This century it is estimated there will be 1 billion tobacco related deaths globally, up from 100 million last century.

While this stat is confronting in itself, especially given the fact that these deaths are entirely preventable, the fact that many of us unknowingly invest our superannuation and retirement savings in tobacco related businesses makes this confrontation personal.

And you can imagine the incongruence when Dr Bronwyn King, a Melbourne oncologist who sees the devastating impact of tobacco on people’s lives on a daily basis, discovered that her superannuation was also being invested in tobacco stocks.

Very shortly after making this discovering she found herself presenting to the leadership of her hospital about this contradiction, and soon thereafter founded the not-for-profit organisation Tobacco Free Portfolios.

Tobacco Free Portfolios engage quietly behind the scenes with finance leaders to educate them on the impact of investment in tobacco, with the aim of de-normalising this practise. As Bronwyn says, if we were designing the system today, we would not make it automatic that people invested their savings in tobacco businesses.

Today there are 35 superannuation funds that are tobacco free in Australia, helping reduce even further Australia’s low rate of smoking. Seeing the Tobacco Free Portfolio logo on a financial product will become a way of quickly identifying those that do not invest in the tobacco industry.

Bronwyn and her team are doing so amazing work that is changing perceptions of normality about tobacco investment, and indirectly enabling people globally to have longer and fuller lives.

Bronwyn is engaging and articulate, and I hope you enjoy our conversation.

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When my guest for this week, Corey Wastle, and his cofounder James O’Reilly founded Verse Wealth, they knew they wanted to do things a little differently. Having a background in corporate financial planning, and witnessing first-hand the fees-first approach most planners took, Corey knew pretty early on that this approach did not sit well with him. And he wanted to create something that did.

For him that meant getting back to the actual purpose of financial planning: to help clients achieve their financial goals so they can achieve their life goals. In an industry many people are skeptical of, this would involve a very different way of doing things, and getting clear on some core principles upfront. Things like transparency in the way they work and not charging commissions on products they recommend.

Taking the time to define what was important for their new business’ culture, Corey and James created a foundation of clarity and integrity upon which their business is now built.

It probably comes as no surprise but I really enjoy talking with people, especially one-on-one. And this is one of the things that struck me after my conversation with Corey: in the process of meeting clients for the first time Verse Wealth take a considerable amount of time to talk with them; to understand the deeper motivations behind their financial desires; to ask them question that perhaps nobody has ever asked them before; and to create a safe place where inner thoughts can be shared and ideas worked through.

Corey and Verse Wealth are taking a different approach not only to financial planning, but also to the way they are designing and shaping their organisation. I hope you enjoy listening to our conversation.

If you enjoyed listening to Corey you might also enjoy listening to Harvey Pene and Ben Walker on purposeful accounting, or Mark Daniels on social procurement.

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When he walks into the room there is something that makes me want to sit down with him for what I know would be a long, deep, and fascinating chat. And there is something about him that makes me think he would welcome and enjoy it just as much as I would.

For a self-proclaimed introvert, Dr Jason Fox sure doesn’t seem like it. My guest this week has the look of somebody who knows who he is, is completely comfortable expressing this the way he wants to express it, and could walk up to any group, at any gathering, and be the life of the party. The blazer, the brogues, the quirky mannerisms when he speaks on stage – Jason has taken what some might consider to be uncool and irredeemable and turned them into a statement about what is stylish, relevant, and authentic.

As our conversation starts to unfold I begin to realise that this truely isn’t an act or an exterior facade, but something that seems to have permeated all aspects of his life. Perhaps a better description is that who he is at his core flows out into all aspects of his life. For example, an academic by training, Jason talks and writes with humour and accessibility. There is no feeling of superiority when you are with him, rather there is a sense of generosity and truely wanting the best for you.

