business – ANDREW MELVILLE

Spoke Turns 20

June 11, 2024admin

Today is my 20th year in business. My company Spoke was incorporated on June 11, 2004.

Wow, what a ride since then.

Vowing to never be an employee again was the best decision of my working life.

I relish every moment of it, even the tough times.

There have been many ups and downs, but what has remained clear is that I can take full responsibility for every up and every down, and my own response.

Just after I quit my management role to start the business, the ever-wise executive assistant to my director said: “Andrew, I always thought you were far too entrepreneurial for this role!” It is one of the greatest compliments I have ever received.

I had no idea how radically my mindset would shift, leaving the shackles and rat race of being an employee.

More than anything else, learning to roll with the unexpected and the uncertain has been key.

The very first day I sat down to create my brand, things did not go according to plan. A good friend and colleague, a master of PR and marketing, was going to meet me at a cafe to brainstorm. They were a no-show. I was disappointed in the moment, though later found out that sadly they had been assaulted the night before.

When they didn’t show up, I thought ‘I’ve got this.’

I was sitting in the courtyard of a Kingsland cafe, the sky was blue, and bright crimson bougainvillea was spilling down the side of the fence beside me. I was eating a tasty buckwheat galette, and a cup of cider. The cafe followed a tradition from Brittany in France, where cider is served in a teacup. It was a delicious accompaniment to the galette. It was a lovely moment.

I looked out at that blue sky and started to doodle on a notepad. It was then that the word ‘Spoke’ came to mind as apt for my business in communication, media and facilitation. It could be a company name, a logo, and a metaphor representing connection with multiple people like the spoke of a wheel. It also evoked ‘bespoke’, the tailoring of my services, and what I was offering: to enable people to be seen and heard, to have spoken.

Spoke’s purpose, and I now realise this has been my purpose all my life, is Connecting Humanity.

I was keen to keep it simple; I had no capital, no office. So I just registered the company, registered for GST, got a former student and colleague graphic designer to make me a logo and a card, and that was it. Metaphorically, I simply put my plaque up and said I was in business.

And that was it. Soon, contracts started tumbling in out of the blue, and I have never looked back.

Spoke has taken me to all corners of the world, and to all corners of Aotearoa New Zealand.

I’ve sat beside my own infinity pool in Bali writing my book The Weave, I’ve swum up stream from crocodiles in Arnhemland on a business development retreat, I’ve played kōauau to an audience of millions in New Delhi, and I’ve spoken at conferences and workshops from New York City to Darwin, from Sydney to Queenstown. I’ve jammed with the kōkako songbirds in the Hunua forest, attended sacred wānanga in obscure corners of Te Tai Tokerau, helicopters around Ngaruahoe and the Tongariro crossing.

I’ve advised some of Aotearoa’s most renowned leaders, and supported some people in their simple day-to-day endeavours.

With colleagues and whānau, I have made apps, videos, books, workshops. We have mentored and coached CEOs, budding entrepreneurs, managers, rangatahi, whānau, neurodiverse communities, people of many genders and ages.

What an amazing time.

And we’ve made some amazing products, mostly books, workshops, and coaching programmes.

Just in the last year, we’ve delivered a range of Story Mojo and Story Masterclasses, Weave facilitation workshops, All In and New Turn mentoring programmes, and many others. The latest offering coming up is Space. It is a book and a workshop, looking at how we can create space for ourselves and others, in work, life and leadership… to be continued…

Have I made it? Am I rich? Well it depends how you define these things. I don’t think ‘making it’ is a concept I adhere to. It sounds too finite. I consider I am perhaps at the half way point, reflecting on the next 20 years in business. My dear mother was still working, largely by choice, at 80. I have several friends loving their work in their 80s. I intend to do the same.

As to being rich? Financially no, it comes and goes, by choice. But rich in experience, heart, spirit and adventure? 100%.

Why I Hugged My UnVaxxed Friend the Other Day

November 9, 2021December 12, 2021admin

It’s tough out there right now. So many, many people functioning on fear.

I am a fully vaccinated anti vaxxer. In a perfect world, I would not go near a vaccination.

I have a healthy distrust of big government, big business, and big pharma. To be honest I would not trust any of them as far as I could throw them.

I chose to be double vaccinated, not for myself, but for my family and community. The decision was simple. Not that I liked making it one little bit.

But this is not a perfect world. We are all immuno-compromised because of the tainted air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat, the work we do, our unhealthy homes and workplaces, and the inequitable society and economy we live in.

If we put a lens to the disgusting chemicals that abound in our environment, a COVID vaccination and its potential side effects probably pale in comparison.

Exhaust fumes, pesticides and nitrates in water and food, chemicals in building materials, cleaning materials… the list goes on and on and on, and it has all been in the name of gross profit, well actually greed.

I write not to excuse or justify for a moment the use of vaccination. It is simply to set a broader context.

This is not to debate or to use the tired adversarial debate process, of who is right and wrong.

No one is right and wrong in this.

I got vaccinated because I spend a fair bit of my time with marginalized members of our community, those on the edges, that we now deem ‘immuno-compromised.’ They include my 92-year-old Dad, who I visit regularly as his care-giving service has been halved. I spend time with people from the disability community, who have no choice over their compromised health. I spend time with people of various ethnicities who through inter-generational trauma, poverty and suppression through colonisation have compromised health; physical, mental, and spiritual.

None of these friends and whānau have the same access I do, as a middle-class white pākehā with a small disposable income, to organic food, home grown food, herbal remedies, yoga and meditation programmes that all support my immune system.

There is plenty of science that clearly demonstrates those in lower socio-economic groups do not easily have the bandwidth or the environment to ‘pivot’ to healthier lifestyles.

If we could get what I have in these so called ‘alternative’ sources of good nutrition, spiritual and mental health to the wider population, we might shut down the Ministry of Health, Pfizer et al tomorrow.

After all, they do have a vested interest in people remaining sick, otherwise they would all be out of a job.

But we are where we are.

