So many conversations with people spiral back to exclamatory comments about the security, the lack of basic functionality and the myriad of fascinating social realities that obscure the view of the so called ‘real PNG’ from people like me. You leave this place feeling like you’ve never actually been here. I got in the lift one day in the hotel and a total stranger said out loud, “Why am I in jail, I’ve done nothing wrong?”

Just one experience can change everything. I was talking yesterday with a permanent expat resident, and he was relaying the story of how some people downplay the security risk. He commented how that all changes when they experience violence.

Our view of the world (every event, relationship, thing, place, philosophy, ….) is totally shaped by what we understand based on our experiences. This is both legitimate and nothing. It is legitimate because it’s all we have. And, let’s face it, I know stacks of stuff, I’ve had 45 years of sucking in knowledge and experience. I’d be a psychological wreck if I didn’t have confidence in my view of the world.

It is nothing because there are an infinite number of ‘experience cocktails’  that interpret reality. Everyone, from every social reality; royalty, criminals, marginalised, centred, every scenario, sees their world through their complex baggage of personality and experiences. And then there are a near infinite number of places and cultures to be experienced. In the scheme of things I know nothing. About anything.

This is not just a size thing. For example, we could argue that in the extraordinary size of the universe where the numbers of zeros become meaningless, the earth we live on is nothing. And it is everything. This is different than what I mean, because we know that the earth is unique in its capacity to cultivate life. So there is an objective specialness about the earth. The metaphor would be true to what I am trying to say if there were millions of earths. From the perspective of those that live on them, their world is everything. In the scheme of things they know virtually nothing about everything there is to know.

How do we hold the legitimacy and the relative nothingness of our perspectives together? I think by humility. We can argue strongly for our view. We can ensure our knowledge and experience adds value. We must back ourselves and our judgements when the call is ours to make.

But we recognise that wisdom comes not from the cleverness of an argument for a particular perspective but from the ability to account for different ones. We will always hold and offer our views lightly; they are not objective reality, they are our view of reality. This mix of strong conviction and openness to other views is a rare attribute. In my view, it will be a key one for leaders to navigate the complexities of the world in which we now find ourselves.

a shot from the first trampline earlier in the year

I loved hearing about ‘edge theory’, learning how to be funny from a professional comedian, listening to some intelligent commentary on intergenerational learning, thinking about how simplistically we have used computers in education … and overall loved the generosity and energetic dynamic that Pat, Steve and Mel facilitated. You guys are legends.

The day left me with apparently conflicting reflections. One the one hand there is nothing new under the sun. The energy and passion of (mostly young) people who are seeking to cultivate a better world will always be.

But every season brings new opportunities and on the other hand there is a compelling argument that the shifts we are experiencing now, with the perfect storm precipitated by climate change and evolving economic systems will bring genuine revolution.

I wonder about leadership. I looked around the room and loved the spirit. But energy, passion, intelligence and vision is not enough. I am one of those who thinks that personal character makes the difference between being a frustrated, the-world-owes-me-something type and those that are able to leave their mark. And personal character is marked not by cleverness or opportunism. It is forged through perseverance in suffering, discipline and intentional humility. It comes from a well formed view of the meaning of life, one that enables us to live in service of a cause bigger than ourselves. That’s what I reckon anyway.

My experience on Saturday gives me hope. Scattered among the brilliance and vision was the right stuff … I look forward to the future if it can be shaped by people like some of those at Trampoline.

Today I join thousands of other bloggers around the world in discussing Climate Change. www.blogactionday.org The encounter with my fellow passenger raises (at least) two interesting questions for me. What permission do we have to call each other on unsustainable practices? And how do we make judgements about our own hypocrisy?

What’s the relationship between climate change and so called work life balance? Both are related to healthy and sustainable living. Most people I know would say they struggle with so called work life balance. I think the real issue though is not about balance, it is about integrity. Integrity is about making sure the way we behave is aligned with what we say is important. If the people I love the most really are the most important thing, then my behaviour should demonstrate that; now – not in 10 years when I’ve managed to ‘free up’ some time. Too late then. So the problem is not that I work too much, it is that I haven’t cultivated a compelling life outside work.

