Engage today 2009 review Day 1, Accountability

02 October 2009

The last 2 days have been an incredible experience. Far from the norm, I’m here in a cold cold Calgary, with a person who warms the hearts of millions of people all over the world, His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Before I talk about his talk, I’ll recap what’s been going on here at Engage Today 2009 and perhaps in my word you might be able to find even more meanings that will help you come to some learnings yourself.

This event has been put together by Simple Wealth, and its mission is to get the people of today, engaged in discussion to move forward changes in the world for greater positive causes. Each day has a theme and so far, day one was about accountability and today was about contribution.

To open the conference we had an inspirational speech from F.W deClerk, former president of South Africa and Nobel peace prize winner. Amidst the stories of his presidency came further understanding into how events which occurred help to shape his mind towards the positive change in South Africa, and how that in turn help shape the future of the country and it’s people today.

As the theme of the day was accountability, the message was clear about what we needed to do as people of this planet. We have to be more responsible and accountable to both the planet and it’s inhabitants, and this requires change on a massive scale. Change is an ever accelerating and unpredictable force, especially in today’s technology and information age. This is the first period in mans history where we have more information than we can process, which means we can’t compute the change quickly enough. What we need is clarity of purpose and goal.

This same theme was echoed by the second speaker, Dr Stephen Covey, who also emphasized that truth and honesty should run deep in both your family and social networks. These are the backbone of your legacy, and without a strong foundation, your legacy will never be built.

One of the more interesting pieces which Covey touched upon was the real and tangible shifting of paradigm in business and non-business related management and mindset towards organisational structure. It was shown that the old industrial age thinking of control was out and the new information age thinking of choice and morale authority was definitely in.

One point which was made, that was a real open box perspective was that whilst people are fearful of “identity theft” through credit card or bank detail losses, he states that the REAL identity theft, was the one of social comparison, where by people are now just a mere part of the social program, and have no real identity in the first place.

This rings absolutely true, with more and more people in today’s society, doing jobs they do not enjoy, and performing for companies whose values they do not agree with. Ultimately their identity is being shaped by these entities, other than their own minds.

That was a long day, the afternoon was filled again with some great speakers, from Lynne Twist, the famous international fund raiser, to Sean Stephenson, who’s story inspired everyone in the room. His story is amazing, without doubt the most humbling attitude to life, which when you meet him yourself, you’ll realise you have no excuse to not achieve. If you want to read more about him, get his book, “Get Off Your But”.

That night, a special private concert was laid on for the VIP delegates and we had a very special treat with K.D Lang and Bryan Adams doing a 3 hour session between them. It was truly an intimate event with such talent displaying the very reasons why they are so successful.