And we have a new minority that run the risk of being turned into lepers; the unvaccinated.

I get it.

When I go out and I see people not bothering with masks, sanitizer, tracing, or social distancing, I judge. I think, come on, get with the programme.

But I then move on to work to source some compassion in myself. The fear in their eyes equals the fear in the eyes of those fully vaccinated following the rules. And let’s face it the rules are messy, inequitable, and frequently don’t make much sense.

Tragically, there are so many hidden sources, political and ideological behind the information we are consuming. We have outsourced what we think and feel, not solely to government and business, but to the algorithm that is choosing the information we consume. We would do well to hack and disrupt the invasive memes that enter our homes and heads that follow an orchestrated coded agenda, and browse sources far, wide, and unpredictable.

The government’s PR campaign is growing tired.

In Aotearoa Labour and National governments alike have been manipulating the population with PR and media since the early 20^th century.

A recent article in Memories magazine by the wonderful radio documentarian, Hop Owen, now in his nineties, tells the story of the introduction of radio to Aotearoa. At the time, a radio set in the home was the very latest technology. But its introduction was mired in political agendas.

Hop writes that in 1934 Auckland’s favourite radio station 1ZB was owned and operated by “Uncle Scrim” a former Methodist City Missioner, who knew well the misery of Auckland’s poor and unemployed. He gave a weekly talk called The Man in the Street that was obligatory listening for anyone in Auckland with a radio set. But an election loomed, and the reigning Coates/Forbes coalition (yes they had them even then) of the Reform and United parties (predecessors of the National Party) were worried Uncle Scrim would use his platform to support Labour, and the government Post and Telegraph department that controlled radio frequencies jammed his broadcast. He did get to broadcast his script the next day after a furore and it contained no endorsement of the Labour Party.

Labour won the election in a landslide victory, but it too would go on to try and control the airwaves. They made the way for parliament to be broadcast for the first time in the western world under a pretext that it would bring democracy to the people. They then went on to stage manage, and carefully select speeches, speakers and edited debates to better represent partisan government views.

It does not feel a long stretch 85 years later to the controlled daily PR briefings we endure from government ministers and health bureaucrats every day. And isn’t it strange that the signage and branding in vaccination centre booths is remarkably like those in polling booths? Just saying.

So where do we go.

We must dig deep in ourselves to source love, compassion, and acceptance. It takes work. It takes stepping through our fears and reactions. For me I now have a two hourly daily practice of yoga, breath, and meditation. That calms me. I have used lockdowns to expand my practice. I am growing vegetables and tending my garden more than I have ever done before in the 30 years I have lived in this spot. I teach meditation and breath workshops online, for people in workplaces and homes to bring a bit of peace and harmony to the fear of the chaos of the world beyond our bubbles.

In my own small way, I wish to bring these immune system building practices to others, and one day in an evolved world, they will become the norm, rather than toxic food, air, water, chemicals drugs and adversarial politics.

We are so blessed to have a short time living on this planet. The natural world we live in is magical and amazing at every turn. If we can pause, wonder and be curious about its magnificence perhaps we can better source wellbeing. In front of me are a vase of flowers and some fresh fruit, they are exquisite. They are beautiful beyond compare. What human mind could ever design something so remarkable. We work to get close, with our imaginations and creativity. But we thrive when we surrender and let go to the fact, we are only a small speck in the cosmos. Our ills derive from getting way too big for ourselves, thinking we can control natural systems for our own benefit.

As western systems of governance, business and science are failing us, it is timely to turn to the ancient wisdom of indigenous knowledge sourced ( honoured and not appropriated) from India to North America to Aotearoa. Western science and thought are slowly catching up to the thousands and thousands of years of wisdom in indigenous science, that melds physics and metaphysics, and teaches harmonious living with tangible and intangible systems of our natural world.

My teacher Sri Sri Ravi Shankar puts politics and religion like this:

“The role of religion is to make one righteous and loving, and politics means caring for people and their welfare. When religion and politics don’t co-exist, then you have corrupt politicians and pseudo-religious leaders.

A religious person who is righteous and loving will care for the welfare of the whole population and hence become a true politician. And a true politician can only be righteous and loving.

Today both religion and politics needs reform. Religion must become broader and more spiritual to allow freedom of worship and to encompass all the wisdom of the world. And politicians must become more righteous and spiritual. “

So whānau, breathe. In your mind and your soul, hug one another, whether it is mentally or physically. Have compassion for all in this time of fear.

Source yourself in activity and thought that brings you peace.

Step away from the drama that pipes into our homes and affects our systems, manipulating adrenal systems, evoking cortisol, dopamine, and oxytocin without our control.

Take time to reflect, to meditate, to do nothing and whatever works for you to still your mind and relax.

In te reo Māori the achingly beautiful, timeless, prescient and connected language of this land,

Kia manawanui, kia māia, kia arohanui.

Building Story Mojo – Leadership in a Pandemic Age

April 18, 2021admin

Never before in recent history have the communication skills of leaders been more important.

Since the coronavirus pandemic hit the world in early 2020, people from every walk of life and in every corner of the globe have struggled to understand what on earth was going on. We had no framework, no reference point, no practiced skills, knowledge or experience to navigate a pandemic that would rend the very fabric of our communities.

The shock and the fear was deep and wide. The shock waves and trauma are still around and going nowhere soon.

Households and workplaces scrambled hungrily for information from any source; what was really going on? Whose information could we trust? Social media, news media, our friends, our families, political or workplace leaders, our spiritual leaders, our fathers, our mothers, our sons or daughters? How could we tell what was true? Even now, what sources do we trust?
Can we trust science? Who has a hidden agenda?

Sharply contrasting communication styles have emerged. There was blame, attack, metaphors about battles, fights and war. There were also appeals to calm, unity and working together, metaphors such as ‘bubbles’. New Zealand Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, whether you agree with her politics or not, was lauded by leaders from the right and the left for her excellent communication skills, and these centred around her powerful use of metaphor to tell a story.

