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Movie Review: For Tomorrow * An Uplifting, Inspiring And Thought-Provoking Portrait Of Human Resilience And Innovation

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Movie Review: For Tomorrow * An Uplifting, Inspiring And Thought-Provoking Portrait Of Human Resilience And Innovation

Follow the journey of grassroots innovators dedicated to fighting some of today’s most pressing sustainability issues. Through actions, big and small, everyday change-makers are tackling local problems and inspiring their communities with ingenuity, resilience and vision. Whether it’s a solar-powered car built from recycled materials by a self-taught engineer to combat air pollution or a line of cleaning products made from food waste by someone with no chemistry training, grassroots solutions are setting the planet on a more sustainable path. But for a real breakthrough, governments, global institutions and the private sector must recognize these innovators and actively seek out their ideas. From the streets of Baku to a farming community in the Andes and the mountains of Northern India, our documentary follows five innovators on their quest for real, actionable change. Their journey to innovation is never simple-how do you keep going when even your husband doesn’t believe in your idea?-but the power of their vision keeps them going. Is the world ready to finally listen to them and change the way it handles and solves global problems?

KIDS FIRST! Film Critic Eshaan M. comments, “One of my favorite documentaries of the past year, For Tomorrow is an uplifting, inspiring and thought-provoking portrait of human resilience and innovation. With immaculate cinematography and compelling storytelling, young minds will be nourished by this wonderful film. Even the K-pop group BTS thinks so.” See his full review below.

For Tomorrow By Eshaan M., KIDS FIRST! Film Critic, age 16

One of my favorite documentaries of the past year, For Tomorrow is an uplifting, inspiring and thought-provoking portrait of human resilience and innovation. With immaculate cinematography and compelling storytelling, young minds will be nourished by this wonderful film. Even the K-pop group BTS thinks so.

“Minds on the margin are not marginal minds.” This line perfectly sums up For Tomorrow, which, yes, was promoted by the Korean pop band BTS.

Following five grassroots innovators from across the world, this documentary, narrated by Daisy Ridley, strives to go beyond labs, think tanks, and name brands to show the real people making change happen. One, a disability rights activist in Baku, Azerbaijan, fights for the construction of elevators in metro stations to make public transport more accessible for the 620,000 disabled Azerbaijanis. Another change-maker is an inventor in Sierra Leone, working to bring electricity to rural areas and get more solar cars on the roads.

An Tran’s direction elevates this already incredible film, as she creates mini-portraits of each of the innovators featured in the film, showing what their daily lives look like and how they tackle the challenges they face every day, whether that’s mountains of trash outside or water scarcity.

The cinematography is just WOW; it’s clear that production was clearly highly valued. For Tomorrow was produced in association with the acclaimed platform fortomorrow.org and the UN Development Programme; the UN could not have made a better filmed or edited documentary to promote their site. I love how For Tomorrow both intertwines, but also separates, the stories of each change-maker. This makes the film easy to follow and constantly engaging.

For Tomorrow promotes finding unique solutions in, at-times, dire situations and empowers others. The world’s biggest problems won’t be solved with just one person’s effort — collaboration is the key.

I give For Tomorrow 5 out of 5 stars and recommend it for ages 12 to 18, plus adults. ForTomorrow is available Amazon Prime Video September 16, 2022.

Trailer:

Three Problems of Power

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Three Problems of Power

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This blog is provided by Margaret Heffernan, author of the book, “Uncharted: How to Map the Future Together.”  It is a companion to her interview on Innovating Leadership, Co-creating Our Future titled “Uncharted: How to Map the Future Together” that aired on Tuesday, January 19th, 2021.

The language says it all. ‘Working your way up’, ‘climbing the ladder’ are ways of describing successful careers: emerging from the dank basement to the wide bright vistas atop a hierarchy. Like Beethoven’s prisoners in Fidelio, the journey is from dark to light, from confinement to freedom: “up here alone is light.”

This narrative is so alluring that many who follow it fail to see its pitfalls. The climb changes what you do, what you can see and who you are. So compelling is the story that it’s easy to see such evolution as all positive. It isn’t.

