around them. A beautiful quote that is attributed to Anonymous (as an aside, remember that Virginia Woolf said, “For most of history, anonymous was a woman”) says, “I walked with you and then I watched you dance.” Imagine your joy as a leader to walk side by side with someone as they learn and grow and then being able to watch them flourish.  Anatole France put it another way: 

“Do not try to satisfy your vanity by teaching a great many things. Awaken people’s curiosity. It is enough to open minds; do not overload them. Put there just a spark. If there is some good inflammable stuff, it will catch fire.”
— Anatole France

Have you met a leader who is ready to collaborate? One who, instead of lecturing from the stage, is ready to sit in a circle with the others? To recognise the strengths of others and to help create a shared vision or plan? One with sleeves rolled up ready to lift the wheelbarrow and plant the garden together? One who is ready to share credit? One who understands what makes people tick? A collaborative leader is a Guide Beside, not a Sage on Stage.  

I heard a story during the recent ten year anniversary of the Black Saturday bushfires. The storyteller was talking about how, in the immediate aftermath of the fire, the word “resilience” was being bandied about far too much and people were sitting in far too many meetings. After a few days, a local came forward and suggested that instead of talking, they should all do something together. So, the locals came together and began building a memorial garden. As they worked together, they talked and remembered and worked through many of the things they needed to talk about.  The power of collaborating on tangible things cannot be underestimated. 

I have spent my whole working life in ecological sustainability and culture change. Over the years, many people from communities, businesses and local governments have approached me with great doubt about their ability to make change because they don’t think they have enough understanding of science, change practice, leadership and sustainability. They worry that they are under qualified and that they need to go and study it all before doing anything about it. My response to this concern is simple (here is the Ian McBurney PhD in leadership): The skills required to make change are inbuilt in every human and are as follows: 

  1. Be Curious: Always ask Why? How? What? When? Who? What if? If at first you don’t succeed, try again. Take the time to think and wonder. A curious mind is always on the look out for new learning and never looks at a situation with a closed mind. As John Dewey put it: “The curious mind is constantly alert and exploring, seeking material for thought, as a vigorous and healthy body is on the qui vive for nutriment. Eagerness for experience, for new and varied contacts, is found where wonder is found.” 

  2. Be Creative: Find new ways, new paths, new ideas, new possibilities, new imaginings. As I said at the beginning of Part 1 of this blog series: Our world has reached the tipping point. Nature is breaking. The economy is breaking. Society is breaking. Politics is breaking. Old stories and myths about how society works have broken. All of the answers will not be found by looking backwards. 

  3. Be Connected: With people, with neighbours, with friends, with community and with nature. Conversations are the bedrock of culture. Change only comes about when we’re with the other people. And remember that we are connected to nature. We are intricately connected to and utterly depended on every living system. As Janine Benyus, author of Biomimicry says, “Nature is our greatest teacher because she has already solved the problems we are working on.” Connecting with others and nature will create better change.

  4. Be Confucius: Confucius said, “Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart.” Find the sweet spot between what you love and what you’re good at: what Ken Robinson calls your Element. Make a difference there. We need poets and engineers and teachers and lawyers and more working on a positive future. What skills can you offer?

Artwork by Sharyn Madder

Artwork by Sharyn Madder

I always back this up with a further piece of advice: The journey to a regenerative future is not rocket science, it’s a three year old. A three year old is always asking, “Why?” A three year old is always digging for more knowledge. A three year old playfully tries and tries and tries until they learn how to do something. A three year old wants the same book read again and again and again until they fully understand. A three year old will climb up high and jump off and trust that they will land safely. If a door is left open, a three year old will bolt outside and explore. A three year old will take great joy in stopping to celebrate with a biscuit. A three year old will make mistakes, and then go back to try again. And when a three year old is exhausted they go and rest in a  beanbag. And if they don’t rest, they will have a tantrum. A three year old loves people and nature so deeply and so naturally it sometimes hurts to watch it. We adults could take much wisdom from a three year old. All of these things are crucial leading change. 

We grown ups in the Western world are far too focused on outcomes and box ticking and reporting. As Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” We need to focus instead on being curious, creative, connected, Confucius leaders of change.

A final word on tomorrow’s leaders, before next week’s blog looks at Leadership and the Self. People’s feelings are really important when it comes to change. If it ‘feels good’, people are much more likely to be involved in change. My mentor and teacher, the late Frank Ryan - founder of Vox Bandicoot, was always speaking about the value of feelings and about allowing ourselves and others to feel. This is risky. Frank said that as leaders we must take risks. What he meant is that we must step outside systems and expectations and make ourselves vulnerable. By making ourselves vulnerable, we appeal to people’s humanity and reach out to their values and their hearts. It’s risky to use words like love, heart and delight to a room of people. It takes guts to use humour, passion, fun, music, dance and social interaction in a gathering. It takes practice to develop meaningful presentation techniques. These things require guts and energy. But the results are always more powerful. As Frank used to say, “if we have fun saving the world, the world will be saved.” 

So tomorrow’s leaders will be flexible, selfless and ready to collaborate. They will be curious, creative, connected and passionate. They will practice the deep wisdom of three year olds and will make sure that everyone around them is having fun on the journey.

In next week’s blog, part 3 - Leadership and the Self, I’ll be looking at what makes us as individuals become better leaders. There will be wisdom from Brene Brown, Malala Yousafzai, Cathy Freeman, Ken Robinson, Lao Tzu and David Greybeard the Chimpanzee. But don’t think I’m going to focus for long on the self! We belong with the others and that will be part 4.

Leadership Part 1: Where Leadership Began: The Campfire

From the Camp Fire to the Kitchen Table: a six part blog series on leadership and change practice.

Our world has reached the tipping point. Nature is breaking. The economy is breaking. Society is breaking. Politics is breaking. Old stories and myths about how society works have broken. All of the answers will not be found by looking backwards..

This six part blog series on my approach to leadership and change has been written for people who want to work together to support the change needed to restore nature and enable all people to thrive. It is for people who want to change the world around them. People who want to change it for the better, for all of us. It is derived from a Leadership and Change Practice course that I have been delivering around Australia and in New Zealand for over a decade and draws on community development theory, environmental education principles, neuroscience, sociology, biology, network science, anthropology and the wisdom and teaching of the late Francis Ryan of Vox Bandicoot - my major influence. 

The blog series tells a leadership journey in the following six parts:

Part 1 - Where Leadership Began: the Campfire

Part 2 - Tomorrow’s Leadership Skills

Part 3 - Leadership and the Self

Part 4 - Leadership and the Others

Part 5 - Leadership and Influence 

Part 6 - Leadership at the Kitchen Table

If you want to learn how to create meaningful, lasting change in the world around you, join us around the campfire …

Part 1 - Where leadership began: the Campfire

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Picture yourself sitting under the stars with a group of friends around a campfire. The smokey smell, the occasional crackling sounds and the red sparks that shoot up with the smoke and disappear. There’s usually a drink in hand and lots of stories, laughter, a snatch of song, group and one on one conversations, eye contact around the circle and moments of introspection where your eyes linger on a white hot part of the fire through a gap in the burning

For most of human history, our values, our beliefs and the way we lived our lives were shaped around a campfire. There is a richly human part of all of us that longs for this experience. Many people recreate the experience as teenagers and as adults in the backyard. A campfire is a place of belonging, stories, song, dance, laughter, togetherness and deep conversations about life, the universe and everything with trusted others. Shane Howard’s evocative song Tarerer describes ancient Aboriginal ritual:

Make the ashes 

Make the fire

Make it burn bright

Light up all the dancers

Light the darkness

Light up the night

And we’ll sing to the mother of creation till sunrise

Learning as we go 

From the stories of the old and the wise

~ Singer songwriter Shane Howard, Tarerer


As a white Australian, I can only imagine what it is like to experience a process of learning and growth based on 60,000 years of connection to place and culture. As indigenous leader Dr Mary Graham describes it, this participatory, arts centred process enabled clans to ensure that each child reached their fullest potential in their community. People had time to think and watch and learn and teach and grow. Individuals were taught when they were deemed ready. Relationships between clans were strengthened. Trade routes were established and maintained. Disputes were settled. Agricultural methods refined. The climate monitored. Housing practiced improved. Biodiversity protected. And a belief system maintained that had Country and community at it’s centre.  This was true leadership and change practice with a deep purpose: Individual growth and development within the context of place, belonging, community and Country. 

