Seeing and Being Changemakers Matter in an Age of Hyper-Change

This 4th edition is about the next steps to build a global creative changemakers community. First, I would like to meet you and communities of changemakers as I travel worldwide. If you missed the keynote, the edited transcript of the Book Launch Keynote is here. This is presented here as part of Creative Change Newsletter, which has over 28,000 changemakers subscribed to it. Join the conversations on Creative Change here.

Hey Changemaker Family!

First of all, it is incredible that within a month, we have grown to a 28,000-strong community! This is definitely a newsletter that you are a co-author of, too. So, I am looking forward to listening to your stories and initiatives for positive change.

DONATE Creative Change Book to Libraries

I continue to seek ways to grow our changemakers movement. One way to do it is to donate Creative Change Books to libraries; the first will be a university in Jakarta, Indonesia on 11th of July. If you think your city or your university library should have the Creative Change book, let us know [email protected]

MEET me as I meet other changemakers worldwide

As I make my way around the world, I will be happy to meet communities if you gather a few to organize a meeting. I will be in Jakarta from 9-11 July, Oxford from 1-3 August, London for a day on the 4th, and then Geneva from 2-4 September. Again, let my team know, and we could organise something [email protected]

Hope to see you in these cities!

Book Launch KEYNOTE

Here is the edited transcript with relevant slides for the keynote speech delivered on June 21st to an audience of 220 people from 30 nations. I spoke about how I rediscovered the gift of seeing, why it matters in an age of hyper-change, why more of us need to be changemakers, and my one discovery about changemakers: what enabled them to change the world. I have also included relevant links. Scroll down for the transcript.

WATCH the Keynote https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EX3zPzZDB6k&t=2s

GET the Books

Get Collector’s Edition: https://9bb3c2-39.myshopify.com/products/creative-change-hardcover-by-lawrence-chong

Get the Hardcover Lion Version: https://9bb3c2-39.myshopify.com/products/creative-change-hardcover-by-lawrence-chong-1\

Books can be delivered globally, relevant shipping charges apply.

EDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE 32 MINUTE KEYNOTE

Good evening, dear family and dear friends. How are you?

Are you feeling good?

Did you think that we had a great Summit today?

First of all, I want to thank the team and everyone behind the scenes who made this happen.

Can we please give them a round of applause?

You know this day would not have happened without all of you.

Everyone of you has walked with us in some way or manner over these 20 years.

You know what they say about people who are part of the Consulus family

The Crazy Ones

So cheers to you, The Crazy Ones

About a year ago, I suddenly saw something like Chinese water painting ink on my eyes

I thought I was seeing things, and I told my wife, Michelle

I think something is very wrong

We were in beautiful Sarawak enjoying the beauty of Sarawak, and I saw these shades in my eyes.

It turns out, I had quite a severe retina tear.

It shocked me because I'm still relatively young, and it took a couple of months for me to regain my vision after several procedures, including one quite frightening where you can see the eye surgeon operating on you because you're on isolated, you know, for those of us who have been through that procedure in the operating theatre

And I understood one thing from that experience

It is a gift to see

it's a gift to see your family, your loved ones, isn't it?

so being able to see is something that we may take for granted from time to time,

so for me, a year after that incident, I took very good care of my eyes

In fact, my wife was always telling me since I fly around very often

you have to be careful of your eyes, ok?

So I think I've been good.

Things have been going well.

Now, interesting enough, when I was young

And I was growing up in Singapore,

I'm sure all of you appreciated the wonderful closing keynote by Mr Lim Boon Heng

(watch Chairman of Temasek Holdings Mr Lim's keynote here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Jd2NeUS-DY)

Can we give him a round of applause, please

Singapore was in survival mode,

and this morning, Minister Desmond Tan was with us, and he was talking about having no choice

(Watch fireside chat with Minister Desmond Tan here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FEecUHgNDQ)

because Singapore in the 80s, we had very little options

For myself, when I was studying

I was quite shocked to realise that in Singapore, it was all about money, money money.