Problem 1. Pleasing

Take Tom, a smart, keen engineer who joined a big energy firm and did well. He never had to apply for promotions, his excellent work ensured that he was chosen. With each bigger project, his skills expanded and he became more knowledgeable, more experienced and better connected. So his career acquired momentum as more people chose him for more projects that attracted more attention and their success more accolades. It was a great ride.

Until right at the top of a public company, he encountered a problem that was novel, at least to him. One of his ExCo colleagues was breaching the firm’s ethical guidelines. Worse still, everyone knew. This bothered Tom, he shrugged it off because it wasn’t, officially, his problem. But it continued to nag at him to the degree that he decided his only option was to leave.

This highly skilled, seasoned, connected, powerful man confronted a problem he didn’t know how to solve. Why was he capable of addressing all kinds of hugely complex issues — but not this one? The answer lay in his ascent.

Sure, he’d developed expertise and networks. But most of all what he had learned was how to please his bosses. Given clear expectations and processes, Tom was superb at understanding and doing exactly what was expected of him. That’s how he got to the top; it’s how most people get to the top. He was, he said, always ‘chosen’; he had never had to take the initiative. But now he was at the top, he was stuck. He had power, but nothing in his career had taught him how to use it.

The problem with pleasing is that it asks the wrong question: not ‘what is the best thing to do here?’ but ‘what does someone else want me to do?’ The first question asks that you think, as Hannah Arendt said, without bannisters. The second question is all bannisters, constraints and entanglements; it impedes thinking. So it’s a chastening thought that the pursuit of success specifically disables independence of mind.

The attraction of bannisters, of course, is that they show you where to go; you are relieved of the burden of decision. So they offer certainty, guarantees that become addictive. Over time, that certainty becomes the necessary quality of a good decision: one destined to succeed. But in an age of uncertainty, the need becomes incapacitating. There are too many unknowns, too much ambiguity. When the route is not clear, when you have to take decisions before all the data is in, the creativity to imagine options becomes fundamental. But a lifetime of pleasing erodes that capability.

At Stanford, the psychologist Philip Zimbardo used to run a class he called ‘deviant for a day’. It’s alarming, he told me, how profoundly we are driven to please those around us. So he required that each of the students do something, for just one day, that contradicted the expectations of the people around them. Some were slovenly, others punctual or late, a few went silent. It’s important, he explained, that individuals find within themselves the capacity to stand outside the expectations and norms of others, if they’re going to be able to think for themselves.

Hierarchies are natural and what makes them so powerful is that nobody needs to define or explain the exchange of power for independence. It’s inferred and self-perpetuated; pecking orders are ubiquitous. But hierarchies conceal a trap: the idea that power will give you freedom. It too often does just the opposite: stripping away the capacity to think freely, make choices and take action.

Next:

Problem Two: Silence and Blindness

Problem Three: Distance and Dehumanization

To become a more innovative leader, you can begin by taking our free leadership assessments and then enrolling in our online leadership development program.

Check out the companion interview and past episodes of Innovating Leadership, Co-creating Our Future, via iTunes, TuneIn, Stitcher, Spotify, Amazon Music and iHeartRADIO. Stay up-to-date on new shows airing by following the Innovative Leadership Institute LinkedIn.

 

About the Author

Margaret Heffernan is the author of the best-selling UNCHARTED: How to Map the Future Together, nominated for a Financial Times Best Business Book award. She is a Professor of Practice at the University of Bath, Lead Faculty for the Forward Institute’s Responsible Leadership Programme and, through Merryck & Co., mentors CEOs and senior executives of major global organizations. She is the author of six books and her TED talks have been seen by over twelve million people.

Photo by Brandon Morgan on Unsplash

Leadership Trends to Watch for 2019 and Beyond

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Leadership Trends to Watch for 2019 and Beyond

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With 2018 coming to a close, many of us are looking to 2019 and beyond. This article was originally published on Forbes.com in August 2018 summarizing the trends that emerged from the last 100 interviews conducted on Voice America Radio, Innovative Leaders Driving Thriving Organizations interview series.  It is the companion to an interview between Christopher Washington, PhD and Maureen Metcalf Top Leadership Trends in 2018 and beyond.

