Thursday, April 29, 2010

Willing to fail?

Insanity is often defined as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Suppose you don't know what to expect? Should you try, or is that risk of failing too much of a risk for you? Someone wrote, "As soon as you are willing to fail, you can accomplish anything." I recently heard about a team-building exercise to build a structure to hold a marshmallow (www.marshmallowchallenge.com). Kindergarten kids scored better than MBAs. Why? Because the kids were willing to try something, and if it failed, they simply tried something else. MBAs wanted to plan and create the perfect solution, only to run out of time when that solution failed. Maybe Kindergarten really was the source of all we really need to know to be successful. We weren't so afraid to fail then.

Thursday, April 22, 2010

How can we help America?

How can we help America? As children of the 60's, we saw that "we" somehow could punish Johnson and get rid of Nixon, but we saw no victory for leaving Vietnam and no world peace emerging from Woodstock. (Altamont taught us that quickly.) Now Gen Y kids are even more cynical about being able to impact anything (since everything is a conspiracy or can't be changed...so why vote). We see anger everywhere but where is the responsibility...and the path to pursue to help America? I'm afraid I don't see it. I wish I could start a new "Independent Republican" party to recapture some gov't values consistent with the original Republican beliefs and without the self-serving and anti-"liberal" obsession or the hidden "we-know-best" socialism of the Democratic fringe. We cannot let the extremes set policy for either party, but how can we make a difference?