I love the elegant simplicity of a regularly updated Now page, in parallel with the more traditional About page, so here’s what I’m working on now (updated May 2021).

Current Big Question

I love questions. A good question inspires a complex answer. A great question provokes complex thinking.

My current overriding question that keeps me awake at night is:

“How do we channel the latent energy from grassroots movements striving for a better world, into something more strategic?”

Current Projects

I’m currently in stealth mode, pulling together networks, cogitating and deciding where best to invest my time and energy. The only project I’m publicly aligning with is Society 4.0.

Society 4.0

Society 4.0 is the meta-community that recognizes the urgent need to redesign the value systems, reward systems, and social contracts underpinning modern society.

• Society 4.0 defined
• Society 4.0 taxonomies

Ongoing

Fatherhood

I’ve run multi-million dollar projects with multi-national teams all over the world. The most complex: 100 Indian and Taiwanese developers (based in Taipei and multiple locations in India), 5 American product specialists, an Australian-born Filipino project manager — all led by a South African. Go figure.

None of these projects were as complex as raising a now 7-year-old daughter. I fail every day, but I’m getting better at it (single fatherhood, not failing). Here’s my big picture view of what I’ve got myself into:

Imagineering a World Where Women Thrive

Marketing & Technology Consulting, Mentoring & Advising

I work with very select visionaries, tech startups and change agents, usually with a focus on empathic technology, enhancement of humanness and the personal data economy.

Writing

I love writing — helps get my otherwise muddled thoughts into a somewhat cohesive framework. That said, I haven’t written anything in over 2 years — just too much else going one.

Earlier writing includes Postcards from 2035, a faction (mix between fact and fiction) and it’s inspired by my real-life daughter, who will turn 21 in 2035. These are short stories from her telling us what her life is like in an entirely new civilisation.

Hi, I’m Gracey. Let me tell you about your future.

Current Reading

I usually read voraciously. Of late, I haven’t found much to inspire me — let me know what I should be reading!

My all-time most recommended books are here (more recent) and here (slightly older):

The Best Books Ever Written

Past Big Questions

• “What does it take to birth an entirely new human operating system?”
• “Can a game be used as a Trojan Horse to birth new worldviews, new cultures and new civilisations?”
• “Can a nation’s culture — or even the world’s — be shaped by a skilled conductor, where social activists and technologists are the orchestra players?”

What I’m Doing, Now was originally published in Michael Haupt on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Earlier this month I was interviewed by Joshua Wisley of Eschaton. Press play and enjoy. Show Notes appear below the audio.

Show Notes

During the conversation, I incorrectly stated that the Satoshi white paper was released in 2009. This was the year Bitcoin software first made it’s appearance, but the paper was released in 2008. You can find a copy of the original paper here:

Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System

The history of how I became interested in blockchain can be found here:

What Happened in 2004…

The journey from Society 1.0 to 4.0 (and eventually 5.0) can be found here:

The Journey to Society 4.0: The Evolution of Societies

The developments I’m currently watching are tracked here:

Developments to Watch

For a 30,000 foot view of how governance could work, including the platforms currently being built to support such a society, see:

Project 2030: Building a Replicable, Self-Governing, Transcendent Society

The huge bibliography for Postcards From 2035 is here:

The Best Books Ever Written

A Celebration Society can be found here:

A Celebration Society | Solving the coming automation crisis

Finally, I mentioned a few resources to answer the question “How do I educate myself about the societal impact of Blockchain?”, which I cover here:

Why Most Futurists, Crypto and Blockchain Gurus are Snake Oil Salesmen

The Great Horse Manure Crisis of the 20th century:

The Great Horse-Manure Crisis of 1894 | Stephen Davies

Launching very soon is a platform to track the evolution of Society 4.0:

Society 4.0

The Societal Impact of Crypto & Blockchain — Podcast was originally published in Michael Haupt on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Slides and notes from a non-technical talk given to an audience of IT Directors curious about blockchain. (En español, aquí — con muchas gracias a Pablo Crespo.)

In the interests of advancing an understanding of blockchain, feel free to use this content to educate your team about blockchain (download latest version .pptx — just remember to personalise slide 4).

The presentation starts with a provocative question:

Is blockchain something worth paying attention to or is it simply the latest fad which will disappear into the mists of time?

Normally the answer to a provocative question is provided only at the end of the talk. In this presentation, the answer is tabled in the very first slide:

The blockchain bubble will burst in the same way the dot com bubble burst in the early 2000’s. My gut-feel guess for the burst of the blockchain bubble is late 2019 or early 2020. This is purely my opinion — please don’t make major business or financial decisions based on this guess.

Just as survivors of the dot com crash have thrived (FAMGA: Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon), so too will blockchain survivors thrive. So, don’t write off blockchain and don’t make major commitments to large blockchain projects now. Learn about it and prepare for the future.

Prediction: Blockchain will be the next great leap in humanity’s evolution and our future will be driven by a new definition of success that is aligned with the values and priorities of every living creature on the planet.

Let’s compare past phase shifts to the stages of human life:

All of humanity’s significant phase shifts (Cognitive Revolution, Agricultural Revolution, Industrial Revolution, Scientific Revolution) have been triggered by one or more of the following aspects of society:

• How energy is converted into something of service (a plough, the automobile, airplanes and the space shuttle are examples);
• How communication takes place and how ideas spread (smoke signals, newspapers, landline phone, fax machine, television, mobile phone, Internet, Twitter);
• How records are kept and history is recorded (clay tablets, papyrus scrolls, printing press, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Wikipedia, the Internet Archive, the Big History Project);
• How the exchange of value is recorded (bartering, coins, banks, central banks, cryptocurrencies).

Key takeaway: blockchain impacts ALL aspects: energy, communication, record-keeping and value exchange.