I host a weekly radio show that helps leaders update how they lead. The interviews are with key business leaders, global leaders, thought leaders, authors and academics. Each year, I publish the main themes we discuss on the show as well as in my consulting work with senior executives around the world.

I have now completed more than 150 interviews, and volatility was a recurring theme. This article is a synthesis of what we can take away as key factors for leaders and executives to focus on for the next four years.

1. Leaders must pay attention to trends and predictions.

As the rate of change accelerates, if you take a “wait and see” stance, you will be caught unprepared. The intersection of volatility, changes in technology and global interconnection means there are threats and opportunities on all fronts and a large pool of organizations poised to leverage both. Speed continues to matter.

2. Leaders and their organizations are becoming agiler.

A McKinsey survey of more than 2,500 organizations of different sizes, specialties and regions reported that “37 percent of respondents said their organizations are carrying out company-wide agile transformations, and another 4 percent said their companies have fully implemented such transformations. The shift is driven by proof that small, multidisciplinary teams of agile organizations can respond swiftly and promptly to rapidly changing market opportunities and customer demands.”

As leaders, it’s important to adopt a nimble mindset and culture. Being nimble means paying attention to trends and identifying small “experiments” you can run to keep up with or even ahead of the changes happening around you. Once you are clear about what will work for you and how it will work, pilot that change. Truly agile companies are always experimenting.

3. Organizations and their people must accelerate their pace of learning.

With an increase in agility, people and organizations will need to accelerate learning. In 1978, Harvard Business School Professor Emeritus Chris Argyris wrote Organizational Learning: A Theory of Action Perspective. This work continues to evolve and increase in importance, as learning provides a competitive advantage.

Take, for example, how organizations are automating more work. Employees who continue to learn and update their skills will be able to find new roles, while others who are not continually learning will be left unemployed or underemployed as their roles diminish.

4. Age range in the workforce will continue to expand.

As life expectancy continues to increase, many people will want to and need to work longer. Organizations will need to find ways to attract and engage older workers. They will also need to address the dynamics created when multiple generations of employees are working together on the same team.

With the decrease of age-based seniority, leadership will be taken by the best person for the role and will likely shift frequently in an agile environment. Organizations need to be creative in promoting engagement and teamwork across multiple generations.

5. Leaders need to identify and build talent at an increasing rate.

As technology evolves and organizations change more quickly, employees need to learn faster, and organizations need to identify workers to fill changing talent needs. Some of these needs will fall in the technology space, but not all.

We referenced older employees remaining in the workforce and returning. We also need to find ways to engage talent who have been previously overlooked. This could mean people leaving incarceration, people with disabilities who would, in fact, be great fits for certain roles, or adults who work from home because they are caregivers to their children or parents, to name a few.

6. Employee engagement will continue to be important in volatile times.

The importance of human interaction will continue to increase even as more of the workforce is working remotely – many rarely, if ever, meeting their colleagues. Leaders and organizations need to focus on soft skills such as emotional intelligence that have a strong impact on engagement and the effort employees put into communicating.

7. Communities must come together to solve quality-of-life and economic issues.

With the level of change, segments of the economy can easily be excluded from the workforce. The gap between economic haves (those with education, access and resources) and have-nots can increase, and the cost can be significant for the individuals, families and businesses impacted by a worker shortage.

Successful regions create organizations to tackle these challenges. This means organizations that traditionally compete for resources and clients also need to work together to solve challenges that impact them.

8. Effective leaders are conscious of their impact across a broad range of factors and stakeholders.

As we talk about conscious capitalism, the main idea is that “conscious” organizations tend to the health of a broad range of stakeholders. It becomes increasingly important to pay attention to the needs of competing stakeholders and balance these demands. Conscious capitalism is one mechanism that helps leaders explore the broader range of stakeholders and understand their drivers.

