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How Much Would It Take For You to Bring This Back from Overseas?

January 28th, 2026

[Picture: Showing approximately 30 items of paper, cardboard and plastic]

On a recent volunteering trip, I brought back the above recyclables from France. Would you have done the same, or would you have had to be paid to do so? If so, how much would you need to have been paid?

Pause for a moment to answer. If you like, you can select your amount by CLICKING HERE and then view what others have selected by CLICKING HERE.

By explaining the motivations behind my actions, this article will consider the concept of ‘wicked problems’ and the mindsets that can arise when facing them. It also aims to provide a useful perspective on crises.

Agency Being at the Root of a Crisis

My volunteering centred on assisting people who are seeking asylum from conflict and persecution. Such a situation often prompts me to consider the interplay between individual and collective responsibility. When is an issue an individual problem? When is it societal? Or is it invariably a mix of both?

As the waste bin at my lodgings started to fill up, I considered this interplay within the context of the environmental crisis. I use the word ‘crisis’ intentionally, as I find the word’s etymology helpful. Crisis stems from the Greek, ‘krisis’, which means, ‘turning point’, or ‘decision’. I find this meaning helpful when it comes to the damage humans are causing to the wider environment, as it signifies a degree of agency. We can decide to take a different turn, so our actions are more resonant with a sustainable future.

mch’s_ Four-Fold Approach and its Directors

mch’s ‘Four-Fold’ Approach to Business aims to give equal importance to the following four aspects: client service, our people, the environment and broader society. A practical application of this approach is that I used train, ferry and bike as my means of transport to and from volunteering, as these forms have the lowest carbon footprint.(1) For a business like mch, decisions relating to modes of transport are some of the most environmentally impactful it regularly has to make. Consequently, it makes sense to prioritise consideration of the environment in such decisions. However, I am not mch’s only Director. As mentioned previously, a Garibaldi fish and a wildflower meadow are also nominal Directors. For more information on these Directors CLICK HERE. Increasingly, they have advocated for prioritising the environment in other decisions. One of these is recycling.

In Calais, France, where I was volunteering, recycling locations for cans and bottles were ubiquitous. However, I couldn’t locate anywhere to recycle paper or plastic. Knowing that such options exist back home, I decided to keep all the recyclable paper and plastic that I was consuming and recycle it when I returned.

My decision to bring back my recyclable waste made me reflect on whether the decision was the most impactful. If recycling is important, would my time have been better spent writing to the local authorities in Calais asking them to expand their recycling provision? Alternatively, should my focus have been on not purchasing items with such packaging in the first place? Or should it have been on all of the above?

Mindsets, Wicked Problems and Clumsy Solutions

From my coaching work, I’ve become aware of the loaded nature of the word, ‘should’. If you take the view that we are composed of many ‘parts’ or ‘characters’, invariably the parts of ourselves that use the word, ‘should’, are not our best selves. The parts that use, ‘should’, often view the world from a perspective of fear, inadequacy and/or scarcity. I call these parts of myself my saboteurs, or alternatively my chimp.(2) Whilst their intent is positive, to the extent that their motivation is to keep me alive, they often inhibit my ability to thrive. In my case, they often surface when levels of ambiguity and complexity spike. They become appealing to listen to because they provide a (false) certainty/definitiveness with respect to my actions; what I should do.

If I recognise this, provided my saboteurs/chimp are not too strong, I can accept and be at peace with the fact that I am likely to be dealing with a ‘wicked problem’.(3) A wicked problem is one which has no definitive answer, no matter how much you analyse, experiment and reflect. The best you can hope for is a ‘clumsy solution’, one which comes from remaining playful and curious and experimenting with a variety of ‘semi-answers’. In my case, I’m comfortable with my decision. My fellow Directors, the Garibaldi fish and the wildflower meadow, are not the most talkative, but I generally get an intuitive sense they’re comfortable with the company’s actions too.

I’d be interested in your views though, so please do share what you’d do by clicking here and if you want to find out what others think, click here.

