Somewhere in Asia, more than 1.3 million days of clean water were funded a day at a time, because of small decisions made quietly, over more than a decade, mostly when no one was watching.

Karma in Action is one of several books I have written, it was the first of two on the idea. The thought underneath it is simple, almost too simple to sound serious: give first, give often, give small, and the world gets better. Not because the universe keeps score, but because it does. Value put into the world flows. It finds its way. And the people best placed to start that flow are the ones who already have something to give.

I believed this for ages. Long before it was a book, it was a small working document I started in 2015 and shared with friends as a journal. Long before it was a business model, it was just how I decided to move through the world. Plant small seeds of good. Water them. Watch what grows. Do it again.

The water is this belief, made into a habit.

Through B1G1, a day of clean water is funded for a person in Asia every time we run an assessment, and for every person who sits in a room while I speak. It is not a campaign nor is it a gesture I remember to make. It is wired in. It happens whether or not anyone is counting, which is the kind of good habit worth having.

Since 2011, that has added up to over 1.3 million days. And a scattering of other things along the way, trees and meals and school days, because once the flow is running you rather enjoy adding to it.

And collectively B1G1 is on its way to a billion impacts across the globe.

I do not think of this as charity, neither do I think of it as an exchange. Exchange is a transaction that closes. Flow is a thing that keeps moving.

I give value openly. My books are published. The research is public. The tools are free to the people who most need them. And I am paid, properly, for the work that turns all of that into something a leader can act on. Then some of what comes back flows onward, to people whose water and land and labour are part of the story in the first place.

Value given. Value received. Value returned. It only works if it keeps moving.

Flow is not only what you send outward. Sometimes it is bringing your own account back into balance.

I have lived a life that moves. My first long-haul flight was at two and a half, from Armidale in an Australian summer to a Canadian winter. I had been around the world more than once, and lived on five continents, by the time I was twelve. That's a wonderful way to grow up. It is also a carbon account that grew up around me and that I did not, for a long time, think to settle.

So I am settling it. Quietly, over time, balancing the impact of a life that has always been in the air. Not a claim to have fixed anything. Just squaring my own ledger, the same way I would want anyone to square theirs.

Believing something is one thing. Building it into a business so it happens without you is another, and it is the harder one.

At the ESG Institute we took this philosophy and gave it governance: a dated, versioned rule we hold ourselves to, reviewed every year, referenced in how we license and how we work. The belief grew up and got disciplined.

If you would like to see how that works, it lives here: The Reciprocity Principle →