Business is getting more complicated and requires leaders to continually update their skills as well as their mindset and focus. This article summarizes some of my key learnings.

As a leader, are you seeing similar trends? What’s missing? What are you doing to prepare yourself and your organization to succeed during the next four years?

As a reader of this blog and listener to the interviews, please consider enrolling in one of the innovative leadership online leader development program. For additional tools, we recommend taking leadership assessments, using the Innovative Leadership Fieldbook and Innovative Leaders Guide to Transforming Organizations, and adding coaching through our online innovative leadership program. We also offer several workshops to help you build these skills.

Maureen Metcalf, CEO of Metcalf & Associates is a renowned executive advisor, author, speaker, coach and consultant.

How to Keep Up with Workplace Changes in 2018 and beyond

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How to Keep Up with Workplace Changes in 2018 and beyond

This guest blog is a guest post provided by Abby Quillen and Zerocater, focusing on creating the workplace that meets our current and emerging needs. It is a companion to the Voice America Interview with Doug McCollough, Jet fuel of Talent Development Feeds Success on Voice America, Innovative Leaders Driving Thriving Organizations.

The economy, technological innovations, and cultural shifts are changing work in 2018. For instance, the oldest members of Gen Z, born between 1995 and 2005, are graduating from college and stepping into the workplace for the first time this year. As the most diverse and digitally savvy generation in American history, their wants and needs will undoubtedly incite change.

Read on to understand key ways the current work climate is shifting, and learn what your business needs to do to keep up.

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Qualified Workers are in Demand

The unemployment rate is below 5% and expected to remain there for a while. Around one quarter (22%) of small businesses say a shortage of qualified workers is their top business concern in 2018.

Because of the tight labor market, employers are becoming more innovative in recruiting and retaining employees, especially millennial employees. That’s because that group now makes up the majority of the American workforce. Millennials value work-life balance, career mobility, flexible working conditions, and social responsibility. Gen Z, on the other hand, want independence, face-to-face communication, and for employers to cater to them. Some companies hire Directors of Employee Experience to improve the working experience of their employees.

How to keep up: You may need to adjust your hiring standards and devote more resources to recruiting, training, and retaining workers. Also consider raising wages: In surveys, company leaders say they plan to raise wages by an average of 3 to 4.27% in 2018.

Perks don’t hurt either. Nearly half of millennials in one survey said they could be lured to a new job by a company that offered better perks, including free food.

Automation Is Disrupting Some Industries

The research firm Forrester predicts 9% of U.S. jobs—particularly administrative, call-center, and sales jobs—will be replaced by automation this year. They predict those losses will be partially offset by a 2% increase in automation-related jobs. Other think tanks and research firms have made wildly different guesses based on the available studies. Gartner Inc., another research company, predicts artificial intelligence (AI) will create more jobs overall than it destroys.

The bottom line? Some people may lose their jobs because of automation—even this year. Many more workers will need to adjust to AI tools, such as chatbots, which enable personalized conversations between software and users. But the good news is, AI tools may make some jobs easier and free up employees from administrative or repetitive tasks and allow for more creative work.

How to keep up: Reassure employees that automation is unlikely to lead to a jobless future. McKinsey Global Institute, a private-sector think tank, predicts there will be enough work for humans to ensure full employment in 2030. In the past, new technologies such as the personal computer led to a net increase in jobs. However, jobs will shift. If automation is reshaping your industry, keep your employees well-informed about retraining opportunities.

With more machines in the workplace, social relationships matter as much as ever. Cultivate a company culture that promotes in-person interaction and collaboration.

Workers Will Challenge Traditional Structures

Remote work (excluding self-employed occupations) has grown by 115% since 2005, according to the analytics firm Global Workplace Analytics. In the U.S., more than 43% of the workforce works remotely some of the time, according to a Gallup report.

Millennials and Generation Z will continue to pressure companies to expand flexible scheduling and telecommuting options. More than three quarters (77%) of millennials in one survey said flexible working hours would make them more productive on the job. Some companies, such as Buffer, have transitioned from a physical office to 100% remote work to save costs.