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Whilst Aboriginal Australia was perfecting this decentralised leadership practice over 60,000 years of continued settlement, Europe went the other way. Centralised towns, centralised leadership, centralised religions, centralised trade, centralised economies and centralised wealth led to what I have termed the Charlton Heston Leadership Model. This is best represented by this iconic photo of Charlton as Hollywood Moses (I have nothing against Moses. Never met him. I’m interested in what the image portrays). The mostly white, mostly old, mostly male solo hero leader standing on a hill telling everyone else what to do leadership model. This leadership model led to a lot of really interesting archeology, from war and boom and bust, oligarchies and collapsed civilisations. 

The big question is how this self promoting egotistical leadership model has lasted all the way into the 21st century when it clearly doesn’t work. It doesn’t work for the environment. It doesn’t work for women. It doesn’t work for children. It doesn’t work for people of colour. It doesn’t work for LGBTQI people. It doesn’t work for the poor. It doesn’t work for the working class. Where it does work is that is centralises wealth and political power for the few for the short term. 

And yet most leadership courses I have seen are based on this model. Their brochures claim that, “You can become known as the leader you want to be!”

The problem with most leadership courses is that they:

  • bring random groups of people together in a central place rather than having a program grounded in local communities

  • are finished before any real change can occur

  • are about transmitting information rather than creating understanding

  • focus on self promotion rather than achieving purpose

  • aim to achieve measurable short term outcomes rather focusing on the process of change

  • are focused on creating prestigious leaders rather than human scale leaders

More on these failures in future parts.

There is another way to develop leadership. It is grounded in people and place and it is much more effective and fun. It involves a deep-dive into who we really are and what makes us tick. 

Next week I will publish Part 2 of this six part blog series: Tomorrow’s Leadership Skills which features the wisdom of three year olds and some advice for those who think they need a PhD in leadership before they begin leading. See you then!

Dear Alexander (a letter to my new nephew about a future that people are worried about)

Dear Alexander,

Welcome to a beautiful world, my love. A world of flowers and winds and rainbows and mountain views. A world of laughter and connection and cuddles. A world of birds and wind blown leaves, of waves and the moon. 

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You live in a world that is so connected and precious and right now you are the embodiment of that world. You were born of millions of generations of DNA and built of exploding star dust in the unimaginable past. Even at your young age you create connection as your eyes search for ours and they shine when they meet another’s and you speak to us and smile. You were born to connect with others. You make uncles tear up, grandparents melt on the floor, neighbours goo and gaa and you doubled the size of your parents hearts whilst tearing away their sleep and their separate selves. You were born needing and wanting human connection. Throughout your life your mental and physical health will influence the health of hundreds of other people around you and theirs will influence you. Having strong connections in your community will add ten years to your lifespan. Your brain will only fully develop with the love and nurturing of your family and community. And you were born and you made an interconnected and interdependent family and community. You made us all family again. 

But you are more than connected to family. You are connected to the earth. 

Every time you breathe out today, that air is shared with the breath of all living things and mixes with all of the air on earth so that when you breathe in next year, at least ten atoms from that breath will have come from your breath today. Each breath you take contains atoms of the breath of your great grandmothers and your distant cave dwelling ancestors too. Each breath you take has come through the leaves of trees and the grasslands and the oceans and beetles and the ice caps and the dinosaurs and the bandicoots. Your breath connects you to the earth and makes you one with the earth. You are the air, Alex, and the air is you. 

You are also the soil. The structure of every cell in your body comes from the food you eat, which comes from the soil. Your body is formed from the thin layer of living soil that surrounds the earth. A layer born of millennia of living and dying lifeforms. 

And you are the water. Your body is mostly water by weight. That water has been cycling the earth for eons, traveling through every plant and animal that has ever lived and flowed down waterfalls and glaciers and through underground caves. 

So you are the air, soil and water. And that is all we can see from space when we look at those beautiful images of the earth. All living things need clean air, water and soil. 

But your connection to this place goes even deeper, Alex. 

Your body contains a hundred trillion cells. Ninety percent of those are fungi, microorganisms and bacteria. You are a thriving community of living things. As you lie back and contemplate this world you have been born into, as your brain expands and forms new links and grows at an extraordinary pace, as every second passes there are a septillion different cellular events taking place in your body. This is a number greater than the number of stars, planets and asteroids in the known universe. The atoms in your body formed in exploding stars billions of light years ago. You are the universe. A map of the connections in your brain has the same structure and shape as a map of the stars and galaxies in the universe.

And the energy that runs your body comes from the sun, positioned at the perfect distance to warm our world and to enable photosynthesis, the stored energy in our food. The earth and the sun are in a perfect dance of tilt and orbit to enable the seasons and cycles of the earth that we rely on.

You are literally made of stardust, air, water, soil and sunlight, Alex. You are made of the earth, you belong on and in the earth. You and this world are inseparable. Welcome home. For home it is. Our only home. Does this not make both you and the earth sacred?
But you are born into civilisational times, Alex. Just as we have come to know how precious our earth is, we have come to a point where we may lose all we have. Between now and 2100 we stand or fall together. That is your lifespan. In your lifetime human kind will either come to treat all of life as sacred and connected and interdependent or we will turn the final page on our chance to exist over the long term. 

You are not born into a world changing from bronze to iron, from horse to car or landline to smart phone. These were social changes bought about by new learning and technology. 

This time it's a global liveable climate, it’s more plastic than fish, it’s extinction rates thousands of times the natural rate, it’s seventy percent of all wildlife gone already since 1970, it’s economic inequality of immense scale, it's a global economy built on selling more boxed landfill, it’s rivers not running to the sea, it’s toxins in our bodies, diminishing resources and diminishing natural places. 

Either we stabilise the climate in your lifetime or the planet is uninhabitable. Either we reverse species extinction and the loss of nature in your lifetime or the planet will not sustain life. Either we create and build a society that looks after all people or society will break and look after no-one. 

And yet here you are, Alex. And you’re perfect. And your parents are worried. None of our predicament is your fault and almost none of it should be your responsibility to fix. 

But they say that the darkest hour is right before the dawn.  We are in the middle of what Joanna Macy calls The Great Turning. The way I see it, there are now two world views and both are operating in parallel. 

The Age of Me.

The Age of We. 

The Age of Me is over. This is the individualistic, top down, centralised power, patriarchal, competition based, growth fetishising, neoliberal world view that has held sway for 40 years. That world view is broken and no longer makes any sense. Old stories held dear are dying and that's why the big wide world seems mad. Politics is mad. The media is mad. The economy is mad. Jobs are disappearing. Growth is stagnating. Ideological trenches are being dug. The post truth world has arrived. “Coal is good for humanity and should be subsidised. Climate change is crap. Wealth trickles down.” These patent untruths are being screamed from the parapets of power, louder and louder, but by fewer and fewer leaders from madder and more extreme political factions and media outlets. As Yuval Harari says in Sapiens, when an old worldview is finished, there is a time of great doubt, when old stories and myths are clung to and they hang on like grim death, funded by old economy wealth as the world changes around them. 

The Age of We is well underway. It fits this world. It understands connection and collaboration. It is being built from the atom up like the air and the water and the soil and like your body and the structure of the universe. Great change is afoot. And I want to tell you Alex that never in human history have so many people come together and worked so hard for change. Paul Hawken calls this movement Blessed Unrest. It is everywhere. It is community gardens, it is community owned solar parks, it is urban food forests, green buildings, food coops, car sharing, bike sharing, bee keeping, repair cafes, community wind farms, regenerative agriculture, walkability planning, native gardening, cooperatives and farmers markets. It is bike paths, it is bush kindergartens and children and nature clubs and frog ponds and local currencies. 