Footnotes and Signposts

(1) The term ‘carbon footprint’ was developed by two academics, William Rees and Mathis Wackernagel in the 1990s. Interestingly, it was popularised by the petrochemical company BP. I find it curious that a framework encouraging individual responsibility for environmental impact was promoted by a company whose core operations unavoidably have a massive impact on the environment.

(2) For more information on the concept of saboteurs and chimps I’d recommend the work of Sharzid Chamine and Steve Peters respectively.

(3) For an in-depth exploration of wicked problems and clumsy solutions click here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281357989_Wicked_problems_and_clumsy_solutions_The_role_of_leadership

Reflections on a Sabbatical

October 23rd, 2025

I turned 50 during my recent three-month sabbatical and for my birthday, my children gave me the top above, in recognition of the phrase being one I regularly exclaim. For the eagle eyed, the asterisk is a ‘conversation starter’ (another phrase I’m prone to utter). The asterisk is effectively a caveat, as I believe that if you know yourself and are comfortable with yourself, there are some things that you don’t need to have a go at to know they’re not for you.

The phrase aptly sums up the motivation for my recent sabbatical. There were no ‘once in a lifetime’ activities, or key life decisions, I wanted to accomplish. I simply wanted to find out what happens when I have three months away from paid work. Here are some of my reflections:

Privilege Can Pose a Conundrum

It was an incredible privilege to take three months off paid work and given the state of the world, I did question whether a sabbatical was the best use of the resources it would consume. Yes, I had spent over 10 years adopting a lifestyle that enabled me to save enough to accommodate so much time off, but I believe that even being able to save is a privilege. Yes, I felt tired and in need of a rest after 20 years of being primarily responsible for my livelihood: being not only the sole trainer/mentor, but also the CEO, CFO, CTO, COO, cleaner and more. At the same time, there are many advantages of working for myself and I believe that having the ability to do so is another privilege.

I don’t think and feel there is a definitive answer to the conundrum of privilege, but the sabbatical did reinforce my belief that so much of one’s privilege is an ‘accident of birth’. Where you are born, the family you’re born into, your skin colour, gender, physique/genetics are all massive determinants of privilege. Furthermore, these factors have a significant influence on the people you then meet and develop relationships with, which leads on to the second reflection.

What is Truly Valuable is Rarely Done Completely Alone

My sabbatical started with a holiday in France with seven school friends, some of whom I’ve known for over 45 years. It’s difficult to convey the love and gratitude I have for such long lasting relationships. A tangible indication though is that my daily number of laughs increased dramatically the first day we were together, then rose nearly exponentially for the remainder of our time together, only to fall back to pre-holiday levels when we said our goodbyes.

There was also an incredible ease in such an environment. I could go seamlessly from whole group activities to sub-group activities to solo activities. Yet even solo activities were not truly solo. Being able to run up an alpine mountain was made possible because several of my friends took charge of the location of our holiday. My ability to have a sauna, was due to one of my friends searching and securing accommodation that had sauna facilities. Bringing it back to work, when I looked round the dinner table each night, I saw several people who have repeatedly supported mch over the last 20 years: one has done the company’s financial accounts each year, several helped refine mch’s branding and website. In terms of mch’s four-fold approach to running a business, volunteering in Calais after the holiday was greatly aided by two friends being willing to drive to and from France and drop me off in Calais.

A Tweak to the Usual Way of Doing Things Can Provide Real Insight

As just intimated, immediately after the holiday, I spent a week in Calais in Northern France, volunteering with two charities that assist refugees who are stranded there. This is something I have done over half a dozen time before. On all previous occasions though, I volunteered for between one and three days. Volunteering for six days may not seem significantly more than three, but the added time proved remarkably insightful. For example, I experienced the incredibly transient nature of volunteering from a new perspective. Over a five-day period, 35 people volunteered with one of the charities I was with, and of those, only seven volunteered for all five days. This meant that on the fifth day, I was genuinely one of the most experienced volunteers. Managing to operate with such a transient workforce gave me an additional level of respect for the organisations concerned.