How to keep up: The commute and nine-to-five day aren’t dead yet, and a few companies (including Yahoo and IBM) ended their telecommuting programs for various reasons. But it’s worth considering whether expanding flexible scheduling perks may help your company attract and retain top talent. If you already offer flexible work, consider stepping up team-building efforts by offering catered family-style meals or a shared collaboration area to give employees more time for team work when they’re in the office.

 

Conclusion

The American workplace is changing quickly. By embracing economic, technological, generational, and cultural shifts, your business will thrive in 2018 and beyond.

As a reader of this blog and listener to the interviews, please consider enrolling in one of the innovative leadership online leader development program. For additional tools, we recommend taking leadership assessments, using the Innovative Leadership Fieldbook and Innovative Leaders Guide to Transforming Organizations, and adding coaching through our online innovative leadership program. We also offer several workshops to help you build these skills.

About the author:

Abby Quillen writes about sustainability, green living, health, business, and other topics. Her work has appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, YES! Magazine, and dozens of other publications. She lives in Eugene, Oregon with her family. Visit her at abbyquillen.com.

Introspection Is Foundational for Effective Global Leadership

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Introspection Is Foundational for Effective Global Leadership

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This blog a companion to the Voice America Interview on “Innovative Leaders Driving Thriving Organizations” with Jeroen van der Veer and Cynthia Cherrey, PhD on March 27, 2018, Nexus of Leadership and Practice: Royal Dutch Shell and International Leadership Association.  The following is an excerpt from the International Book Award Winning, Innovative Leadership Workbook for Global Leaders by Maureen Metcalf, Steve Terrell PhD, and Ben Mitchell.

The national economies of the world have grown to be so integrated and interdependent over the past twenty-five years that a significant number of companies operate today as if the entire world were a single market or entity, comprising many different, interconnected sub-markets, and crossing borders, cultures, time zones, and languages. This high degree of interconnectedness or globalization, brought about through the impact and use of technology, melds with the chaos and continuous change of today’s business environment to create a highly dynamic, complex, borderless, multicultural context within which businesses must learn to operate, or suffer the undesirable consequences of being left behind. Organizations must find constructive ways to adapt to survive, and the most adaptable organizations will be best positioned to explore all possibilities and to respond with innovative solutions to the complex challenges they face.

Organizations are discovering that globalization demands that leaders master different skills than were required in the past. The world is increasingly characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA), and global leaders need new competencies that enable them to respond accordingly. Global leaders deal with intricacies that differ significantly from non-global contexts and must demonstrate cultural adaptability and sensitivity. Yet, many organizations are finding that their supply of global leaders, or even individuals with the potential to become global leaders, does not match the demand. In today’s world, the race is not won by the swift, strong, or smart—the race goes to the most adaptable, those who learn from experience and co-evolve with the complex adaptive systems within which they work and live.

Leadership plays a critical role in an organization’s long-term success, and innovation has become a strategic necessity in today’s business environment. In short, global leadership and innovation have a greater impact today than ever before. Despite the volume of resources exploring both leadership and innovation, most approaches provide directional solutions that are merely anecdotal and lack sufficient information to allow leaders to make measurable change. Add to this equation the importance of developing global skills, and leaders face an even greater challenge. Technology and increased access to information continue to accelerate the pace of business and of change and organizations are often too overrun with change to handle the torrent of emerging demands.

Questions on how to lead and where to innovate remain puzzlingly philosophically: What is the role of global leadership in a time of looming uncertainty? How will organizations innovate to overcome challenges that are largely unprecedented? In a new climate of business, is there a formula for creating success in both areas?

Becoming a better global leader and optimizing innovation jointly hinge on your ability, as a leader, to authentically examine your own inner makeup and diligently address some challenging limitations. Leadership innovation happens naturally and can be accelerated through the use of a structured processes involving your own self-exploration, allowing you to authentically enhance your leadership beyond tactical execution.

