Crimped lifestyle serves as the tipping point to re-boot America’s consciousness, communties and sense of purpose

Here’s an inspiring snippet from a recent post on WorldChanging (whose tagline is “change your thinking”) about the mainstreaming realization that America is broken, that something is seriously wrong:

“Common folks… are starting to understand that our ever-diminishing free time, the loss of sense of community, rising gas prices, the sub-prime mortgage implosion, and a whole range of other current societal problems are all pieces of a bigger puzzle. We’re starting to understand that all of this points toward a fundamental problem with the way America has designed and developed our communities over the past 60+ years. This shift in thinking among the American mainstream is beginning to bring about the popular and political will to rectify our past errors.”

While this may sound like a gloomy quote, I think it’s a hopeful one in that once enough people feel the negative impact on their lifestyle, they will realize that we have to make some bold changes in the interest of our collective well-being, leading to a flourishing of public/private partnerships designed to restore much-needed community (real community, not Starbucks-baked community) as the foundation for improving our quality of life.

How do you think?

I used to be much more of a linear thinker — how to get from point A to point B in a straight line, marching down the bullet-points on a page, taking a single line of attack to find a solution to a problem - you get the idea. Maybe it comes from my experience as an investment banker coming out of college?

Select US cities show some leadership

Here’s an excerpt from Mayor Bloomberg’s speech today at the US Conference of Mayors. It’s exciting to see US cities show leadership in areas where the federal government is failing, miserably!

“On climate change, the duck-and-cover usually involves pointing the finger at others. It’s China-this and India-that. But wait a second. This is the United States of America! When there’s a major challenge, we don’t wait for others to act. We lead! And we lead by example. That’s what all of us here are doing.

This conference has highlighted just how much local leadership there is on the issue of climate change and how many innovative new projects are going on in cities around the country: Seattle’s incentives for greening existing buildings, Los Angeles’s million tree initiative, Miami’s bus rapid transit program — and the list goes on. When we developed our long-term sustainability plan in New York, which we call PlaNYC, we made no apologies for stealing the very best ideas — and we came up with some of our own, including converting our 13,000 taxis to hybrids or high-efficiency vehicles. This will not only help clean our air and reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, it will save each driver about $4,500 a year in gas costs.

Cities and states are both taking action, but the fact is, no matter how far we push the boundaries of the possible, there will be no substitute for federal leadership. Leadership is not waiting for others to act, or bowing to special interests, or making policy by polling or political calculus. And it’s not hoping that technology will rescue us down the road or forcing our children to foot the bill. Leadership is about facing facts, making hard decisions and having the independence and courage to do the right thing, even when it’s not easy or popular.”

Here’s a copy of the full speech, via the New York Times.

Leading with your values

Some people choose to play life safe, never venturing far from home. Others choose - or have to - put themselves in harm’s way to try and “make it happen”, whatever “it” might be.

If you belong to the latter group, odds are you’re going to create friction as you strive for success. It’s hard (and inadvisable) to try to please everyone, all the time.

And achieving stuff obviously means taking quick and sometimes tough decisions: successful people tend not to dwell on things any longer than they have to.

Cha-Ching: timeless tips from another sage

Here are a few more choice tips from “The Art of War” (see earlier post), referring to the importance of adaptation as one of the cornerstones of “the warrior’s art”, or effective leadership.

Only these aren’t from the master himself (Sun Tzu), they’re from another work called “I Ching”, referenced in the translator’s introduction (no, I’m not reading the book backwards):

“If you take on too much without a solid foundation, you will eventually be drained, leaving you with embarrassment and bad luck.”

“Persist too intensely at what is currently beyond your depth, and your fidelity to that course will bring misfortune, on gain.”

Most entrepreneurs try to do too much, too quick, with too few resources, so this sounds like good advice from I Ching.

Five virtues of a good leader

I’m half-way through a fascinating little book called The Art of War (Thomas Cleary translation). The original text was compiled over two-thousand years ago by Sun Tzu, an enigmatic fellow to be sure. In spite of its warring title, the book is filled with gems re: enlightened leadership (”to win without fighting is best”, Sun Tzu said). Consider this one by Jia Lin (Tang Dynasty, 618-906), commenting on Sun Tzu’s five virtues of leadership:

Reliance on intelligence alone results in rebelliousness. Exercise of humaneness alone results in weakness. Fixation on trust results in folly. Dependence on the strength of courage results in violence. Excessive sternness of command results in cruelty. When one has all five virtues together, each appropriate to its function, then one can be a military leader.

[my underline & italics]