But it is in how this understanding of who he is has flowed into his work that I find most interesting. In an era of startups, fin/bio/nano tech, warehouses converted into coworking spaces, and where it is fashionable to poke fun at multi-national corporations and those who work there, Jason has picked the established and mainstream meeting rooms of the corporate world over the startup world as the very target of his work. In some ways he sees this as being a more comfortable fit for him as he believes he can more easily impress those who work at corporates. Corporates seem to be more hungry for his input because they know that things aren’t working there, and they want something new and better and more meaningful. There is a humility and willingness to change that you sometimes don’t find in a self-assured startup.

And although the complexities of big multinationals make implementing significant change difficult, the potential for fast and far-reaching change is profound. Can you imagine the implications of socially and environmentally conscious change inside corporates like Pepsico, McDonalds, Suncorp and the CSIRO – corporates that Jason influences and works with on a daily basis?

Jason is the author of two books (The Game Changer, How to Lead a Quest), a sought after keynote speaker, and an expert in motivation and work design. He is on his very own quest to rid the world of poorly designed work. The kind of work that kills brain cells, drains motivation, and leaves people wondering what the point of the work is, who it benefits, and how it ties back to the goal of their organisation. In its place, Dr Fox implements elements that make work fun and that give people a regular sense of progress. As he puts it, he helps people make progress through doubt and uncertainty and unprecedented work. He enjoys nothing more than helping forward thinking leaders use motivational science and design to create well designed work.

It was through a curiosity about two things that led Jason to his breakthrough ideas. The first curiosity was about the effectiveness of video games in getting people to work so hard at something where they spent so much time failing. The second curiosity was through the observation that in setting and achieving SMART goals people were often prevented from seeing even better opportunities along the path. In disrupting ‘default thinking’ (which is great for efficiency but not so good for strategy, curiosity and empathy), Dr Fox encourages people to embrace self-doubt over certainly as this enables people to have an open instead of closed mind, and to ask themselves what setting fuzzier goals would look like.

In his book The Game Changer Jason’s number one tip for improving the design of work is to make progress visible. And in our conversation, his tip for those of us wanting to be subtle disruptors is to be active instead of passive in our consumption of information, by asking two questions:
– ‘yeah, but….’ (e.g. yeah but that won’t work because its already been done): this means we are thinking critically about the information we are presented with
– ‘yes, and…..’ (e.g. yes and that is like this other random thing over here that I heard about): this means we are thinking creatively about links between the information we are presented with, enabling us to join ideas from very diverse fields to create brand new thinking.

In asking these two questions we are then about to create our own thought leadership and have something valuable to share with others.

Sitting in The Everleigh cocktail bar in Collingwood’s Gertrude St and pondering some fascinating ideas with Dr Jason Fox is right up there with my favourite things to do. I hope you enjoy joining us for this fun and though provoking conversation.

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When Summer Edwards decided to become a mother, she had a suspicion that this would mean she would have to compromise having as much responsibility as she was used to at work. Sure, she would be able to continue working part-time, as she wanted to, but the reduction in hours would also mean a reduction in responsibility.

This did not sit right with her though. Why was this necessarily the case? Was it not possible to have a position of responsibility, and work part-time, and be a mother? She wondered if this the experience and expectation of other working mothers as well.

From the time I spent chatting with Summer on a beautiful Canberra afternoon, I got the impression that she has an understated way of asking a question, and if the answer she comes up with is not satisfactory, of not letting it go until she has found a way to take action to remedy the situation.

Another example of this is her wondering about whether the approach of only focusing on one thing at a time had universal merit. Wanting to work on three project concurrently, she would often get advice that it would be difficult to make this happen, and that putting all of her energy into one of those things was a better way to go.

Now running her own consulting business helping social enterprise communicate their stories (Social Impact Stories), building Lead Mama Lead – a network of women seeking to find flexible and responsible work, and through her slow and sustainable fashion blog Tortise & Lady Grey, she has found a way to weave these three projects together in a way that gives her flexibility and the challenge she wants in her work.

It was so good to have a chat with the first Canberran subtle disruptor, something that Summer is living in word and action. I hope you enjoy our conversation.