When Philosophy Meets Practicality Tensions Can Arise

The big experiment of the sabbatical was a 10-day silent ‘retreat’. Interestingly, the organisers used the word ‘course’, rather than ‘retreat’ and on reflection, I quite agree with them. Indeed, for me, the word ‘retreat’ is a complete misnomer, as the experience proved a full-on battle between one way of thinking/living and another.

The course is likely to be the subject of future posts, but a key insight was that whilst I agreed wholeheartedly with much of the course’s philosophy, I couldn’t ‘get on board’ with the one size fits all approach to practicing/living it. For example, the premise that suffering is invariably caused by craving or aversion sits very well with me. So too does the belief that a more peaceful society depends on individuals becoming more equanimous with their thoughts and feelings. What I wasn’t so sure about was whether a regime with the following characteristics was the best way to start practicing such a philosophy:

• Wake up at 4.00am and conduct 12 hours of meditation/instruction
• Have no contact with the ‘outside’ world: no phones, no TV, no radio, no newspapers, no leaving the premises
• Have no reading or writing materials
• Conduct no exercise, other than walking
• Adopt complete silence with fellow participants and act as if they are not there

I certainly felt a sense of irony that what I had to work hardest at being equanimous about on the 10-day course was the disappointment and unhappiness at being on the 10-day course!

Ambivalence is Still a Reaction Worth Reflecting Upon

At the beginning of the sabbatical, several people asked what I was most looking forward to doing/experiencing. My consistent answer was;

“I’m really interested to find out how I’ll feel when I return to work. Will I be eager, or reluctant to return?”

The reality is that I’ve been neither. I felt and thought next to nothing about work whilst on sabbatical. Consequently, when the time came to return, there weren’t any feelings and thoughts to reflect upon. I felt ambivalent, albeit from the perspective of genuinely enjoying my work and finding it both rewarding and purposeful. In some respects, I found this disappointing. Practicing the equanimity encouraged on the 10-day course though, I’m approaching such ambivalence with curiosity and a belief that such a feeling will not last forever. To this end, it may prove most interesting to reflect on how I feel three months after returning from sabbatical. Furthermore, it has been interesting to reflect on the feelings and thoughts I have had during the sabbatical, and these may also be the topic of future posts.

To conclude, if you are in the privileged position where a sabbatical is possible for you, I would recommend considering it. After all, if you don’t have a go, you’ll never know!*

Why (I think) I ran a marathon

June 5th, 2025

20 years ago, I ran a half-marathon and on finishing thought;

‘If I was running a marathon, I’d only be halfway. Ooft. That would be brutal.’

So why was it that last Friday, I decided to run a marathon?

Well, there are several reasons and the first starts with the pictured pot of jellybeans.

A year ago, I picked up the jellybeans at a conference. It was the usual Pavlovian response;

‘They’re free! Get some!’

However, soon I was reminded of my recent commitment to eat more healthily. I distinctly remember thinking;

‘The only instance when these would be useful is if I were to run a marathon.’

But I didn’t want to run a marathon, so the jellybeans went on a kitchen shelf; and they stayed there because I didn’t want to throw them away (I can’t bear waste). The almost daily glance at the jellybeans brought about a shift though and soon my inner voice was saying;

‘You’re going to have to run a marathon if you want to get rid of these jellybeans’*

In addition to my ‘free stuff vs no waste’ conundrum, I think there were other reasons:

(1) Since I’m known for being a ‘runner’, having run several times a week since I was a child, I’m often asked; “Have you ever run a marathon?”. I think part of me was simply bored of saying; “No.”

(2) I’ll be 50 this year, and despite suffering from ‘Peter Pan Syndrome’, even I am having to acknowledge the ageing process. Running a marathon is unlikely to get any easier.

These are all conscious (if quirky) rationalisations, but I think there was more to it. Something personal and subconscious. Prior to completing it, I only told two people I was going to run a marathon. Also, I did not take part in an organised race. Instead, I measured my own course which started from my house, incorporated local landmarks that were meaningful to me and ended at my partner’s house.

