Weatherwise, today has got to be the perfect autumn day. The trees are holding onto the last of their orange and red leaves with the blue sky providing the backdrop. I’ve dropped in for a coffee at The Lounge, one of my favourite CBD venues with an outdoor balcony.

When I turned 40 (a few years ago now) I had planned to do a little celebratory project that for one reason or another I never got to. Given my commitment to live with no regrets I’ve decided to rectify and do a slightly modified version through this blog. The idea is this: when we have a milestone birthday the focus is typically on us. However, as I reached 40 and reflected on the 20 years previous, those years between 20 and 40, I realised how privileged I had been to have lived life alongside some amazing other blokes. There are multitudes of good friends and people with whom I’ve enjoyed sharing life through the years, but my thoughts were drawn to a handful of people who had inspired me over a period of years, people who I had admired, not from afar but from up close.

As I thought about this group of people I became conscious of how much richer my life had been from having not only known them, but from sharing life’s journey with them over time. The plan at 40 was to write them all letters of thanks and invite them all around for dinner – an impractical but enticing prospect. My lite plan is to write a short appreciative reflection on their impact on my life as a public acknowledgement of their contribution to who I am.

I expected it to be hard to decide who to write about. The truth is that it wasn’t. That’s not to say there aren’t a whole group of other people who have had a marked influence on my life, it is simply that there has been something about the way this small group people lived that invited me to live at a level that I would otherwise never have reached.

My parents and siblings are not included; my parents’ influence in particular is profound, positive and lasting. The person who has influenced me the most is Maria, my admiration for who she is fits in a different category altogether.

So this week is the first of six posts on this theme. In alphabetical order … I begin with

Al Watson (& David Turner): the pragmatic entrepreneurs.

Al was the first entrepreneur I knew well. When I met him he was a preacher who had recently set up a cleaning business. I was looking for some extra cash, so Al employed me to clean and mop supermarket floors. He told me that if I wanted it, he’d put me on a job normally done by two people; and if I could manage it he’d pay me for both. For about 6 years I got up before the birds and worked out swinging a mop before I went to my senior secondary school teaching job during the day.

Al soon set up a flag printing business (which his son Glenn took over and pushed into BRW’s Fast 100). He then bought a farm a couple of hours north of Melbourne. He told me he got the land cheap because no one else wanted it, but he figured he could do something with it and became passionate about breeding Welsh Black cattle. He was a passionate sailor, but being Al he had to build his own yacht.

I lost touch with him many years ago, and I am sure Al has done a whole bunch of things since. He was always on the go, full of energy. It’s a cliché, but with Al I always got the sense that ‘can’t do’ was not in his vocabulary.

Al taught me to ‘go for it’. He inspired me to move beyond the safety of social norms, as did another bloke called David.

I got to know David Turner during the latter half of my Uni degree and ended up living in his home during my final terms. David inspired me similarly. I was raised by a ‘planner’. My dad has always been a meticulous list keeper and planner. An engineer by profession and nature, he takes due diligence to a whole new level ahead of any project or event. I love him for it.

But David taught me spontaneity. David is the kind of bloke that can decide at breakfast to do some concrete edging around the garden and knock it off before going fishing after lunch. David used to take mini buses full of students to do volunteer work in outback towns with large number of indigenous Australians. All the planning required from David’s perspective was a time and place to meet in Melbourne, the rest would take care of itself … kind of.

He decided to build some houses … as you do. Gee materials are expensive aren’t they? No drama, I’ll going to the US, I’ll buy everything I can think of that I’ll need, stick it on Amex, bung it in a container (got a bit extra room, why not plug the hole with a ride-on mower, someone will buy it off me when I get home) and ship it back to Hobart … and still come out ahead.

Al and David, you blokes don’t know each other, but you’ve taught me so much about grabbing hold of life and living it. I still don’t have the same risk appetite as people like you, but you’ve sure helped me feel some adrenaline that has revved up life a tad. My life is richer because I knew you and you believed in me.

Thanks.

One of the most potent and formative ideas for me is ‘presencing’. It is true that there is ‘nothing new under the sun’, however sometimes people can package a set of ideas and practices in a way that increases our capacity to think and act with intelligence and wisdom. When I first read Senge, Jaworsky’s, Scharmer and Flower’s work, when it was released in 2004, the resonance with the ideas was almost like a homecoming.

Presence has many dimensions and applications, one of which is attentiveness; the art of paying deep attention to what is happening in the present. I use this in my work; in preparing for an engagement I immerse myself as much as I can in the environment of the people with whom I am working. When it comes to creating content and methodology, I get myself in a frame of mind that allows me to be totally attentive to the outcomes the client is looking for. During the workshops, all my energy is focussed on listening to the collective; gleaning spoken and unspoken messages as I attempt to help the group move together toward a better way of being and working.

But ‘paying attention’ is also a lifestyle choice. It these days of ‘noise’, being attentive to the people we are with does not feel as easy as it used to be. It requires us to ‘switch modes’ as we move from one part of our lives to another. For example, walking out of Bourke Place on Friday after 2 days on the 50^th floor and meeting my 13 year old daughter to go shopping required more than a few steps.