If you enjoyed listening to Summer, you might also enjoy listening to Sigrid McCarthy on sustainable fashion, Nicole Avery on working as a mum with a family, or Karen Ellis on living frugally.

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In that moment before something big happens; something that we look back on when studying history and can see the inevitability of what was to come; in that moment, are there people who are warning us about this thing? Asking us what are doing to prepare for it? Probing us to help us consider how things will be different when this thing happens?

I am not sure if my guest for this week, Andrew Macleod, would put himself up as a prophet or soothsayer, but he has some great insights into the geopolitical dynamics of our current context, and what this could mean for humans living over the next 20 – 100 years.

For example, it seems as if the era of Anglo/Christian domination is coming to an end, with countries like Russia and China establishing themselves as powerful equals at the very least. Andrew encourages us to think about what a change like this could mean for the way we live, to lift our eyes beyond our own time and culture to that of other eras and other ways of thinking.

Andrew has had a career that has taken him from post-conflict and natural disaster zones, to providing advice on corporate community interfaces. Author, speaker, businessman, board member and advisor: Andrew is compassionate, energetic and insightful, and I hope you enjoy listening.

If you liked listening to Andrew you may also enjoy listening to Gus Hervey on being intelligently optimistic about the future.

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Emma Sharley and I are sitting in the cafe of Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art. It is a place she comes to regularly to change the pattern of her thinking; to disconnect from her phone and the everyday hustle of her consulting business; and to connect with the work of an artist she probably doesn’t know too much about.

Through putting herself in situations like this that get her thinking differently, Emma is able to let the inspiration it brings impact the work she is doing. It nurtures the creative juices and brings her closer to her flow state. Something that is so important to what she brings to the table for all her clients.

Almost two years ago now Emma started her own brand and marketing consulting business, after working for the previous six years in a corporate role at Westfield. Making the change without really knowing where the gap in the market was, she spent three months hustling, coffee-ing, and planning, and came up with the formula and niche for her new business.

Realising that the middle and smaller tiers of retail clients were getting left behind in their marketing and customer experience expertise, and matching this with her love of working hand in hand with business stakeholders and decisions makers, Emma launched her business with the specific purpose of providing resources and strategic advice to these types of clients.

Now also working with property, lifestyle and tech clients, Emma quickly learnt the importance of being fearless, persistent, and consistent; of backing herself and trusting her gut; and of being clear on her purpose and the types of businesses she wanted to work with.

Other things we talk about and mentioned in this conversation include:
– understand and creating routines and structures around times when individual flow is optimal
– joining groups like a cowering spaces, or the League of Extraordinary Women, for support, accountability, mentoring and collaboration
– living and working across different cities
– Adam Grant’s book Give and Take

Emma has a great personality and down-to-earth way of talking about her process of moving from a corporate role to her own business. I hope you enjoy listening to our conversation.

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For the more aware of us, it takes no more than a feather to wake us up that we need to follow a different path.

For others, it takes something a bit more obvious, like a brick.

For most of us, I suspect it is not until we are hit by the steam train that we get the hint, and give ourselves permission to change the course of our lives.

I know this was the case for me, as it was for David Packman, my guest for this week.

A corporate executive in communications, he loved the money, perks and prestige his job gave him.

His feather was his sister taking her own life.

His brick was his mum dying of cancer.

His steam train was getting cancer himself.

Taking the hint he has made some big changes to the way he lives, including becoming a Buddhist, teaching meditation, and putting his communication skills to good use through The Good Men Project and The Sauce.

David is open about his journey and pain in the conversation we had together. Being with him left me feeling warm and connected. I hope you enjoy listening.

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I have this suspicion that one day I will become have vegetarian, or perhaps a vegan. It has been sitting there in the background for about six months, where I have parked it until I am ready to properly consider it.

My suspicion was born from a growing understanding of myself as the member of a species; a species that is a member of an ecosystem; an ecosystem in flux and change and one where I may not always be the most powerful or conscious. If there was a species or a thing that was more conscious or powerful than I was, how would I like it to treat me?

