May 30, 2022
Good morning!
In searching for something profound to offer you on this Memorial Day, perhaps it’s best to simply urge your remembrance of ONE heroic human, just one… from among millions throughout history.
Not everyone has the day off; I wonder what the percentage is?
We could do a (much) better job of remembering and respecting the thousands of different schedules people follow.
Media are especially (unintentionally?) insensitive and narrowly focused about this.
- How many times have you witnessed a motorcycle driven by a woman — and a man (boy) riding along as the passenger?
- I had road ditch cleaning duty last week.
- Any container filled with liquid is extra-gross, otherwise the litter itself is usually not too bad.
- If you’ve never done road ditch clean-up, give it a try, you will have a new perspective.
- Most unusual find: A turtle apparently injured trying to cross the 70 MPH+ road… I was unable to save him (her) in the moment.
- In need of baby formula?
- The shortages vary significantly around the country with Indiana and Colorado reporting no shortages at all.
- That production plant in Michigan (Similac/ Abbot) is scheduled to be back on-line soon.
Can U.S. Cities Make a Comeback?
- Varadarajan (2022) asks, “Can U.S. cities make a comeback?”
- When the COVIDs started, about five percent (5%) of U.S. workers worked remotely.
- The mean in major cities is now 19% working remotely with places like San Francisco at 52%.
- As centers of commerce, cities depend upon people interacting with each other on a daily basis.
- Without that daily interaction — and the millions of financial transactions resulting therefrom — cities relying on the pre-COVIDs model will need to reinvent themselves.
- (BTW, it’s not possible for most people to work remotely — and those of us who can and do, too often forget the truckers, the farmers, healthcare professionals, retail people, sanitation workers, musicians, street vendors, teachers, custodians, and on and on and on… those without whom the rest of us would suffer greatly.)
- I’ve admired and learned from Babson College over the last 20 years.
- Babson is recognized year after year for being at the center of the best entrepreneurial education in the U.S.
- It’s a smaller college in suburban Boston, very famous on the East Coast.
- “Popular models of leadership aren’t helping us solve the most challenging problems of business and society. From keeping employees engaged and motivated during the Great Resignation to addressing ongoing problems like Israel and Palestine, healthcare in the U.S., or the myriad issues outlined in the seventeen United Nations Global Goals, the common models of leadership aren’t getting us where we need to go. Yet leadership development is a $366 billion global industry — with $166 billion of annual spending in the U.S. alone. There is clear agreement that these problems are not so complex that they’re unsolvable. Leaders simply need more effective tools and approaches to navigate them and get better outcomes. To lead effectively in a world in constant flux, you need to build and nurture an ability to think like an entrepreneur. This way of thinking goes far beyond venture creation. It allows you to act under uncertainty while developing and facilitating opportunities. It is good for you as an individual and good for the health of your company.” (Babson, 2022)
- Read/ Learn more; I think you’ll enjoy this: Entrepreneurial Thinking
- Here’s Amanda Gorman’s latest poem:
- Schools scared to death.
- The truth is, one education under desks,
- Stooped low from bullets;
- That plunge when we ask
- Where our children
- Shall live
- & how
- & if
- No poor words I might write can add clarity to the shameful and tragic stain now on the fabric of our society. (With apologies to Longfellow)
- “… now we are… testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.” (A. Lincoln)
- Hope, my friends, hope — and trust — and diligence.