These new stories are being written at breakneck speed and they haven’t quite yet taken hold in our collective imagination. When they do,they will infuse business and politics and communities everywhere. The world has always been thus. Change is constant. 

As the age of Me slips into irrelevance and decay, the age of We rises and grows stronger. It is almost ready to fly. You will live this journey Alex. You will see the last piece of coal burned. You will see the last drop of petrol combusted. You will see the waterways return and nature prioritized in and out of our cities, the green building revolution and the relocalized economies and the world powered by free wind and sun. You will live through the end of personal ownership of stuff. You will live to hear prime ministers speak of the benefits of a post growth economy. You will see a universal basic income rolled out so that no one is left behind and everyone has a chance to thrive. You will bear witness to the birth of a new politics that makes sense and helps us thrive. 

You will thrive in the great turning. The movement that learns to live on the earth as if we’re from the earth. In the words of Janine Benyus,  “I think we realise that it’s time to fit in here. It’s time to come home. It’s time to figure out how to function in a way that will allow us to stay here. When we get to the point where civilisation is functionally indistinguishable from the ecosystem that surrounds it, then will be a welcome species.”

You were born into a beautiful, diverse and connected world, Alex. You were also born into a complex, impoverished and broken world. 

We will lose much on the journey. So much will be lost that it is almost too much to bear. It is likely that half of all living things will not make it through with us. It is likely that many coastal cities will disappear under the oceans. Much of the world may be uninhabitable. 

But the prize we have to gain is immeasurable. We will build a civilisation that survives to thrive in the long term. 

So breathe deep, Alex. As your great grandmother once said, always look for the silver lining. Paul Hawken says that this is the most exciting time to be alive in human history. We get to remake and redesign and renew everything in civilisation within a generation. 


My advice to you on your journey is to strive to live these four qualities every day: 

Be Connected: with people, with neighbours, with friends, with community, with nature. 

Be Curious: always ask why? How? What? When? Who? What if? 

Be Creative: find new ways, new paths, new ideas, new possibilities, new imaginings. 

Be Passionate. Find your element. Follow your dreams. Explore what you love. And make a difference there.

And Alex, make sure you fall in love with this world and the people in it. Be in it and live it and breathe it and drink of it and eat from it and do this together with loved ones. 

Have you sat with your mum and dad under a wattle tree in the spring whilst a cool breeze made the leaves dance, Alexander? 

Love, Uncle Ian

Aiming for the Good Life

The Bendigo Weekly have been running a great series on Bendigo in 2020. This is the original extended version of my piece in that series (which can be found here).

In 1996 I ran from Bendigo to Melbourne for deeper conversations, cultural diversity and positive thinking. In 2007 Claire and I bought our first child back to Bendigo for fresh air, community and a childhood without a million traffic jams. And ever since we have enjoyed the deeper conversations and positive thinking that has flowed in to Bendigo since 1996. We helped to establish the Bendigo Sustainability Group and we loved watching the establishment of the Farmers Market, the Trove Market, the Night Market, cycling infrastructure, the gallery, the food scene, the cafes, Ulumburra theatre and more. The Age even called us the coolest town in Bendigo. Take that Castlemaine!

On the back of this innovation and change we can look with confidence to 2020 and beyond. Great and exciting changes are afoot. A new economy is rising and it is about localisation. Around the world, local people and local place are being put back into the local economy, enriching everyone. Councils role is to encourage, enable and embrace the localisation of energy, food, work and transport systems and Bendigo will benefit from this for decades.

So what is this new economy? It has three main elements. The first is local renewable energy, the second is electric vehicles and the third is high speed internet. Jeremy Rifkin calls the convergence of these three elements “the third industrial revolution” because it is the convergence of new energy, new transport and new communications systems, like the first two industrial revolutions. It has profound implications for the way our local economy will be structured. Lets think about it. 

Energy - Renewable energy is local. The solar and wind and energy efficiency and sustainable design and battery storage and distribution projects will create local work, local ownership, local investment and local revenue. We’ve never had that here before. Our $80 million annual household energy spend largely leaves Bendigo and mostly leaves the country.   The big idea however, is that once installed, renewable energy is basically free. In the mid 2020s this new energy system will go online in real time allowing everyone to both produce and consume energy, including households, businesses and surrounding towns, so that we can match energy flow with demand. 

Transport - Our local energy system will combine with the global push for electric vehicles. Council can begin to plan for a transport revolution as internet platforms will allow vehicles to become shared, driverless and autonomous, removing 90% of all cars from the roads. Everyone will be able to travel where they want when they want, without the road toll, without foreign petrol and without air and noise pollution. We wont need any public or private parking and at least half the roads will be repurposed for trade, nature, community or all three. Bendigo homes used to spend $280 million on transport each year, which left our city. That can stay here.  We will all pay for the bits of transport we need, rather than a whole vehicle. Council can increase its investment and planning for electric vehicle charging, walkability, cycling, public places, public transport, urban greening and housing and land use projects that encourage these. The 2015 Integrated Land Use and Transport Strategy has already positioned us for these changes and I think it will win us international planning awards. 

The localisation of energy and transport will create a revolution across the rest of the economy. Heres a taste …

Food - Our food system is already beginning to relocalise with local niche brands and Farmers Markets, Food Fossickers, backyard veggie gardens and fruit trees flourishing. Web platforms will allow food swapping and redistribution and mapping to occur in real time. The cooperatively owned Food Hub is the next piece, encouraging local and regional food growing and distribution to thrive.

Work - Fluid collections of talented local entrepreneurs and micro businesses will combine to deliver great work, replacing larger organisations. Our Synergize co working hub is an early example of this change. Council can adapt local planning and policy to suit this vast growth of mobile workers, creating local places of economic value, connection and creativity. People won't want or need ‘jobs’, but there will be lots of exciting work to do as we transition energy, transport and food systems and tackle homelessness, loneliness, intergenerational poverty, obesity and disadvantage, all of which cost our local economy millions of dollars each year.  As transport and energy systems localise, global products will become more cost effective to manufacture, assemble or print locally. Council can begin to plan for a new local manufacturing boom. 

Participation - Online platforms are already popping up to reenergise citizen participation. Crowd writing, shared decision making, crowdsourced opinion, encrypted electronic voting and more are reenergising participation in local democracy. We wont have to go to the town hall: we will participate online where we happen to be at the time. This jump in participation will enlivened and improve how our Council operates and delivers services, with the old top down model becoming obsolete.  Councillors and Council staff will be much more adaptive, responsive and open to encouraging new thinking.

Retail - Retail will move towards life and away from stuff. Morleys Emporium with its social enterprise model, Food Fossickers and niche products like local brewing and breads are all thriving.  Around the world, sharing stores and fixing stores and meet up and skill sharing cafes are popping up. Council will begin to remove vehicle infrastructure in the city, planning for the return of the local walkable shopping strip, pop up trade, local markets and public places for people to be together.  Council is in deep planning phase for real time freight for the city that runs on a local electric autonomous fleet.

Sharing - I’m currently working on bringing the sharing economy to Bendigo, providing real time access to goods and services from lifts, stuff, money, time, skills, spaces and more. We will move beyond ownership of stuff to shared access. This will be cost effective, convenient and if the tech is owned by local cooperatives, the value will stay local. Council can changing the design of streets, buildings, public places and services to reflect this new sharing focus. 

Health - These big systematic changes will make us healthier, happier, more diverse and more connected. Council will focus on place making, community connection, walkability, ten minute neighbourhoods, cycling, parks, access to nature, quality aged and child care and the child friendly city. Children and the aged will reclaiming streets and public places. The return of local biodiversity to our waterways, parks, streets, gardens, walls and roofs will have a big impact on local health, wellbeing and sense of place. With a fast warming climate, this greening of the city will help keep the city cooler.

Youth - The new local access economy will mean students will come back to Bendigo in droves. Their vibrancy will be our vibrancy. Council is planning for the ten thousand people that will live in the city centre by 2030. This will be safer, more fun, more alive, will open up new markets and create a more edgy city. 

