Last night's debate was on "Growth can be green: the carbon market will allow us to save the planet without sacrificing economic growth".

We've all been round the houses on green debates, but this was nicely specific. And as with any good debate, I found myself torn. James Smith (chairman of Shell) and Eric Bettelheim (sustainable forestry magnate) made convincing cases for markets being the best way to solve the global warming crisis. And as an entrepreneur, surely I should be on their side?

But as Tom Burke demonstrated, for a lot of problems, regulations solve problems more quickly and effectively than markets. And more importantly, I couldn't help thinking, any capitalist "market" solution is always going to allow richer people to pollute more than poorer people. But, as Mark Lynas pointed out, rich people don't own the atmosphere, and everyone on the planet should have a right to clean air. So my question to the panel was, given that we need to cut carbon emissions to around 4 tonnes per person (across the planet), what gives any individual the right to cause emissions greater than that? After all, global warming has the potential to cause the death or displacement of hundreds of millions of poor people. It's generally accepted that rich people don't have any more right to kill or injure people than poor people. Isn't this the same principle? (Don't worry, I didn't waffle that much!)

Eric's response, that such a solution wasn't workable, is probably correct. But I still ended up siding with the "against" camp: we like markets in the West because they fit with our world view - that we're somehow entitled, thanks to our capitalist system, to consume more and emit more... But unless we start radically altering our assumptions about what's a reasonable amount of carbon emissions for us bloated Westerners, we're never going to tackle this problem.
The one thing everyone was agreed on: we can't afford to get this wrong, and in 10 years it could be too late.
(And yes, I cycled there)

When Marcus and I started up Firefly, neither of us had ever managed anyone. (Unless you count the odd choir or football team. A bit different, sadly).
So now that we're ballooning to 10 people, we figured it was time to get some advice.

And two came along at once. Richard Westoby and his team from London Business School wrote a paper on Firefly as an example of the "Entrepreneurial trap"; because entrepreneurs like to "do" stuff, they often end up getting stuck in the detail, and fail to give leadership and proper management - so people feel disempowered and directionless...

Then there was Sue Spencer. She's a bit of a legend. An HR consultant who understands entrepreneurs - so more about people and action, and less about form-filling and regulations.

So what have we changed so far?
1. Clear lines of reporting: we've separated Sales & Marketing (now under Marcus) from New Products, Finance and Operations (now under Harry). Radical.
2. New ways of interviewing people. Out with the nice chatty "tell me about your CV" style. In with "When have you demonstrated your ability to...", probing follow-on questions and embarrassing silences. Clear job descriptions with "essential" and "desirable" skills. Suddenly the "but he's such a nice guy" defence goes out of the window (almost).
3. The Three-year vision. We've always had a "vision" - to be the healthy, effective drinks brand... But that means a lot to us, but perhaps less to everyone else in the business. So we've now had a big think about where we want to be in 3 years time: what products, which shops, what kinds of marketing, finances, the works. And suddenly everyone's walking round with an apparent sense of purpose. Miraculous.

And the book of the month (apparently - haven't read it yet): Hidden value by Jeffrey Pfeffer - "How Great Companies Achieve Extraordinary Results with ordinary people." (Not that we've ever hired anyone "ordinary" of course!)