Before diving into more detail, allow me to provide a little background on my blockchain experience, and let me share how I stumbled into the blockchain world:

• Started out as computer programmer and became IT Manager. Played a key role in the launch of mobile telephony in South Africa. Formed EPPIX User Group in 1993: a collection of mobile phone service providers who all used the same billing software. My first experience of crowd wisdom — collectively we all achieved more than we could individually in negotiating with the software supplier.
• Head-hunted to go to Australia and from 1996 to 2004, I implemented multi-million dollar technology platforms for mobile carriers around the world. Last assignment was in Taipei, Taiwan.
• In mid-2004 I experienced a lucid dream of a fully data-driven, transparent society, with feedback loops for economy and ecology. Spent 2 solid days without sleep writing down what I could remember of the dream. None of the dream was possible because technology didn’t exist to fulfil it, so I did nothing about the dream, except to remind myself of the details at the end of every year by re-reading the notes I’d kept.
• The dream indirectly led to two years of inner-directed learning while travelling through Asia: read hundreds of books on philosophy, eastern traditions, human evolution, consciousness.
• Went back to the corporate world as Managing Director for Striata, Europe in London from 2008–2012. Grew a European network of evangelists from a home office and significantly grew annual revenue — another example of collective wisdom at play.
• Discovered the Bitcoin white paper soon after it’s release in October 2008. Penny-dropping moment, because now I could see a possibility for the data-driven society I had dreamed about.
• Returned to South Africa in 2013 and helped raise $1m from Silicon Valley for an AI startup as an advisor. Then co-founded another AI startup, Jottr.ai, for which we raised another $1m from a family fund in Malta. After a disagreement over strategy with the CEO, the board voted me out and the company eventually listed on the Australian Stock Exchange as OpenDNA.
• Cashed in my shares and in June 2017, I started writing Postcards from 2035: Tales of a Blockchain Civilisation, a story-form description of the data-driven society I had dreamed about. Researched over 200 blockchain white papers, from a total of more than 1,500 that crossed my desk. From reading so many diverse papers and identifying the common themes, it seems undeniable that something is happening in mass consciousness, hence the framing that humanity is growing up from adolescence to adulthood. This talk is a summary of the core themes from those 200 papers, so please don’t shoot the messenger!
• As my writing progressed, I decided to release each chapter online as they were completed, rather than publishing a traditional book. Turned out to be a fabulous strategy, because you get immediate feedback. Here’s how it worked:

A screenshot of my Medium profile, shown not to pat myself on the back, but to show the extent of interest shown, which includes followers from established and in-development blockchain startups. Very often, after releasing a chapter, a blockchain founder would reach out to me saying they were building the very tech that enabled the chapter I’d just written. Deeply profound.

Publications: Postcards from 2035, Project 2030, Society 4.0.

In order to show how important blockchain is as an enabler of humanity’s next phase shift, I developed a 1-page summary of past phase shifts in humanity’s evolution:

The table, which can be found here, is intentionally dense and hard to read on this slide, because we’re not going to go into it today— it’s the subject of a separate hour-long talk.

In the context of humanity’s immense past achievements, how can I claim that blockchain will have an impact on society that’s at least 100 times greater than the Internet, which fundamentally changed how we engage with each other and with institutions?

To answer that question, we need to look at the history of accounting — not the most exciting topic, I know, but fascinating when we consider the impact accounting has had on humanity’s development:

Although accounting has only undergone 3 innovations throughout history, each innovation presaged a massive uptick in human societal complexity and innovation. So, let’s look at the first innovation:

Single Entry Accounting was invented by the Sumerians 5,000 years ago. It consisted of a series of wedge symbols — base 60 — the basis of 60 minutes, seconds and our current method of timekeeping.

Single Entry Accounting enabled the creation of money and debt. It was the single entry in a ledger of an event like “Subject A owes the King 4 acres of land in exchange for 2 gold coins.” This seemingly simple innovation enabled empires to be created for those who controlled wealth, financed wars and controlled mobility over the poor and illiterate. It allowed limited local trade and was easy to fraudulently modify and the clay tablets could easily be lost or damaged by water, so this system reached its limits easily.

Time for the next innovation in accounting:

Luca Pacioloi, a Venetian friar, codified Double Entry Accounting in 1494. This system allowed the Venetian economy to boom, starting the trend towards globalisation, because of 2 sets of books —consisting of a debit and credit in each — allowed trade to occur far beyond the reach of a handshake.

Double Entry Accounting enabled everything we take for granted today in commerce: from currencies to stocks to interest rates, central banks, trading houses, nation states and Free Trade agreements. However, the system also enabled the 2008 financial crisis, the Enron scandal, Lehman Brothers and every financial Ponzi scheme you can name.

And so it became time for the next innovation in accounting:

Triple Entry Accounting was codified by Ian Grigg in 2005, although it was originally conceived of by the late Professor Yuji Ijiri — who passed away in January 2017 — as Momentum Accounting (pdf). This is a system whereby all accounting entries involving outside parties are cryptographically sealed by a third entry. This single innovation will prove more revolutionary than the cotton gin, the steam engine, the printing press, the PC and the Internet combined. That’s because in Double Entry, the debit and credit are the recognised event (and the record that is audited, sometimes many months after the event occurred). In Triple Entry, the change in balance is the recognised event and this change is recorded in real-time and can be made publicly visible. In addition, the record cannot be reversed or modified in any way, because it is cryptographically sealed on the blockchain.

Just as Single and Double Entry presaged a massive uptick in human societal complexity and innovation, so will Triple Entry Accounting.

We’re at the very early stages of blockchain, so most definitions are not particularly helpful, because even the experts are still trying to understand what it enables, in the context of humanity’s evolution.

If a young child asks you what an aircraft is, you could either launch into a detailed technical explanation of how thrust and lift works and how a jet engine works, or you could describe how an aircraft whisks you through the air and enables you to leave a cold wintry morning and be on a beach in Thailand in less than 9 hours. Both are factually correct, but a description of the outcomes the innovation enables is far more useful.

Another example is the motorcar, which we all use on a daily basis, without necessarily understanding how an internal combustion engine works.

The same will be true of blockchain: we will all use it on a daily basis (like we do the Internet), without necessarily understanding exactly how it works.

The problem with most current definitions of blockchain is that they try to describe what it is, which is less helpful than what it enables:

The Wikipedia definition of blockchain, while factually accurate, doesn’t help. And so I propose a definition instead of what blockchain enables:

Blockchain is an emerging technology which enables transparency in commerce, politics, voting, identity, governance, health and every aspect of life.

And here’s a more academic observation:

“Blockchain is more than just ICT* innovation. It facilitates new types of economic organization and governance… based in new institutional and public choice”… (Economics of Blockchain. De Filippi, Davidson, Potts, 2016)

ICT = Information, Communication & Technology

With these definitions, it’s easy to see why the blockchain zeitgeist is overwhelmingly Utopian, because millions all over the world have lost faith in the institutions that helped create the world, but are not transparent about how they work. As humanity matures, this need for transparency becomes more and more important — just ask any teenager starting to question their parents’ wisdom.

I love this quote from one of the brightest minds in the blockchain space, an American you’ve probably never heard of, but will be hearing of soon, I predict: Arthur Brock (follow him!), Founder of Holochain:

“Formally describing the complexity of decentralised multi-agent systems is a non-trivial task.” — Arthur Brock

Arthur’s quote introduces a new term you will hear mentioned frequently in the blockchain space: Decentralisation. What exactly is decentralisation?

The easiest way of describing this concept is to ask what might sound like a stupid question (in this case relevant to an audience in Cape Town familiar with water shortage):

Why install a borehole? Or why purchase a generator during the Eskom power shortage between 2007–2015?