Research shows on average we all use up to six metaphors every minute every day. Our lives and our communication is (to use yet another metaphor) riddled with metaphor.

They can have immense power and influence. Neuroscientists have found that substituting power verbs and metaphors can dramatically influence us in our experiences and decision making and how we see the truth. For example if we substitute the world ‘collision’ for ‘smash’ when witnessing a car ‘incident’ people’s estimates of how fast a vehicle is travelling can change dramatically. If the word ‘smash’ is used people estimate a higher speed, if the word collision is used they estimate a lower speed, unconsciously. As we are awash (another metaphor again for drama and emphasis!) with endless notifications across social news media, TV, radio, audio, video, politicians, community leaders, neighbours and friends, navigating what is true and what is not is immensely challenging.

Sometimes even what might appear to be quite harmless metaphors can create fear and disempower. Talk of ‘waves’ of the pandemic can give a sense that it will be a never-ending force with no end. Contrast this with the use of a metaphor like ‘fire-fighting’ which can enable people to fell they have a sense of control over something that can be overcome.

There are pluses and minuses with the use of all metaphors. The most important thing is to be aware of their power and how you use them, and to change and adapt them for different circumstances.

Building story mojo with the use of metaphor is now a key tool in a 21st century leader’s tool kit.

There is an onus like never before on leaders to reflect deeply and clearly on the language they use, the stories they tell. What metaphors and stories are you using? Will they create fear, or calm? Will they call people to action, or disempower them?

In my upcoming workshop Story Mojo: Story Telling for Authentic Leadership we will explore metaphor and storytelling in depth. Join us to take your leadership communication to another level. http://www.andrewmelville.com/workshops/

Let’s Teach Side Hustle at School.

October 8, 2020admin

Like many people growing up in the late 20th century, I was told at school and home that success looked like achieving well in education and work, focused around core subjects and career paths into professions or trades. There were set steps to follow, and you were always being measured against others and ranked. The measurements, metrics as we talk about today, were numeric, linear and quantitative. There was a cut off point where those with enough marks headed in one direction in life, and those with not enough marks headed somewhere else, usually to lower paid employment or perhaps no employment at all.

However, turns out my greatest successes in life have been my side hustles. But no one ever taught me that. When I was very young, I experimented with friends about making things to sell. It was a game. We made art, cookies, or perhaps even mud pies, and played shop, selling them to family or friends for a few cents. It was a little glimmer of what it might mean to be entrepreneurial and receive reward for something you made from your efforts. Later in life, products and services I have designed and delivered myself have been the most satisfying and the most lucrative.

But my education for this was only ever a game. This approach to creating things, selling or exchanging them, was certainly not on any school curriculum. And once in the work force, creating new ideas, products and services in most of my early roles was not valued whatsoever. You followed a set line, a set of formulas with parameters around delivering work and outcomes. Step outside of the set rules too much and you were reprimanded.

Today, I still see this continue. I have witnessed children in school, students in university, hungry to turn their ideas into realities that will benefit their families, communities, and themselves shut down time and time again. Many is the time I have seen an inspired student or graduate deflated as their enthusiasm, their vision and their creativity is shut down. They get told to follow the script in their career, if they can in fact find a job.

In the Māori and Pasifika world I have seen this frequently occur too with another twist. These students want their study and their research to go straight back to their whanau and community, and yet they get told their study is an ‘academic exercise’ and they do not get to deliver their ideas and have to turn to compromised roles in mainstream workplaces.

An entrepreneurial or creative spirit happens on the sidelines.

In 2020 as traditional jobs disappear in the thousands and kids have spent half the year out of school, what new alternatives can we look at to fulfil on dreams, to source an income, and to ‘make a living’ in the true sense of the word? (Interesting how we default to thinking about cash when we talk about ‘making a living’ rather than giving this phrase a broader intent!) I’m pretty damn sure that professional roles for life are on the way out for good.

The power base of the tired old professions of accountancy, law, medicine and engineering are less and less relevant in today’s world. Many of the services offered by these professions you can now google, or manage yourself. I see more and more of the traditional firms resort to fear tactics as they desperately try to remain relevant, inculcating a risk averse business culture, telling the population that it is very dangerous to do without a lawyer, an accountant, an engineer or a doctor. It is tragic that many parents, teachers, academics, business and government leaders still push these professions as the pinnacle of achievement. And in so doing they’re selling their children and their children’s children a very dud deal.

Maybe it is a bad idea to try and quantify and systemise something as creative as a side hustle. But then again maybe we should honour, celebrate and encourage rangatahi today to have a few strings to their bow, to experiment with technology and creativity, with science and with art, and where all these often sidelined endeavours intersect. I once teased an old friend with a strict socialist ideology that the best thing I could ever teach my children growing up was how to write an invoice. And I wasn’t kidding. Writing an invoice can give you many things; an awareness of business, financial literacy, self sufficiency, self worth. I know for myself writing an invoice for my services is very satisfying and empowering.

Let’s pivot, no in fact lets pirouette, to put the entrepreneurship of the creative and tech sectors at the forefront alongside sustainable uses of the land and our beautiful resources, to grow food and shelter. Is it timely to change out what has been seen as the ultimate professions. Let’s honour the collective, the diverse skills in our communities. It is time to move away from hierarchies that values certain human attributes above others.

Kia Manawanui, Kia Kaha, Kia Māia.

The Opportunity For Māori Values To Re-Build NZ Inc.

September 18, 2020admin

Whatever way you choose to cut and dice it, colonisation was, and still is brutal for Māori.

If not at the scale of warfare of some parts of the world, the brutalization of the spirit, of a way of life, of a humanity has deep scars still running through Māori communities today.

But there is a further tragedy, and one that could become a triumph if people’s mindsets can shift.

Three massive fissures in the wellbeing of Aotearoa, the Christchurch earthquakes, the Christchurch mosque terrorist massacre, and the COVID19 pandemic have shown the generosity and values of Māori communities coming to the rescue again and again, often in simple understated ways.

