Don't discount the beer!

There's nothing quite like a cold beer on a hot Kenyan night. Especially if you are at a party in a friends back yard watching the bon fire (bon fires are common at parties in Kakamega, the town I used to live in in Western Kenya) as the stars stretch their brilliant selves out before you. Once, while talking about philosophy, a newly-made friend suggested I come and check out an NGO he was starting, to create the local ecosystem into a real community (instead of a collection of towns, tribes,and other pieces that did not see themselves as part of the same whole). I did - and that experience opened up a new career path. And it never would have happened without the beer (the stars and the bonfire helped too, I'm sure). Which is to say - the informal is just as important - if not more so - than the formal.

Really, we all know this. If you are looking for a job, you go to lots of parties, not just job-sites. If you go to a conference, the most interesting parts are usually around the coffee machine where a chance conversation leads to a new business deal. Big deals - and some great friendships - are made after playing a round of golf. Your kids football game can be where you find your next client, or next friend, or maybe both.

In Kenya, the informal was the glue that held society together. Yet it is rarely used effectively. Too often, we focus on the 'formal' spheres, and don't give enough time to the informal. Not only our careers suffer - so do our spirits. Of course, that's part of what JustMeans does - here, we practice using the informal as well as the formal to advance a common solution.

Recently at work it felt my team had hit a wall, and we didn't know how to move forward. When a colleague recently suggested that we didn't need another meeting to figure out what our next action was, we needed a long conversation over some beer, I couldn't help but laugh out loud. Of course! When stuck - get wet!

Of course, its not about the beer - but it is about opening up space for ideas to, well, flow.

Sustainability can be about being with people where they are - not pushing them (or the planet) to go beyond its limits. And often, the informal sphere is the best place to, literally, open up space, and discover that even within our limitations, there's new possibilities.