The answer is because the service provider we previously trusted proved unable to adapt their delivery method in a rapidly changing world, and so we took matters into our own hands.

Decentralisation is simply accepting personal responsibility for lack of service due to inadequate or failing infrastructure.

In the blockchain world, this is also called ‘eliminating or bypassing the middle man.’

With that definition of decentralisation as context, let’s look at examples where blockchain is being proposed as a possible solution:

Most current use cases you might have heard of miss the underlying philosophy of blockchain, which is the removal of middlemen.

Blockchain is not about improving the efficiency of business as usual. Let’s look at commonly-quoted use cases:

In the majority of use cases quoted by blockchain consultants, there is little evidence of transcending failing infrastructure, or eliminating middlemen who provide service which is no longer adequate in a rapidly evolving world. See, for example, the diagram shown in the slide.

Considering our model of the evolution of humanity, these are use cases presented by an adolescent.

Let’s look at adult blockchain use cases:

• Identity: Not Estonia’s E-Residency, not India’s Aadhaar Card, instead an identity that entirely avoids the recent Facebook & Cambridge Analytica scandal (and there will be many more)
• Governance: A way of addressing declining trust in governments worldwide, but not China’s Social Credit System
• Stewardship: Transcending the flawed idea of private ownership, and not land registration, not asset tracking
• Incentives: Income as a Human Right, but not Universal Basic Income
• Learning: Entirely transcending old methods of retaining knowledge.

I believe that what is more valuable than use cases is to look at the meta-trends uncovered from more than 200 blockchain white papers:

See Bucky’s World Game.

When considering blockchain for business, there are a number of models to help determine whether blockchain should be considered for any business, which all eliminate around 80% of proposed blockchain projects:

And another, which eliminates 80% of proposed blockchain projects:

And one from the World Economic Forum:

An online decision process can be found here:

Do you need a blockchain?

Thank you for your time and attention. Any questions? Ping a reply to this post and I’ll do my best to answer.

In the interests of advancing an understanding of blockchain, feel free to use this content to educate your team about blockchain (download latest version .pptx) or contact me to deliver the most up-to-date version of this talk for your organisation, school or university.

Further Links of Interest

• Sebastien Meunier’s Collection of Decision Models
• Michael Haupt’s List of Blockchain Developments to Watch
• Michael Haupt’s List of The Best Books Ever Written
• Supply Chain: https://www.mattereum.com and https://sweetbridge.com
• Biggest Blockchain by Developer Community: https://www.ethereum.org
• Biggest Blockchain Consulting Provider: https://consensys.net
• Next Generation Blockchain: https://holochain.org

Blockchain: Hype or Hope? was originally published in Michael Haupt on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We’re not taught to do so in school, but there is immense value in writing down 10 or so of the most important principles you believe in that shape your life priorities. These are the big-picture fundamentals that guide your decisions. It doesn’t matter if they’re complex or simple — you’re not trying to impress anyone. The list can change over time, but it remains your reminder of the principles you live by, and helps you get clear on your priorities in life so that you don’t get caught up with meaningless distractions.

Here’s my list, in no particular order:

1. There is no right or wrong; there are only consequences. The early part of my life was dictated by what others told me was right and wrong: parents, teachers, mentors, peers and political and religious leaders. They all had the best intentions in the world, but little of what they had to say proved useful to me long-term. This is why I now live my life by what philosophers call consequentialism, in which decisions are made based on whether the outcome of a particular action proved either positive or negative. Why it matters: Useful for avoiding debates about morality and avoiding making judgements about something someone has done.
2. Unintended consequences are a fact of life and cannot be avoided. I used to spend an inordinate amount of time pondering over life decisions and weighing up pros and cons. Unbeknownst to me, I didn’t know what I didn’t know and I was completely oblivious to my own cognitive and emotional biases and the immense complexities of the systems we’ve created to support human existence. Amidst personal biases and the complexity of life, it’s nigh on impossible to make accurate assessments and ‘good’ decisions. I now make decisions relatively quickly, knowing that course corrections can be made later, if and when unintended consequences occur. Why it matters: Opens up the possibility of acting on gut feelings or intuition.
3. Democracy and capitalism created unintended consequences and are currently collapsing. What started out as a worthwhile experiment in organising societies has now morphed into a single global economic ideology, consistently maintained across national and continental borders, across political parties and across political leaders. While it’s tempting to believe that each country is responsible for their own laws and regulations, these local laws merely support a meta-philosophy which is intentionally never taught, discussed or reported on. As a result, the ideology is understood by very few. The most accurate term I’ve found (so far) for this ideology is neoliberalism, but many names have been suggested by others: deep state, oligarchy, plutonomy, military–industrial complex and corporate capitalism. Why it matters: Avoids political debates and opens up the possibility of considering alternative social and economic systems.
4. Propaganda is alive and well and far more ubiquitous than most people imagine. Every single action the average person takes is influenced largely by people we didn’t know existed. Western propaganda started with the work of Edward Bernays and has continued with media consolidation and manipulation. Why it matters: Understanding how public opinion is formed is useful in forming personal opinions: know the source.
5. Humanity is essentially moral. Depictions of terrorist acts and ‘bad’ people who must be conquered and punished are largely propaganda, created to support the belief that a strong military presence is constantly required. Contrary to Bernays’ insistence that the masses are sheep and need to be led, scientific evidence and historical precedents show that “the arc of the moral universe is a long one, but it bends towards justice.” — The Moral Arc by Michael Schermer. This doesn’t mean there will be inevitable moral progress. It does mean that we can earn moral progress, fight for it and argue for it — without overbearing law enforcement. Why it matters: If we are to design new a new social system to replace democracy and capitalism, we can start with the assumption that people are inherently good.
6. The world’s To Do list, as summarised by the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals, are merely symptoms of neoliberalism. As is true in medicine, treating symptoms seldom results in a longterm cure of the underlying cause. It is much quicker and significantly easier to treat a symptom, but there are usually more unintended consequences for ignoring the cause and aiming for quick wins. Each one of us have a choice as to the kind of legacy we leave. We can either be known as someone who achieved large, short-term symptomatic solutions or we can be known for smaller long-term systemic solutions. Neither choice is right or wrong — there are only consequences. Why it matters: While the SDG’s are a useful list of super-wicked problems, it is useful to know that they cannot be solved within the constraints of neoliberalism and that a different system is required.
7. Leapfrogging democracy and capitalism is not only possible, it’s inevitable. “We challenge the deadly notion that nothing can be done — disputing that capitalism as we know it is the best and the only possible option.” — Gar Alperovitz and Gus Speth, co-chairs of the Next System Project. Why it matters: Although the task at hand may seem impossible, many others are thinking along similar lines. By setting a collective intention and building a movement — all we need is 10% of the planet’s population — it is inevitable that a new system will eventually become the prevailing opinion of the entire planet.
8. Intention is the most powerful force known to humanity. Through four personal experiences in Sydney, London, Taipei and Dar es Salaam, I am convinced that some things can only be achieved by setting a clear intention. Some things are only possible with less planning and more being open to flow. Some things appear impossible — until you start them. And then they’re no longer impossible.

