The first photo that appeared on this blog was at the beginning of September 2010, only a few days after I had committed to the journey.
The photo is taken in Oxford, outside of the running track where Roger Bannister broke the four minute mile as a record for the first time.
The story about Bannister is now well known in summary, or at least the bit about what happened after he broke the record. So the story goes, after he broke the record there was a flood of people who broke the record, now that some elusive so-called psychological barrier was lifted. This is no actually the case. Yes, there were people who broke the four minute mile after Bannister, but it hasn’t been many, and only men.
What is perhaps more telling is the process he used to break this record. It was only made possible with the help of fellow-runners as pacemakers. And this is a most interesting piece of no-so-trivial trivia.
I took this photo while in Oxford in 2009 during the conduct of an earlier ridiculous challenge that I had set myself: the 9 City Bridge Run, where I ran 9 sub-marathons in 9 cities across 9 countries inside of one month. The similarity between the two initiatives that the execution both times left a lot of room for improvement. The 10 City Bridge Run was ‘threaded onto this needle’ in making a patchwork of 100 stories by what I considered to be an unsatisfactory effort in 2009.
How did I miss this important factor in Bannister’s success? In fact, how does this one small fact escape all of our attention?! It is so elementary, yet critical to performance. The help of fellow-runners as pacemakers.
It is no good having those fellow-runners and pacemakers if you are either not listening to them or not communicating to them. It implies an intimate level of trust and teamwork. A common goal. A shared vision.
The good news is that the race is far from over. Bannister, must like others, must have tried dozens if not hundreds of time to smash this record with these pacemakers, or at least trained hard together in practice. Consider the stunt that this 100 patchwork tapestry that I am now blogging about as the practice, and the main event coming in the form of the Design Forum.
Will you share this same impertinent level of audacity that we can, together, smash a world record for the benefit of those most in need?
Delivering on the promise of improving child survival. First, we must know what defines the race, and secondly, how our performance will be measured. We are competing against ourselves, and we must succeed.
This is the second patch of 100 stories that defines the journey I have recently concluded. Leave a comment and let me know how you like my handiwork!
Recently, actually nine months ago which is not so recent, I completed a journey called the 10 City Bridge Run. It was immensely more difficult and challenging that I could ever have imagined. Perhaps I made it harder than it needed to be, and some of the circumstances of my own life at the time didn’t exactly contribute to making it a talk easy to achieve.
But achieve it I did. I ran 10 sub-marathons each of 24 km (some slightly shorter, and a few much longer) in 10 cities across 10 countries in a month.
But that didn’t complete the epic journey I was on.
There are two deliverables unfinished. I still have the book Life Bridge to deliver which will contain an inspiring photo essay of human bridges to capture a thought that it is they connections between us is what is most important to change any problem.
The second is the culmination of the conversation that emerges from this epic quest which I have called the Design Forum. A conversation to ask: “how might we use our networks to deliver of the promise to improve child survival?”
This journey was made possible from the generosity and support of many people who contributed small amounts to ensure I could sustain myself along the way. Without this help it would have been impossible. It was a tough ask as it was. Much of the journey was spent essentially homeless while overseas, often with little or no money for food. This was an unexpected part of the stunt, and a factor that I felt unable to readily share with the community of followers partly because I thought it would degrade their confidence in my efforts, and partly because the sense of shame I felt was too great for me to share that experience at the time.
So before I complete these two outstanding deliverables, first I am going to say thank you to the supporters who made this journey possible. And that will be done through a patchwork of photos from the journey. 10 x 10 photos. 100 squares, with each square part of the journey. I’m getting this printed shortly, and then I will send it. What took place might make more sense to you, and also to me with some benefit of retrospective hindsight as I reflect on what took place.
So this is the first square. My intention to say thank you.
Another 99 stories to come. And it’s good to be able to share this with you.
It’s been a while. It’s been a while since I last posted. I didn’t check, but maybe it was back in February when I last posted. That’s a while between then and now. But since then, I have been thinking a lot about you, our supporters, and also our mission here which is to ask a question: “how might we use our networks to deliver on the promise to improve child survival?”
