#4, Upgrading Democracy, with Lyn Carson

This episode is part of a series on purpose. 
In episode 28 we will be exploring a specific angle, the question of purpose through the business lens.
 My guest for this episode is Phil Preston. Phil used to work in the finance world, more specifically he was in the investment realm, overseeing 50 Billion dollars of global investments. But in 2007, he starting asking himself “Why am I doing this?”. This question lead him to build his current business two years later, in 2009, where he now a speaker a facilitator and a consultant, whose mission is to bring more purpose to the business world. We exchange on how businesses can embed purpose into their values, whether it is through their mission statement, their KPIs, or their culture, and generally what it takes to have a whole company following a purpose that is not simply “making money” but also having a cause, how to get the business to commit to that decision, and what are the challenges and rewards that such a business faces along the way.

The Great Unravelling has started and will be part of our story for the rest of our life. It is an ineluctable dismantling of the fabric of life as we know it, leading to rapid and at times violent, changes to human societies. It is the result of humans pushing the boundaries of our planet beyond sustainable levels, leading among others to climate change, but also rapid loss of biodiversity, pressure on freshwater, and more. We are currently going through an acceleration of the Great Unravelling due to the confluence of the environmental crises with other crises. While the 2020-2030 decade will be affected by disasters of unprecedented scale, it will also be the decade of unprecedented societal transformation as a way to adapt to these. In Australia, there has been an enormous wave of community activities that have sprung since the Black Summer bushfire season and Covid-19. The confluence of crises have led to a realisation that we can’t continue living the way we do. Mindfulness, resilience and regeneration are emerging as key ways to navigate the Great Unravelling. There is a thirst for social and environmental connection and as a result an innumerable amount of grassroots community initiatives are springing.

About Dr Jean S. Renouf

Jean is an academic at Southern Cross University, a firefighter and a dad. Prior to this, Jean spent years implementing emergency relief projects in disaster zones and countries at war, including Afghanistan, Congo, Haiti, Iraq, North Korea, etc. All of this informs his passion for climate change, community regeneration & resilience and non-traditional security, and led him to found Resilient Byron.

Episode 25 was recorded live on stage during the first FutureSeeds event, on May 26th 2021.

Mara Bun is a true legend. She has been a non-executive director of Australian Ethical for the past five years. She was the founding CEO of Green Cross Australia, an organisation set up in 1993 by Mikhail Gorbachev to create a new approach to solving the world’s most pressing environmental challenges. In early 2018 it was also announced that she will become the first female President of the Australian Conservation Foundation.


Previously, Mara has worked for The Wilderness Society, Greenpeace Australia, CHOICE, the CSIRO and a number of financial organisations, including Macquarie Bank, Morgan Stanley, and as a director of Allen Consulting Group. Mara has also worked for The World Bank on an earthquake reconstruction project in Nepal. She was a Director on the Board of Bush Heritage Australia for ten years and a member of the NSW Sustainable Energy Development Authority Advisory Council for six years. Mara studied economics and political studies at Williams College, Massachusetts.

Video version available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGK7m3RBQeE&t=4s

Episode 24 is the second part of my interview with Donnie Maclurcan. In episode 23, we explored the roots of capitalism, its pros and cons, how money is created, what’s missing in economic models, and the problem that arises with too much privatization of wealth. Episode 24 focuses on the shift from a world ran by private individual for-profit businesses, to a world lead by non-for-profits organizations, and how this movement is already taking place worldwide. We also describe the believes and fear that make people hold on to misleading capitalist values, and how to discuss the benefits of shifting our economic system with a defender of modern liberal capitalism.

Donnie is an Affiliate Professor of Economics at Southern Oregon University and an Executive Director of the Post Growth Institute - an international organization exploring how people, companies and nature can thrive together, within ecological limits. He's taught at the Institute for Sustainable Futures, in Sydney, and at the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability, in Bristish Columbia

In this episode, I interview Shadé Zahrai. Shadé is a coach, entrepreneur, keynote speaker and mindset expert. She has the most impressive portfolio: Telstra Women’s Business Award, New York Times, Yahoo Finance, Forbes, Adriana Huffington’s Thrive Global, Westpac, and TED and TEDx presenter. In the previous episode, we explored the PERMA Model, a model for happiness designed by Martin Seligman, the father of positive psychology, and we also spoke about the five inner critics that hold us back and keep us from thriving. In this episode, Shadé gives her antidote to the inner critics, how to consciously break vicious mental cycles and change our thoughts. We also discuss many other topics such as compassion, fear, purpose and meaning, money and work-life balance.

About the speaker

Shadé Zahrai is recognised for her superhuman ability to translate neuroscience and psychology research into practical, actionable strategies to accelerate success. As Principal and Director of her positive-leadership company, Influenceo Global Inc., she consults, trains and coaches leaders and teams from startups to Fortune-500s, breathing life into organisational culture to enhance change-readiness for transformation, increase engagement, support the development of people-centric strategies and boost commercial performance.

In this episode I interview Shadé Zahrai. Shade is a former lawyer but she also holds a Bachelor in Psychology, a Diploma in positive psychology and has also trained to be a leadership coach. The list of her mentions and achievements is really impressive, just to name of few: she was twice a finalist for the Telstra Women in Business awards, she is a TED and TEDx presenter and she was featured in The New York Times, Yahoo Finance, Forbes, Adriana Huffington's Thrive Global, Vice, the Daily Mail, and many more. What the Internet says of her is that she has supernatural abilities to translate neuroscience and psychology research into practical, actionable strategies to accelerate success.
As such, in this episode, Shade and I explore the positive psychology model for Happiness, namely the PERMA Model, and then go through the different voices, the different inner critics that haunt us and often keep us from thriving.

In this episode, I interview Dorset Campbell-Ross. Dorset is a counsellor, certified in non-violent communication. He is also an NLP Master Practitioner and Hypnotherapist, codependency lecturer, seminar leader, and mediator. He has conducted business and personal relationship trainings all around the world, and has mediated between groups of people in conflict in Ireland, Indonesia and Australia.
In episode 19 we explored the four steps of NVC, namely observation, feelings, needs and requests. Episode 20 is more of a role-play in which Dorset shows us with examples the way he would approach difficult conversations in different contexts: in a workplace, in a relationship and with a friend. He also gives valuable tips on written communication (emails and text messages), and sends a beautiful message to the world at the end of this interview, embedded with a deep desire for peace.