On each occasion marae, always a place of welcome and haven, were instantly in action providing food and shelter for displaced people, without question. Again and again. No delays or processes about waiting for approval, funding, or criteria to be set. And alongside those marae, Māori health and social service providers rose quickly to each occasion supply what people needed, door to door.

And there have been more subtle ways that te ao Māori has been a massive contribution in this nation’s times of need.

When the mainstream public; numb, speechless, and desperate were flaying around to understand, to find meaning, to make sense of it all, we started to see words like whānau, aroha, kia kaha on placards and on lips throughout the motu.I

will never forget witnessing a crowd of many cultures gathered outside a Ponsonby mosque bursting into a rendition of Te Aroha to express just that… the waiata led by a Chinese man.

Why does the nation turn to kupu from Te Reo Māori in times of great hurt, of great need? On the one hand mainstream New Zealand continues to persecute Māori, with racist jibes, institutional racism, casual racism, fear and ridicule. But on the other, when the chips are down, what set of values do people turn to?

When we hear talk of the Kiwi Ingenuity of Aotearoa New Zealand, of our ‘down to earth’ nature, of our ‘can do’ attitude, and our non-judgmental friendliness on the world stage, what is the source of that in our history?

Without research, and without any academic nous, I strongly believe that it was not simply the pioneers and colonists that forged the ‘kiwi’ way, it was Māori.

And yet that contribution, as with many others from the Māori world is never fully acknowledged. Our qualities as a nation are assumed to be an evolution of some pioneering spirit, and anything wonderful in the growth and forming of this nation is rarely attributed to Māori.

Now, as we face years of re-set, come-back, re-formation and re-invention, where does a Māori tikanga sit in the mix?

From every vantage point that I can see, the collective spirit, the focus on whānau, manaaki, tiaki, aroha and whenua is an operating system robust, age old, harmonious, productive, unifying and fundamentally utterly humane. It is a universal and cohesive winning formula. This is what we need to re-emerge.

We have led the world for so many initiatives in our history. We love being the David to the world’s Goliath and we are good at it. But we have hugely underplayed how much Māori contributed to these successes. It remained hidden.

Now as communities process the grief of a decimated economy with work and livelihoods in complete disarray, we can perhaps finally start to take seriously the ratification of Te Tiriti o Waitangi forward. We can move on from it being an abstract idea, that has been thrashed and manipulated by colonising governments to this day, ignored by the business community, and reviled by the mainstream public to have it be a living document, and foundation for a cooperative template for partnership.

The tragedy and missed opportunity is that the colonial view of Te Tiriti was so literal and narrow that it fully missed the nuance, the inter=connected, holistic and sustainable operating system of Te Ao Māori.

Wake up people! A true partnership between the best of the kiwi mainstream western world, and the best of Te Ao Māori can make our place magic. We know we can pull together as one. We all get the concept of rowing the waka together. Let’s now live into that promise, that opportunity.

Let’s learn to fully love our whenua, our maunga, our awa, our moana as living beings, as extensions of our whānau. We’ve started to write this into our legislation, let’s honour it, let’s be it.

My personal experience as a pakeha in Te Ao Māori has always been one of love, of acceptance, of an all encompassing aroha that stretches way beyond words. I am at a loss to understand why so many pale, stale, males like myself are so frightened of this world.

I guess it is attitude, and that dear Aotearoa, is what we have to shift.

I’ve had the privilege to be invited to document and articulate efforts around co-governance between hapu/iwi and government. When this has progressed well, usually after decades of intransigence on the part of bureaucrats and colonised thinking in Iwi, it has been beautiful to behold. People work together to make the whole far greater than the parts, the whenua is loved, cherished and gives back, and stormy times and conflicts are navigated.

I am not suggesting a utopia, that is always a lie and a fantas\y. But we can do and be so much more.

Kia Kaha, Kia Māia, Kia Manawanui.

Daylighting The Pipeline of Uselessness

July 10, 2019September 16, 2021admin

In the work of restoring streams and creeks there is a thing called ‘daylighting’. It refers to restoring waterways that have been diverted underground through pipelines and culverts. The daylighting occurs when they can once again flow above ground as water ways.

So with that in mind I want to talk about how we might bust open the pipeline of uselessness that is our education and career pathways for young people in Aotearoa New Zealand.

It is time to call it out. For more than 20 years we have established a pipeline of uselessness through education and workplaces in Aotearoa.

We have been educating people with information that does not turn into skills and does not equip them for jobs, workplaces and the world.

We have created endless tiers of management, where people do not produce anything.

Ask the majority of secondary, tertiary students, and employers if they think their education is equipping people well for work and the world, and they will offer you a resounding NO.

And yet it continues, on and on.

It all began to really turn to custard towards the end of the 20th century. As the new millennium dawned, some bright sparks in government decided they would jump on the neo-liberal machine and turn tertiary education into something that would make money… at any cost.

So to some extent, there were elements of this that were a good idea. Why not earn income from international students? And to do this one had to head higher up the rankings of universities internationally. Maybe that could be a good idea too.

However, as is often the way with government policies, it was a sledgehammer to crack a nut approach.

Around this time my own alma mata, AIT polytech, became AUT University, God Bless Them.

The transition showed just how myopically focused (and how much the same!) academics and bureaucrats can be. They made sure funding was all about research outputs and bums on seats, and sweet FA about quality teaching, or adapting curricula for fast changing world and employment markets.
Any sense of graduates gaining skills and mindsets for the new working world and fast emerging ‘gig’ economy were no where in sight.

And on their merry way they trundled through the 2000s.

Every year, tertiary education became less and less relevant to the market.

Every year more and more degrees and courses were created.

Every year universities, polytechnics and private providers spread campuses up and down the country, offering a multitude of courses that competed with one another, with pipelines to jobs that no longer existed, at least not in the form they were being taught.

Every year more and more graduates were ‘qualified’ for specific roles that were diminishing.

