Are you ready to TRANSFORM?

No amount of quantative easing is going to get us out of the debt-laden society, economy and environment we now inhabit.

It is now all too apparent that we need a transformation to deal with the economic, ethical and ecological crises we now face. Time to transform; but to what – to a world full of austerity and rationing or more debt-fuelled consumption?

Can we learn from our mistakes?  Are the economic, social and environmental conditions we now face just the right conditions to stimulate our transformation?  The wise phrase rightly states ‘adversity reveals genius, prosperity conceals it’ and it is genius we now need to innovate and transform us beyond this perilous conundrum we find ourselves in.

All around us we see shoots of hope, of new ways, of transformative actions spawning from the innate human genius within each of us.  Rio +20 was flat and disappointing in terms of courageous leadership from current establishment politicians; yet at Rio +20 there was a vibrant plethora of exciting, ground-breaking, courageous initiatives emerging forth. We find many more of these examples of budding transformation in our local communities and organisations.  These initiatives are not fuelled by the desire for ever more austerity or ever more debt (the only two levers our current politicians seem capable of grabbing for).  They are fuelled through the ‘power of giving’ the synergistic energy that comes from getting involved and making stuff happen which improves the lot of the individual and the collective.  This is core to how humans behave.

We may have been taught at school that economics is all about competition and leadership is about power and delegation; yet we innately know life is more than that. Far from humanity being ‘red in tooth and claw’ we see (in times of strife and plenty) that humanity is hardwired for cooperation.

Likewise, we may have been taught at school that nature is all about ‘survival of the fittest’ and yet the closer we look, the more we realise that nature evolves through a cooperative dance of vibrant diversity; flourishing within the limits of life.

As our world transforms, we transform ourselves and our organisations, yet fundamentally we transform our perceptions.  We are witnessing a transformation of perceptions from seeing the world through threat-tinted glasses, through competitive, individualistic eyes to seeing the world through collaborative eyes seeing the world for what it truly is – an interconnected web of life.

Leadership becomes less about power and more about empowering.  Business becomes less about profit and more about value.  Society becomes less about competing and more about cooperating.

All around us spring up new ways through local initiatives and emergent networks to innovate our behaviour; some will take root, others will not, yet still yield seeds of change and vital learning through their failing.  It is exciting times to live in for those who are courageous enough to shift perceptions and see opportunity in challenges, to change competition into cooperation, to transmute fear into love, converting failure into success and shattering the illusion of scarcity to reveal the clarity of abundance. Here is a short YouTube clip about this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWJkhxrrnH4&feature=plcp   Are you ready to transform?