I smiled inwardly all the way through Paul Kelly’s article in the current edition of The Monthly, in which he celebrates the making of compilation cassette tapes. He scoffs at the click, drag & burn of the CD. Kelly describes the labour of love associated with judging the right moment when to press record and the creative pondering about the ordering of track. He references Tarantino’s Death Proof and Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity, (link to the ‘Monday morning tape’ clip) probably the only films to engage the deep giving that is compilation cassettes.

I think I will go shopping on the weekend for a C90. I always used to use BASF, I presume they still make them. I’ve already got a bunch of yurting (nomadic caravaning ) songs in my head, its gonna be fun to get them together. Our old Patrol will be a great acoustic home for the click of the cassette into the player. With no air con, and the windows down, I’ll be wafting the Waifs and Paul Kelly et al across the Aussie landscape.

I’ve got mates who operate at the cutting edge of new media (G’day Steve). But I rarely tweet. Maybe it’s a stage of life thing. I have in the past been an almost compulsive connector/networker, these days I get tired thinking about it … I derive deep satisfaction from slow and simple pastimes with Maria. While the kids watch their TV shows on computer screens, I handwrite in my moleskin journal with an ink pen. Like Hannah Montana and Peter Garrett before her I want the best of both worlds. Amidst the connected ubiquitousness of new technologies, the ‘discipline of slow’ is good for my 00’s soul.

Better go and check from my 3G phone to see where I can get a C90 tape …

We drove with long periods of silence. The scars of Black Saturday are everywhere.

I have seen the after-effects of bush fires before. But the scale of this and the background knowledge of the fatal horror on the very roads on which we drove was poignant. As we browsed the shops the discussion was still about recovery. The newspapers are still peppered with references. Little known village names like Chum Creek are now legend.

But my lasting memory will be of a phenomena I’ve never seen before. Autumn colour was everywhere. Dazzling oranges and brazing reds were across vineyards and bordering roads at every turn. But we were struck by the green ‘fur.’

Actually, it is not fur, but from a distance that’s what it looks like. Charred trees … covered from base to branch tip with vibrant new green growth, as if being taken over by a parasitic creeper. I think I would have expected trees recovering from a bush fire to sprout new growth from their branches as in spring. Not so. I wondered what happens next.

Trauma rocks normality. I am not a psychologist but I imagine there are parallels in human life. Recovery from trauma probably looks very different than normal growth. When the ‘green shoots’ come, they likely do so in surprising places. I thought more …

Our world is in trauma now. The twin crises of environmental vulnerability and the financial crisis dishing out pain and inviting a new way of being. As in bushfire recovery, I wonder whether conventional cycles of recovery will fail, Rather we will see new growth sprouting from places we didn’t expect. If we are not attuned to the nature of the trauma, the fury ‘green growth’ could be mocked as try hard. Instead it could well be the signs of human resilience and creative hope.

I will have my eyes open for ‘fury green growth’ in the economy.

I woke early and was contemplating the work ahead of me today. There are some meetings and conversations with some pretty important decisions to be made. I felt the level of anxiety rise as I contemplated the different dynamics and responsibilities I have in them. Then as my thoughts shifted to the broader perspective, the outcomes of the projects in which the activities sit, I could sense an immediate shift … my anxiety started giving way to an energised motivation.

The three projects on which I will work today are all great projects. One, in partnership with a Uni, involves the development of a diagnostic for measuring the ‘generativity’ of a workplace, another is a major initiative to cultivate a social enterprise hub in the CBD, and the third is preparation for a sustainability workshop for the regional Board of a global company. Fantastic projects. Focussing on the bigger picture helped me heaps, rather than lamenting the busy activity in isolation.

I hope you can locate your activity today in the context of the broader outcomes you are trying to achieve … it certainly helps me to do so.

I had a relapse yesterday.

My mind was consumed with what felt (and still feels) like an impossible problem. Not a totally unfamiliar one, fairly typical organisational dysfunctionality. (refer Albrecht’s Law) What was perplexing me was my inability to get any traction around the issue. It was disconcerting. Like a childhood dream when you are trying to run away from something and feel like you are being held back.

My name is Col, and I’m a bookshop-aholic. The object of my relapse was the unremarkably named ‘Influencer‘. Like most books of its kind, some simple and powerful ideas get padded out with stories and elaborations. Even though I had a few flights ahead of me to digest it … it only took about 20 minutes to be inspired to not give up.

One of the profound ideas, to which my musings here will not do justice, is that you simply cannot verbally persuade people to sustain different behaviour or see the world differently. As someone has famously suggested, “You can’t persuade someone to change their mind about a position that they didn’t ‘think themselves into in the first place.”