And it’s also been a while since I first put this idea out there on this website back in 2010. I remember that day well. It was in August, and my friend Kelley was visiting from the US. She patiently sat and listened while I explained my doubts, and after I had finished talking she told me bluntly in her best Bostonian-New York style to just do it already.
Many of you will know how the journey has progressed. I commenced a stunt running 10 sub-marathons each of 24 km in 10 cities across 10 countries last September in Port Moresby and then finished the running in New York in early January this year on a cold, dark and wet night. That stunt frames the question we are going to be asking in order to help improve child survival through a series of Design Forum.
There are still a lot of uncertainties as to how the future will play out, but we are forming a good foundation to engage on this question. The hard work comes now: it is ahead of us, and I want you to be part of that journey. How that will play itself out, as well as an explanation for my recent delay, will follow in the coming days and weeks, but for now I have posted a video to check in with our supporters and let you know we are still well and truly in the game.
The video was in Luoyang, Henan Province in China. I refreshed while away, and am coming back stronger. Thanks for being part of the team. Let’s get to work.
Major John McCrae’s poem has immortalised the symbolism of the poppy in Western culture. The words are haunting:
We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now we lie In Flanders fields.
He writes about those taken too early. But it is the legacy someone leaves that is what matters. This too is contained in the final stanza of this poem, paraphrased here on the anniversary of the MH17 tragedy, one year on:
Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though sunflowers grow In Ukrainian fields.
I have been absent from this blog for a few months. I’ll explain that later. But for now, let’s take stock of why it is important to press forward, as if our duty is to take up that unfinished quarrel with the foe. Nick Norris was passionate about thinking differently, and applying systems-changing thinking to co-create a better world. At the time of his death, while I was motivated to embolden my commitment to the 10 City Bridge Run journey as a tribute to his influence, I also at the same time felt constrained to do so because of the very public nature of the incident and media profile given to seeking stories about the family.
I look back now and can understand my actions. I think I did the right thing, but now it is also time for action, and now it is perhaps the right time to honour his legacy as an influence in this journey. And as I write that, my thoughts can’t be too far removed from my brother, especially as no one could have known at the time that on this anniversary this year it would be more poignant for our family to remember.
I’m back into it, and taking their legacy forward as a driving influence. I’ll tidy up this site and write more about that in the days that follow. For now, suffice to say that the torch has been caught and held aloft.
Nick Norris. A great family man and inspiring leader.
Think back to that time. That special time that only you can remember. Focus a little closer. Can you see it now? Do you remember?
Sometimes, it would seem that all we have left are delicate memories, maybe corroded by time. They remain in your head. You can write about them, but they can’t be seen by another because they are your memories.
What was it that you remember the most? A smell, the fragrance of flowers or the distinctive aroma of coffee; maybe it was hot and humid and you can remember the sweat pressing against your shirt; and maybe also the sounds, the mumble of crowds disturbing the moment in the background, the sound of the person in your memories; can you remember the colours as if it was yesterday, see the face of the person at the centre of the memories, their smile and their laugh. Do you remember?
It was with some mild anxiety that I searched for a video I made at Kuala Lumpur airport in early October last year. I had just completed the third leg of the 10 City Bridge Run and was headed to Osaka. I travelled to KL by bus from Singapore because it was cheaper, and even though the flights were inexpensive, the reality was that I almost has no money to even buy food.
Sitting in the departure lounge in Kuala Lumpur, I remembered Nick Norris, my uncle who was tragically killed about MH17 a year ago today along with three of his grandchildren. Kuala Lumpur was his destination on that fateful flight which never arrived. Wreckage and debris scattered across a previously unknown Ukrainian field, with no special respect given for human life.
So why this post? It is my first post after being absent from this site for a few months, but I will write about that later. Today, is a tribute to Nick Norris, and my brother Stephen. Stephen attended the memorial service for Nick’s three grandchildren in Perth with my mother last year. For my mother, that will have been a bittersweet memory, as in December my brother would also die.
When I was in the Army, I was deployed on a tour of Rifle Company Butterworth, located close to Penang. We trained across Malaysia and Singapore, engaging in some excellent jungle warfare and urban terrain exercises. My credit card was scammed while I was in Malaysia, and my brother showed his true generous spirit to always nurture others by covering the debt until the bank could reaccredit my account after the fraud had occurred. Nick would have leant back in his chair and laughed approvingly with his infectious roar if I ever told him the story, and would have been entirely pleased to see my brother and I helping each other out.