Despite their collective value, many conventional applications of leadership and innovation have often proven elusive and even problematic in real-world scenarios. For example, if the leadership team of a struggling organization drives initiatives that focus solely on making innovative changes to incentives, products, and services, without also advancing strategic purpose, culture, and team cohesiveness, they will ultimately miss the greater potential to create a comprehensive turn- around in the organization. Productivity and system improvements are undoubtedly critical, but how employees make sense of their work experience is equally vital to team engagement and commitment. Innovating products and improving functionality—without also creating a better and more meaningful team environment, or a more supportive organizational culture—often appears to pay off in the short term, yet produces lopsided decision-making and shortsighted leadership that create lasting adverse consequences.

Knowing that the future of organizations is irrevocably tied to a world of erratic change, we can no longer afford to improve our systems and offerings without equally advancing our leadership capacity. Leadership empathy and the ability to inspire cultural alignment, along with other important leadership activities, will make a significant impact on your organization and must be implemented as shrewdly as is strategic planning.

Combining global leadership with innovation, then, requires you to transform the way you perceive yourself, others, and your business. By earnestly looking at your own experience—including motivations, inclinations, interpersonal skills, and proficiencies—you can optimize your effectiveness in the current dynamic environment. Through reflection, you learn to balance the hard skills you have acquired through experience with the meaningful introspection attained through deep examination— all the while setting the stage for further growth. In essence, you discover how to strategically and tactically innovate leadership the same way you innovate in other aspects of your business.

To become a more innovative leader, please consider our online leader development program. For additional tools, we recommend taking leadership assessments, using the Innovative Leadership Fieldbook and Innovative Leaders Guide to Transforming Organizations, and adding coaching to our online innovative leadership program. We also offer several workshops to help you build these skills.

About the Author

Maureen Metcalf, CEO and Founder of Metcalf & Associates, is a renowned executive advisor, author, speaker, and coach whose 30 years of business experience provides high-impact, practical solutions that support her clients’ leadership development and organizational transformations. Maureen is recognized as an innovative, principled thought leader who combines intellectual rigor and discipline with an ability to translate theory into practice. Her operational skills are coupled with a strategic ability to analyze, develop, and implement successful strategies for profitability, growth, and sustainability.

Leveraging a Crisis as the Foundation for Future Transformation By Maureen Metcalf

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Leveraging a Crisis as the Foundation for Future Transformation By Maureen Metcalf

This blog is a companion to the interview with Barbara Marx Hubbard and Dr. Marc Gafni on VoiceAmerica “Innovative Leaders Driving Thriving Organizations” on March 21, 2017 focusing on navigating a smear campaign they experienced, respectively, as the board co-chair and the founder of the Center of Integral Wisdom. What emerged was a much more hopeful conversation. They are modeling the behaviors they teach as they confront this challenge, and are working to leverage what would for others be a crippling crisis and share the culture of collaboration and unique contribution to a conscious world. They are talking about an evolution of our culture!

So here are the bios for our guests. They are both well positioned to talk about creating a positive future given their professional and life experiences.

As a prolific author and educator, Barbara Marx Hubbard has written seven books on social and planetary evolution. She has produced, hosted, and contributed to countless documentaries seen by millions of people around the world. Barbara Marx Hubbard is not an idealist, nor does she believe that social and planetary change is simple, but she does believe that humanity has the tools, fortitude, and resolve to take the leap toward conscious evolution. One of her best known quotes, “Evolution by choice, not chance,” says it all when speaking with this visionary leader.

Dr. Marc Gafni is a visionary thinker, social activist, passionate philosopher, and author of ten books, including the award-winning Your Unique Self: The Radical Path to Personal Enlightenment. He holds his doctorate in philosophy from Oxford University. He has been a guest editor of the Journal of Integral Theory and Practice on issues of integral spirituality, and a faculty member of JFK University. He is the co-founder, together with a stellar group of thought leaders and social innovators, of The Center for Integral Wisdom, a leading activist think tank dedicated to articulating a practical politics of love, and to catalyzing an emergent personal and global vision of ethics, Eros, and meaning. Barbara Marx Hubbard serves as co-chair of the Center.