Every year, the expectations of graduates rose, as they sought employment in so called ‘management’ roles because these attracted better salaries, and after all that was their due, after paying thousands and thousands in student fees. Why wouldn’t you?

At one point it really came home to a group of us who were ex-industry professionals helping run a journalism programme that had become a degree at AUT when we noticed all the applicants for a media award for a ‘senior’ journalist were in their early to mid 20s. The career path to someone being ‘senior’ and then on to management had grown much faster, so that people could follow the salary band, all with limited experience.

And so we also started to see more and more of the “Peter Principle” , the concept dreamed up in the late 1960s as a satirical idea about managers rising to the level of their incompetence. The principle fast turned from satire to a sad reality.

And so we started to create legions and legions of managers every where, from government, to corporations to small businesses, to not-for-profits.

Everyone was a manager of something.

And to boot, the title and the role, the job description, the CV, the ability to be a manager was based on some inept psychometrics, in job interviews, and employment processes run by HR professionals that measured only very narrow elements of human beings and their ability and potential.

Argggh. I have sat on many an interview panel when all the assessment criteria were irrelevant and quite frankly useless, bearing no relationship to the actual job to do. Someone would end up employed who did not fit the job and was simply good at writing CVs and application letters and gaining qualifications.

Anyone with a foreign name or diverse life experiences usually had their CV tossed to the bottom of the pile.

And so for several decades we created tiers and tiers of managers, predominantly white and middle class, inexperienced in life, emotional intelligence or empathy, but increasingly skilled at justifying their existence by creating meaningless work; restructures, new strategies, staff reshuffles, KPIs, reports, blah, blah blah.

This is nothing new of course in a colonial society, but it reached epidemic proportions over the past 30 years.

And now here was the further twist. These legions of inexperienced ‘managers’ were now making government and corporate policy, to employ more and more people like themselves, who had no experience at the ‘coal face’ but could write reports, and invent KPIs and measurements that all looked quite good on paper, and might get an A as an essay or uni assignment, or as a bright new shiny output of policy or strategy, but did not turn into the delivery of any useful services for the public, or the economy. These outputs never turned into any specific actions or changes.

And so on and one the roller coast trundled throughout the first decade and a half of the 21st century.

Every year, local and central government grew another floor of managers, more and more tiers of management. I believe Auckland Council has six or seven tiers of management today.

My goodness, what does Tier 4 do as opposed to Tier 7?

And in the hallowed halls of the council, people talk rather reverently about some on a higher tier as if they are a demi-God. Well I guess they wield more power and definitely bigger budgets and the ability to hire and fire, but divine presence?

So we wonder why the public service is in disarray and the corporate world terrifyingly out of touch with their customers and the public.

For a start they are increasingly faceless, lost way behind an automated customer service line. Their names, and their direct line phone numbers are never to be found. To face up and take responsibility is no where on the horizon, not even as a KPI.

I have painted a desolately picture here, and despite this I remain an optimist that these horrendous can change.

There are increasing glimmers that there is more and more awareness that these systems are broken. We hear more and more talk about adaptive leadership, empathy, authenticity, vulnerability and human centred organisations.

Here and there the talk turns to reality.

It does take a mindshift, not new skill sets. And there is a vast different.

Our individualised education and employment systems focus on gaining tools an and skill, without the wisdom of where and how to use them.

This requires a mindset shift, to being more human centres, and more focused on the collective than the individual. It requires a focus on how can the team as a whole succeed, and on measuring a wider range of successes.

We really have to redefine success, and we see glimmers in this around the new approaches being sought by government to measure more widely that GDP and solely economic metrics.

The idea that wellbeing and social impacts are equally important.

After all if we go to the origin of the word ‘economy’ it comes from the same root as ‘ecology’ which comes from the Greek word and concept EKOS, which is family.

So the whole point originally, was economics as a system for a family.

So paying attention to the collective, the whole, the organism of an organisation is the new ‘black.’

But we are only taking baby steps towards realising this after entrenched individualism and colonialism for hundreds of years.

The irony and the opportunity and the potential turn of the cycle is to wake up to the fact that all along there have been systems existing in this country that are perfectly suited as a model for a collective way of working, of honouring difference, and recognising the enormous potential when one or I shoud say when ‘we’ fully embrace the innovation, the inclusion and the ingenuity of working in a collective way to achieve far greater results, outcomes and outputs than we can achieve alone.

Aod so this most obvious of systems is Te Ao Māori.

Hello! It is such an absolute no brainer, and yet legislation, ideology, religion, and mainstream culture has repeatedly ignored, dismantled and totally supressed Te Ao Māori systems.

It is a devestatingly crying shame. For what better opportunity does Aotearoa have than to full embrace an ancient and timeless culture as it’s mainstream operating system.
How beautiful, elegant, smart and successful this can be.

Our niche on the world stage, our uniqueness, has always been based on Te Ao Māori, it has just never been acknowledged.

Our history of punching above our weight, of kiwi innovation has always had Te Ao Māori central to it as much as the zeal of European pioneers. And I romantically like to think that on a good day historically, there were no degrees of seperation between innovative pioneesr and an entrepreneurial tangata whenua.

Hello people, wake up. We have this most elegant and smart opportunity right in front of us. The rest of the world sees it and we don’t. We are admired and sought after around the globe and yet we still can’t see it, mumbling into our beards monosyllabically in the cultural cringe anti-tall poppy sentiments giving ‘all credit to the oppposition.’ What?????? How crazy is this false humility?
Really it is just passive-aggressive bullshit.

We can rise up the brilliant opportunities of the tikanga of Te Ao Māori as this main operating systems for our motu and ourselves.

We are gorgeous. And this place is gorgeous.

We can collectively embrace system changes that enable us to be the change we wish to see in the world.

Fundamentally, the changes that will enable more equity for more people to be fulfilled in their life and work will come from a place of love.

The concepts of aroha, of whakawhanaungatanga , of manaakitanga and kaitiakitanga are all about love, a universal love connecting, people, planet and the universe.