Transition - As our economy transitions from cars, rubbish, disposable stuff, fossil fuels, foreign ownership, big business, “trickle down economics”, social breakdown and cultural sameness we will have a few trip ups. We have already seen this in Bendigo. These are big global changes and we don't like change. Trump is the clearest example of the political reaction to this change. The old economy is dead and people know it, but salvation does not come from fear or clinging to the past. Bendigo is no different. Fear of cultural diversity has already caused outbreaks of bigotry. Fear of a new economic system creates longing for an imaginary past. Fear of the speed of change creates disfunction amongst elected officials and our Council is currently being investigated by the state for disfunction. This is expected in times of great change. But we must rise above our fears and learn together and if we can we will thrive.

Local - The key to our future strength as a city is to take the best and most brilliant ideas from around the world and localise them: local money, local trade, local making, local services, local energy, local transport, local food, local places, local people, local fast internet, local ownership, local work and local democracy. 

Put simply, our spending and our work need to relocalise, circulating locally and enriching us all.  Roads, rates and rubbish is so 1950s. The Council mantra from 2020 needs to be local people, local places, local economy. 

Claire and I chose Bendigo to raise our family and make a good life here. We can create that good life together. I’m with social researcher Hugh Mackay, who in his book The Good Life asks: 

“What makes a life worth living? His conclusion, drawn from his research, is provocative and passionately argued. A good life is not measured by security, wealth, status, achievement or levels of happiness. A good life is determined by our capacity for selflessness and our willingness to connect with those around us in a meaningful and useful way.”

Bendigo Peoples Climate March MC #COP21 Thoughts

The latest UN Climate Change Conference is happening right now in Paris. Last weekend saw the biggest day of protest in human history, with 2300 marches taking place in 150 countries to put the spotlight on world leaders. I was asked to MC the Bendigo march and ABC Local Radio recorded my introduction to the March and played the first three minutes on local radio. Nice! I thought I'd add the text of my entire speech here, along with the soundcloud file from the ABC, a gallery of photos from the Bendigo March and a climate change timeline that I put together in 2008. Enjoy!

MC Climate March Notes

Peoples climate March: 2300 events registered in 150 countries. 

To start the official proceedings I would like to acknowledge that we are meeting on Jaara Country of which the members and elders of the Jaara community and their forebears have been custodians for many centuries and have performed age old ceremonies of celebration, initiation and renewal.

We acknowledge their living culture and their unique role in the life of this region, and today we especially acknowledge their care of country and lasting relationship with the earth.

Today’s people’s march is a Global event. 

World summit in Paris

World leaders have now met for 27 years on climate: RIO, Kyoto, Joberg, Bali, Copenhagen: they have created tiny incremental improvements in that time.

Climate: 2015. 

I’m 37 years. old. I have never lived in a year of below average global temperatures. 

We are seeing extreme weather events, sea level rises, conflict.

Great divide between reality and politics: Environment Minister saying we'll fix climate change and expand coal is like trying to end smoking by expanding Philip Morris. 

Pope: Encyclical - our common home. Calling for an “ecological conversion”. What does that mean? In the 90s we changed the light bulbs and began recycling. In the 2000s we put up solar panels. But we haven’t yet changed our values. We haven’t changed who we are. That is what the Pope is calling for. Conversations and dialogue on a deeper level.

Today he’s in Nairobi: He said the international community had to listen to the “cry rising up from humanity and the earth itself”.

Barack Obama said earlier this year that “the people keep marching in the streets and we need to heed their call.”

Around the world? Exponential growth in all of the following: Renewables, energy efficiency, batteries, storage, networked smart grids, coal shares, 

Global emissions this year did not rise! First time. 

The Canadian research company Corporate Knights examined the stock holdings of 14 funds, worth a combined $1tn, and calculated how they would have performed if they had dumped shares in oil, coal and gas companies three years ago. Overall, the funds would have been $23bn better off with fossil fuel divestment. 

Turn to person next to you and talk about Hope …

Final thought after the three speakers: courage. Do we have the courage to spend the rest of our lives changing everything about who we are to ensure that we can be here for the long haul?

A Climate Change Timeline: 1880 – 2008

Put together by Ian McBurney: not referenced. If in doubt – google it!

1880s – Industrial Revolution: large scale burning of fossil fuels begins.

1896 - Svante August Arrhenius, Nobel Prize winning scientist publishes first work on the greenhouse effect, finding that "if the quantity of carbonic acid [CO2] increases in geometric progression, the augmentation of the temperature will increase nearly in arithmetic progression."

1950s – Measurements of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere begin with 350 parts per million CO2. Growth in CO2 is steady since.

1970s – Climate Change lectures delivered in Universities. “Limits to Growth” report published which predicted 2050 CO2 levels similar to those of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2005.

1980s – cfcs and ozone hole the big issue: As a result of the 1988 Montreal Protocol the ozone hole is now stabilizing.

1988 – International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) set up with the following starting points:

  • We think climate change is a big problem and is caused by the burning of fossil fuels

  • We think we’ll need cuts of 60% by 2050

1989 - Global Climate Coalition founded (an industry lobby group) by 50 oil, gas, coal, car and chemical corporations. Over 11 years it gave $US60 million in political donations, and spent millions on propaganda. It’s stated purpose: "to cast doubt on the theory of global warming."

1992 – Rio Earth Summit fails to set targets

1995 – IPCC Report: human impact on climate is discernable

1996 – Kyoto Summit Protocol created: Only first world countries not to sign are Australia and the USA.

1999 – Vostok Ice core: CO2 levels are 30% higher than any time in the past 400,000 years and rising fast.

2000 – Laviosier Group set up in Australia. See Global Climate Coalition above.

2001 – Nicolas Stern, British economist releases a report on the economic impact of climate change: unmitigated Climate Change will ruin economy: we could spend 1-2% of GDP fixing it now, or 20% later.

2005 – George Monbiot Releases “Heat”

  • Scientists now telling us an urgent CO2 cut of 90% is required by 2030

  • 2 degree temperature rise the ‘tipping point’

2005 – Vostok ice core: 30% higher figure now true for last 650,000 years.

2005 – USA National Science Foundation: Category 5 hurricanes have doubled since the 1970s.

2005 – Tim Flannery releases “The Weather Makers”: Growing scientific consensus indicates that a rapid increase of more than 2 degrees constitutes "dangerous climate change", causing mass extinctions and social and economic disruption.

2006 – Royal Society of London releases public letter asking Exxon Mobil to cease giving $2.9 million annually to 39 named right wing think tanks to “misrepresent the science.”  

2006 – World Health Organisation estimates 150,000 deaths pa due to climate change.

2007 – IPCC Report (based on 2003 science: it takes that long to get agreement from all countries).

  • 384 parts per million of C02 in the atmosphere. Growth rates in CO2 emissions trebled in the first 6 years of this century.

  • Current climate change (a 0.8 degree temperature rise this century) is human caused

  • Global emissions must peak by 2015 and we need a 90% cut in CO2 emissions by 2050

  • Feedback loops (such as ocean acidification, melting permafrost and artic sea ice which all add to the problem) are now looking dangerous

  • Carbon Sinks (such as the ocean and soils) are drying up

2007 – Centre for Alternative Technology in Britain: 80 – 90% cuts required ASAP

2008 – Most IPCC predictions are underestimating the rates and seriousness of change.

2008 – Ross Garnaut (Australian economist) Climate Change Review

  • By 2100, unmitigated Climate Change will remove 4.8% of GDP, household consumption will drop 5.4% and a 7.8% drop in real wages.

  • A 2 degree temperature rise will mean no inflow into the Murray Darling Basin, Kakadu, the Great Barrier Reef and possibly starts an irreversible loss of the Greenland ice sheet (which would cause a 7m sea level rise)

2008 – CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology Report

  • We are set for exceptionally high temperatures every on to two years

  • Drought will now occur twice as often, with twice the severity

  • Eleven of the hottest years on record have occurred in the past 12 years.

2008 - Australian Bureau of Agriculture and Resource Economics Report says exports of key commodities will fall by 63% by 2030

2008 - Tim Flannery: “There is now a better than even chance that, despite our best efforts, in the coming two or three decades Earth’s climate system will pass the point of no return.”