Jessica Ivers, my guest for this week, always had a love for animals, even travelling overseas to help save the endangered Orangutan.

But when asked why, if she cared so much about helping and saving animals, did she still eat them, it gave her cause to pause.

Instead of parking it, she grappled with this question and came to the decision that she could no longer consume animals products, becoming a vegan.

In the words of her friend Carmen Hawker, Jess ‘…is a social change maker, animal fosterer, vegan, digital media specialist and all round cool gal.’

You can read more about her on her website and blog, as well as The Reluctant Vegan website.

Jess is open and gracious with her time and explanations, and I hope you enjoy listening.

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This is the second of two slightly different episodes of the podcast Subtle Disruptors.

I have had a three-month break from releasing episodes, and before kicking off 2017 I wanted to think about the key themes that emerged during the 2016 interviews, and to ponder the areas I want to explore as I talk to people in 2017.

Last week I released the 2016 reflection episode, and this week I will be talking about the ideas I am curious about as I start 2017.

I started this podcast for a few reasons. During my gap year I was having some amazing conversations with everyday people all over Melbourne, people who were doing fascinating things in their life and work, with purpose and with meaning. People who were doing it in a way that was subtle and accessible, and in a way that could easily be implemented by others.

It got me thinking that there is so much good happening in the world that goes unnoticed and unpublished. I wanted to meet more of these kinds of people, to have more of these kind of conversations, and I wanted to provide a way for these stories to be told and for others to hear about them.

I had a suspicion that the types of people putting themselves out there in this way would often feel isolated in their quest, and to have a way to connect to others on a similar path would be encouraging and inspiring.

As I think about this I am trying to find a way to categorise these people – who they are and what they are doing. But perhaps the best way to describe them is why they are doing what they are doing.

They are doing it because they have listened to a deep seeded hunch about living in a way that is aligned with their own inner-nature, and aligned with the external-nature they find themselves living in. Not stopping at listening, they have had the courage to take a first step in following this hunch. And then another. And then another. Sometimes slipping. Sometimes pausing. Always feeling, being, questing.

For some this has meant leaving a job that was no longer aligned with them, to start or join something that was. For others this has meant changing the way they eat, where they live, what they spend their money on, or how they connect with others. The manifestations vary, but the underlying reasons seem consistent.

Some of my listeners have described a common trait among those I interview – something they described as egolessness. They are who they are, and doing what they are doing, not because of how it will make them look or what they stand to gain, but because it sits well with them, and its what they’re compelled to do.

It has been an honour to talk with and learn from these people in 2016. And in 2017 I want to go deeper and further, and with a tighter focus.

Over this three month break I have been struck by a number of thoughts. Initially they may not seem all that connected, but I hope as I dump them out I can also connect the dots.

The first is that humans are going to Mars within my life time. Will Dayble, A guy I am planning to interview this year, opened my mind to the audacity of this thought – how extraordinary that I am living at the exact moment when humans become an inter-planetary species.

This got me wondering about whether this was a good thing, what it would change in the way humans think of themselves and our planet. I watched TV shows such as Mars and researched this development.

The second thought come to me thanks to the book Homo Deus written by Yuval Noah Harari. Harari talks about how it is quite possible, also within my lifetime, that some humans will live for 150 years and beyond, will have everything they do monitored and informed by artificial intelligence, and in many ways will be unrecognisable as humans. We will have evolved to become a new species – post-human – not through biological evolution, but through technological evolution.

This idea of myself as a member of a species that was on the cusp of evolving rocked me. What are we becoming, and do we want to become this? Do we want to evolve? Do we have a choice? What about those who do not evolve? And how will this evolution change the way we think about ourselves and our ecosystem?

The third thought followed-on from this and came to me while watching the TV series Black Mirror and re-reading the book Neuromancer. Given the rate of change in technology, what kind of world are we going to inhabit in 20, 50 or 500 years time? How can I understand the change that is occurring? Do we have any power to shape, design or mould this? And if we do, how do we want to shape it?