Love is about shining light, on ourselves, and on others, seeking the light, seeking the daylight.

So daylighting our selves and our places in love is something that we can all commit to, it is a value beyond question, beyond debate, it is presencing our potential as human beings to evolve in love.

Aue te aroha i ahau, aue
Aue e te iwi e.
E te iwi Māori puritia kia mau,
Utaina ki runga i te waka o te ora
Ka hoe ai ki te tauranga.

Embed Success People Care About

January 16, 2019admin

Every single day that we wake up, breathe and go to work, success is on our mind.

It might be a small thing like cooking our eggs or coffee exactly the way we like. It might be a big thing like winning a six figure contract.

We are always thinking about success in the completion of a task, success in communication, success in goals, success in our wellbeing, success in being fulfilled.

At the end of each day, we all at some point for a moment look back and assess the day as a good one or a bad one, or maybe average.

We have all our own unique set of criteria and measurements of what a good day or a bad day looks like.

Was Christmas and New Year a good or a bad time? Was 2018 a good year or a bad year?

And let’s be honest, we can make up a whole bunch of measures that are far from objective and based on a whole series of connections and patterns we have decided to put together.

We can add up a number of incidents that did not go well and decide they had a momentum that added up to a bad year.

We can connect a number of activities that equate to success, either monetarily or the completion of work, life goals, milestones, and deem the year to be a good one.

The thing is, WE MAKE IT ALL UP! NONE OF IT IS TRUE!

We allow ourselves an unconscious boom and bust mentality about success, about what good looks like and what bad looks like.

And with a constant onslaught of media stories telling us what good looks like, we compare and compete, and let other realities dictate to us what good success and happiness looks like.

All my life, I have been driven to find connections between people. It is my life’s work to connect. I have been blessed with an uncanny ability to see connections, commonalities, patterns and synergies for people that they often do not see themselves. It is my job to focus on that essence, the guts of what we have in common.

When people and groups are in conflict, and in opposition to one another, I see what they share in common, very often when they do not see it themselves.

In a business when there is a breakdown between management and staff, I see what they share in common and what they really care about and value.

When the IT department, the HR department, or the Sales Department or PR Department are at war with one another, I see what they share in common.

I am blessed to have some sort of radar or xray that penetrates these often superficial perceived differences.

In our vastly complex world, we often find ourselves focussing on differences, breakdowns and what is not working. Perhaps we develop or join a group of like-minded people who hold themselves together by being in opposition to another group. We might decide people who like country and western music are good people, and those who like hiphop are bad people.

We might decide that people who like Android phones are good people and people who like iPhones are dumb people.

And so it goes.

So what to do, what to do?

To find fulfilment, happiness and success is to find COMMON GROUND.

COMMON GROUND allows a sense of belonging, and plenty of research tells us that is very good of us, to have a sense of belonging.

If we work together to establish a common language, we can navigate and share common ground.

COMMON GROUND and COMMON LANGUAGE must always be developed and agreed together, that is the point.

There can be differences in how we all see and navigate COMMON GROUND and COMMON LANGUAGE for we are obviously all unique in our identities, preferences and ways of expressing our selves

We are talking more and more about EMPATHY, COMPASSION, and KINDNESS. We can find these in our COMMON GROUND and our COMMON LANGUAGE, when we sit down to focus on what we all have in common.

COMMON GROUND and COMMON LANGUAGE come from our shared values and vision as human beings.

Where ever we are, what ever we do, what ever our circumstance, what we all have in common, without question, is that WE ARE HUMAN BEINGS.

Let’s have 2019 be the beginning of creating success that people care about, that is based on what we have in common as human beings, so that wellbeing, wealth and success are not the preserve of a few at the expense of others.

Let’s embed a greater humanity in all our actions, our interactions, and bring together everything we hold in common as human being to succeed, to be fulfilled, to belong, to be happy, and above all else, TO LOVE AND BE LOVED.

Speaking About Spoke, My Longest Ever Post!

June 25, 2018admin

Exactly 14 years ago I quit my job and I have never worked again.

I was in a management role. I woke up one day and realised what I was doing was a complete waste of time.

It was driving me crazy. The work didn’t produce things, anything. I shuffled paper, went to pointless meetings, managed staff who didn’t need it, wrote meaningless reports, strategies and KPIs all of which produced next to nothing.

When I veered into work that actually produced something, like writing stories, having conversations and mentoring people, I was told off. Managers didn’t do anything ‘tactical’. They did ‘strategy’. They went out for expensive lunches with key ‘stakeholders.’ Argggggghhhhhhhhh. It was all killing my soul.

My partner recalls one morning around this time when the endless meaninglessness of management got to me. I ran through the house, biffing my cellphone onto the couch, ripped off my suit jacket, pulled off my tie (I grappled with that beause the knot got tight) ripped off my white shirt popping all the buttons. I pulled off my suit pants and sat in my underwear and knotted tie on the coach, yelling.

That was it. My days as a ‘suit’ were over.

The day I quit I had no idea where my next dollar would come from. I still had a young family and a large mortgage and I was the main bread winner.

I called up a friend who was a brand and marketing expert and asked him to meet with me so I could set myself up in my own business.

We arranged to meet at a new French café in Kingsland that made wonderful galettes, a buckwheat pancake with yum fillings like my favourite ratatouille.

Unbeknownst to me, my friend had been in an altercation and was suffering a concussion. He never showed up. What was I going to do?

This café also served a wonderful dry cider in teacups, a tradition from some region of France I guess. I ordered some and a galette. They were delicious. It was a cold clear late autumn Auckland day. The sky was dark blue, and on the brick wall in the café’s courtyard, a bougainvillea was laden with dark pink flowers that looked beautiful against the sky.

So I thought, there was nothing to it, I would simply dream up my own brand and business plan.

I’d like to say I wrote the whole thing on the back of a paper napkin, but somehow I think I probably had a note book.

I jotted down a couple of sentences about what I considered I had to offer the world, and the word Spoke jumped up at me.