  • 2008 - Ocean acidity is rising: this means less carbon will be stored and less life can survive.

2008 - 40% of Arctic summer ice is gone since 1970: by 2013 it could be ice free.  The poles are warming 5 times faster than the world.

2008 - Pacific Island nations including Tuvalu and the Cararet Islands are planning to move as surge tides are rendering their islands unliveable.

2008 – The scientific predictions:

  • A 2 degree temperature rise could mean the death of half of all species of life

  • A 5 degree rise would make the Mediterranean uninhabitable and the Amazon rainforest would disappear in smoke.

  • Bendigo will receive less than 11% less rain than now and be more than 3 degrees hotter

  • The loss of the Greenland Ice sheet would lead to a seven metre sea level rise, putting the land of billions of people underwater.

  • 200 million people will be without drinking water as the Himalayan glaciers melt.

  • Climate Change Research Centre at UNSW: acidity in the Southern Ocean will reach destructive levels where it will dissolve the shells of marine organisms by 2030.

2009 - Copenhagen Climate Summit fails on nearly every measure, except that world leaders agree to limit waning to 2 degrees. 

Check out the images from the marches around the world on the Guardian

Looking after the earth enhances your business

Last week a new study appeared that shows (once again) that improving environmental performance is good for business.  OECD economists found that environmental regulations permanently boosted productivity. 

The other finding of the new study: less productive businesses were likely to see costs rise. In other words, poorly run businesses don't use environmental regulations as an opportunity to stimulate innovation. They continue on as normal, pay the costs and then complain about the costs to anyone who will listen.

For fifteen years now I have been helping businesses improve their environmental performance. At Jimmy Possum we reduced power bills by an average 15% in their stores and they saved money. At Bendigo Community Health Services we reduced the power bills at two sites by 11% and 13%. At Swan Hill Rural City Council we reduced the power bills across four sites by 9%, saving money. At St John of God Hospital in 2014 we increased recycling by 700%, saving money. Yes, that was 700%.

Each of these businesses is in the early stages of transformation. They are reducing their impacts. Being less bad. But what about businesses that are further down the path? Interface Carpets have reduced their impact by 80% since 2004 and have a goal of zero impact by 2020. They report saving $400 million, a huge improvement in their products driven by design for sustainability, a massive improvement in attracting and keeping the best staff as they share a common higher purpose and that the goodwill of the marketplace has been astonishing. No amount of marketing for any price could have produced as much goodwill. Regulation anyone? Do you think Green Tape is ever mentioned at Interface?

“But it’s just not reasonable…” I hear the Industrial Revolution brigade pronounce importantly as they stare down from their dusty parapets, “…Green Tape compliance is a cost to be borne by business!” Australian Treasurer Peter Costello once said that only when the economy is strong can we afford to protect the environment. In 1992 George Bush senior spoke of a "balance" between protecting the earth and making money.  

What they fail to see is that many of the costs of doing business are also environmental costs. Fuel, electricity, gas, water, raw materials, waste and fleet all impact on the environment. Reduce these costs and you have a more efficient business with a lower environmental impact. If business takes this thinking further and imagines how these might be eliminated through design, planning, goal setting, learning and trial and error, then culture, products and services can be remade, improved and reimagined in a big way.  It’s a win-win situation.

Staff are generally the largest cost for business. As Interface found, their sense of a shared higher purpose attracted the best people and kept them together. That's hard to buy. Staff turnover and lack of quality people can ruin business. Investing in a green building can bring increases in productivity too; the City of Melbourne CH2 building boosts productivity through less sick days. A study by the Victorian government showed green buildings boost employee productivity, health and more.

I once heard someone say that regulation is a sign of design failure. The evidence suggests that if you have to even worry about "compliance" (what a horrible word) then you haven't done your job properly. Innovation is always a better path for your business than complying with regulation. ​


Goodbye Origin! Here's why ...

Dear Origin Energy,

Ten years ago our family chose your company for our electricity because you headed up a list of green energy retailers in Australia. You offered solar and wind power, supported home solar systems, ran impressive looking green advertising (happy people sitting in trees as I remember) and looked to be heading into a glorious new energy future. 

In the 1980s Kodak was a pioneer in developing digital film. Then they closed the doors to innovation and to a changing marketplace; and they disappeared. 

In the past few years your CEO Grant King has actively and publicly campaigned against the Renewable Energy Target, solar power and the Carbon Price. All of which were working and none of which were behind energy price rises.  So why the opposition? Because if you support renewables then you will have to change your business model. Shock horror!

Our power system is currently centralised, fossil fuel powered, foreign owned and controlled by large feudal style corporations like you Origin. The sort that pervertedly argue that coal will lift poor people out of poverty. What's with the sudden care for alleviating poverty Origin? Would it be the only twisted moral reason your PR team can come up with to support coal? 

Why would our family support that?

A 100% renewable power grid is the opposite on all fronts. Every building will be a power station and wind, hot rocks, solar PV, solar thermal, tidal, wave and more power sources will link locally together. A distributed, networked, smart grid will transfer power in real time over the internet. Once installed, this system will be near to free, because sunshine, wind and hot rocks are all free.  Every building will be at least 40% more energy efficient than they are today. A third of the average power bill is currently wasted. Energy storage will be huge, with excess power stored locally in our buildings, electric cars and at special node points in the grid for use when the sun doesn’t shine, the wind doesn’t blow or the power price is good enough to sell. This power grid will be far more secure, as anyone who has studied the science of complex networks will attest: a centralised system is far more likely to fail. Even the Saudis know this grid is coming. We're excited about it. 

Renewable energy will be locally/regionally owned, operated and managed. My home town of Bendigo spends at least $80 million powering our homes and almost all of that money leaves Bendigo and most leaves the country. Imagine the alternative for our local economy.  Like Hepburn Wind: community owned, producing more power than Daylesford needs and they won the world wind award. Like the People's Solar: crowdfunding solar and building community. Like the Bendigo Sustainability Group and Bendigo Library solar project. Our family wants to invest in a different future to the one you desire.

Our fossil fuel powered grid is moving the world towards 5 degrees of global warming this century, a situation so dire for humanity that imagining your centralised fossil fuel powered business model in existence in that future is laughable. The science is clear and as close to absolute as anything ever has been. And Australia will be worst hit. A world five degrees warmer would not sustain our economies, societies, governments, law and order or the natural systems that sustain our lives: the clean air, water and soil. Over half of all species of life would be extinct, the oceans would be acidic and lifeless and sea levels over a metre higher, displacing millions of people. Climate Change aside, coal kills hundreds of thousands of people around the world every year as it pollutes our air, water and soil with toxic fumes and effluent. You could not sell fossil fuels on Mars. There is nothing there. Your precious business model is moving the Earths climate in a Mars direction. We have been told that 80% of fossil fuel reserves must stay in the ground to limit climate change. You don't care. You care that you make money now. Our family is heading in another direction. 

Every time we hear your CEO Grant King speak he is talking about the old power system, or apples, when the future power grid is oranges. How about comparing prices properly? If climate change costs were paid, then renewables would be cheaper than coal. If we paid for the power lost in the line on the way to Bendigo, it would make renewables much more attractive. If solar power received a proper feed in tariff when added to the grid at peak times when the price is high, then renewables would be much more attractive. If we spent the billions you are spending (or supporting) on poles and wires on local smart grids then renewables would be cheaper. If we removed the $10 billion our government provides to subsidise fossil fuels then renewables would be cheaper. If the health costs of coal were added to the price, then renewables would be much more attractive. If renewables were a greater percentage of the power system, prices would be lower. If all of these costs were added to the coast of coal renewables would already have wiped coal off the face of the earth.