The bloke in 21D might have thought I was overdoing it (with my heavy reading agenda on the plane while he sips his complementary red). I knew I had some activity planned for the rest of the week that tapped into other passions beside work. But I love that he called me on it. I hope desperately that society will shift in ways called for in the Prosperity Without Progress Report so that being addicted to work will become socially unacceptable, not as a regressive prohibition, but because it reflects an absence of other healthy stuff that cannot coexist with it. And it will be OK to dob in a workaholic.

The problem most of us have, I think, with changing our behaviour so we are part of the solution to damaging climate change, is that we are addicted to an unconstrained-carbon-lifestyle. We are carbon-aholics, without even knowing it, or caring. I think the solution to workaholism is not to coach ourselves to ‘work less’, it is to develop passions that compel us to stop work. In the same way, as carbon-aholics, we must change our view of the world so that we learn to appreciate, like and even love activity that is part of the solution.

For example, we need to learn to love buying local food so we do not perpetuate unsustainability of ‘food miles’, or we need to learn to love riding our bikes whenever possible, or we need to appreciate the discipline associated with turning appliances off, or we need to reset our idea of holidaying to exclude air travel.

We will move to a healthy and progressive carbon-constrained economy via action at all levels of society. As much as it is up to business (shifting the economy) and government (legislative incentive), it is also clearly up to each of us to do our little bit. I hope you can develop an appreciation of some behaviours and lifestyle options that provide incentive to give up some carbon.

Spring in Melbourne. Teased by the weather. Last weekend in shorts and T-shirt cleaning up the back yard, trimming, mulching, wiping down the furniture and re-hanging the hammock. Come on spring. This weekend, wind, rain and cold. Resistance is useless so go with the flow and pretend that we’re not ‘so over winter’. For us that meant an open fire (first for the year), a massive pot of tolouse sauage and borlotti bean soup and the Concert in Central Park quietly playing in the background. Donning the rain coats and walking down to Ceres to catchup with friends, and oh yeah, screaming at the screen during the AFL Grand Final.

I love fruitcake, but a good one is almost impossible to buy. I’m sure I could find a Lions Christmas cake in September if I looked hard enough but …  Our local supermarket used to stock something called a ‘celebration cake’ – ordinary name but top shelf quality. Alas, no-one else must have thought so because ‘used to’ is the operative phrase. What’s a bloke to do? Go with the flow? I don’t think so.

Enter Alan Campion and Michelle Curtis’ Italian spicy fruit cake. Never made one before but when Coles lets you down what can you do? I had a slither to taste it when it came out of the oven, but decided to wait until a cup of Tetley’s had brewed later in the evening to savour it properly. Initial impressions were excellent and I wondered if I should perfect a recipe and challenge the old hands whose handiwork we had seen on display at the Royal Melbourne Show on Friday.

I was sitting in the car waiting to pick up Heidi from netball training … it was cold and wet outside and I was already tasting the combination of tea and cake. Then Zac calls. Him and two of his mates are going to the Red Triangle (iconic pool hall in Brunswick Street), do I want to join them? Opportunities to do stuff with your 19 year old son don’t come around too often. But it’s late already. The fire is still going at home. And the fruit cake. Decisions. I said ‘no’.

I sat in the car and waited for Heidi for another couple more minutes. Decisions. I had plans. Why tonight? I’ve created a nice little evening for myself. I called back…

… and crawled into bed three hours later satisfied that the tea and cake will be waiting for me another time.

Life is a relentless series of decisions. Go with the flow or create your own reality? May you make some wise calls this week.

There are two ways that a commitment to quality expresses itself in delivering value at work. One is expressed through another of our participation behaviours.