The ‘master influencers’ in the study managed to transform people’s lives by cultivating incentive for a few very specific behaviours. Interesting.

This simple refresher thought has put some wind in my sails when I think about my work with others. It also rings true in relation to my own efforts to maintain wellbeing. It pays to identify a few simple behaviours that we know will result in particular outcomes. Discipline, yes. Simplicity, yes.

I was prompted by relatively recent experience when I was back in my home town for the launch of a book that Dad had written. The topic of the book, a history of a Trust Fund that had been a vehicle for civic leaders in Ulverstone to give back to the community, brought together a large gathering of people. Throughout the evening, the recurring comment made to me was, “Great man, your dad.”

This helped open my eyes to the man my father has been from a perspective other than that from within the immediate family, where the moment is overtaken by forever, the depth of knowledge trumps the reality of public contribution.

So in preparation for yesterday, I did what you do these days if you want to find out about someone … I googled him. One of the things I found was a transcript of a speech he delivered to a public works conference in 2002. Having spent his career in local government, he offered some perspectives on the BASICS of public service. These, I realised as I read, were things that my father had valued highly, and although rarely verbalised in the family context, he had modelled these and instilled them in me and my three siblings. As is my dad’s custom, he used an acrostic:

B stands for ‘Back yourself’. Dad has always been an outstanding problem solver, particularly when it comes to engineering or ‘handyman’ related challenges. He taught me to believe that there is always a way.

A stands for ‘Attitude’. I struggle to recall a time when people were criticised openly in our home. Dad has passed on to me the value of giving people the ‘benefit of the doubt’. In reality, everyone acts in ways that are reasonable to them. Acknowledging that for the most part people act with positive intention is a trait that I think has served me well. All behaviour is ultimately rooted in an attitude, it is therefore imperative to make sure it is our attitude that is right … behaviour will follow.

S is for ‘Simplicity’. Edward deBono famously distinguished simplistic from simplicity which he suggests lays on ‘the other side’ of complexity. For my dad, life has appeared uncomplicated. There are a few things which have been important to him … other things in life get moved around to accommodate these. I admire the simplicity that this generates.

I is for ‘Innovation’. Dad has been incredibly inventive over the years. Whether organising his workshop, renovating, making things, solving problems, he has set his mind and hands to some outstanding creative endeavours. He has taught me the value of discipline, productivity and diligence in the process.

C (and the S) stand for ‘Common Sense’. My father has always valued rationality over emotionality. His ability to dissect something objectively is a real strength. I hope that some of the ’sense’ he has expressed through his 70 years has rubbed off on me.

Thankyou Dad for demonstrating and passing on these ‘basics’.

Perspective is as close to a silver bullet as you can get. What you see affects everything. It’s a simple formula but there are a couple of elements that are crucial for living with purpose and contentment.

1. Know what it is that is important. What matters to you? We’ve got to have clarity on this.

2. In frenetic urban living, what matters most can so easily get crowded out … not intentionally, just because urgency is so noisy and the pressures of work and life impact what we see and the choices we make. We’ve got to find ways to regularly keep aligned meaningfully to these things.

For me, it has always been a fundamental of wellbeing to find ways to regularly re-connect with the things that matter, the things that elevate my thinking and regenerate my spirit. A week in Inverloch in South Gippsland and reflecting over Easter on ‘new life’ has been very helpful.

One of the implications for me is that I will need to be more disciplined in reflecting on my own journey via my journal (old fashioned pen and paper) that has taken a back seat since I started more public reflection via blogging 15 months ago. I do not intend to cease blogging, but I expect it might be less frequent …

In the meantime, have good week and I hope you are making choices based on the stuff that matters to you in the long term.

So says Allain de Botton, the wonderful writer whose books I’ve eagerly devoured. With the benefit of hindsight it feels reasonable to say that it was just a matter of time before he turned his attention to the ‘pleasures and sorrows of work‘

With the inevitable evolution in our economies as we emerge from the current twin crises, climate change and economic, it is a better chance than we’ve had for a long time to ask questions about work and workplaces. We have taken it for granted that work can be drudgery as we participate in the machinery of industry.

Ergo’s development of the concept of generative workplaces has incorporated a variety of dimensions that have been well studied and understood, including workplace wellbeing and organisational health. But de Botton’s straight forward question above is the nub of it for me. A generative organisation is one that facilitates meaningful work.

On one level this is about stakeholder engagement. Especially staff. To what extent do employees experience meaning and joy as people in the course of their work? At another level it is about the meaningful contribution of the organisation to society. The two are clearly related, but the capacity of leaders to keep people connected with the greater social purposes of enterprise appear to be sorely lacking. It goes without saying of course that the tragedy is that many, many enterprise leaders have themselves lost touch with a vision and purpose beyond wealth generation.