So here is your marketplace Origin. The growth of solar around the world is exponential. The growth of wind power around the world is exponential. 80% of Australians support renewable energy. Energy efficiency is growing rapidly around the world. Energy demand has peaked. The growth of energy storage around the world is approaching exponential. Two of Europe’s biggest energy retailers have already flipped their business models to facilitate the new energy future, having tried to hold onto the past and lost mega profits. The fossil fuel divestment campaign is growing momentum at over $50 billion. Global carbon targets are heading from 20% fossil fuel reductions by 2020 to 100% by 2050. South Australia is approaching 30% renewables and their power prices are lower. Germany is approaching 31% renewables and they don’t even have sunshine. Denmark is at 39% wind power. One fifth of Australian households now have solar PV on the roof. A system went up every two minutes last year. The head of SA power Generators thinks your business model is dead. Your profits are already on the decline. 

A recent report by Accenture showed that utilities in the USA and Europe stand to lose $100 billion from these changes. They advise this: "In order to navigate through this demand disruption, utilities will need to fundamentally transform their business models, including the creation of distribution system operations services to manage a more complex and distributed grid."

So how’s your Kodak going Origin? Are you seriously choosing Kodak? You are at the most crucial point in your history. 

Today our family changed our power supplier. We will not support yesterday's thinking. In fact, we cannot think of a single reason to support the direction you are taking your business. The only conceivable reason you have for your position is to protect your outdated business model over the short term. 

There is nothing personal about our decision. AGL, Energy Australia and co just as bad. And we’d happily change back if you have the courage to continue along the path that you began ten years ago.  Push for a larger Renewable Energy Target, push for a carbon price to send the right signal again for the market, support renewables, support storage, help build the smart grid and you will shine. You probably won't be as big and your profits won't be as easy. But as it stands now, your ‘green’ push was just greenwash. A lie. A cheap marketing ploy to trick people.  

And as it stands now, if your short term business model works, we all lose and we have no economy. If it fails, you disappear. 

As Alan Watts said, “The only way to make sense of change is to plunge into it, go with it and join the dance”. Jump in Origin!

Living and Travelling in Bendigo, 2030: a potential vision

Inspired by the Bendigo ITLUS (open for comment now), this seven part vision is offered for argument, derision, discussion and inspiration ...

"I just moved to Bendigo. I love it. I love seeing the Cathedral lit up from my apartment with the sunset in the background. What a view. After dark I often go for a walk in town. It’s so alive! Ten thousand people live in town now. It feels full of fun and it’s so safe: someone is always around and watching. The bars and cafes and bookshops are open late and they all face the street. I love the laneways and the sound of music drifting out of them. I gave up my car when I moved here. It’s saving me heaps of cash and I can grab one of the electric car share vehicles from the station when I need to go beyond the city. I’m a member of Bendigo Bike Share too. They had to put more bikes in at the station last year as all of the tourists love them. They love the interactive transport map they can download to their phone too. It makes it so easy to get around. I chose to live here because of the lifestyle. And when I want to go to the footy or a band in Melbourne it’s only an hour and a half on the train and the wifi is great." 

- Joe, 29, third floor apartment, Mollison St, Bendigo

 

“We’ve lived in Huntly for forty years. We’re almost locals now I suppose. We love the open space and the sense of community. We feel like we’ve lived through a pretty special time. With all the influx of new people we’ve seen a lot of new ideas. A lot of new local businesses have opened up which is great as we don’t need to go to town as much any more. A lot of the working folk catch the bus into Bendigo. They leave from here every 12 minutes in peak times. Why would you drive to work? If we need to go into town we walk into Huntly and use one of the electric cars in our car sharing pod. Sometimes on a Sunday we ride into Bendigo and feel like we’re surrounded by nature the whole way along the path. We’re a lot fitter than we used to be and that might have something to do with our car being mostly in the garage these days.” 

- Bev and Earl, 75, Detached House, Huntly

 

“We moved to Strathfieldsaye because it’s a great place to bring up kids. They can walk safely and quickly to school and the footy ground and they love their backyard. Kate works in town. She says the bus station is the place to be at 8:30am: she thinks the Strathfieldsaye community is run from that bus station. The buses go every six minutes during commuting times, so it doesn’t matter if you miss one. She parks her bike there in the cage. I drive a delivery vehicle out of the Epsom and Kangaroo Flat freight hubs. It’s an amazing hive of activity! The big trucks coming in from the north and south straight off the highway and a lot of Bendigo large industry has moved to these two zones to be nearby. Then there’s the automated storage and delivery systems and the electric vans out the other side. Everything is ordered and delivered online in real time. Some of the big trucks still go through Bendigo late or early in the day, but most of the grunt work is left to the vans. I still cant quite believe how our systems work out the fastest route and the right number of deliveries for a load and the time of day. I do know that our customers love the service though.” 

- Ben and Kate, 36, with Thomas 7, Mollie 5, Detached House, Strathfieldsaye 

 

“Getting to work is a cinch. The train runs from Square to town twice in the mornings, it’s a minute from my third story flat and it only takes a minute to get there. If I miss the train the bus along High street goes past at six minute intervals in it’s only a block away. My phone tells me where the train and bus are in real time. In the spring and autumn I like to ride into work along the creek. I think only a third of Bendigonians drive to work these days. The showers and storage facilities at work are brilliant. I have family in Geelong, so I own a car for weekend and special shopping trips. The best thing is, I’m part of the five thousand strong peer to peer car sharing network in Bendigo, so I rent my car out during the week and it’s earning enough to pay off my flat. I know it’s in good hands because I only rent it out to people with a great online reputation.  Golden Square is a real population hub now. There are some really funky new apartment blocks near the main shops. Our local economy is thriving and there is always something open and always a place to catch up with friends after work.”

- Erica, 24, second story, Golden Square Station Apartments

 

“I’m in hospital utilities administration. Moved here fifteen years ago when we opened. We ditched our car fleet soon after the hospital opened. We found that the local car sharing company offered us better rates, a simpler smart phone booking system and a better private car solutions for hospital staff that lived locally. So my work cars during business hours are the same ones I use for personal use at my cost after hours. I enjoy the walk into town after work. It’s about 20 minutes. I especially like it when I make it all the way without crossing paths with a single car. The good thing about the way the city has been developed from a transport point of view is that obesity rates have reduced to the point where we think this hospital will not reach capacity for another thirty years or so. We, on the whole, removed ourselves from car dependency and we’re fitter and more socially connected as a result. I have many more conversations on my wanderings than when I was commuting by car.”

- John, 55, Flat, Ironbark

 

“I love how everyone in Bendigo is within 500m of a park and shops. That’s clever design. It makes each local place feel like a place to be. The walking paths it has opened up are delightful.  I especially love the evenings in Eaglehawk. Everyone is out and about on the street cafes or heading to the Star. I feel much safer riding into town than when I grew up here. The magical disappearing bike lanes on Eaglehawk Rd were a bit of a hazard back then compared to the detached bike road now. I still drive my car. It gives me a buzz to have my car find and book a carpark in town and then direct me to it. I used to hate doing circle work searching! My furniture business is in Long Gully. I’m such a fan of the freight hubs. We have less trucks on our streets, which I value and we have delivery within the hour.” 

- Sarina, 44, semi detached house, Eaglehawk

 

“I love my car. I’ve loved them since I was a kid. I’m at Tafe this year, so I drive in four days a week. The awesome thing is, I get half price parking if I take someone with me. I just whack up the time I’m leaving on the app, and if someone else needs a lift into town I get a text with a name and address. I check their history first to make sure I’m not picking up a murderer. Or my uncle. Then we’re off. I’ve met heaps of local people I never even heard of before. Me mum catches the bus into town for work. Says she likes reading the paper on the ipad. The buses have free wifi. Dad runs the Heathcote wine bank. He likes walking to work because he can have a few wines afterwards and not worry. He likes all the chats with the locals on the way home too. His garden is full of cuttings from the neighbours. He says the big numbers of new folks in Heathcote has been great for the town. Says we’ve got our own sense of ‘vibrancy’ now. Whatever that means. I just like how busy the bar is on the weekend. Dad used to have to go in to Bendigo for a crowd.”

- Rory, 19, Detached house, Heathcote

Imagine meeting your Financial Carbon Broker ...

“Hi, welcome to Victory Financial Carbon Brokers, your friendly ‘carbon down’ financial advisors. We’re here to help you rid your life of fossil fuels and in the process, to help you become rich. 

