Over the past few years I have worked with and met a number of social entrepreneurs. I have been struck by how many have come into the work that they do through perceiving injustice, inequity or inefficiency elsewhere. Most social entrepreneurs I know are not new to 'doing good' - it is in their blood.…
The ethical alignment of mission, strategy and investment
I had an interesting conversation the other day with Nick Moraitis about the ethics and alignment of mission, strategy and investment in social change. Very often social entrepreneurs will possess incredibly ambitious goals about what they want to achieve. This may include eliminating poverty, stopping global warming, or reducing unemployment amongst a certain part of…
The Pygmalion Effect: who are you living up to?
A number of years ago I learned a powerful lesson about human behaviour. At the time I worked for Outward Bound and led groups of young people through the wilderness on personal development expeditions. On this one particular expedition, I experienced the dramatic and yet surprisingly effortless transformation of a young man who had previously…
The Ethics of Competence in Social Change
It is a basic ethical standard in most professions and industries for one to operate within their field of competence. This is true in law, medicine, psychotherapy, financial advice and more. Professional bodies will often dictate what the minimum standards of competence are, and codes of ethics require or suggest that professionals operate within the…
Pay it forward – searching for a more ethical incentive
In the business world it is a fairly common tactic to use bonuses, commissions and other rewards to incentivise performance and retention amongst employees. Is it possible to create a more powerful incentive however, where the employee who does the work receives nothing personally? In addition, could it be possible to create an incentive where…
Whatever you do, don’t trust the process!
"Trust the process" is one of the most frequently used phrases in modern personal development. When I hear it I usually shudder, partly because it is so overused, partly because I have been previously asked to trust a process that didn't warrant trust, and yes, I too have asked people to trust a process. As…
Where change has no name
"The day you teach the child the name of the bird, the child will never see that bird again" - Krishnamurti I perhaps don't understand the full depth of this quote, but what I imagine Krishnamurti was referring to was this idea that when we are born we see the sacredness in life and things…
Freebirthing and the ethics of judgement
In many ways ethics can be about making judgements or assessment about what is right or wrong, good or bad. But are all judgements the same? Recently there has been an ongoing story in the press about a mother who lost her child in during a freebirth. This event was naturally a deeply tragic one…
Limits of the mind and how to work with others
"One day you'll find out that you but play with words, and though you think you simplify the world, you but shroud truth in small complexities" - Joan Grant I have been having a dilemma lately with one of the projects I am pursuing. The project has been a major collaboration between a number of…
Your idea is not unique, so get over it!
Recently someone pitched to me an idea for new organisation they want to establish in Australia, which highlighted what I have seen time and again as a perennial problem in the social space. This new initiative strangely shared the same mission, target group, and even name of an existing and well-known charity in the same…
How To Do Good 