KEY POINTS:
Steven Carden is calling for a revolution. Not a blood-in-the-streets type revolution, more a quietly defiant change in thinking about our future. The sort of change that brings about a new flag - not because we have to, but because we want to make a statement to the
world about our cultural identity. And especially because we want to do it before Australia does.
Of the current flag Carden says: "It's such a relic of a bygone age. I love it. It's the only flag I've ever lived under, but I know it doesn't represent the New Zealand of today."
In an increasingly complex and continually changing world, Carden isn't looking to government to lead the revolution. Rather, as he lays out in his just-published New Zealand Unleashed, he's looking to the collaborative efforts of groups of New Zealanders here and abroad to simply get on with it.
Get enough connected, proud New Zealanders embracing diversity and doing creative things and Carden reckons our cities can become "cauldrons of culture and coolness" and the country "a sponge for ideas".
If this sounds ridiculously idealistic and wishy-washy, Carden points out this sort of thinking leads to tough decisions. Such as - sacrilege - deciding not to apply government funding to host the Rugby World Cup and using the money instead for something like a science and technology park or other socially productive cause.
It may sound presumptuous from one who's only 33, but Carden already has a brilliant career. Fresh out of Auckland University with a Bachelor of Laws and Arts, he set up the First Foundation to provide tertiary scholarships for financially disadvantaged youth.
Then he worked for amazon.com wannabe Flying Pig, including an emotionally draining stint as general manager making people redundant as the doomed e-tailer became a lame duck in the wake of the dotcom crash.
Next it was off to Harvard Business School for an MBA as a Knox Fellow and Fullbright Scholar. Following that he was invited to join "The Firm" - McKinsey and Company - and became immersed in the heady world of management consultancy in the Big Apple.
Somehow he also found time to write New Zealand Unleashed, which gained acclaim in some quarters because it was attacked by Business Roundtable ideologue Roger Kerr. And, oh yes, in 2005 Carden was named by the Sir Peter Blake Trust as one of New Zealand's six emerging leaders.
Not bad for a middle-class Pakuranga boy schooled at St Kentigern College. Now, Carden is home with wife Kristin and 22-month-old son Lucas living in an ex-state house in Orakei with a view to Rangitoto, and itching to play his part in the revolution.
The boardroom of McKinsey's Auckland office is suitably plush, with an outlook to the Viaduct and designer chairs that tilt, swivel and thrust. Carden, boyish and friendly, is suitably attired - stylish dark jacket, pale shirt, no tie. "I'm the least photogenic person in the world," he tells the photographer.
Behind the self-deprecation is a confidence that's startling. He has returned to New Zealand with an unshakeable certainty he can make a difference.
"New Zealand is always home. It's a country I want to see do well in a way that I don't feel about America. For that reason alone it's a society I can have some positive impact on that I never could in New York."
Yes, his time in New York was fantastic, but he and Kristin had made a promise that if they ever stopped feeling amazed at their good fortune as they crossed Times Square to get to work, they would reconsider whether they should stay.
After three years it happened. "Times Square became an irritation. It blocked up the traffic and there were lots of tourists around. We started to become New Yorkers, rather than outsiders enjoying the big city."
On the flipside, he says New Zealand, unlike New York, feels as though it has a glass ceiling. "People there had an inherent belief that truly anything was possible and within their grasp, even in an environment of such magnitude and scale. New Zealand doesn't have that feel. I wonder if these constraints are imposed by reality or whether they're constraints imposed by our limited aspirations as a society."
"No constraints" and "anything is possible" are the mantras of New Zealand Unleashed, in which Carden explores our history of adapting to change and how we might again do so successfully in the future.
Carden demonstrated this can-do attitude at 24 when he set up the First Foundation, developing a scholarship scheme with a difference. Rather than just giving a handout, the corporate sponsor also provides part-time paid work experience and mentoring. The student in turn applies a portion of their remuneration to their course fees.
The scheme is a living example of the "weak links" theory Carden talks about in his book. Weak links are random relationships established with strangers that provide the bridge from one social circle to another.
Weak links in a workgroup (people who don't know each other), paradoxically make it perform better by adding creative spark and connections to a wider experience. The First Foundation scheme forces weak links: corporate sponsors employ students from disadvantaged backgrounds - people they wouldn't normally interact with - and benefit from the diversity and new ways of thinking that enter their organisation.
Carden finds it strange that people ask why he did it. "It's as though it's unusual for anyone to produce a scheme that's not deliberately designed to help them, but to help someone else."