“Before we get into the details, some background. To play our part in the global challenge to keep global warming below the dangerous 2 degree mark, which might be too dangerous a mark anyway, the average Australian has a carbon budget of 400 tonnes left. After that, carbon - our old industrial revolution friend has to be ditched. The rising seas, the new strains of disease, the extreme weather events, the collapse of the ecosystems that allow life to flourish are just a bit too much at that point. Check the science. 

“So to break it down further, the average Australian currently puts 24 tonnes of the stuff into the atmosphere every year. So the average Aussie has 16 years left to ditch their carbon habit before they hit the 400 tonnes mark. And if you’re sitting here listening to this I’d guess you ain’t average. We here at Victory Financial Carbon Brokers think folks like you can do it in ten years to lead the charge. And don’t forget - we’ll make you rich.

“Are you still with us? Are you quite aware of the challenge? We want to make sure you’re in for the ride. We’re not talking about voting, or Facebook posts of disgust, or turning up to the odd rally, or changing the light bulbs. Hell, I bet you did that ten years ago!  We’re talking about changing who you are. About creating an economic and social revolution. A revolution with big winners and the biggest losers in human history. Those old fossil fuel giants that own government, the merchants of doubt, the coal, oil and gas mobs, they stand to lose 21 trillion dollars if we can keep the climate under two degrees warmer. 80% of known fossil fuel reserves must stay in the ground. No industry has ever had $21 trillion in Stranded Assets before, but if we’re going to have a future … that’s what we’ve got to do. They are banking on you not changing who you are. On you buying their product. They have chosen to stick with the old and ridicule the new. 

“So are you in? Ok? Are you sure? Can you sign here then? We don’t take half-hearted clients. You have to be all the way in. The planet doesn’t negotiate. It just knocks us down and leaves the temples in the jungle. Or the desert. Or the crumbling statues.

“Done.

“Ok. Step one. We’ll need to pull your super out of fossil fuels. Where is your super invested? Do you know? We can show you some great ethical investors that will look after your super and your future. It’s a bit quaint hearing fossil fuelled super funds talking about your future.  In the words of Paul Hawken, ‘they are stealing the future, selling it in the present and calling it profit or GDP’. Here are the forms. We can fill them in right now and we’ll help you make the shift. The funny thing is, you won’t be worse off financially. The ethical funds are doing quite well. The Australia Institute last year found that 1 in 4 Aussies are already thinking about this shift: that’s $247 billion that could be taken away from fossil fuels in Australia alone. 

“Step two. Is your home loan with one of the big four banks? They all invest heavily in fossil fuels. Don't listen to their snazzy ‘sustainability’ tak. We can help you shift your loan and your accounts to a bank that invests in the future instead. Here are the forms. I can explain the exit fees, charges and help you get a good rate at your new bank.

“Are you still with me? The first two were pretty big. A shock to the system? You’re ok? Good ...

“Step Three. If you own shares you need to get them out of fossil fuels and the banks that invest in fossil fuels. Let’s work out a great new portfolio with you that invests in the future as well as your future. The 2014 Climate Proofing Your Investments Report found that ditching fossil fuels made no difference to your returns anyway. We’re here to help make this as easy for you as possible. Here are our recommendations. Once again, you won’t be worse off, and when the carbon bubble bursts, you won’t lose all of your money either. Remember 80% of the stuff has to stay in the ground. 

“Right. It gets a little easier from here.

“Step Four. Power. Are you with an energy company that supports renewable energy? That’s easy to change. The big old mobs are trying to protect their old business model and their super profits and their size. The future is renewable, decentralised, networked, online and efficient. In short: it’s small and innovative. The big old mobs are about to die like Kodak did. It’s like they’re trying to get the government to legislate for film when the world is racing to digital.

“Step Five. If you have an unshaded north facing roof, put up solar PV panels. The cost is about $5K, the payback is about 6 years and after they’re up you can wipe your power bill basically for ever.  A million Aussie homes have already done it. It’s a complete no brainer.  It’s a better investment than shares and housing. It adds to the value of your home. When you sell you basically get your money back. We can help you find a good installer, get a quote, manage the power companies and even lease you a system if you don’t have the upfront cash. While we’re at it, if you have electric hot water it’s also a no brainer to switch to solar hot water. We can help.

“Step Six. If your power bill is on the Australian average you’re paying $2000 a year and half of that is paying for wasted electricity. We can help you understand your energy use and to put together a plan of attack to reduce your bill by half. Most of the changes are low to no cost. The CSIRO suggests a saving of $1200 a year is possible. $1200 in your pocket every year is nothing to snort at. We’ll look at insulation, LED lights, sealing drafts, efficient appliances, low flow shower heads, hot water temperature, space heating, switching off and more. This UK study found energy efficiency can add 16% to the value of your house. 

“Overwhelmed yet? Don’t worry. Remember you have ten years to accomplish your carbon down journey. We’ll help you plan financially over the ten years so that you are gaining money each year, not losing it. And remember … this journey will make you rich. But from here on in you might have to alter your idea of success and fix up your ‘stuff’ related ego issues. A lot of folks out the have a severe case of Affluenza, as Clive Hamilton called it.  

“Step Seven. Your going to have to ditch your car related ego too. If you drive on-road, get rid of the 4WD. It uses heaps more petrol and kills more people. The Joneses are buying smaller cars now. Just ask Ford and Holden. They kept building the big ones and fighting government fuel standards and they ain’t here any more…  

“Then, you have ten years to stop buying petrol. I know! It sounds crazy. But you signed on at the start. And you’re spending $3000 a year on petrol anyway. So stop it and you can save. For now, buy the most efficient car you can. And use it the least that you can. The average Aussie home spends around $1,000 a year running the car on less than 2.5km trips (47% of trips are under 2.5kms). 

Your car is costing up around $10,000 to run in total, so think about the number of hours you are working each day to pay for your car. And $10,000 is a lot of taxis. 

And then plan to join a car sharing group. Why own a car when you use it one hour a day? You will have a choice of new cars when you want and you’ll probably save $5000 a year. And you’ll drive a third less. As of December 2012, there were an estimated 1.7 million car-sharing members in 27 countrie. If you want income from your car as it sits there in the drive way, add it to a person to person car sharing scheme and earn some cash.

Then buy a bike. A Copenhagen study found that people who commute to work for twenty years by bike save $100,000, cut 94 tonnes of carbon and live seven years longer. A $1000 bike is not a bad financial investment. And get some good shoes; walking is even better. The average Australian spends $1000 on health every year, and another $4000 via taxes. The heart foundation suggests that 30 mins a day of active transport would save our economy $13 billion and stop 16,000 premature deaths every year. 

“For other trips, set up a car pooling group and if you still need a car buy the smallest one you can.  In the end you’re going to have to either move to a walkable area, or own a renewable energy powered electric car, or have some great public transport or car pooling options. We can help you manage the transition. 

“Once petrol is out of the equation, property values on the edge of cities are going to plummet and the value of walkable areas will skyrocket. We would advise that you move into town sooner rather than later to make sure you win from this change. One USA study found that every mile you commute in your car already costs you $795 a year. Put that on your home loan and you’ll save thousands in interest. This study said $15000 a year.

“Step eight. As Clive Hamilton said, stop buying stuff you don’t need, with money you don’t have, to impress people you don’t like. The CSIRO thinks a third of your carbon footprint comes from the stuff we buy and the Australia Institute reckons we all spend $1000 a year on things that we rarely use. And we spend a lot more than that every year on stuff that we don’t need. We spend $2288 per year on clothes and shoes for example. How about halving that and buying quality and second hand? A clothes swap with friends? So save your pennies and buy quality, sustainable, fair-trade and for your needs, not your ego. The Jones are starting to think you’re a stuck-up ponce-face with all your useless stuff and your long working hours. Get a life instead! Work less, go hang out with your neighbours and replace ‘stuff’ with good times. 

“Ok. Is your ego surviving at this stage? Some folks are going to take a hit. But don’t worry. All the research points to a more wholesome, fulfilling life if we ditch our spending-money-ego-frenzy.