I hope that the current climate might prompt more people to ask the meaning question in the prime of their careers, rather than having to walk the well worn path that throws up the questions as wallpaper for a midlife crises.

I’d love to hear your thoughts. How would you answer this question?

“What conditions allow you to experience meaningfulness in your work?”

One of the little problems to be resolved today is associated with our partnership with Deakin University’s Org. Psych. Department. We are exploring a psychometrically valid instrument to assess the “generativity” of an organisation. This has emerged from our work over many years now to understand the phenomena which we have described as a generative organisation, and in particular, generative business. The problem we’ve got is that the established categories don’t fit. There are established models for “organisational health’, wellbeing in the workplace’, CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility), sustainability, ethics, and more. But when we talk about generativity we are talking about a combination of these and more …. not more broad, but more deep.

How do we not reinvent the wheel, yet do the nuances of our thesis justice? We want to assess the nature of organisations that enliven people, that energise people to produce the best they can from their core strengths in an environment in which they can be thoroughly themselves. In parallel with this generative organisations generate positive change in the community, society, market in which they operate.

Will let you know how we go.

I am anticipating a great event this weekend. Three amazing people (Steve, Pat and Mel) who have all worked with us at some stage, are running an event in Donkey Wheel House. (Donkey Wheel is an organisation, of which I am Chair, that is developing a social enterprise hub in the heart of Melbourne.)

Trampoline (www.trampolinemelb.com ) will bring together 100 energetic, intelligent people for an ‘unconference’. Check it out. I look forward to reporting on that too.

Reading Natural Capitalism  when it was released a few years back was the first time I was introduced to the idea of zero waste. Traditionally recycling has been about reducing the volume of landfill and being smarter about re-using the same materials. Paul Hawkins and others are now painting a vision that everything we manufacture is to return for whence it came. Further, the idea is that the manufacturer has accountability for the entire lifecycle of their product.

If you, like me, have thought that dealing with rubbish is a bit 70s, think again.

The Economist recently ran a special report on waste. An introduction article included this,

“The stretch of Pacific between Hawaii and California is virtually empty. There are no islands, no shipping lanes, no human presence for thousands of miles - just sea, sky and rubbish. The prevailing currents cause floatsam from around the world to accumulate in a vast becalmed patch of ocean. In places, there are millions of pieces of plastic per square kilometre. That can mean as much as 112 times more plastic than plankton, the first link in the marine food chain. All this adds up to perhaps 100m tonnes of floating garbage, and more is arriving every day.”

The article goes on to list an array of stories describing the unbelievable volume of waste that is accumulating around the world.

I have been musing about this in the context of digesting Thomas Friedman’s sharp little piece called The Inflection is Near? (Thanks to the Trevor, Mohan and Chris who, within 24 hours,  independently suggested I read this short NYTs article)  In it Friedman articulates so succinctly what many have been intuiting .. . 2008 will become known, not just for the GFC (Global Financial Crisis), but as the point in human history where we hit the wall - the time “… when Mother nature and the market both said: ‘No More’”.

We are on the cusp of deep and fundamental change.

We have lived a myth. Through the industrial revolution and the years beyond it, we have thought that we have been generating wealth. But real wealth is surely sustainable. It is not about a time constrained enjoyment of riches that sticks its head in the sand with respect to the prevailing reality. Instead of passing on wealth to our children and their children, we are passing on a world in decay. We have plundered limited resources to cultivate a way of life that we thought included endless growth and progress. The scrap heap is not a fantasy, it real. And as Friedman reminds us, “Mother Nature doesn’t do bailouts.”

The current issue of Company Director is cover to cover about managing in the economic context of 2009. These are critical discussions. There is so much at stake when we are talking about jobs. But I am reminded that if the economic lens is the only one through which we assess the state of the world, and the only one via which we measure our success, they are gloomy days indeed.

Last night, as I braced myself for another week away from Maria and our four children, I reminded myself again that balance is not about working less … it’s about ensuring there are other things in life that solicit my best energies and passions. What is there in my life that I hang out to invest time and effort in. As much as I enjoy the challenges of business, I am lucky, lucky, lucky that I’ve got an amazing life outside ‘organisational effectiveness’. I hope the tough times cause us deep ponderance on what matters most in the scene of our whole lives.

Meanwhile, the balls I have in the air include being in PNG every second week, managing the business pressures of economic slowdown, all that goes with purchasing a caravan and vehicle to tow it with … not much margin in life at the moment.

I woke this morning knowing the best thing I could do was go for a swim. I lay there thinking about how easy to justify another 45 minutes rest. Sooo tempting. I’m glad now that I chose the swim … feeling ready to take on the day.