Marc and Barbara have made creating this path forward their life’s work. They have been involved with different ventures and channels including speaking, writing, teaching, and activism. From the Center for Integral Wisdom’s website:

“At a time when we are more interconnected and interdependent than ever, we lack a shared narrative of meaning and purpose. Evolving a shared narrative of meaning and purpose that will animate and inspire both our individual and collective lives is our mission. Particularly we are committed to articulating and sharing a “new meaning story” for our civilization whose vision and values have the power to liberate us from the global action paralysis which defines so much of our politics and culture.”

One of my favorite phrases from Marc and the Center is: “We are guided by the deep knowing that the only response to outrageous pain is outrageous love. Outrageous love expresses itself as outrageous activism, joy and responsibility in both our personal and collective lives.”

We, as a society, use the word love differently and, often, far too flippantly. My belief is that the best antidote to the pain, fear, and hurt many people on our planet are facing is the action inspired by hope and love. To many people, “hope” and “love” may sound like “soft” words until you are called to put them into action. There is nothing “soft” about standing by a principle you value at the risk of your livelihood. Yet, for many of us, this is exactly what we need to do to live in a just society. Our military members take a stand for a free country and they defend it with their lives. They defend principles. Each of us is called, as well, to stand by our principles.

This interview seems risky to me. There are people who targeted my publisher because they also published Marc’s books. For me, publishing this blog and this interview reflects taking a stand in supporting a colleague when he has been wrongly accused. For Barbara, it means risking losing several speaking engagements because of her association with Marc and the Center. At one point, her daughter was contacted as part of the smear campaign.
As we look at this evolution taking place on our planet right now, many of us will feel called to take action. Yet it is hard to know where to start when the needs are so great and our lives are so busy. Nevertheless, in the face of outrageous pain, we must demonstrate outrageous love. Here is what that means to me:

1. Identify where and how you can uniquely contribute to the world you want to live in. Identify your vision and values. What will you focus more energy on or start doing? What behaviors do you amplify, and which change based on your values?
2. Identify what you want to stop doing so that the “old way of doing things” slowly withers to make space for a world that is more peaceful.
3. Identify who you invest your energy in and who do you want to spend less time with?
4. Identify how you can make these changes in your organizations. How are you creating businesses that thrive and evolve to create the next evolution of the world? If you are leading an organization, are you looking toward innovation in your products, your mindset, and your behavior? Remember that most of life is a package deal.

We each have unique skills and abilities, as well as life situations. We are each called to make changes in different ways. I invite everyone reading this to consider how you can invest your time in the positive changes you want to see in the world, as planting a positive seed can flourish and grow around the world as others contribute to the changes we have started. Others will continue to nurture it so that we can all help one another and soon we will have a forest of change.

To become a more innovative leader, please consider our online leader development program. For additional tools, we recommend taking leadership assessments, using the Innovative Leadership Fieldbook and Innovative Leaders Guide to Transforming Organizations, and adding coaching to our online innovative leadership program. We also offer several workshops to help you build these skills.

About the Author
Maureen Metcalf, CEO and Founder of Metcalf & Associates, is a renowned executive advisor, author, speaker, and coach whose 30 years of business experience provides high-impact, practical solutions that support her clients’ leadership development and organizational transformations. Maureen is recognized as an innovative, principled thought leader who combines intellectual rigor and discipline with an ability to translate theory into practice. Her operational skills are coupled with a strategic ability to analyze, develop, and implement successful strategies for profitability, growth, and sustainability.

Maureen has published several papers and articles and speaks regularly on innovative leadership, resilience, and organizational transformation. She is the author of the award-winning Innovative Leadership Workbook series and the co-author of the Innovative Leadership Fieldbook, winner of an International Book Award for Best Business Reference Book. She is also a regular contributor to Forbes.com.