“You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you’ll escape one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.” ― John Green, Looking for Alaska

My Guiding Principles for Life was originally published in Michael Haupt on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Michael Haupt is a certified Strategic Foresight Practitioner (SFP) and Executive Director at Project 2030, a grassroots collective dedicated to co-creating a world that works for 100%.

As an SFP, Michael is trained on how to proactively plan and create the future. His role is different to that of a Futurist: those who make predictions about the future based on current trends.

Strategic Foresight Practitioners create the future.

Michael is also a speaker, consultant and advisor tracking Emerging Strategic Technologies (EST’s¹), the simultaneous rise in personal authority and what role both play in the evolution of humanity.

Michael freely shares his thoughts on a thrivable society in Postcards from 2035. His writing is faction: a mix of fact — gleaned from researching hundreds of blockchain and token white papers — and speculative fiction. It consists of hypothetical stories from his real-life daughter telling us what life is like in her future society. She will be 21 years old in 2035, hence the name Postcards from 2035.

Michael’s early 20-year corporate career included directing multi-million-dollar technology projects in 16 cities on 6 continents. He later transitioned into the role of Marketing Technologist, where he built a bridge between Marketing and Technology departments in large corporates. After leaving the corporate world in 2013, he co-founded an Artificial Intelligence and Big Data start-up called OpenDNA, which listed on the Australian Stock Exchange in 2016.

In 2017, after 25 years of chasing “the American dream,” Michael took time out from his career to pursue Project 2030, an audaciously bold, sweeping plan to decisively eradicate poverty, hunger, disease and inequality by building a bridge between top-down actors like the UN and national governments and grassroots activists like Extinction Rebellion and Fridays for the Future. His hard-won experience in technology and marketing is helping to proactively birth Society 4.0 via the Tipping Point Festival. Michael is the unashamedly self-appointed Project Manager for humanity’s next great transition:

You can find Michael on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and his writing can be found at Michael Haupt on Medium, where he is one of the top writers in the world on the topic of the future, with over 18,000 followers.

To find out what Michael is currently engaged with, visit his Now page.

Footnote 1: EST’s include Distributed Ledger Technologies (blockchain), robotics, biotechnology, genomics, nanotechnology, materials science, artificial intelligence, computational logic and cognitive neuroscience.

Michael Haupt was originally published in Michael Haupt on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I’ve been so impressed with Andy Raskin’s breakdown of Zuora’s sales deck that I’ve referred to the article again and again to create new decks for clients. It struck me today that instead of starting from scratch every time, it would help if I had a blank template to re-use. Starting with a blank template also helps me avoid the problem of trying to repeat a storyline that works for Zuora but doesn’t necessarily work as-is for other products and industries. Andy explains why this is:

Is the “Greatest Sales Deck” Great for Savvy Prospects?

If a template of the Best Sales Deck Ever would be useful to you too, feel free to download it here:

It’s nothing fancy — just 6 slides with Andy’s original 5 Elements of a Brilliant Sales Narrative. There’s no theme and no images, so the document weighs in at only 58kb.

Enjoy. You’re welcome.

Download a Template of Zuora’s “Best Sales Deck Ever” was originally published in Michael Haupt on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I love the elegant simplicity of a regularly updated Now page, in parallel with the more traditional About page, so here’s what I’m working on now.

Last update: September 2018

Current Big Question

I love questions. A good question inspires a complex answer. A great question provokes complex thinking.

My current overriding question that keeps me awake at night is:

“Can a game be used as a Trojan Horse to birth new worldviews, new cultures and new civilisations?”

Current Projects

Tomorrow Makers

While still in the very early days, Tomorrow Makers is a For Purpose Events and Gaming Enterprise with a single, laser focus: the conscious evolution of humanity. You can read our Conceptual Plan. Next steps are fundraising and forming the core team.

Society 4.0

An ongoing, iterative proactive plan to birth an entirely new civilisation, starting with a game:

Let’s Play a Game: Designing a New Civilisation

Learning

In August it was announced that we are finalists in the Evolutionary Future Challenge 2018, which means we’ll be presenting our proposal in the Silicon Valley area in October.

Until then, we’ll be learning about The Seven Competencies of Evolutionary Leaders:

1. Personal Evolution — become a force for good
2. Emotions & Language — how we relate & create new narratives
3. Systems Thinking & Being
4. Systemic Sustainability
5. Ontological Designing
6. Adaptive Collaboration
7. Wisdom & Long-term Visionary Thinking

Ongoing

Fatherhood

I’ve run multi-million dollar projects with multi-national teams all over the world. The most complex: 100 Indian and Taiwanese developers (based in Taipei and multiple locations in India), 5 American product specialists, an Australian-born Filipino project manager — all led by a South African. Go figure.

None of these projects were as complex as raising a now almost 5-year-old daughter. I fail every day, but I’m getting better at it (single fatherhood, not failing). Here’s my big picture view of what I’ve got myself into:

Imagineering a World Where Women Thrive

Marketing & Technology Consulting, Mentoring & Advising

I work with very select visionaries, tech startups and change agents, usually with a focus on empathic technology, enhancement of humanness and the personal data economy.

Writing

I love writing — helps get my otherwise muddled thoughts into a somewhat cohesive framework. I’m nearing completion of my first book: Postcards from 2035. It’s inspired by my real-life daughter, who will turn 21 in 2035. These are short stories from her telling us what her life is like in an entirely new civilisation.

Hi, I’m Gracey. Let me tell you about your future.

Current Reading

Ever since the age of 12 I’ve read voraciously, with changing interests through the years. Right now, I have a completely illogical fascination with methods of human coordination and Nature’s way of teeming and swarming, so that’s mostly what I’m reading about now. A few of my favourites:

• Teeming: How Superorganisms Work Together to Build Infinite Wealth on a Finite Planet by Tamsin Woolley-Barker, Ph.D
• Big Mind: How Collective Intelligence Can Change Our World by Geoff Mulgan
• Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks by James H. Fowler and Nicholas A. Christakis
• SuperCooperators: Altruism, Evolution, and Why We Need Each Other to Succeed by Martin Nowak and Roger Highfield

My all-time most recommended books are here (more recent) and here (slightly older):

The Best Books Ever Written

Past Big Questions

• “Can a nation’s culture — or even the world’s — be shaped by a skilled conductor, where social activists and technologists are the orchestra players?”