“Step nine.  Change your diet. Michael Pollen has three dieting rules: Eat Food (food being defined as anything your grandmother would recognise as food), Mostly Plants and Not Too Much.  Follow these and you’ll drop your food carbon footprint a mile. Meat has a massive carbon footprint so eat it much less. Your body will thank you too. And the average Aussie home throws away $2000 worth of food a year. So save that money. And plant fruit trees, herbs and a veggie garden. Plant a fruit tree in the nature strip! Support your farmers market, support your local wholefoods store, support your local butcher and support environmentally produced food. This is going to require some deep thought and probably some overturning of common misconceptions. Sometimes food miles are less important than farming methods for carbon output for example.  There’s one more financial food sweetener to throw in for you: carrying a water bottle rather than buying bottled water saves $2800 a year.  

“So far all of these steps have been personal. Individual. That’s great. You’re helping to change the economy, our society and your life. We think the above nine steps will save you at least $10,000 and more probably $20,000 from the average annual Aussie household budget. And your super, shares and house loan will perform well and be saved from the big carbon bubble burst, which is either coming, or our civilisation slowly will slowly fall apart. Neither of which is a good outcome. Individual actions are brilliant and necessary. But they are not enough. We need to share and connect if we want to win this battle.

“Step ten. Reconnect. Work less. Live more. Be with your kids. Visit your sister. Play in your street. Join a local environmental action group, join a choir, have four conversations as you walk to work, set up a workplace green team, kick a ball with a mate, have a dinner party with the neighbours. Share your journey with others. 

A Sustainability Street community

“Join the new economy. Set up or join a car sharing business, a community owned renewable energy storage facility, a bike share, a tool swap, a food swap, build a local park, plant a shared community garden for food and join a local group to revegetate your local creek. In short, build community.  

“Final Thoughts: If you follow through on this ten year challenge, you will be happier, healthier, stronger, will live longer, you’ll feel better about your life, be supported by the strength of your community and you’ll be building your local economy for the future. Remember when we said that we could make you rich? Well … lets define rich. Yes, you’ll be at least $15K better off every year. That’s nice. But how much richer will your life be? Hugh McKay’s book The Good Life asks the ultimate question: What makes a life worth living? His conclusion, drawn from his research, is provocative and passionately argued. A good life is not measured by security, wealth, status, achievement or levels of happiness. A good life is determined by our capacity for selflessness and our willingness to connect with those around us in a meaningful and useful way.

“So steps one to nine will save you money and bring your carbon down near zero. But add in step ten and we may just help you create the wonderful, meaningful life you’ve always ached for.

“Are you up for it? Great!. Sign here, roll the sleeves up and let’s get going!” 

​

Sustainability Street iBook Launch

It’s here! 

It took two years! 

I am so excited to have been able to play a major role in bringing the Sustainability Street Approach within the reach of every iPad on the planet!

“But what do you have do with Sustainability Street, Ian?” I hear you ask … 

Well. It changed who I am. And it might just do the same for you. After you download it of course :-)

In 2002 I was an environmental engineer with two years of work in the fields of waste reduction and cleaner production under my belt. I was standing, unemployed, next to a pile of recycled timber in Coburg when Francis Fitzgerald Ryan (Frank) founder of Vox Bandicoot appeared next to me. The very next week I started work at Vox Bandicoot and began five years of following Frank, learning like a sponge. 

The Vox put me face to face with 20,000 people. We delivered the famous theatre program to 10,000 people at schools and festivals.  We delivered workplace culture change training to 6000 people in manufacturing and local government.  I wrote interpretation, developed theatre scripts, state government education curriculum, published picture story books, was MC for state government environmental awards ceremonies, launched a hundred local government programs, worked in three states, managed staff and helped manage the business all the while going through a personal learning journey and transformation like no other. 

And all I had to do was follow Frank around. 

Frank would say goodbye to twenty people at the end of a workshop by name when he’d met them only two hours before. He would connect on a beautiful emotional level with them all. Through Vox Bandicoot he enabled people to reconnect deeply with the earth and all it’s wonders. Frank is a perfectionist and a clown and a poet and educator like no other. He taught me the power of now, the power of relationships, the power of the spoken word and the power of the whoopee cushion - the power of laughter and fun.  And all the while the message was the same: we need to fundamentally change our relationship with the earth.

Just before I started at Vox Bandicoot, Geraldine Doogue from Radio National had bought Robert Putnam the sociologist to Australia with his book ‘Bowling Alone’. In it, he talks about the 21st century need to create new ways of coming together as communities; how we need a new era of civic invention. For Frank, it sparked a synthesis of his 20 years of environmental education with his sociology background and his deep passion for bringing people together. Sustainability Street was born.

My task that first week at Vox Bandicoot was to find some money to add to a $3000 City of Moreland grant.  That grant had been made based on a powerful seven words from Frank: “Sustainability Street - It’s a village out there.” Not a jungle! 

So we potted around and found $24,000 to add to the original grant.  We found two “streets” in Coburg to be the first Sustainability Streets and then worked with them for 18 months. 

By the time I left the Vox in 2006 to set up Live ecoLogical I had worked with 150 Sustainability Street villages across Melbourne and Sydney. I am fortunate to have been a part of one the most successful and profound environmental education programs ever created. I’m not sure that any other program has ever matched Sustainability Street in the university confirmed 30% reductions in water, waste and energy achieved across the board. The incredible leap in social cohesion, capacity and wellbeing that Sustainability Streets also achieve amongst participants would be hard to match too.

But for me, it is the intangibles that were the real highlights. As I sat in lounge rooms, bus shelters, back yards, cafes, parks and community halls I witnessed the first slightly anxious and awkward coming together of strangers meeting people in their local places. They might have met previously if a tree had fallen on the road or seen each other once when a cat was stuck in a drain; or spoken briefly at an auction. Now they were sharing tea, cake, wine and veggies. They were laughing and planning and dreaming and learning together. They were becoming comfortable to let their kids walk down the street without an adult. They were digging together and joining a local carbon choir and presenting on the radio and changing their careers and swapping recipes. They were installing solar, buying bikes, setting up street notice boards and planting the nature strips. They were supporting each other through personal tragedies and watching one another’s homes when holidays came round. They were carpooling, swapping worm farming tips, holding eco film evenings and becoming friends. They were getting frustrated at the trials of incorporating so that their community garden could begin. In some cases blood pressure returned to normal, bad backs disappeared and depression reduced.  They felt wonderful. 

And I felt wonderful. I learnt how to be a ‘Guide Beside’ rather than a ‘Sage on Stage’ as Frank taught. I learnt how to encourage a community to emerge and learnt how and when to butt out and let them to blossom into who they are themselves. I saw the long term power of local people doing it for themselves over the fence.   Sustainability Street is driven by and thrives upon the people involved. I saw people of every political persuasion working together, having fun together, planning together and celebrating together.  I realised that the big political ideologies are just spin and shadows, and I now know that there is a way to move beyond them. I learnt that all of us, at a deeply human level, want to look after each other and want to look after the earth. 

Sustainability Street was created and authored and guided by Frank Ryan. It is now so much a part of me, my work, my community life and my spirit that I have no idea what’s me and what’s Sustainability Street anymore.

A few years ago I pitched the idea of a Sustainability Street iBook to Frank and he was excited. Since then we have been plotting and planning, writing and creating, editing, animating and video recording our way to publishing our first iBook. Frank as the author, and myself as publisher and editor.

It’s now in the iBookstore and anyone with an iPad and a spare $10 can download it, immerse themselves in it and then knock on the friendliest neighbour’s door and begin the journey. At it’s simplest, you will reduce water, waste and energy together. At it’s most complex it will change who you are. At it’s most meaningful is the knowledge that all change begins at the most local level - if enough Sustainability Street Villages form around the world …

I’m a little bit proud of our iBook and I’m very happy for Frank as he deserves to be recognised for his amazing life’s work. I’m so excited to think about communities everywhere learning from the Sustainability Street iBook to set up their own streets or to use it to inform and enhance their existing community sustainability programs. 

I can just see the smiles as they create the future together …