Almost everyone remembers the MH17 incident. It was a tragic incident that took on national significance, and even forced the outcome of negotiations at the United Nations. Before that, most people didn’t know where the Ukraine was, or that there was a conflict with Russia. It even led to Tony Abbott promising to shirt-front Putin at the G20 last year. Serious stuff. And today, a memorial service in excellent taste in Canberra. A fitting tribute. Love conquers hate. Do you remember?
I wanted to upload this video of the reflection I made in the departure lounge of Kuala Lumpur airport last October for you all here tonight, but when I searched my external hard-drive, it seems it is the one file that for some reason had not been properly transferred. I can’t find it. It was slightly distressing, and caused me some minor anxiety. I felt like I had betrayed my memories of Nick. I had cheated myself of a public expression of the tribute I thought was so important to make. And I thought how stupid was I not to post it there and then back in October.
But I also came to realise that it didn’t actually matter. Who is going to see it or even read these words? Crafting a message-in-a-bottle to be thrown into the amorphous mass of the interwebs. I stopped and thought: what really matters here? Did I remember? How would I remember? Those are personal memories I have of Nick and my brother. We weren’t always that close, but we were family. I can’t show you that on a video.
Remembering those we care for ought not to be reduced to an exercise of humblebrag. Tributes and legacy are incredibly important, and it is we who give them meaning, even if that meaning is only an individual experience.
So tonight, I’m asking you to just stop and remember for a minute. Everyone has a story, even though it might not be shared. Treasure yours, and respect the other.
Yesterday I published a blog with my list of the five best books for making change happen to improve the delivery of child survival. You might have read it already, but if you didn’t click here to read.
The response has been positive, and on reflection what I like about my books (apart from the fact that I really like the books I selected!) is that few of them are so-called best sellers. In fact, reading reviews on Amazon (check out the blog) you can see that they are not all acclaimed as great. That doesn’t much matter about what other people think. It is about what value they are for you, or in this case, for me.
Also, reflecting on the list, I noticed the most recent book was published in 2012. Books don’t get worse with age. Sure, some books are contextually relevant to the time they were written, but many stand the test of time. The books I selected fall into that latter category. Even though events have changed since The End of Poverty was written, it remains a good book to consider looking back what has transpired across the last ten years. In his book, Sachs takes a strategic and longer view. We are not there yet, and the challenge he writes about remains. If anything, his suggestions remain a provocative taunt to some who would argue that aid is wasted, and to others who might argue that change is never going to happen.
But what has happened in the last year that I have missed out on? I am not suggesting I ought to have included the last two Annual Gates’ Letters on the list, both of which addressed child survival as a key priority. But I am interested to know what books have been published during 2014-2015 that are worth sharing around because of the difference they can make.
So now the conversation is over to you. This question began directed to Bill and Melinda Gates, and for the time being while we wait for a response from them (which we may or may not receive), we can do some of the heavy lifting ourselves and share our own information. Don’t keep the good oil to yourself! What have you learnt in your reading in the last year, and why is this important to help us learn how we can improve the delivery of child survival?
You can see the original request I made to Bill and Melinda below. Alternatively, you could also forward this blog along and do your bit to get it one step closer to being in front of Bill and Melinda Gates so that we might also benefit from there answer, regardless of when their list of books was published.
Thanks for reading, and especially, thanks for sharing!
Plato’s Allegory of the Cave is well known by many people: inside this cave, people stand chained and facing a blank wall. On the wall they can see shadows projected of things, illuminated by a fire behind them. The shadows become the only things they know, and so they name these shadows as the frightening figures in their known reality. They give form to their worst fears.
Plato uses this allegory to suggest it is the philosopher who is able to walk unchained from the cave and see these things for what they are, and in doing so make sense of reality.
Perhaps Joseph Campbell was suggesting that Plato didn’t go far enough by suggesting that the true Hero must venture further in their epic quest to find the rewards of reality. Campbell suggested that people must re-enter the cave, but not that same cave they once came from, not the cave of bondage.