What I’m Doing, Now was originally published in Michael Haupt on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Here’s a useful life trick I learned from my leadership coach: Place a bowl on your bookshelf or display cabinet — any bowl will do. Whenever something good happens in your life, write it on a card or slip of paper. Write the date on the reverse, just so you can keep tabs on what happened when. Drop the card in the bowl. By the end of a year you should have a sizeable pool of gratitude cards.

Whenever you’re experiencing a bad patch, or you’re angry with life, or someone has upset you, do a lucky draw from your bowl. Take out any card and read it. No matter how bad you’re feeling, whatever you read will be a perfect pick-me-up, at a time when you need it most.

I love this life hack, and it has kept me going during patches of sadness, poverty, loneliness and disconnection.

I added a pretty significant card to my gratitude bowl today — probably the most impactful of any of the cards I’ve ever deposited.

Why so significant?

I like to look back and see the patterns that have emerged across my life. I believe that there’s a golden thread that links seemingly unrelated events in everyone’s life. Understanding this golden thread and seeing the patterns unfold gives life meaning. For the past few years I’ve struggled to find the golden thread in some of the ventures I’ve been involved in. That’s changed recently, and I’m excited to tell you about it. Today’s card reconfirms for me that the golden thread continues, albeit invisibly at times.

Before I tell you what’s on the card, I’m going to spill the beans on three huge life mistakes that led to today. I believe we don’t talk enough about mistakes. Today’s narcissistic social media world is filled with impossibly cute children, breathtaking sunsets at the beach, inspiring life achievements, perfect gourmet dinners, and profound off-the-cuff witticisms. It seems to me that unless your life is perfect, you might as well shut up on Facebook.

I disagree about hiding mistakes. Mistakes and failure are two of life’s most potent teachers — if you allow them.

Here, then, are my three most significant life mistakes (so far) that led me to a new adventure that starts today. This may be one of the only times I ever bring the backstory of why I do what I do to light. It’s not something I plan on doing often, because it is a pretty raw exercise of getting real on my WHY. But at the beginning of what I anticipate will be a wild ride, I want to open up about how I got here, why I took this path, and where I’m headed next.

Mistake #1: Shift Publishing — 2011

I decided in 2011 that I wanted to work exclusively with change agents — people working to make the world a better place. I spent 6 months packaging everything I knew about B2B (business-to-business) marketing into something digestible for coaches, speakers, authors and social entrepreneurs. Templates, processes, scripts — the whole kit and caboodle.

I poured blood, sweat and tears into putting the package together. It was beautiful and I’m still really proud of it, but no-one else wanted it. Sure, I engaged a few really interesting clients — people doing really cool things to heal the planet. Many of them are still friends today. But my little business didn’t take off the way I had hoped. I eventually pulled the plug in 2015.

The lesson I learned is to never again build a product before I’ve validated that there is a real need or there is a real problem. The fact that I believe there is a need is meaningless. A quote that really challenged me as I wound up the company was:

“You either solve the problem that is, or you solve the problem that isn’t. If you solve the problem that isn’t, you still have the problem that is.” — Keith Cunningham

In Silicon Valley they call this getting to Product-Market Fit, and it’s a big deal. Failing to get this right is the reason why so many startups fail.

Mistake #2: Silicon Valley — 2015

In 2014, a long-time client who had become a good friend asked me to co-author a marketing book. Since we both had strong views on the annoyingly disruptive nature of advertising, it was an easy ‘Yes!’ We spent every Sunday morning for 6 months recording our thoughts and discussions. A freelance writer waded through our ramblings and tightly edited what we’d chatted about into a punchy manuscript.

By the time we’d completed about 80% of the book, a business idea had started forming, so we decided to shelve the book to build a tech platform. I asked a friend to join as the technical brains, and we hammered out a proof of concept. In April 2015 we flew to Silicon Valley to raise funding.

Within 6 weeks we had $1.2m in the bank and we’d started building the product. Everything was looking rosy indeed.

After a few months of solid progress on the project, things started going pear-shaped.

My co-founder friend and I — he was CEO, I was marketing — just could not see eye-to-eye on strategy. I felt strongly we should build a business platform; he wanted to build a consumer app. What irked me most is he wanted a consumer marketing strategy that went against all of the principles we argued for in the book we’d almost finished together. He basically wanted me to build a click-bait farm to rival the much-hated Taboola and Outbrain. I was not happy. At all.

He consistently chose to ignore what advisors and I were saying about his growth strategy. So I suggested we attend an App Promotion Summit in London. The idea was to learn from other successful app developers. He agreed. The organisers of the conference selected our product to be critiqued in the final panel discussion. This was a chance to pitch our idea and have experienced app developers and marketers provide feedback on our (ahem) brilliant idea.

On the day of the London Summit, he arrived late because of a transport strike. He’d missed all of the talks that supported my argument that the consumer route was bound to fail. I briefed him as quickly as I could and off he went to pitch his usual pitch.

The panel roasted him. The entire pitch and business concept was embarrassingly flawed. He was humiliated. And furious.

I was fired a few days later. No valid reason was given; none was required. The friendship, the book and my dream of being involved in a tech startup disappeared in a puff of smoke.

Ouch.

Fast-forward a few months, and a ‘chance’ Twitter conversation led to another Silicon Valley adventure.

Start of MySwirl Adventure

The tweet that initiated contact with Tracy Saville and MySwirl

I spent the following 9 months helping this all-woman startup team refine their pitch and shape their company culture. The great news was that we managed to secure funding from a large Silicon Valley hardware vendor. The bad news was that my role as Head of Global Partnerships became redundant in the process. The vendor wanted to retain ownership of the platform for an internal pilot, so no global partnerships. Another ouch. Nine months of hard work with no compensation really sucks.

Fast-forward to earlier this year, when the company that fired me listed on the Australian Stock Exchange. Their prospectus described the exact strategy I’d fought for, but failed to gain support for. Yet another ouch.

I learnt (and lost) a lot thanks to my Silicon Valley adventures. The biggest lesson, though, was gaining an understanding of what drives the Valley. In a 2016 thought piece I summarised the Valley’s obsession with technology that measures and controls vs. my desire to use technology to meet one of humanity’s basic needs — that of connection.

The Rise of Conscious Combinatorial Technology

I’m still a huge fan of technology, but I had to accept that Silicon Valley just isn’t for me. I’m grateful for the incredible people I met and the experience of pitching to VC’s. It was a wild ride, and I believe the experience gained can be applied elsewhere. Watch this space.

Mistake #3: An Unplanned Birth — 2014

This mistake is unquestionably the most difficult to admit. It’s also the biggest turning point in my life, so I’m going to tell it like it is. I’ve recently embraced radical honesty, which has been known to make others uncomfortable. Brace yourself.

