In the Ted Talk below, Majora Carter intertwines eye-opening social facts with her personal story of creating positive change in her community in a compelling way. Her dream was to create green space in the South Bronx to fight the neighborhoods environmental degradation that, in her opinion, “begets social degradation.”
After college she returned to the South Bronx and started volunteering at the Point, another non-profit in the South Bronx, where she learned who the decision-makers in NYC were.
Her proactive efforts were awarded with a $10,000 seed grant from the Parks Department in the late 90s to create an illegal dump into a green space. In 2006, after leveraging her seed money, she made the Hunts Point Riverside Park worth $3 million dollars. Carter went on to found Sustainable South Bronx, a non-for profit focused on cleaning up the neighborhood and creating new “green collar” jobs.
Carter created a collation and pushed her agenda through from a grassroots level with little resources. Her dreams stem from her passion but her success stems from her ability to build an idea into a reality by creating a volunteer coalition that pushed for a common-cause.
Please watch her talk on her efforts to rejuvenate the South Bronx:
Sometimes leaders have to deal with artists–those brilliant, gifted, geniuses who can do something better than anyone else. The challenge is: how do you get them motivated?
Do you use commitment, guilt, passion for artistic expression, or maybe just constant pressure. Your office may not be the Sistine Chapel but after watching this clip you will get the idea:
Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling in 1505. The project was finally completed in 1512. Pope Julius II, according to Michelangelo’s letters and modern historical interpretation, may have forced Michelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel. According to Irving Stone’s book, The Agony and Ecstasy (and the subsequent movie staring Charlton Heston), Pope Julius II did just that and bullied Michelangelo into creating one of his best works.
We talked about making sacrifices and suffering recently–but what about failure? Depending on whom you talk to failure is either something that you should avoid or embrace.
Michael Jordan, in the video below (full disclosure: Nike Ad), says that failure helped him achieve success. In other words, he would not have accomplished anything if he, presumably, let the idea of failure cripple his skill. It’s an inspirational thought.
Failure is an uncomfortable notion. In our culture we have created a sense that effort should be taken into account before evaluating the magnitude of the failure. There is a sense that the more you take on, the more you challenge yourself, the more you experiment, the more you risk, the more you’ll be supported if you fail to achieve your goal.
In entrepreneurial workplaces, we often hear that value is placed on risk taking, that taking things to the cutting edge will be rewarded, even if success is not achieved. While this may be an interesting notion, it does seem to me that there is less here than meets the eye. It is one thing to talk about failure in times when resources are abundant. It is quite another to talk about risk taking when resources are scarce. Put in slightly academic terms, the more we approach a zero-sum game, the more we become nervous about risk, and less tolerant of failure. When we approach a non-zero-sum game, that is when resources are abundant, we’re less nervous about risk and more tolerant of failure.
There is a certain irony to this because as resources become scarcer, leaders may push for retrenchment and risk aversion, taking risks becomes one way of moving ahead. As had been said often lately, in today’s market, those that risk may in fact wind up on top when the economy again sparkles. But who exactly is willing to take risks when resources are scarce? Who will take risks when the downside is at hand? In truth, in our culture, we celebrate risk-taking but quietly are intolerant of failure and when things really get rough we’re intolerant of risk taking and failure.
The challenge for leaders is not whether they’ll risk and encourage others to risk in good times, but whether they’ll risk and encourage others to risk—and subsequently stand behind the failure—when times are bad. It’s one thing to risk when you are already playing for the NBA–it’s quite another to risk when your playing with a semi-pro team in northern Florida barely making a living and hoping to get another contract. Sure, if you don’t try to hit it out of the park you may never make it to the major leagues but if you go for the long ball and miss you may be left with no food on the table. So, it’s not that simple.
If there is ever a time for leaders to push innovation, to push entrepreneurship, to do it rigorously, cautiously, but with enthusiasm, it is when things seem the toughest. Proactive leaders who are entrepreneurial are now more necessary than ever before. Theoretically, if all is right with the world they and their organizations are the ones who will be rewarded when the economy reemerges. But, which one of them is willing to go for the long ball when they realize how close they are too stumbling into the minor leagues?
There has been much made of servant leadership in recent years. Desmond tutu, in this video, speaks from a pragmatic, but moral perspective.
In the following video 1984 Nobel Peace Laureate Desmond Tutu talks about what, in his opinion, makes a good leader. A servant leader must carry the burden of responsibility internally while inspiring people. He sites the Dali Lama, Nelson Mandela, Mother Theresa, and MLK Jr. as great examples of servant leaders. Tutu places a particular emphasis on what I would call the notion of moral burden–that leadership demands some sacrifice and suffering.
While suffering is a word often used to describe the burden of leadership in the spiritual realm, Tutu seems to imply that the essence of obligation and responsibility of keeping others in mind are critical in being a servant leader. So the question for most of us is, “is this the type of leader we want to be or are there elements in Tutu’s notion of the servant leader that may be important to adopt while not buying into his idea of leadership hook-line-and sinker?”
Enjoy the video and tell me what you think of his ideas.