In fact, for friends from overseas, we have a movie that marked that period it was called: "money not enough"

so I felt very limited by the entire environment at that time.

Until 1992, when I had the privilege to meet a changemaker. She's an Italian woman. Her name is Chiara Lubich, and she dreamed of building a United world

and I was very surprised to meet

other young people who believe and were doing things to bring about a united world

I remember telling myself when I was in Rome as a 14-year old attending a press conference ran by all these young people who were working to bring about the reduction of poverty, they were doing something for the planet. They were fighting corruption in the cities of Europe and I said I should be doing something like this!

I should be having this kind of adventure

to believe a greater dream

that life is more than just about getting by,

and so for me, in 1992, it was almost like having a black and white television turn full color

my life became very enriched from that moment in time since '92

and why am I telling you this because in Singapore, change happens very fast

this place where we are having this special event, and you may be asking us why we are doing this event here.

This was a former carpark but look at it today

because of the speed of change

today that car park has become a jewel

It is not by chance that Singapore managed to bring prosperity and purpose to its people.

Of course, as we have heard from Mr Lim, over time, the society in Singapore has evolved, and Singapore is now a much better place.

Today, we are not just talking about money. We are talking about cause and purpose. Many Singaporeans are involved in missions here and overseas.

And today, we heard some of those experiences

A while ago Lawrence Chan, another Lawrence

shared that for him, doing mission work is important, so there are many of us

many of us here, whether we are from overseas or we are Singaporeans,

we believe that it's not enough to look at the news of our times and say

I wish you well or I pray for you

that it's important to see and act now

I was asked this question when I was studying design,

you see, I had an ambition and I thought that in order to bring about change in the world I will be a Catholic priest, that was my dream - to be a traveling Catholic priest until I met Mr Loh Khee Yew whom I considered as my Yoda and my guide for understanding the power of creativity to shape the world.

I was studying design and I was very arrogant then because I was doing a lot of design projects before I went to study design

and when I went under the tutelage of Mr Loh Khee Yew I designed what I thought was a fabulous poster and I showed it to him in one of his lessons

He looked at it and he said to me and he asked me:

"what do you see?"

I said well, I see a beautiful poster that you know, addresses your brief and he asked me again, looking at me in the eye:

"What do you see?"

I couldn't answer him and he was getting very frustrated so he asked me again a third time:

"what did you want people to see?"

I was stunned because I thought that design is all about beauty and form

I never thought much about it and I went by the gut feel and he told me that day

"You're wrong Lawrence, design is about decision-making it's how you want people to feel.

It's how you want people to move

and is how you want people to understand

If you want people to feel how you felt

If you want people to see what you see

you have to design in a way that they can understand you

I said "wow!"

I have never understood the power of design until the day Mr Loh said that to me

I could describe my career as Before Loh, BL and After Loh, AL

I didn't become a priest but I found that the power of design can indeed change the world and I followed that dream

I followed that dream to work with many other people to do so

Now dear family dear friends

why seeing change matter even more today?

and why in terms of seeing, it has to be a gift that we treasure

because in a time when change is at hyper-speed we actually have to be far more observant about who we are and what we do

It's more important to be mindful of the being before the doing

Too many of us are caught up in doing

We are always on our phones

even today in the summit I noticed that while a lot of wonderful experiences were being shared

at the same time, a lot of people were multitasking on their phones attending meetings, sending messages

This is our world but because of that as Mr Lim said

it is a complex world and we have to be very clear

That better technology does not guarantee a better world

and this is not new

Throughout the 20th century progress does not mean that human civilization are more deserving of each other

Progress does not mean that we know how to love our neighbor

NO

dear family dear friends it has not been so

and this is why I argue we have to learn how to see with

a lion's gaze

For friends from overseas, you may not know this, Singapore is also known as the Lion City and the founding fathers of Singapore observed the present and the future like lions.

