Freedom in Captivity

Freedom in Captivity

There are two books that have had a lasting impact on me, redefining my relationship to tough circumstances. They are Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl and The Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela. Frankl miraculously survived years in a German concentration camp, when many simply gave up, hopelessly, and died. His book […]

What have you done?

What have you done?

This is the question I dread in every media interview. This question has brought me to tears of frustration many times, because I don’t have the words to fully describe the answer. The world wants a simple headline or an easily definable outcome to appease its primal energy-saving desire to simplify complexity. The world wants […]

Emergence (Part 2)

Emergence (Part 2)

She danced. When confronted by a video of her dancing in her youth, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was not embarrassed and did not play down this experience. Instead, she joyously danced into her Congress office and posted a video of it. This video exploded online, bringing her human, no-nonsense style to a whole legion of new voters […]

Transformational Spaces

Transformational Spaces

How can you create the momentum for transformation – without the resistance that comes with it? Whether in family relationships or large organisations, driving transformation head-on is often challenging and meets with significant resistance. One thing I have learnt, to overcome this, is to look for the spaces that can transform the culture of the […]

Unknown Knowns

Unknown Knowns

There’s a quote that I always remember, for some reason. It was from Donald Rumsfeld, then United States Secretary of Defense, prior to the Iraq War in 2002. “Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. […]

Lift and Shift

Lift and Shift

One of the easiest ways to create impact in our community is what we call the ‘lift and shift’. We take a non-local solution for a local challenge, and we put it on stage at one of our events. It is a breathtakingly simple move that inspires the emergence of community leadership that could apply […]

The Chaotic Improvement of the Average

The Chaotic Improvement of the Average

The world is getting better – a lot faster than we think. And yet, generally, we don’t feel it. A recent survey suggested that more than 9 out of 10 people believe the world is getting worse. This just isn’t the case. Extreme poverty is collapsing faster than anyone predicted. Life expectancy improvements are accelerating, […]

The Great Surfacing

The Great Surfacing

We live in strange times. Times when the collective noise in the news and online can be quite overwhelming. Fear, anger, rage and pain are appearing everywhere we look – and there seems to be no end to the rising tide. As individuals and in our communities, in ourselves and in the world, the darkness […]

Cultivating Grace

Cultivating Grace

How do I transform my own suffering to grace? This is the question I am asking myself most, at the moment. When I was growing up, I remember my mum often used to say: “Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the […]

Bridging Narratives

Bridging Narratives

There is more division in the world than ever before. The information age is partly to blame – its increasing technology-driven polarisation is driving a wedge between communities. We live in an era of radical ‘us and them’. Key institutions dominate control of the information we consume – and the trouble is, there is no […]