In 2013, I had a fling with a woman half my age. It was fun and just the kind of distraction I needed after an unpleasant and messy divorce in 2011. We were both from — shall we say — opposite sides of the road, and the fling was never destined to go anywhere. At least, that’s what I thought.

When she told me she was pregnant, my immediate reaction was abortion. We’d spoken about children before and she knew that fatherhood was not an option I was willing to consider.

Or so I thought.

Turns out she shrewdly waited until it was too late for a legal abortion before telling me. I was furious. My solution was to announce I wanted nothing to do with the child. I offered to pay her to disappear and remove an awkward situation that I wasn’t prepared to deal with. Problem solved.

Or so I thought.

Life for me completely changed on the day of my daughter’s birth in May 2014. If you’re a parent, you’ll know what I mean. When I looked into her eyes, there was no way I could continue being the asshole I’d become. So I committed to becoming the best dad I could possibly be. Steepest learning curve ever.

What scares me the most is the world I’ve brought her into. Even more scary is the world she’ll grow up in. I did a little digging to see what it’s like to be a woman in today’s world. What I found rattled me to the core, so I wrote a blueprint for the world I’d love my daughter to grow up in.

Imagineering a World Where Women Thrive

The mistake of bringing an unplanned child into this world shifted my focus from business and marketing to education. I’ve never been a fan of formal education. While life-long learning is important to me, I prefer self-learning. All of my research into education systems proves (to me anyway) that the education provided today — anywhere in the world — no longer serves us. Schools, and to a lesser extent universities and colleges, prepare students for a world that no longer exists. In a Google-powered world, the art of remembering has become obsolete. Schools haven’t cottoned onto this shift yet. The reality for me, though, is that education is something I will have to take an interest in, for the sake of my daughter.

The Golden Thread Returns

The past 6 or 7 years have been really tough for me. This is difficult to admit, but I’ve thrown myself into all kinds of initiatives, without much direction. As a result, many of my bright ideas have been shelved, incomplete. One of them is the boook I’ve been writing for over 2 years.

My leadership coach recently asked me to complete an exercise that uncovers how people perceive me. The results were hardly surprising: no-one really knew what I stand for. In another exercise, she asked me to find my golden thread. It was this powerful exercise that uncovered the value in my 3 biggest life mistakes.

The ‘perception’ exercise also sparked a conversation with an incredible woman I did some work with way back in 2014. At the time I was thoroughly impressed by her view of the world. The work we did brought together a dozen or so of the world’s thought leaders on the powerful principle of purpose. Sadly we lost contact after the telesummit. What I didn’t know is that she’s been hard at work on a solution to South Africa’s education crisis.

Which brings me back to the gratitude card that started this story. I’ve been so impressed by the work she has done and the solution she is currently raising funding for. I’m also truly, truly excited by the scope and impact her initiative will have. My daughter has a hope of receiving a more real-world education as a result this initiative.

That’s why I was humbled and delighted when she asked me to join her non-profit board some time back. It’s taken me a long time to make the decision, but that’s what today’s card represents — a confirmation that the golden thread doesn’t disappear for long.

Today is the start of a whole new chapter in my life — one that feels far more purposeful than anything else I’ve done. It brings together my marketing experience, my deep interest in education and my passion for technology. Most importantly, it promises a much brighter future for my daughter, and indeed all of the 13m learners in South Africa. It solves a real problem: education. Did you know that SA spent R213.7bn on basic education in 2016, or about 15% of the total budget? UN data shows that SA allocates a higher proportion of its budget toward education than the US, UK and Germany.

Despite this high investment, South Africa’s education system was rated 134th out of 138 countries in the World Economic Forum’s 2016–17 Global Competitiveness Report. That’s not on. It’s certainly a worthwhile problem to tackle. So…

The non-profit we’re launching very soon is SOLE South Africa.

Our moonshot mission is 2030 by 2030.

We aim to identify, nurture and grow two thousand and thirty entrepreneurial icons, role models and leaders, to a combined net worth of $20.30B by 2030. (Each worth $10m). Yes, it will be challenging, but oh so rewarding.

We’re currently actively seeking funding from the philanthropy arms of major tech companies. We’ll be making major annoncements very soon. In the meantime there are a number of ways you can help, if this project inspires you:

• If you have children of school-going age in South Africa, start the How to SOLE discussion with your educators;
• If you want to see examples of the kind of Big Questions we pose to learners, like or follow our Facebook page — you’ll get a daily question to ponder on or get engaged with;
• If you’re part of a large organisation who want to sponsor our SOLE in a Box kits for underserved rural schools, ask your Corporate Social Responsibility team to see how they can get involved;
• If you’re a parent or educator and have questions, we’ve provided answers here;
• If you want to help reach a tipping point in South Africa, consider joining our Innovation Circle;
• If you know someone in the media, send them to this initial press release;
• Help us build momentum to transform SA’s schooling by bashing the share buttons on the SOLE SA homepage;
• Consider following us on the journey:

With Thanks

I’m extremely blessed to have enjoyed the support of many people who have supported me during the past 6 or 7 years of floundering around — you know who you are. I’m deeply, deeply grateful. A special thanks to my brother and his family who have consistently gone above and beyond. Thanks boet!

I’m also grateful to my leadership coach who has helped me through a very trying time in my life. I highly recommend Louise Mowbray. If you’re a leader trying to make a bigger impact in the world, I thoroughly recommend her free (but priceless) training, which you can access here.

How I “Accidentally” Found My Life Purpose was originally published in Michael Haupt on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Gender inequality is not something I’ve ever given much thought to— after all I’m a single white male in a man’s world and life is pretty comfortable, thank you very much. However, the unexpected birth of my first child late in life is the Universe’s way of opening up an opportunity for learning. So I did a little digging to see what she can expect as a grownup.

I did not like what I found.

The prospects for a young girl post-2020 are dismal — unless women leaders today figure their stuff out and take a stronger stand.

I’m mad as hell that she will be treated as a consumable — like a chicken breast or a rump of steak . Yes, we’ve progressed: modern day ads no longer feature women being beaten by their husbands — as they did in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s — but we still have a long way to go.

I’m infuriated that it’s likely she will work in the tech industry, where 60% of women are sexually harassed and where funding decisions are at best an ego-driven gamble made by ownership-hungry men.

I don’t like that her access to education may be limited and I certainly don’t want her to join the more than 700 million women globally married or pregnant before they’ve had a chance to enjoy their childhood.

I don’t want her growing up in a country where women cannot own land, or where sexual subjugation is hushed up.

I would never want her rights to travel to be restricted and I’m pretty pissed she won’t earn the same as men doing the exact same job, simply because she doesn’t possess a penis.