I did not know this but you might want to know that the hunting rate of a lion

is actually very poor, they don't kill very well,

compared to cheetahs, they don't kill very well

they only make it one out of five times so even if a prey were to be running in their direction they will look out for it

they will observe very clearly before they make their move

and why am I saying this

I'm saying this because as I said earlier

being matters more than doing

doing more actually create even more dissonance and confusion in us

What is critical is a discerning mind and a discerning eye in order to see what is truly happening around us

I learned this the hard way.

Today you have heard my brother, the Secretary General of ACRP who is here with us

Can we give him a round of applause?

Shinohara San, more than a decade ago thought of this idea to suggest to the United Nations to ask the world's governments to reduce their military spending by 10% so that we can meet Millennium Development Goals.

When he proposed the idea to all of us young leaders we thought it made a lot of sense

We thought that the world's governments would support us so we collected 20 million signatures

Now here I was, in Union Square (New York City)

Now as a good Singaporean I have never participated in a public campaign or stood in the middle of the street to collect signatures so when I was in Union Square, and a policeman eyeballed me and walked towards me I thought:

Uh-oh I'm in trouble

so it turns out that the policeman was just trying to ask me

'Sir' he asked 'What are you trying to do?'

I said 'SIR' trying to be nice as I'm in a foreign land, I don't know whether I'll be arrested so I replied

"Sir, we the young people of Religions for Peace of all the world's religions would like to collect 20 million signatures to convince the world's governments to give 10% of their military budget to meet Millennium Development Goals"

(Read more about Arms Down Campaign here: https://www.baselpeaceoffice.org/sites/default/files/imce/rfp_resource-guide-nuclear-disarmament_v12_preview-pages.pdf)

At that time the military budget was US$1.46 trillion so it's small change for these governments

The policemen listened intently then he asked me:

"If you achieve what you set out to achieve and if the world’s governments agree with you, would there be World Peace?"

he asked me

he also asked me

"If you achieve what you seek to achieve, will the evil actors stop to do what they are supposed to?"

Frankly speaking I didn't have an answer but the questions from the policeman in New York left a deep impression in me.

because later on when Shinohara San and I continued to serve in interreligious dialogue we saw with our own eyes how religious divisions are always planted by political actors

it's not by religious people and they are planted for control

and we were also shocked that if you are involved in peace building

if you are involved in dialogue

Do you know that the extremists, they out-raise us by a thousand to one

there is far more money to blow up places than for peace

I know this for a fact

we are trying to raise money for journalism for a United World

we can only collect pennies compared to terrorists who collect billions.

this is a hard truth

so friends, good intentions are not enough

it requires careful deliberate systemic design which is also why we do Shape the World Summit

(See the rest of the sessions of STWS2024 here: https://www.youtube.com/@consulusglobal/videos?view=0&sort=dd&shelf_id=2)

What is the biggest distinction between the animal kingdom and the human species?

The one thing:

the greatest clarity and characteristical difference between the animal world and us is:

Civilisation

Our ability to organize ourselves, not to eat or kill each other

but to flourish as a shared people

that is the biggest distinction

and it's not by intuition, as all this is achieved by design

now the challenge before all of us is:

With the rise of artificial intelligence

Will it also result in the switching off, of human intelligence

which is why I would say and here, dear family, it is critical for us to think of it carefully and clearly,

it is important to also know that we have to match the power of machine learning and why is this critical?

Because billions are being spent and it will cross very soon into trillions of dollars but while we spend so much energy to train a machine why don't we do the same for ourselves because in order to thrive as a people of the future we need creative intelligence

we need creative intelligence to match artificial intelligence

because in recent times there's just too much conversation about the money flows about training machines

Instead of we need more conversations about Humanity going forward and you know in this entire journey of over 20 years I realized that with multiple crisis, all interconnected

we need more of us as changemakers not less!

do you all agree?