Here is how Campbell is quoted:
The cave we fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.
So let me ask you, where are you on this line between the two caves? Chained and frightened into submission of what society would have you think, free and exploring the reality of this wonderful world around us, or perhaps avoiding your quest to enter the cave which holds the treasure you seek?
Decide to be bold today. Now is the time to take that epic journey. Don’t hesitate a moment longer.
Last December, I was standing on a bridge crossing the Clyde River n Glasgow which was completely shrouded in fog. I stopped a moment to record a short video to Bill and Melinda Gates, and asked them for their recommendation of five books to help make change happen.
Maybe you saw this video if you were following my journey. It was the day after I had run the eighth leg of the 10 City Bridge Run that concluded in January this year where I ran across 10 cities as a stunt to open a conversation about improving child survival.
The video is below, and while I have forwarded it through social media, I don’t now that I have exhausted every avenue to pass the message to Bill and Melinda Gates. And even if it did reach their gatekeepers, there is no guarantee that they would see it personally, or even have the time to respond.
Well, I haven’t given up on them, and will keep looking for ways to send this “message in a bottle” to them.
In the meantime, I made my own list of Five Books For Change that have most influenced my thinking as I worked through the 10 City Bridge Run epic quest ahead of a series of Design Forums to ask “how might we use our networks to improve the delivery of child survival?”
And here is the list, and in no particular order. They are all great books!
There were other books as well that I had to cut from the list. I asked Bill and Melinda Gates for five books, and so I limited myself to five books too.
You might have a different opinion, or some other books that I didn’t consider. I hope you do, and I hope you might share them here too! Write a review of your favourite book for making change happen as it relates to improving the delivery of child survival, and I’ll add it here on the blog (you write the blog and I can post it without editing it).
As for getting in touch with Bill and Melinda, well I’m sill trying. You can help by forwarding this blog, and the video message to the Gates’ is shown below. Personally, I like the list I have already, but this journey is about building a conversation and sharing how we see the world, so it would be nice to know how they think and what they would recommend we read!
“All it takes to become an artist is to start doing art.”
With these understated and at the same time profound words, my friend Dr Ellen Langer began her 2005 book ‘On Becoming An Artist”. It is an instructive and inspiring book I have read through cover to cover about four or five times now. Dog-eared and underscored, this book provides a reflective conversation that lives up to its subtitle: “Reinventing yourself through mindful creativity.”
I first met Ellen in Toronto back in 2007 when attending a conference at Rotman Business School. Roger Martin who I knew from attending the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship had invited me to participate in a conference he was convening about thinking. I knew there were great thinkers in Toronto before I arrived for that conference, but it was when I was attending I saw how alive that city is with fresh thinking, design and creativity. It was for that reason I decided to run there during the 10 City Bridge Run, and especially why it will be included as part of the Design Forums that will follow later this year.
Ellen is a big thinker, but not your usual academic or thought leader. She is an elegant woman who would seem to be more at home at Largerfield’s next Chanel showing in Paris, but she is just at home with big ideas and the opportunity to ask you to stretch your mind more. I was fortunate to spend time with her again in Melbourne in 2011 at the Australian Davos Connection ‘Future Summit’ which I am alumnus to.
She is a professor of psychology at Harvard University, and is qualified to speak on matters concerning the mind. The book is a case study of her own experience from picking up paint brushes through Untaught Art and becoming an artist. She uses the writing to paint metaphorically a discussion beyond her earlier writing about how rampant and costly living a life mindlessly can be, to address how mindful creativity enriches and enhances your life.
Re-reading the book now, I find at this is our intention as we set about the Design Forum for the 10 City Bridge Run to ask “how might we use our networks to improve the delivery of child survival?” We will together tap into a process of engagement that will enrich our own lives, and through doing so we will be helping to literally save the lives of millions of people over the coming decades as part of a broader collective effort.
The photo is from a friend in New York, Matthew Courtney. He too is an artist with a colourful past I know little about. He lives in Brooklyn, and travels into SoHo to sell painting and drawings he has made. Most people are too busy to stop and look or to talk. Much like existing conversations that sometimes overlook dysfunction in making change happen in child survival, Matthew experiences a phenomenon that Ellen writes about observing people and critics flocking to “official art” with excessive emphasis on evaluation. Ellen writes:
“People don’t give up their current preferences or ideas easily.”