So what have I learnt from this (that’s hopefully useful):

1. People are Complex

The reasons people do things can be varied and may not make much sense to you or indeed them. The brain is often considered the ‘Executive Centre’, but in reality, it is more akin to the press office: producing narratives that make sense of how the body perceives and responds to its environment (for more insight into how the brain constructs its reality, I strongly recommend the work of Lisa Feldman Barrett).

1. Changing One Thing Can Change Everything

Until I started training for the marathon, I found running easy, enjoyable and was objectively quite good at it. Although training for the marathon was still ‘running’, I found it hard, often unpleasant and I was nowhere near as good at it relative to training for a 5km distance. So much so, that despite it being accepted wisdom that (a minimum of) 12 weeks is required to prepare for a marathon, I did my marathon after only 8/9 weeks of training, primarily because I just wanted to get it done and the training to stop! Changing a single variable, the distance, changed almost everything.

1. Very Little is Truly Done Alone and You May Never Know Your Impact

Despite the reputation of the ‘loneliness of the long-distance runner’, I proactively engaged the services of a dietician and a cranial osteopath/massage therapist. Both were incredibly helpful in getting me to both the start and the finish. Yet until now, only one of the aforementioned ‘support crew’ explicitly knew I planned to run a marathon. Furthermore, other sources of support can be unexpected and unplanned. To give just two examples, keeping ‘fluid’ as events unfold, which I gained from a guided walk in the woods and the breath work during an introduction to taking ice-baths, were not preplanned into my preparation, but were incredibly useful none the less.

*Days before the marathon my cranial osteopath/sports massage therapist pointed out that I could have just given the jellybeans away. Strangely this had not really occurred to me! I think because I’d already labelled them as ‘unhealthy, unless used in a marathon’, and didn’t know any other marathon runners living locally.

How One’s WHY Impacts the WHAT. When Minor Changes Matter.

October 8th, 2024

I’ve just spent several hours changing a single word on mch’s branding, marketing, presentation materials and documentation. Instead of describing my work as one of, ‘staff development’, I changed it to ‘people development’. Why did I bother to make such a change? Where did the insight to do so come from?

The answers to both can be found in the Source of Leadership Programme I deliver. A guiding premise of the programme is that leadership is a never-ending quest to know yourself, be yourself and manage the creative tension that comes from trying to be at peace with oneself whilst also striving to develop oneself. To this end, an early exercise in the programme involves finding what Simon Sinek terms your, ‘WHY’. Essentially, this involves completing the following sentence;

‘My WHY is to [Insert the contribution you want to make in the world here] so that [Insert the impact you perceive your contribution will make here].

For a summary of Sinek’s work, and guidance on completing this sentence, click here.

In the Source of Leadership Programme, I raise the prospect that participants may generate multiple WHYs initially, with a personal WHY and a professional WHY being the most common. By way of example, I share the following personal and professional WHYs I generated for myself and my organisation;

Personal ‘To live my values so that I can be the best father, partner, son, brother and friend I can be.’

Work/mch: positive impact ‘To help individuals, teams and organisations reach their full potential so they can achieve the positive impact they want to have on the world.’

I deliver the Source of Leadership Programme annually and always try to approach each exercise with a fresh pair of eyes (or more accurately a pair of eyes with a year’s more experience and reflective practice). In practical terms, this typically means I do the exercise myself in advance of facilitating it for participants. Doing so this year, I was struck by:

1. The multiple roles I have.
2. How artificial it seems to separate my professional roles from my personal ones: whilst some roles may be more important than others, they are all part of who I am.
3. The fact that given I only have one set of values, perhaps I only have one WHY.

With these insights, my provisional, overarching WHY became;

‘To live my values so that I can be the best father, partner, son, brother, friend, colleague, mentor, trainer and facilitator I can be.’