He's disappointed, too, that people are surprised about his age at the time. "It reflects very low expectations that society has of young people in what they can accomplish and what their motivations are. We need to change that so it doesn't seem so unusual if someone sets up a non-profit social enterprise scheme in their early 20s."
He agrees there are probably deeper intrinsic values driving his altruistic tendencies, but points out he gets something back, too. "I find it remarkably satisfying, from a selfish perspective, to turn up at the First Foundation awards ceremony and see all these people positively impacted by the scheme."
Harvard also provided a life-changing experience - working with Ecuadorian prisoners in their rehabilitation. Following the month-long programme, Carden set up a non-profit organisation to get additional funding for the group that helps the prisoners. At school he was heavily influenced by the people he read about - "Wilberforce, Albert Schweitzer and Martin Luther King".
He admits to a left-leaning period at university. "It was the early 90s. New Zealand was going through an ideological revolution and we were reacting to 'Ruthanasia'.
"Student fees had just come in and we spent a lot of time marching and yelling abuse at Lockwood Smith [then Minister of Education]. We weren't protesting against the Vietnam War exactly, but there was still that protest ethic."
As it turned out, Carden didn't end up with a student loan - he lived at home and worked in the holidays and part-time to pay his fees. So what possessed him to become a management consultant?
"It was not exactly a lifelong ambition. But management consulting is great along two dimensions. It provides an extremely broad exposure to a whole range of different companies and industries and ways of working, which is valuable for me and helpful."
He says the work leaves options because he hasn't figured out yet what he wants to do.
The McKinsey style has been described as "people using PowerPoint to state the bleeding obvious". Ask about that and Carden reverts to consultant-speak. "We try to serve our clients based on what they're asking us to look at - what their priorities are."
He admits the job is taxing - "one of those 'high-energy, high-intensity, learn a lot, get burnt' sort of jobs" - but is quick to praise McKinsey's benefits, especially in response to our if-it's-not-invented-here-it-can't-be-any-good mentality.
"They're good at bringing the best ideas from elsewhere and localising them. In an increasingly globalised world we need to find ways of tapping into great ideas from elsewhere."
Ways to generate new ideas and discarding ideas that no longer work feature large in Unleashed, which may explain Roger Kerr's negative review of the book.
Carden was surprised at the review because he thought if anyone would agree that government can't solve our problems, it would be Kerr. He puts it down to the tired ideological warfare of the 80s and 90s.
"I feel people have moved beyond that. He [Kerr] is a bit like one of these Japanese soldiers who has been abandoned on a Pacific island and hasn't been told that the war is actually finished."
Kerr questions Carden's thesis that we are in the midst of change far greater than ever before. "Are current technological developments more society-changing than electricity, the telephone, air travel, the contraceptive pill or the supermarket? Are we so much more knowledgeable and sophisticated today - for example, has any modern writer surpassed Shakespeare's understanding of the human condition?"
Carden says we are, pointing to ephemeralisation - the inexorable march of smaller, lighter, faster, better, cheaper technology.
It crystalised for him when he tried to imagine what sort of computing power his son Lucas would be using in 15 years when he sat down to do his homework. "It's naive to think we're in a business-as-usual phase at the moment."
Kerr argues also that New Zealanders are not as change-averse as Unleashed suggests - citing the radical 1984-87 Labour Government and its re-election in 1987.
"We changed a lot in the 1980s," says Carden. "But it was pretty painful, there was a lot of resistance and we developed MMP, which is deliberately meant to avoid massive changes in policy."
As a result Carden says the country has reverted to incremental change and, in the process, become less adaptable. "What I'm saying is let's be a society that pro-actively continues to change and evolve and doesn't need these shocks to the system like 1984 to change."
So what's next in the Carden brilliant career? Sometimes he says he looks at friends who've chosen a less-ambitious path and their less-stressful lives and wonders whether it's not a better path to follow.
Carden is still unsure about his next phase. He isn't keen on a large corporate job, likes the idea of an entrepreneurial start-up role, and remains interested in the "youth education, mobilising young people space".
He is drawn to politics because it's a direct way of having positive impact on the country, but he doesn't think the political environment would bring out the best in him.
Now he's back, does he feel the expectation of being named one of six emerging leaders by the Sir Peter Blake Trust?
"Yes, but I don't think it's bad to have those sorts of expectations placed on you. I'm not unhappy to have a sense of responsibility to do something for New Zealand - it's actually a cause I feel genuinely pretty passionate about."