I definitely don’t want her to live in any one of the 155 countries that — even in 2016 — have at least one law restricting women’s economic opportunities.

If it ever comes to it, I’d like her to be able to make her own decisions about divorce, abortion, driving and I hope for her sake she’s never gruesomely attacked on social media, simply for standing up for women’s rights.

Sadly — purely because she’s a girl — chances are high that she will experience at least one obstacle no self-respecting dad would ever wish on his daughter.

Good news: there are tons of initiatives underway to address gender imbalances globally, and there has been solid progress since the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing more than two decades ago.

There have been encouraging moves to close gender gaps in wages (California), provide a Universal Basic Income (Finland) for women who provide care to the young and the elderly, laws are being passed to reduce occupational segregation (UK), women’s property and inheritance rights are being protected (Africa) and there are ongoing efforts to combat violence against girls and women (Middle East & Africa). Globally, the more than 15 year old UN Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security is steadily making progress.

Bad news: all of these gender initiatives focus on symptoms rather than causes.

This is mainly because — in every sphere of life — we’ve been conditioned to expect rapid results that match our fast-paced world, rather than lasting solutions.

Symptoms are always easier, quicker, cheaper and more profitable to tackle than causes. The medical and pharma industries often bear testimony to this fact.

The otherwise laudable women empowerment initiatives don’t address root causes, so achieving meaningful, lasting gender equality is unlikely. Some world leaders claim they’ll get there by 2030. Cherie Blair says it will take 118 years before women reach economic parity with men, but I remain skeptical that we will ever achieve gender balance, unless something significant changes.

Why?

The current solutions are simply Band-Aid’s applied to systems that do not serve women’s needs as effectively as men’s needs have been served ever since the Industrial Revolution. In short…

Women are round pegs in square holes, doing the best they can in a system designed to serve men.

The elephant in the room is that these male-constructed systems have run their course and are due for replacement.

Stripping away all the rhetoric, there are two main underlying causes for gender inequality, the first of which is simple and excruciatingly obvious:

• We’re different, by design. Women are endowed with 10 special traits — hardwired into a woman’s brain by evolutionary biology — which are the exact opposite of those hardwired in men;
• Men are not yet willing to scrutinize their conditioning and embrace the female energy within themselves (a huge topic for another post).

For too long we’ve belittled or ignored the extent of our differences and both sexes have adopted learned behavior as coping mechanisms. The reality is that men and women thrive in totally different environments.

Naturally, exceptions abound and there are many examples of women making it big in the world of men, but I cannot accept that my daughter’s only option is to partake in a game stacked against her by design.

“Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition. Rather than spending a lot of time attacking the current realities of gender inequality, women have an opportunity to create new models that make the older masculine models obsolete.” — Adapted from two quotes by Timothy Leary and Don Beck.

Blueprint for a Thriving Woman’s World

What might these new models look like, in a world where women’s energy is celebrated and allowed to flow and flourish?

This is what the world I’d love my daughter to grow up in looks like.

I certainly don’t have all the answers and I recognize that there is no right or wrong — there is simply what is. That said, it’s obvious that our current patriarchal hierarchical view of life no longer serves our planet. Rather than step aside and admit defeat, it’s time for men to carve out space for women to come forth and blossom into leadership positions — both in business and in government. Continuing to pay lip service and nit-picking over symptoms simply doesn’t cut it.

This is the world my daughter — all daughters — deserve. Women, it’s your role to lead the way and co-create this world. Men, it’s your role to support rather than lead. Are you willing?

How We Define Success in a Women-led World

• Happiness and fulfillment are more important pursuits than recognition, success, wealth and power. We pursue a life well-lived, and the consequence just might be recognition, success, wealth and love. We are people who have ambition, but we are not ambitious.
• Community (and global) success is more important than individual success. Today’s world needs more collaboration and nurturing. We need cooperative, collaborative, sustainable societies. We will have succeeded when every country’s budget prioritizes nurturing above war.

Women-led Community Culture

• Decisions are made from the starting point of trust and abundance, rather than from fear and scarcity. Even decisions that might appear risky — where all possible outcomes have not yet been weighed — are easily made because they resonate with deep inner convictions.
• Facts, logical reasoning and rationality — unless accurately informed by data — take second place to inner wisdom.
• Intuition is highly valued, because it honors the complex, ambiguous, paradoxical, non-linear nature of reality. We know that intuition can be developed like a muscle, so we constantly learn to pay attention to our intuition.
• We yearn for wholeness, while recognizing that this longing is at odds with the separation that most of the rest of the world fosters, albeit unconsciously. This wholeness permeates everything we do. For example, we do not strive for “work-life balance” — we strive for integration of our work life with the rest of our life.
• We recognize that we are not separate from but one with nature and each other. We recognize that everything we do impacts others and has consequences, like a rock thrown into a pond causes ripples far beyond the point of impact.

Women-led Technology

• The progress our civilization has made with technology is astounding, but the men responsible are now wondering what’s next. The next transformative innovation — which is just around the corner — requires a woman’s touch. Women in tech have only just begun their big move, and by next leap year they will demonstrably prove what’s been missing.
• For starters, technology should be sensitive to how the user is feeling, and adapt accordingly. Technology will recognize emotion, because emotional intelligence is key to empathy.
• Connecting to and collaboration with the right people at the right time is the most valuable asset in a connected society. Synchronicity is always present and current technology has failed to leverage synchronicity. The network effect can be scaled significantly by connecting individuals destined to meet, rather than connecting those who are already connected.
• Artificial Intelligence — driven by Big Data generated primarily by women both East and West, developed and developing — will provide solutions to global challenges from a different level of thinking that created our planet’s current challenges.
• Men chose to spread knowledge through a system of education that many are losing faith in; women choose to spread wisdom using AI, empathy and technology.

Women-led Privacy

• Privacy concerns arise only when users are convinced of their separation and disconnectedness and when they don’t recognize that the concept of ownership is a dying fad.
• A woman’s data is 25% more valuable than a man’s, and she should be able to trade that value if she wishes, fully under her control.
• A woman’s reputation score is more valuable than a man’s credit score, and she should be able to publicly display her score, or make it available on demand.

Women-led Funding & Finance

• Women have a dysfunctional relationship with money, and this matters because what’s at stake is far bigger than money itself.
• The world’s debt-based economic system is crumbling. Collaborative consumption, partnership society, co-creative gifting, paying-it-forward, buy-one-give-one, peer-to-peer and abundance economics are economic models preferable to profit-driven or shareholder-dictated economies.
• An abundance economy creates thriving lives, rather than gullible, desperate consumers.

Achieving the world I’ve imagineered for my daughter is a tall order, and this is a huge topic with room for much more constructive dialog, and ultimately action. I hope you’ll add to the conversation. I’m firmly of the opinion that the world’s biggest problems will never be solved without wonderfully bold, new ideas, pushing the boundaries of conditioning and ingrained beliefs.