Attentiveness and being present can also be challenging because of the journey towards self-awareness that accompanies it. I cannot think deeply about the present without examining my own motives and fears. I cannot be fixed onto the needs and desires of others without being conscious of what I am fighting within. I was thinking about these things over the weekend as I wandered back from our local bakery. I had checked in on Foursquare and as I did so had a ‘penny drop moment’.

I love the idea of social media in its various forms but have struggled to develop the habits necessary to get any substantial value from it. I realised, that for me it relates to ‘attentiveness’ and ‘audience’. Take twitter for example. I love the idea of collective wisdom and real time information. But I react against the idea that when I am doing something, or with someone, I am thinking about a broader audience. Attentiveness, presence, mindfulness or whatever word we use to describe it, is incompatible with communicating simultaneously with a broader audience. One cannot listen and speak at the same time. I’ve been at events where people are so busy tweeting, it would be impossible for them to be attentive to the actual content. It is as if the ‘idea’ of the event and the content is more valuable than the actual experience itself.

Is art good art even if nobody gets to see it? Is a poem in someone’s journal a good poem if no other living being reads it? It’s a complex question but I think the answer is ‘yes’. I sometimes worry that the proliferation of social media has created an addiction to ‘audience’ that prevents us from appreciating life for what it is, being totally present rather than feeling like we have to broadcast it to make it valid. It’s akin to celebrity, the idea that life is better or more valuable in direct proportion to how many people know about it. Rubbish.

Of course, the spreading of good stuff is a positive thing. I just wish I could access the good stuff without the dribble, which often comes from the same source. And the irony and hypocrisy is that I’ll broadcast this post.

My first memory of self-mocking Australian TV comedy was a 70s show called The Naked Vicar Show. I don’t remember a lot but there are a few sketches seared in my memory. One used footage from Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the moon. As he descended the ladder and spoke those famous words, “One small step for man …” the coverage was abruptly interrupted by a voice that drawled, “Now we cross to racing at Moonee Valley.”

The Friday evening before last I was settled in front of Channel 7. Along with 50 billion others I watched the Prince walk up the red carpet with all the pompous surroundings and the world waited for Kate to arrive. And then the coverage was interrupted by a smiling suit that informed us, “Viewers in the southern states will now cross to the football for the match between Carlton and the Sydney Swans.” Indeed we will.

Strategy is about stuff that matters in the long run. Leaders who are strategic suspend the noise and apparent urgency of immediate operational needs and prepare the organisation for the future. During the half-time happenings at Docklands yesterday my brother-in-law Gregg and I were talking about how in junior sport everyone follows the ball around, and I was reminded of Wayne Gretzky’s famous commentary on what made him such a dominant (ice hockey) player. “I skate to where the puck is going to be.”

It takes great courage in an organisation to be strategic, especially when most people are interested in looking somewhere else, typically the urgent needs of this week. This week is important too, but someone in the organisation must have the courage to ‘cross to thinking about the future’.

Take a step back. What is consuming leadership energy in your organisation? Is it time for someone to interrupt the telecast?

With a third of 2011 behind us already, the achievement oriented among us will be assessing what we’ve managed to accomplish in the months that have passed. For me, as another week kicks off I am living the tension between being and doing.

Many years ago, Gordon MacDonald in his book Ordering Your Private World, formatively (for me) made a distinction between being ‘driven’ and being ‘called’. My memory is scant of the detail, but as I project my current understanding back onto the ideas, being driven had things like compulsion, a sense of striving, and a type of workaholic addiction associated with it. Being called (by God) had more freedom, a sense of choice and ultimately service associated with it.

I recall that a network of friends I had at the time, decided to eliminate the word ‘should’ from their vocabulary as an expression of wanting live in less conformity to social norms and expectations. The idea was that whenever we said ‘should’ we were adopting an expectation from outside that may not be helpful. Of course, its more complicated that that. We all conform to the norms of the community with which we want to identify and conformity is seen this context as a healthy thing. (As in, “We should eliminate ‘should’ from our vocab”. J)

Over the years I have admired driven people, elite sports people who are single minded in their pursuit of excellence and even domination. I don’t know much about her, but I’d be surprised if Lennox Head’s Sally Fitzgibbons, as she takes a back to back championship this weekend in her rise to superstardom, has got there through anything less than unreasonable determination. As Bertrand Russell has famously said, “All progress is as a result of the unreasonable man.”

But then I know how wellbeing is not just about contribution and achievement. A full and satisfying life is not just about doing. It is about being. We all know that famous achievers are often tormented souls. We know that accolades are way less than sufficient for a good life.

So I start this week wondering about the tensions between striving for achievement, recognition, contribution, excellence and making a difference (feels like being driven), and the satisfaction that comes from soaking in the beauty and goodness of life; afternoon snoozes on the weekend, duck risotto that took half a day of pottering to concoct, and slow family conversations around the table. (just being)

I’m making artificial distinctions here, but the point for me is that both components are necessary. It’s not about balance. It’s about both on full volume. The challenge ends up being about transition, moving from one mode to the other. Not helped today by the fact I’m recovering from a bit of a lurgy.

I am helped by asking myself the ‘why?’ question. Am I just going through the motions? What am I seeking to achieve and who am I wanting to be? Gordon MacDonald’s distinction remains helpful. Am I simply conforming, or being swept along in the wave of what society expects and demands?

What does it look like for you to be ambitious and content at the same time? What are you learning about switching modes; from striving to contribute something substantial to basking in the peacefulness of being?