But I think the more significant way that quality is demonstrated is via a pervasive attitude. It’s not so much about the little things, the extras, the fine tuning: it’s about the overall philosophy. Indeed, the ‘trimmings’ get their meaning from the context and the overarching commitment to a particular way of being.

Quality is about at least substance and design. Neither is sufficient on its own. The best substance can be lost if the presentation doesn’t invite engagement and appreciation. A business development proposal can articulate a great solution, but if it is not presented in a way that is clean and attractive the substance will likely be lost. Clearly, design without substance also doesn’t work … it leaves a hollow sense of unmet expectations.

Quality is one of those contagious things I think. A long time ago in this blog I talked about how our office helped breed an increased commitment to quality. My experience of high quality hospitality on Friday night has helped me lift the bar for myself this week.

Have a look around and see what you can plug into to lift the bar for yourself. Ponder the design of your Mac, take in the architectural genius of the surrounding buildings, listen to an inspiring speech from TED, or smell a rose. And be inspired.

At Ergo, we have developed a custom that has served us well by minimising the errors and improving the quality of official documents. Among our nine participation behaviours which line the walls in our stairwell is this one, we call it ‘collaborate and validate’:

Collaborate & Validate
Value the input of others and be confident to offer your own. If you don’t know – ask. If you know something useful – share it. Ensure someone else has given input on the quality of your work with the opportunity to “make it better”.

The habit of shooting our work to a colleague with the subject line ‘make it better’ has helped us reduce the number of typo level errors but also allows others to offer strategic input into our work. Simple but effective.

If you are interested in our other participation behaviours, you can see them here.

It got me thinking again of the wisdom of Alain de Botton’s The Art of Travel. One of his significant reflections is the idea that we always ‘take ourselves’ on holidays. The palm trees and white sand are impotent against the absence of inner peace, and inner peace is cultivated in the normal routines of everyday life.

It can be easy to look at the jobs of others and imagine how good it would be. Of course there are important shaping realities about the kinds of work we do, the workplace environment and the people with whom we work. However, I wonder whether the most significant determining factor in job satisfaction is our overall wellbeing.

The key to being productive and satisfied at work is being productive and satisfied in life. I’m sure there have been studies done somewhere, but I reckon it would be interesting to see how things like physical healthiness, hobbies, community engagement, family relations etc influence how satisfied we feel at work.

Curious if anyone has any thoughts on this.

So moving on to more ‘white people msuings’ I want to dedicate this post to Dell and Kelsy (not their real names but you know who you are.) Dell and Kelsy are colleagues at an organisation we worked with a few years back and they say nice things about this blog. In my recent silence they were kind enough to ask if I was OK. Dell and Kelsy leadership roles but do not have much scope for discretion or flexibility. It is easy to feel stuck.

One of the things I am learning from my partner Maria is that there is always choice. There is always choice, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t consequences in the wake of those choices. You can do anything you want. Really. You could speed. You could run naked through the streets. You could move to Antarctica. You could make peace with an enemy. You could shave your head. You could quit your job and try to live off next to nothing and experiment with self-sufficiency. Weigh up the consequences and then make courageous choices. We only have one life.

Without exercising our choice, life happens to us. Of course there is heaps of stuff that does happen to us, we really don’t have choice except from how we deal with it. What I am talking about is the capacity to move beyond the habits and momentum of the status quo and choose the things that we wish for.

The parallel thought that goes with this, is that if we weigh up the consequences and determine to maintain the status quo, we need to choose to do so. Embrace the positives of our current situation and suck the marrow out of it.

Now I don’t pretend making significant choices is easy. I do know that change is hard and we all need encouragement to exercise courage. Especially in the workplace and family; inertia and poor habits are too often swept under the carpet. Sometimes it all feels too hard. It is hard, but it’s not too hard.

How’s this for some kitchen table philosophy? Deeply satisfying things in life don’t just happen, they come from hard fought battles with discipline and courage. That’s what I reckon anyway.

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.