These insights also explain why I felt it was appropriate to change ‘staff development’ to ‘people development’ in all of mch’s materials. My ultimate aim is not just to develop a person as a member of staff, but as a human being. This is what draws me to the type of training I deliver. The utility of the likes of emotional intelligence, mindset, resilience, management and leadership training is not confined to the workplace. These topics are equally valuable outside of work. Although there can be an understandable desire to compartmentalise life, the ‘buckets’ we create for ourselves often prove quite transparent and porous - one impacts on the others. This perspective is supported by the extended feedback I receive from participants six to 12 months after their training formally ends. One of the most common qualitative comments goes something like;

‘Whilst the training was useful at work, it’s also had a really positive impact on my relationship with my partner/son/daughter/friend/mum/dad/sister/brother.’

So what’s the ‘So What?’ to all of this? I believe there is one general and one specific ‘So What?’. The general one is that no matter how experienced you are, there can be real value in repeating the same reflective exercises, provided you can do so with genuine curiosity. The specific is that discernment is likely to serve you well, if like me, your WHY is based on the roles you have. Given that your WHY is intrinsically linked to your identity, if you start to attach your identity to a role, the question that’s then worth asking is;

‘Who would I be if that role no longer existed?’

A while ago, I was faced with this reality when a separation led to my role as ‘partner’ no longer existing. Given the multiple roles I have, the loss was felt, but did not lead to any sort of identity crisis. However, it did make me appreciate that all my roles could come to an end at any point. If that were to happen, who would I be then? This is a question I’m reflecting upon, and it may lead to a further iteration of my WHY. If so, it would be a fitting illustration of the never-ending leadership quest to know yourself, be yourself and manage the creative tension that comes from trying to be at peace with oneself whilst also striving to develop.

For an overview of the Source of Leadership Programme mentioned in this blog, click here.

Reflections on 20 Hours Doing ‘Nothing’

April 4th, 2024

“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”

Blaise Pascal, Philosopher and Mathematician

I came across this quote many years ago. It’s stuck because, for me, it highlights the potential ‘dark side’ of action. Whilst I consider it valid, it’s also challenging for someone like me who considers that ‘what we do is who we are’. I hasten to add though that why we do something, who we do it with/for, how we do it and where and when we do it are also crucial.

Having discussed this quote with others, an assumption often emerges, namely that if we sit quietly in a room alone, we’re effectively doing nothing. If you subscribe to the premise of ‘what we do is who we are’, the arresting conclusion is that if we do nothing, we are nothing.

I was keen to explore this further, but rather than sit alone in a room, I sat (and lay in a hammock) in woodland for 20 hours. During this time, I stayed within the same 15 square metres of woodland. I heard and saw no one else. I had no watch, no phone and no reading materials. I chose not to write or draw anything. I simply sat/lay and experienced day turn to night and then night turn to day. In the days leading up to it, I was apprehensive. I was worried I’d get really bored, to the point that it would be unpleasant.

Did I get bored? No.

Was it unpleasant? No. In fact, I would have been content to have stayed longer.

Did I do nothing? No. At times, I was taking care of basic needs such as eating and sleeping. At other times, I was intentional and meditated. For the most part though I simply absorbed what my senses perceived:

The smells of the forest and how they varied over the course of 20 hours.

The sensation of flies around my face (a free test of self-regulation if ever there was one).

The sound of bird song, deer movement and foxes communicating (very unexpectedly, very loudly and very early in the morning).

The differing shapes and colours of the trees.

Intermingled with this were a multitude of thoughts and feelings concerning people, places and things. Some were unsurprising, as they involved very current events in my life. However, many were far more obscure and left me wondering; ‘Why on earth did that pop into my mind?’

Was there enlightenment? Most certainly not! However, despite not sleeping very well, I felt energised and upbeat leaving the forest and for the remainder of the day.

Would I recommend it? / Would I do it again? Yes and Yes. If you do give it a go, I hope you find it insightful to explore what thoughts and feelings emerge when you allow yourself that amount of time in such an environment. Also, and without meaning to be clichéd, I hope you perceive it not as a case of getting away from it all, but instead getting back to it all.