Not less! We need more of us to get out there, not to be afraid!

To be the change that we're meant to be

and it's not just narratives, it's not just a slogan

We have to act now because we need to do it for our kids, we need to do it for the next generation

Funnily enough probably because changemakers are so rare,

no dictionary has an official definition of it and here's my shot at it:

Changemaker/s

so we define any person or persons who have a specific cause despite the odds is creatively changing the world for good while mobilizing a movement for lasting change.

There is something that I discovered which is quite fascinating, I realized that throughout history all the changemakers, those

who moved nations

who changed the understanding of science

who helped elevate our understanding as a shared people

they all had one thing in common

they had a penetrating gaze

they had a very different vision of tomorrow

and their greatest ability was because of that vision they were able to unite a lasting movement for change

and I believe, I believe so many of you here you are guides, lights for your movements of change and that's why we can connect and that's why we are here in Shape the World Summit.

In my research and in my work for over 20 years I understood that it is not a mystery but there is almost a sequential process that all changemakers go through

First they find a cause

they are so restless about it that their wives couldn't stop them from doing it or their husbands couldn't hold them back

and they say: I got to do this and I have to do this today because of that cause, that makes them restless, it makes them want to move because they saw a different vision and the confirmation of that vision is they will soon find a circle of trust, friends, a core group who come along with them to do the same.

and because of the collective talent of these people, their abilities, they are able to pivot and change the world for good.

In this time when there's so much more money flow into artificial intelligence we need more of us more of us to find these hearts of lasting change and this is important because each one of them when they found it, they almost had an atomic effect

And they were always few. It always begin with 2, 3, 4, 10, 12 never more and yet they were able to mobilize millions of people because they all subscribed to the cause.

How do you know this is your cause?

It is when you care enough, you shall see

There was a very young nun in India, she had already followed God and when she was in India, next to her convent there were people who were dying, people left on the streets and no one was really helping them and this nun was very restless. She struggled and she asked what should I do?

I've already given my life to God, should I let them be?

Should I pray for them?

What should I do?

and one day she couldn't take it anymore she said I have to leave behind my first calling to God and I had to go towards the calling to serve the poorest of the poor.

And that's it!

An Albanian nun who was also made a national hero and given a state funeral

that that was the story of Mother Teresa

because it bothered her so much, it bothered her so much that her gaze from the center reached out to the ends, reached out to the entire cycle of time

so that it will not be business as usual but time to change

and there are so many Mother Teresas who are here, who will be there tomorrow and I want to say this very clearly

These people are not perfect, they are not always good in what they do,

They do not always know what to do but the only thing they had in common was

they acted on their intuition and their motivation because they found a cause

and so it is critical for us to see but we can only see when we care like here in this moment.

Some of you are very bothered about noise, it will bother you because of all the sounds that we have and everything

but for many others they won't mind

Likewise, a cause is the same, if it bothers it enough, you are coming closer and closer to it and when you are searching, trying to understand your cause and today we heard so many different experiences, the hard truth is:

It is a lonely journey but it is always better to find the mountain that you're meant to climb than the mountain that you are not

which is why Finding Your Everest is very important because there will be many dark nights

there will be many moments when you'll be discouraged

you'll be asking yourself why am I doing this and when you do find it

when you do understand

it is different from purpose

I can tell you this, it's not something that you can rationally understand because all these changemakers there's one thing in common

it’s not just a rational purpose that justify what they do why they do

but it is something that kept them going especially in the darkest moments so it

is almost like an atomic effect that has a wider and far-reaching impact on their peers and the people around them.

Mahatma Gandhi is one example,

a trained lawyer who will have a good life, a barrister

there was no need for him to walk the lonely path but he did and in challenging one of the mightiest Empire of the time without firing a single shot.

