“I don’t really want any more work, I don’t want people ringing me up” said Meg, explaining what she didn’t want her website to do.

You’ll never die wondering what Meg Rose is thinking.

“You’ve come to the right place” I reassured her, albeit somewhat puzzled by Meg’s desire to be on the interweb at all. We first met working on Kirsten’s Mayoral campaign a couple of years ago, and I’ve offered to help Meg build a website in return for some sensible advice she’d given me. We chat as I take her photograph.

“So what do you want it for?” I asked.

“World domination” said Meg in the blink of an eye and devoid of any irony.

It turns out Meg has big plans indeed. 

Invited by Hardin Tibbs, a futurist and scenario planner from the University of Cambridge, Meg has written an article for the World Futures Review on how she uses Hardin’s strategic landscape tool in her work. The tool was originally developed for use by large scale corporates and governments, so that they could change direction by learning to rewire themselves, but it was how Meg had adapted it for local use that caught Hardin’s eye. 

“I work with CEO’s, gang members, prisoners, and small businesses” says Meg, “one client said my work … hang on … “as she reads from a testimonial “ - helped him rewire himself’”.

“But yeah, no matter who it is, the conversation starts with the same two questions: what do you need and what could we do?” 

I was momentarily distracted, wondering if the CEO, gang member, prisoner and small business owner could possibly all be the same person, meanwhile Meg is patiently explaining her dream of scaling up those individual conversations so they are held by whanau, communities and Government.

“The real big picture,” says Meg, calmly outlining her plan to rewire our most fundamental systems, “is to fuse the strategic landscape tool with the work Sir Tim Berners-Lee is doing on an alternate world wide web. The good web.”

Well, yes, of course it is I’m thinking - a little cross at myself for not having arrived at this blindingly obvious conclusion earlier. As it turns out though, I’ve heard a little bit about this ‘good web’,

”Isn’t it like the current web without the porn?” I offer. “Without the advertising actually,” Meg replies straight faced. “That’s the real problem”.

I let that one go through to the keeper, as most discussion about the relative merits of pornography vs advertising usually ends in the none too salient observation about both industries being full of wankers.

During the day Meg and her husband Andy teach life skills, a job that is intensely rewarding as it is demanding. Often their clients are dealing with a problem, but they have no idea what it is, let alone how to fix it. By a process of gentle pragmatic coaching Meg helps people identify whatever it is that’s holding them back.

“A lot of the work centres around the relationship between mind and body, when we understand how our body reacts to situations, we can learn to respond differently.” says Meg. 

They’ve set up camp in the cleaning supervisor’s office. Anyone on staff can book a session and clients get free advice on anything from budgeting, to anger management, or relationship guidance, through to how to sit a driving test.

They go into the workplace because it’s easier on the clients, this place has hundreds on staff. “Andy’s even got a set of toy cars he uses for the driving tests, because not everyone can read.” Meg adds.

For some clients Meg or Andy might be the only people they can talk to about stuff, or at least the only people that will listen. Some are really battling, others just surviving, all seem to be hurting: if Meg doesn’t want the phone to ring, it’s only because she wants to develop a set of tools that we can use to fix ourselves.

“Men really get the DIY angle” she laughs. It’s a work in progress though. “Often, they’re just looking for an acknowledgment, a validation of their journey.” Meg adds. “You can physically see a breakthrough. The exhale of breath, the body slumps forward in the relief of being heard.”

Like anyone on the frontline I’m sure Meg can tell horror stories alongside tales of triumph. 

But always with the same starting point: what do you need and what could we do?

See? World domination. But in a good way.