Spoke. It had two great meanings for me; the spoken word, and the spokes of a wheel that connects the hub to the rim.

That was what I was all about, great communication that connects.

Simple. And so Spoke was born and a 14 year journey into business began.

This journey has taken me to every corner of the world.

I have made ginormous mistakes and had enormous successes.

I have paid business coaches $1000 an hour, and I have earned $1000 an hour. I have earned nothing giving my time to not for profits sometimes for weeks, and I have earned $1 an hour.

I have sat in horror looking at bank accounts sitting on zero with no idea when any cash was coming in, and I have seen my bank balance hit $900,000, albeit briefly, not quite the $1mill.

Why I am telling you all this? Well it is part of my story, and I believe we all have stories to share, that can contribute to others, sometimes in ways that can be unexpected and unintentional. Sometimes we share something we think is useful, and it was actually something else that we talked about that struck a chord with someone.

The exercise of being visible, sharing, showing up, expressing yourself is really the trick.

What is Work?

After my 14 years ‘out of work’ what I really mean by ‘work’?

A good many of us have a very unhealthy attitude to work. We end up thinking that being busy, and ‘doing’ lots of stuff equates to value.

Working is a form of belonging, the most basic of human needs. If we are working we belong some where and to sombody or some people/family. We believe work gives us a worth.

But what is the nature of work?

Work as an employee is soul-less.

Work serving others and giving of yourself is soul-full.

At the beginning of this story I said I have not worked for 14 years. I mean working as an employee. I have come close several times in extended contracts, and then felt my soul withering as I became an employee widget in a system of useless management, and I bailed.

You see we are on the edge of perhaps the biggest revolution in work in the history of humanity.

We have created so many meaningless activities that get described as work, and earn an income. These roles are shortly going to completely disappear.

Traditional professions such as lawyers, accountants, management, and even some roles in medicine and engineering and marketing are no longer needed. We can sort most of this with an algorithm or AI.

It is people, mostly men, in these professions that have ruled the first world for the last several hundred years. But it’s over.

I’m sorry guys, we don’t need you, well at least not in these roles that you perform today.

It could get ugly for a little while. These, predominantly men, many of them middle aged and generally well meaning, much like me, will desperately cling to power and wealth that they have accumulated from these ‘old school’ ways of working, overseeing how others perform useless work.

And I believe we will need a great deal of compassion and kindness to prevail as the legions of these men struggle.

Sadly there will be enormous collateral damage for all those people that these men in power have employed in meaningless work, especially managers and professionals, and the staff that they employ to perpetuate unneeded systems.

So what do we do?

It is time to get very ordinary, and definitely not extraordinary.

The simple things, the little things will be the things that prevail.

We can reinvent community and village economies, trading, bartering and selling and buying things from one another.

We can make things, grow our own food, produce our own power, create our own entertainment.

We can be a nation and a planet of small businesses, family businesses based on community values.

A few years ago I angered an old socialist friend of mine.

I said the best thing I could teach my children was how to write an invoice.

He muttered into his beard that this was an awful capitalist idea.

The thing is, today all my children have written an invoice to charge someone for their services. It is a key to self sufficiency to understand the value you offer, and the exchange you can make for it.

The future of humanity is about building an entrepreneurial spirit in every living being, that is self expressed, conscious of their gifts that they offer the world, and in love with the idea of serving others through what they can provide, and exchanging that for a range of currencies from money, goods and services, to belonging.

The Future is Indigenous

For the new ways of working, that are really a new twist on some ancient ways of working, we can look to a neglected and marginalised part of the world, the world of indigenous people.

Indigenous people have been smashed by the first world for the last few hundred years. But today the very values, practices, and ways of working from these cultures is exactly what is missing and what is needed in the first world systems of work that are failing, and that will soon be obsolete.

Here in my homeland of Aotearoa (New Zealand) the indigenous people, Māori, and close relatives from across the islands of the South Pacific/Oceania, hold the key to the future.

For many it doesn’t look like it right now, because Māori and Pasifika have been excluded, their spirit, their wairua, their joy and their culture crushed by the systems of government and commerce. The cult of the individual and the dysfunction of honouring intellect way above body, heart and spirit has prevailed.

It has been my utmost privilege to work and be accepted to work with Māori and Pasific peoples, and learn the depth and breadth of these beautiful and exquisite cultures, a way of working, a way of loving and a way of living that offers so very much in a time bereft of love and compassion.

The craziest thing in the world is that so many people in the mainstream world cannot see it.

They misunderstand that any dysfunction they see in the Māori and Pasific world is a reflection on their own.

The systems and beliefs of Mãori run deep and hold some significant opportunities for surviving and thriving the fast changing world.

The structures of the culture are universal, and if we look at every culture on the planet back far enough in time, we all share the same beliefs around how the universe is shaped, our place in it, and how we can go about balancing body, mind and spirit.

The Weave

It is these experiences, observations and insights that led me to write The Weave, The Surprising Unity in Difference.

The exercise of writing and teaching The Weave is not about me. It is not my idea, and it is not my expertise. I am the conduit for a way of thinking and being that is humanity’s oldest technology.

Weaving was the first activity that we undertook to shape and make sense of our environment and universe.

To this day, weaving as a practical activity is fundamental to the materials all around us that we take for granted that are absolute staples in the way our shaped environment supports us, from our clothing to our buildings, to the fabrics from many materials that we interact with every day.

To weave is also a powerful metaphor that we also engage with almost daily, as we talk about the ‘fabric’ of the universe, the

‘tapestry’ of life, the ‘threads’ that come together in our lives. It is the conversations, ideas, thoughts, communication and endless day to day activities and interactions. It is our now daily engagement with the World Wide Web, the most omnipresent ubiquitous and infinite weaving humans have created.

It is no wonder that the very invention of the computer came from weaving technology in the 19^th century!

To weave is both the most simple of exercises and models, but also a matrix of endless complexity, that we may never full comprehend.