I could summarise my change in thinking to that of understanding myself as a member of a species, one that is a very small part of an ecosystem, an even smaller part of a historical and future ecosystem, and an even smaller part of a historical and future universe.

Given this context and all its dimensions, including the temporal, biological, technological, ecological, historical, and spacial, and from these three thoughts, two key areas of exploration emerged:

1) What does it mean to live well in this moment, in this context, and how can we go about doing this?

2) What sort of world do we want to inhabit, want our ancestors to inhabit, and how can we harness our context and the change that is occurring around us to bring this into being?

These will be the two questions that focus my attention in a number of things I do this year, including my reading, my work, and of course as I interview people on Subtle Disruptors.

I hope to interview people who can help me understand the context I am living in, and the subtle changes that are happening around me. People who are actively trying to harness these things to bring about a future that more of our species, and our ecosystem, thrive within, what ever that may mean.

People, who while thinking and acting upon this quest, are also living well now, in this moment.

Next week I will start releasing new interview episodes.

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I am here to explore the mystery and wonder of existence through love and compassion.

Love and compassion for myself, through consciousness and wellbeing.

Love and compassion for others, through connection and conversation.

Love and compassion for Earth, the universe, and all the beings and objects they contain,

through understanding my context, through creation, contribution and curation.

These four sentences are something I remind myself of each morning after finishing meditation. It serves as a way to focus all my activity for the day – I want everything I do to link back to this in someway. And while these four sentences about why I am here will no doubt change over time, right now it is the best I can come up with about why I am here, and what I am to do.

In many ways it has emerged from what I have learnt and read over the past two years, and the 43 people I have talked with on the podcast.While having a break from releasing episodes was a difficult thing to decide at the time, two months later I can see how important it was.

It has enabled me to think about what I have learnt through the first year of episodes. It has enabled me also to move house, and start a new job – things that will allow me again to focus on creating meaningful episodes. And it has enabled me to ponder new ideas about our species, the way we live, and what may come next.

Over the next few weeks I will be releasing a couple of episodes about these themes, to reflect on what I have learnt and to talk about what I want to explore next. This week I look back on some of the themes that have emerged through the first season.

Theme 1: The primary importance of taking care of myself, taking care of ourselves, so that we can be the best we can be in each moment.

My thoughts about health and fitness have changed dramatically over the past two years. In the past my internal rationale for looking after myself was so that I could look good, and live a long time.

My focus has changed to looking after my insides, and to bringing my best to as many moments as I can.

I want to be present. I want to bring my best qualities to each moment. I want to create my best work. I want to feel well. I want to love people and understand as well as I can about where and when I am.

To do this means understanding what it means to look after myself, and then to put it into practise. There were a number of episodes that touch on this topic, including:

• Masha Gorodilova on meditation and yoga;
• Adrian Medhurst on mindfulness and performance;
• Matthew Hoo on nutrition and movement; and
• Georgia Clarke-Edwards on eating well.

These are all things I am steadily and incrementally building into my life, creating new baselines of what I am capable of as I go.

For me, the ‘steadily’ part of this is crucial. I am not interested in doing these things intensely for a month. I want to ingrain them as my default way of doing things; new way of living. Therefore I am not focused on how quickly I get there. Rather that I make regular progress.

Theme 2: Its time for all of us to be frank about experience of being human, and to be open and curious about the experience of others.

The time for pretending is over. This may be conscious, deliberate pretending. It may be unconscious, ignorant pretending. Either way, I think we hurt ourselves by denying the reality of our own experience, or that of others.

And by putting on a show, by distorting what is going on for us, no matter how subtle, we also make it more difficult for others to live well. This is magnified for those who have a voice, are on stage, are writing books, or publishing podcasts.

I don’t think this is binary. Allowing ourselves to be as we are takes courage, awareness, and trust in ourselves. And the training ground is our everyday interactions with others.

