If it is a despot you would dethrone, see first that his throne erected within you is destroyed. For how can a tyrant rule the free and the proud, but for a tyranny in their own freedom and a shame in their own pride?

In the pursuit of systems change, many of us operate with a cognitive tendency that bears examination. There exists a common pattern of mistaking knowledge alone for wisdom, content for context, and information for understanding.

"Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anaemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against...

I never chose vulnerability. It chose me.

I recently found myself in a challenging conversation with one of my most trusted friends. I'd made what I thought was a useful observation, only to witness their upset, and immediate withdrawal. My intention had been to help, to be...

We live in a culture that too often confuses pain with progress. Nowhere is this more evident than in the impact sector, where the narrative of necessary suffering takes root in frequently under-resourced and overworked teams.

We're living in an era when many of the great social, economic and environmental experiments humanity has been engaged in over centuries are failing, or have already failed. And while it's true that the only constant is change, I've...

The most challenging element of working to rethink, redesign and rebuild systems to be more effective, efficient, and equitable, is that it demands making the abstract visceral.

When it comes to redesigning our social, organisational, and economic systems, there’s a dynamic tension between equity, effectiveness and efficiency that is essential to maintaining balance, especially in high-stakes situations.

Over the last few articles we’ve been exploring the principle of equity, and how it relates to engagement, participation, ownership, and governance. At the core, every impact entrepreneur is concerned with equity, and lives with the...

We all know that impact projects have a history of being funded, designed, and executed by those outside the communities they seek to serve. No matter how well-intentioned, this approach perpetuates a cycle where those with power,...

As a facilitator, there’s one acknowledgment I believe all participants must embrace:

Conferences in the impact sector have become almost ritualistic, drawing people from around the world to share ideas, network, and, theoretically at least, create change. Yet Impact conferences are still falling short. We gather with...

Both the world, and the business-of-change that has sprung up to support it, are in crisis. The models we’ve built our organisations around are crumbling under the weight of the very problems we seek to solve. We can no longer pretend...

As impact entrepreneurs, we’re wired to see opportunity where others see failure. We’ve been trained to believe that every crisis holds a silver lining, some hidden path to growth. But the uncomfortable truth is that not all...

For impact entrepreneurs and non-profit leaders, burnout has become so normalised that we almost wear it like a badge of honour. The relentless pursuit of change often comes at a personal cost, and many leaders find themselves walking...

In the world of impact entrepreneurship, there’s an unrelenting pressure to maintain an optimistic outlook, regardless of the challenges faced. We’ve become masters at reframing setbacks as “learning opportunities” and putting a...

Jumping into any sort of venture is always exciting at first. We’re in a creative headspace, and anything is possible. We don’t want to get hampered by minutiae, because that’s the fastest way to kill a good idea. We need space to...

Demanding integrity is not an unreasonable philosophical position for anyone to take. Expecting it, however, results in an unseen form of psychological warfare, that while damaging to our relationships with others, is rooted in an...

Founder’s Syndrome is a condition in which visionary leaders fall prey to the cognitive bias that nobody could possibly understand their venture’s purpose and how to achieve it better than them — resulting in an organisation that feels...

For those unfamiliar with the term, the “Valley of Death” is that charming stretch of time where a startup wanders through a desolate wasteland of emptying bank accounts, increasing credit lines, unreturned investor calls, long sales...

There’s an old adage: "When the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."

“Every one lives by selling something, whatever be his right to it.”

Failing to treat our customers as partners in achieving our purpose is unconscionable if we have any interest in creating a more just, equitable and loving world.

The most challenging thing about finding one’s self in crisis, is being willing to call it what it is. While it may be a word that is almost guaranteed to produce a strong psycho-emotional response, it comes from the Greek krisis,...

Unless we act now, the 2030 Agenda could become an epitaph for a world that might have been.1

The human species is extraordinarily creative. The history of humanity—from capturing fire to firing ourselves into space—bears testament to our capacity to invent, reinvent, adopt, adapt, rebuild, and reimagine ourselves, our world,...

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) describe the list of global challenges that need to be addressed, and fast, if all life on this planet is to thrive. Updated estimates suggest that the price tag for achieving the SDGs has risen...

Digital technology has been a boon for the social impact sector, enabling the creation of more accessible online tools, services and education in the communities most impacted by wicked problems like climate change, or access to clean...

Cancel culture is often the selective application of outrage to an individuals’ actions in the absence of context. Rather than seeking to highlight behaviours that may be detrimental to the wellbeing of society, it conflates who people...

Systems engineering firm Sphaera, and impact consultancy Uncompromise have merged and relaunched as Armillaria to focus on co-creating critical digital infrastructure to rapidly scale efforts to achieve the United Nations’ Sustainable...

Love comes with a knife, not some shy question, and not with fears for its reputation!~ Rumi

— Want to cut to the chase? Click here to download the concept note —

January 16, 2017

The business of change is brutal. At times it is glorious, uplifting and inspiring, certainly, but the real work, the work of solving the most pressing human challenges is arduous, heart-breaking and, at times, interminable. It is...

Dear America,

Today is Martin Luther King Day. I woke up this morning to a feed full of inspiring quotes from a great man, most of which exhort tolerance, love, compassion, forbearance — the essential and gentler side of change. At this time, when...

Successful entrepreneurs share one fundamentally common trait — they identify gaps in a market and develop a solution to generate, at the very least, a measurable, replicable and sustainable result.

The Jewish people I've met in Israel so far have been both inquisitive and dead-pan. I'm never entirely sure if they're being serious, but this is pretty much how my conversation at lunch today with the waitress went.

Firstly, the bad news ...

Social media channels - like global media generally - have a tendency to be dominated by the US - due almost exclusively to their sheer volume of users. In the world of social and environmental enterprise - where global participants are...

For the past week or so, every now and again - and completely without warning - I've found tears pooling at the corners of my eyes and sliding down my cheeks. Sometimes I've been unaware of them until cool air, or the taste of salt, or...

As #occupy, #socent and the #socmed savvy socialists sharpen their pitchforks and coil up the rope, I rest secure in the knowledge that here, in a friend's house on the coast north of Byron Bay, it's too windy for the blazing fires of...

I’m fortunate to have been working with changemakers for more than 15 years. It’s inspiring, humbling and frequently frustrating work.

In the seventeen years I've been working with sustainable ventures I've made some bad decisions. Decisions that have cost me time, money and friendships.

Some lessons are hard learned ... and despite everything I know about running a sucessful consultancy, I've been stung several times over the years as a consequence of not sticking to an effective framework.

I certainly wasn't an early adopter of Facebook - not in a global sense, definitely, although, perhaps, amongst my peers, I was one of the first to stare into the abyss of the world's most highly monetized relationship database (I'm...