It is a model and a metaphor for our very existence and offers a form for navigating our lives and our worlds.

To weave is to find connection points through threads of things that can occur as disparate or isolated.

In a simple form, individual threads alone are linear. But once they are crossed they immediately start to create a greater whole, a fabric.

The trick of the twists and turns of a weave is the give and the take, that they are held in a tension of movement and moment. Dealing with difference in human beings is the same, there are times when it will be uncomfortable to intersect with someone with a different world view, in order to realise our common humanity. As Hannah Arendt said, it will take imagining another’s world, not having pity, sympathy or empathy for it, and understanding that it may always be different from your own world view.

The warp and the weft of any woven form intersect multiple times in multiple ways. In the spaces in between a picture, a pattern forms and becomes apparent.

Many cultures of the world hold sacred rituals around the practice of weaving for good reason, to honour the ‘magic’ of the creation of the woven form, and understanding that the DNA of the practice of weaving lies in ancient times, and in forms that extend with a thread into the unseen universe, acknowledging energies and connections that are often not obvious to us in a sentient and rational world view.

The interesting fact is that although the practice of weaving threads its way into metaphor and matters that are intangible, it at the same time provides very tangible materials that support us in a very practical way in daily life.

In Māori culture, the harakeke, the flax bush is most often used for weaving. It is honoured as a very important plant because it provides a material to sustain us, not to mention the use of its seeds and juices as a rongoā, a medicine.

The leaves of the flax bush are immensely strong, and are also used to create a story for sustaining planet and people. The story underpins an importance practice to honour and sustain the harakeke, and the ecosystems of environment and people it supports.

Weavers are taught that the leaves of the harakeke form a family, and that the young shoots should never be picked, and should be protected by older shoots, leaving only the most mature leaves to be harvested.

This is a metaphor for family life, where all members across generations are interconnected, and focus on protecting the young in all their interacting and intersecting worlds.

Well, I now have produced the equivalent of an essay. What is joyful for me about this, I have written this with absolute freedom; the opportunity to express myself as I choose, the time to do it, and the inclination to bother.

As I close in on the age of 60, my life delights me. I am honoured, privileged and proud to lead a life where my work is my bliss. I feel myself growing into a sense of wisdom, excited and curious as the next 20+ years unfold.

E koekoe te tui, e ketekere te kākā, e kūkū te kukupa, It Takes Every Kind of People.

Mauri Ora.

What’s Bad About Things Being ‘All Good’?

April 25, 2018admin

There’s three popular phrases I hear and also use frequently.

“All Good”, “Sweet As”, and “It is What It Is.”

In the right context they are harmless and sometimes gentle phrases that are about accepting things as they are right now.

If someone says” How’s everything going?” The reply can be ‘all good’, or ‘sweet as.’

It is all about the context. Sometimes these phrases are exactly the right thing to say and name what is really going on. They can put people at ease, create connection, unity, and equilibrium.

But how often does this actually gloss over things that are not quite right?

Are we sweeping things under the carpet when we declare things are ‘all good’ or ‘sweet as’?

But how often have these expressions crossed over to being an automatic response to everything whether it is good or bad, running smoothly, in conflict, or challenging?

Is it resignation, or is it acceptance when someone uses the phrase ‘it is what it is’ ?

I think it can be both. But it is ‘good’ to know the difference.

I was watching a Netflix series early this morning, and it suddenly came to me how much my years of consumption of television, feature films and video has deeply influenced my perception of time.

Everything is edited so there is momentum with very little down time. We have an expectation that ‘something is going to happen’. Film makes talk about creating a beat to ensure momentum and rhythm, as we do in poetry and music. In itself that is not a bad thing. But most of what we consume day to day via visual media sets a pace, that is quite at odds with how time really passes in most of our lives.

How boring would a film or Netflix series be if it included people circling round and round to find a parking spot, or waiting on hold for a call centre to respond to a request, or waiting in a queue to be served.

Of course we edit all this stuff out of the stories for media.

So really that’s fine if we know that is what is going on. But I have succumbed often to the hyper-reality that time will pass in my own life the same way it does in these fictions.

I am teaching myself now the art of doing nothing, of having ‘downtime’ be as valuable as active time. I look to have this more in balance the same way it is used in resistance training in physical workouts.

In The Weave, we focus a lot on the intersections we come across in our interactions; the knots, the twists and turns that make up a weaving. It is the intersections where everything is held together. But it is held in a tension; too tight and the fabric is constricted and uneven. Too loose and it is full of holes and not held together.

Our approach to life can be much the same, through dark and light, through good and bad. The times of stillness and inaction inform and fuel the action, while the times of action fulfil through momentum.

It is much the same with the very essence of our lives, our breathe. We breathe in to energise, and we breathe out to relax. We would not live without both.

Our self observation and acceptance of the twists and turns is both the art and the science of living.

So when we are at peace with the yin and the yang of the light and the dark, the good and the bad, the stillness and the movement, we can say that things are All Good, Sweet As, and It is What It Is.

Introducing The Weave Workshops: A New Twist to an Ancient Technology

January 11, 2017January 11, 2017admin

Today communication breakdown and disengagement is epidemic. There are more and more communication tools and less and less connection.

People are not united in vision, values, purpose or actions. Results are varied. Diversity of culture and of people is not embedded.

From governments and corporates, to small businesses, to not for profits and iwi, productivity and innovation is low.

The Weave© offers a rich and deep technology to engage people across cultural divides, enabling unity, while empowering individual cultural identity, including ethnicity, gender, spiritual belief, ability, or age.

• Strategies to weave together diverse world views
• Building team cultures across diverse roles and skill sets
• Uniting governance and management teams
• Embedding vision
• Building communication and story sharing capability

The workshops are led by Andrew Melville building on 30 years experience as a facilitator, communicator, journalist and engagement specialist.

Tuesday January 24
Thursday February 16
Monday March 27

All sessions run from 9:30 am to 2.00 pm.

Full Fee: $450.00