“The fastest way to change society is to mobilize the women of the world.” — Charles Malik, former President of the United Nations General Assembly

If you like the story, don’t forget to recommend and share it so that more women will step into and claim their true power!

Project 2030

You made it to the end! If you’re interested in helping us solve some of the planet’s grand challenges with our ambitious Project 2030, please check out the overview, and invite others to do the same.

Postcards from 2035

Have you come across Postcards from 2035? It’s a series of profoundly simple interlinking ideas describing life in a highly desirable society, where everything and everyone is advanced, happy, intelligent and problem-free. It’s a blueprint of the world we need to co-create. Here’s what that world could look like.

Imagineering a World Where Women Thrive was originally published in Michael Haupt on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Hi, I’m Michael. This is my story.

Let’s first go back a little in time.

It was shortly before my 40th birthday and things were going surprisingly well. Not directly thanks to me in any way. A university dropout, a computer geek who could happily spend endless hours researching or coding, social skills not particularly well-developed. I was more surprised than anyone to find myself where I was.

Yet there I was: at the peak of my corporate career and literally on top of the world — exploring the observatory of the (then) world’s tallest building, Taipei 101.

How did I get to the top of the world?

I’d been headhunted a number of times to lead large technology teams. We implemented complex mobile billing systems around the world, and the assignment in Taiwan was drawing to a close. When I’d left my birth country — South Africa — at the age of 29, I told friends (only half-jokingly) that I was going to explore the world at someone else’s expense. Eleven years later, I’d lived in 16 cities on 6 continents, built an impressive business track record, earned increasingly bigger annual bonuses and amassed a professional network that spanned the globe.

I’d reached the million frequent flyer miles goal, stayed in expensive hotels (including the presidential suite of former palace in France and a castle in Scotland), dined in the world’s best restaurants and lived in fancy houses and penthouse suites. I’d sailed under the Sydney Harbour Bridge, helicoptered over a volcano in Hawaii, swum with dolphins, ballooned over a pride of lions, jumped out of perfectly safe planes and ski’d some of the best powder in the world.

I was on top of the world and living the dream.

But something was missing — I just couldn’t explain what.

Unbeknownst to me, everything was about to change.

After a significant payout in Taipei, I decided to take a little time out to explore Asia. Thailand was my first stop. I’d done business before in Bangkok and was struck by the inner beauty of the Thai people. I wanted to learn more about what makes the East so different to the West. I packed a bag and off I went, with no itinerary and no plan.

After a month in Thailand, while lying on an island beach, I had my first — really scary — out-of-body experience.

The Beach That Rocked (My World)

I. Was. Rattled.

The bizarre experience demanded an explanation. I told close friends what had happened. They were all convinced I’d lost the plot and could offer no answers. So I turned to books.

What was meant to be a 4-week trip through Thailand turned into a 2-year Asian Sabbatical. A period of deep learning, profound shifts and multiple epiphanies.

Now, more than 10 years — and thousands of books — later, I’m comfortable accepting that the experience was real. I’ve met others who have had similar experiences. I’ve read hundreds of medical research papers documenting and explaining experiences that at first appear unreal, illogical and impossible. I’ve had the joy of repeating the experience again and again.

What have I learned?

There are three big takeaways from the out-of-body experience and my unplanned 2-year Sabbatical:

1. Your brain, my brain and humanity’s brain is evolving. The really strange things going on in the world can be easily explained when we understand the latest neuroscience research. There really is a difference between left- and right-brain thinking, but it’s a little more complex than “right is creative and left is rational.” When we add a layer of historical perspective and the recurring cycles of 2,000 years to the field of neuroscience, patterns can be easily explained. Briefly, the Rennaissance was a predominantly right-brain culture and the first Industrial Revolution was predominantly left-brain. The Regenerative Renaissance — the deep social changes unfolding as you’re reading this — is and will be right-brain dominated. Understanding patterns helps predict the future. Knowing the future makes life in the present a whole lot less stressful!
2. Culture is a mirror that reflects back the combined thinking of a nation. Most people, most of the time, take on the traits of the culture around them. Western culture for the past 3 generations has been mostly patriarchal (one of the characteristics of left-brain thinking). Progress has been phenomenal, but we’re slowly realising that our progress created unintended consequences. The brain evolution I referred to earlier is towards a dominance of right-brain thinking — a more caring, supportive, empathic, whole approach to life. Because culture is so closely tied to thinking, the good news is that Western culture is s-l-o-w-l-y evolving too.
3. Today’s global challenges will only be solved by changing culture. The culture of any nation is shaped by the worst behaviour the citizens are willing to tolerate of their leaders. Our planet has tolerated left-brain driven progress since at least 1800. Addressing the consequences without instilling a culture of right-brain thinking doesn’t solve anything. Today’s leaders don’t grok right-brain thinking. Culture won’t change without changing leaders. We need new leaders, and those leaders are currently between the ages of 25 and 10. Our planet’s very survival depends on these leaders unlearning everything “the system” has taught them.

How have these discoveries changed me?

I am absolutely committed to finding a better way.

Why?

Turns out that an out-of-body experience provides perspective. In a world that teaches specialisation, focus and attention to detail, big picture perspective is often overlooked and undervalued.

What do I do? I’m helping to birth the kind of model society that will solve the planet’s grand challenges.

Why? Because systemic issues require systemic solutions. The chance to reform has long past. We now have to embrace systemic decay and collapse and then celebrate systemic reconstitution — the process of building something up again by selecting the pieces that work and ignoring the pieces that don’t.

I’ve been through a lot. I’ve told you about the good bits. I haven’t told you about the bad: Two failed marriages and countless failed relationships. Watching my father die after a high speed car accident. Feeling misunderstood, rejected, alone. Being angry at the world. Not knowing what my purpose is. Thinking more than once that perhaps I should simply voluntarily remove myself from this planet. Removal — I thought — is better than witnessing and experiencing more pain and suffering.

But all those failures and moments of despair no longer matter. They don’t matter any more because of a new perspective. A new story, a new way of looking at our world and how we engage with the planet and with others.

This is what I know: there’s a lot of frustration and disappointment in the world right now. A feeling of WTF?! Despite that, I’m hugely optimistic that everything’s gonna be OK. We are living right on the cusp of something profound. It’s your and my calling to make it real.

This year, I’m shifting my focus away from business consulting. I’m thinking more and writing more.

If you’ve read this far, please join me on this epic journey. Our planet needs you.

Michael
Cape Town,
March 2017

Here’s what I’m working on now.

Here are 30 random things about me.

Early History

Personal History

My Story was originally published in Michael Haupt on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.