These are big ideas Ellen is playing with. It is not suggesting you throw away your bible, figuratively or literally, and I for one would encourage you to hold onto your values and beliefs. But importantly, learn to look anew, see with fresh eyes, and think again. This is the process we will embrace during the Design Forum. Please join us on this journey!
“Who are you doing this for?” This is perhaps the most frequently asked questions of me as I set about the epic journey which I had called the 10 City Bridge Run. I ran 10 sub-marathons each of 24 km in 10 cities across 10 countries. I wasn’t doing it for myself, and I wasn’t doing it for an organisation. Truth be told, I was doing it for the many millions of children born and unborn, along with their parents and communities to give them hope and the enjoyment of a good start to life by combatting child mortality. Audaciously, I proposed that through this crazy stunt that we could open a conversation to improve the delivery of child survival.
Initially, I did think this question about “who or which organisation was I doing it for?” was entirely reasonable. I now look back and see that instead that question is based on a flawed premise that it is only through having the juggernaut of a fundraising institution behind you that our efforts might have any credibility. We don’t need anything other than our own sense of daring and will to make change happen. It doesn’t mean will will be successful, but then again, not everything the large institutions do is successful either. Certainly there are questions about probity that need to be addressed, but that is also a matter of trust between those that might support me and my own personal integrity and conduct.
Can we really give ourselves permission to tinker a little as individuals collaborating together so as to put a dent in the universe?
Yes, it is about us as individuals and what we will do together. This thought returned to me as a startling epiphany today while I was re-reading “The End of Poverty” by Jeffrey Sachs. “The End Of Poverty” is a great treatise on how poverty can be eradicated by 2025 from the perspective of an economist. What struck me as profound in Sachs’ book is the final paragraphs are dedicated not to how the UN or the IMF or the World Bank will save the day, but he writes very pointedly:
In the end, however, it comes back to us, as individuals.
He amplifies this comment by quoting Robert kennedy:
Great social forces, Robert Kennedy powerfully reminds us, are the mere accumulation of individual actions.
And he goes on to end his book with a powerful quote from Kennedy, repeated below:
Let no one be discouraged by the belief there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world’s ills – against misery and ignorance, injustice and violence… Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation…
It is from the numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different enters of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.
I’m inviting you, asking you, challenging you, and imploring you to do something that maybe you might not have done before. Do something daring. Go ahead and take action, become an activist. Do it as yourself, an individual representing yourself, but as part of a collective experience. What that something daring is will to some degree be up to you.
We need your participation in the series of Design Forum that are unfolding. Let your little droplets of activity send out tiny ripples of hope, so that together we will build a current that will sweep like a tsunami of activity that might even bend history itself.
The first photo that appeared on this blog was at the beginning of September 2010, only a few days after I had committed to the journey.
How do I say thank you?
It’s been a while. It’s been a while since I last posted. I didn’t check, but maybe it was back in February when I last posted. That’s a while between then and now. But since then, I have been thinking a lot about you, our supporters, and also our mission here which is to ask a question: “how might we use our networks to deliver on the promise to improve child survival?”
Yesterday I published a blog with my list of the five best books for making change happen to improve the delivery of child survival. You might have read it already, but if you didn’t click here to read.
Plato’s Allegory of the Cave is well known by many people: inside this cave, people stand chained and facing a blank wall. On the wall they can see shadows projected of things, illuminated by a fire behind them. The shadows become the only things they know, and so they name these shadows as the frightening figures in their known reality. They give form to their worst fears.
Last December, I was standing on a bridge crossing the Clyde River n Glasgow which was completely shrouded in fog. I stopped a moment to record a short video to Bill and Melinda Gates, and asked them for their recommendation of five books to help make change happen.
Well, I haven’t given up on them, and will keep looking for ways to send this “message in a bottle” to them.
There were other books as well that I had to cut from the list. I asked Bill and Melinda Gates for five books, and so I limited myself to five books too.
Building Bridges 