A number of my guests have made authentic connection a central part of their work:

• Carmen Hawker talked about feminism and finding a path through the hyper-masculinity of sport;
• Emeli Paulo is the embodiment of authenticity, and through Collective Potential empowers others to also experience this;
• Jamin Heppell works at redeeming the local sporting club as a place for young men and women to form their character;
• Jimmy Ferne shared about creating a place and culture where men can be vulnerable and connect with each other; and
• Shalini Samuel spoke on the creativity and beauty that comes from embracing diversity in all its forms.

Theme 3: The current shift in values about how we live together

In my own life my living arrangements have undergone a dramatic change over the past two years, including moving out of the city, living close to my parents, and being a single-dad for 1 week out of every two.

These changes have prompted me to think about the type of dwelling I want to live in, where it would be, how it would be designed, and who I would be living close to, and just how close I would want that to be.

My current thinking on this is evolving quickly – I want to live in a minimal way, where I only own things that give me joy. I want to live in a way that enables me to be part of a community of people living close together. And I want to live in a way that connects me to the planet, and the ecosystem I am a very small part of.

Here are some of the topics that were covered under this theme:

• Karen Ellis talked about the joy and benefits of living frugally
• Maria Cameron shared about the organic emergence of her suburban community
• Sigrid McCarthy talked about sustainability and mindfulness in fashion
• Kate Challis discussed the connection between the design of a place and our wellbeing
• Al Jeffery open me up to the concept of co-living; and
• Rebecca Lovitt talked about the liberation brought through choosing to live with constraints.

Theme 4: What it means to work, and the new ways people are going about it

In 2015, as a 37 year old, I took my first gap year. A supposedly risky thing to do,I told myself I would go backwards in my career; that I would erode my security and savings.

But despite my own words of caution I felt I could do nothing else. I was not able to maintain my wellbeing and keep working the way I was. I need to stop everything. To allow the things that were superfluous to fall away and to see what remained.

After creating a couple of new ventures of my own, I needed to return to paid employment while they were given time to grow.

In experiencing the shock of being back in an office, working 9-5, five days per week, I could not help but think about the places, the meaning, and design of our work.

Thankfully I had a number of guests to give me their wisdom on this theme along the way.

• Melina Chan talked about life in a co-working space, and the impact this is having on all workplaces
• Dr Jason Fox talked about engaging in uncertain, unprecedented work, and bringing meaning and a sense of regular progress to all we do
• Mykel Dixon and I drove around Melbourne talking about artisan thinking and the role of the artist within the workplace
• Jirra Lulla-Harvey and I looked over the Punt Road Oval, while she shared about the values inherent in the way Aboriginal entrepreneurs conduct business; and
• I sat with Jarrod Briffa in a building full of social enterprises, and discussed enabling customers to unknowingly become agents of social change.

Theme 5: Developing our contextual awareness and understanding

Through speaking with people, reading and reflecting, and perhaps unexpectedly, watching some amazing TV shows, my own understanding of the context within which I exist has greatly expanded.

The following books have been eye-openers for me:

• Sapiens – Homo Deus
• The Systems View of Life
• Debt: The first 5000 years

As well as the TV show Mars, and taking time to write my own blog.

And of course, speaking with, and reflecting upon, the words of the following guests:

• Cameron Elliott, who shared and sang about crowd-sourcing wisdom;
• Gus Hervey who talked about science and technology and being intelligently optimistic about our future; and
• I spoke with Matt Wicking about understanding and acknowledging the temporal, biological, historical, and spacial context within which we live.

I feel grateful for what I have learnt over the course of putting this podcast together, and for the people it has enabled me to meet. As I contemplate where the podcast goes from here, I don’t want to do more of the same. I want to build on these insights and explore new areas.

In the next episode I will talk about the questions I keep coming back to, what this could mean for the podcast.

And in the mean time, it would be great to hear your thoughts on your favourite episodes, and on the themes we covered last year. You can do this through our Facebook page, or through emailing me directly through [email protected]

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