He preached non-violence to save his people from further violence, brought about freedom for the people of India

but first and foremost when he decided to go on this he’s alone, he had to make that decision himself to go on this path, that was his Everest, his India.

if you are very clear about your cause, you will be able to see a creative vision

It is almost like building a masterpiece that you saw in your mind first, a creative masterpiece that gives people hope

It’s almost like the Gothic cathedrals in Europe in those days when people had small houses while these Cathedrals provided hope

You may not have met God and if you did, please let me know

but these Cathedrals provided a way to experience hope and joy

Now many friends have visited Singapore and they have been going around because they came for the summit.

They have always asked us: Why is Singapore like this?

why is Singapore so beautiful?

Mr Lee Kuan Yew has ever said: do not build any monument for me, for Singapore is my monument

and it is true because when you walk around, when you visit the parks and you see the city especially when you go to the suburbs and you see many 'Garden Townships' everywhere.

You can sense the design and the vision of Mr Lee Kuan Yew and his peers who believed first and made this happen.

And today in several presentations some of our speakers mentioned about that.

That Singapore was in a dark place, it was not harmonious, it was not organized, it was not properly curated but over time because of a Creative Vision it became so.

No one can walk this path alone, I could not have walked this path alone and here

I want to thank my partners especially Mr Rawi Ahmed and Mr Jeffrey Chiu, can you please stand up

because if they didn't say yes to me 20 years ago we wouldn't have started

thank you Jeffrey, thank you Rawi.

So every one of us, we all have a circle of trust

(Listen to Helena Pham to learn more about a circle of trust: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5B-jHge1Yj8)

we all have a very core group

without that core group, without the few it is impossible to even think of wanting to change the world and the circle of trust is so critical in all the things that we seek to do

Many friends from overseas know about Mr Lee Kuan Yew but we have Mr Goh Keng Swee, we have Mr S Rajaratnam, we have so so many other leaders who made Singapore possible

and they were all different, they didn't always agree but they had a common cause

the common cause was Singapore and to make Singapore happy and successful as Mr Lim shared with us earlier.

and even for Consulus there is no way we could have gone to the ends of the Earth by ourselves

We managed to go the distance because of all our friends just like this picture at the Kwali farm in Abuja with our friends from our beloved family SCL,

my dear brothers and sisters from Africa, thank you very much and because of that experience I managed to finish my book

because my African brothers and sisters gave me the courage and gave me the belief that I'm not alone in this that I have this and I can do this!

Ultimately what is the litmus test that your cause is true

The ultimate test that your cause is true is that it inspires a vision that gathers a circle of trust that you're able to pivot as and when the time and age calls for it

and we all have to pivot with the advance of artificial intelligence, with the advent of space

and as a species that is really using up a lot of the resources of the planet we have to pivot

Things have to change and I think one of the best examples that continue to inspire me was Steve Jobs because in the revival of Apple as a company that is close to bankruptcy

The first thing he did was to end the conflict with Bill Gates but in a very specific way with Microsoft and because he did that he was able to pivot Apple from a PC company into the post-PC era and we know the rest is history from the iPhone and now recently Apple once again became the most valuable company on the planet by market value

I'm saying this because even for Consulus we had to evaluate ourselves.

and likewise for all of us here from time to time we have to evaluate our cause we have to evaluate our vision whether it makes sense

we also have to evaluate our circle of trust and whether we are pivoting because let me let you in on a very personal secret of mine.

that I've always told my my dear family in Consulus that this picture means a lot to me because 10 years ago Consulus was close to bankruptcy, we were in debt, we could have died but the only reason why Consulus survived was not because people said you're good in what you do and I support you

NO! They came to us from all around the world and said because you believe in changing the world to build an economy for a united world we are in

and because of that we could find ourselves resurrected and we could celebrate today's 20th anniversary

so dear friends I wish with all my heart that you find the heart of lasting change that you become the Creative Change you're meant to be

thank you

thank you very much !