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Our Oceans, Our Future: a conversation with Fabien Cousteau by Catherine Calarco

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Our Oceans, Our Future: a conversation with Fabien Cousteau by Catherine Calarco

Educate + Empower + Restore. It is a great honor to be joined by Fabien Cousteau to discuss the Ocean Learning Center (OLC) and the experience of living 31 Days underwater. Our dynamic conversation will provide unique insights and review amazing adventures of the Cousteau family. Following his grandfather’s words, “People protect what they love, they love what they understand and they understand what they are taught.” – Jacques-Yves Cousteau, the mission of the OLC is to raise awareness, educate, and inform all citizens of the world of ways to protect and preserve the planet’s waters and endangered marine habitats and marine life. Through knowledge and innovative technologies regarding ocean preservation, the team at OLC collaborate with partners to develop educational programs and activities in aquatic conservation, restoration, and marine projects dedicated to protecting the Earth’s waters and its inhabitants for the future of our next generation.

The Oceans provide our planet with air, water, and food. We share an unbounded curiosity to learn about our environment and life.   As an Aquanaut, Fabien lived under water for 31days.   His experience demonstrated the uniqueness of our planet and the joy of being part of the ocean environment.  

“”Ninety-nine percent of our livings space is the ocean”  

The oceans hold a huge amount of secrets and amazing new discoveries.   New technology now makes it possible for us to explore it like never before.  At the same time, the ocean environment is threatened with islands of plastic (gyres), the loss of coral reefs due to bleaching and acidification that threatens the entire planet itself.  Dynamics of climate change impacts the ocean and us on land.  Technology can save the ocean but it will take people to make it happen.  
How can you get involved?  Connect with Fabien at http://www.fabiencousteauolc.org/ and join in the efforts to save our oceans.  Join us on Humanity Evolve! Tuesday 1pm Pacific Time on VoiceAmerica

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Drones in the Home of the Future By Jessica Stoner

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Drones in the Home of the Future By Jessica Stoner

“Drones in the Home of the Future” – this weeks episode of The Future of Real Estate radio show with Real Estate Futurist Jessica Stoner.

How fun are Drones!? Now that we’re finally embarking on the future with the exponential growth of drones and drone technology, what can we expect from these little guys, in and around our homes, neighborhoods and cities? As we are very much on the precipice of the drone revolution, it’s difficult to really grasp the uses we can put them towards. Just like we could not guess the sheer number of apps and the many uses we put them towards on our mobile device when the iPhone first came out, similarly we can’t yet get the full picture of how many ways we’ll use these newly opened up 3 dimensions now available to us. Today’s show is going to be an exploration of where we know we are going with Drone technology, where we think and where we hope it will go, and how all it may affect your home and community of the future.

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Tiny Homes By Jessica Stoner

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Tiny Homes By Jessica Stoner

Tiny Living is a movement taking place in many developed countries. It involves people making a conscious choice to live in small homes. Some choose this out of necessity, as affordability of housing in many cities and towns is increasingly becoming impractical. Others choose it for long term financial reasons, not wanting to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in their housing over their lives. We also have those drawn towards Tiny Living, due to the simplicity of it. Small homes equals small storage spaces, therefore less possessions.

Many feel overwhelmed with our mainly consumerist society and the many things they own, have to take care of, move when relocating etc. Tiny Living results less “things” in one’s lives which comes with the feeling of Freedom and Relief.

On today’s show, we will be chatting with two guests. A developer, Battistella Developments, building an inner-city micro-condo complex in Calgary, AB, and Tiny Home Alliance Canada,  an organization, that provides resources and assistance to those embarking on the Tiny Living lifestyle.

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When Will We Rebuild Our Barn? By David Savage

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When Will We Rebuild Our Barn? By David Savage

Today, many people focus solely on what’s in it for them. This has led to significant decay in services, infrastructure, economy, environment, trust, respect for public institutions, and, most importantly, in relationships. Think about what’s in it for us. A self-righteous manipulator or an inspirational innovator; your choice, your leadership, our world.
Let’s work together better to redesign and build a new barn that serves our shared future.

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