My friend Stu Zimmerman has put together a very creative idea. Inner Espresso is a daily video series - a triple shot consisting of a thought-for-the-day, a real world example and a call to action. I would love for you to have a free sample and, if you like it, serve it to yourself and your employees each day in future.

Inner Espresso is a well-produced, highly affordable, 90-second videos featuring internationally recognized thought-leaders, coaches, authors and business leaders. It is a time- and cost-efficient alternative to seminars and training that can bring one message to your entire enterprise, helping everyone to be on the same page. It will help your team to reinforce new skills and behaviors through daily viewing and practices and it is customizable, with features that support your specific organizational needs, strategic directions, or core values.The clips are very entertaining and thought-provoking and I think you will enjoy them very much. You can order a subscription at a special rate here. I look forward to hearing your comments.

Rushworth Kidder, whose thoughts and writings are always insightful, has recently completed a small pilot survey of members of the Institute for Global Ethics, of which he is the executive Director. The question: What is the most threatening global issue facing humanity today?

Is it terrorism, violence against women, CO₂ emissions, governmental corruption, mass migration, water scarcity, or slavery?

Since the questions in the survey were based on the 15 major issues catalogued in the 2007 “State of the Future” report from the United Nations-affiliated Millennium Project, Kidder’s team asked one of the report’s co-authors, Theodore J. Gordon, to join a follow-up conference call with the survey participants. Gordon conceived of the Millennium Project in the 1980s and remains one of the world’s most highly respected futurists. He’s been studying future issues and trends since well before 1971, when he founded his own consulting firm, The Futures Group. So his answer was surprising.

Of the nine topics in the survey, respondents clustered three of them near the top: terrorism, CO₂ emissions, and mass migration. They followed with a group of five more: corruption; violence against women; global slavery; disease, AIDS, and pandemics; and imbalanced wealth distribution. The ninth issue, shortage of medical professionals, came in well below the rest.

But Gordon said it’s none of the above. He said, “If you look at all of these issues,” he said “and ask what’s common to them all, its lousy decision making.”

“There used to be a time,” Gordon continued, “when I thought futures research, my field, would make its contribution by improving decision making. But I’ve abandoned that thought. We could have the best insight into what the future might be through magic techniques not yet invented and decisions would still be terrible!” Translation: It’s not the specific issues that challenge us, but the way we fail to deal with issues of every sort.

Kidder writes, “That strikes me as a remarkable admission for a man whose life has been devoted to advancing and promoting futures research. Gordon wouldn’t want me to hold him up to unfair comparisons, but if Einstein after decades of work had told us that something mattered more than physics, or if Cezanne had concluded that painting wasn’t what it was all about, or if Darwin had intimated that he was outgrowing his commitment to evolution, wouldn’t we pay attention?”

I find in the organizations that I work for that there is a general weakness in the crispness and discipline of decision making – too often, it is a disorganized process which relies more on positional power, ego and forces that psychologists call “the shadow” – the personal foibles and demons that we all possess.

It’s not that the big issues are not important, but as long as we lack the will and the training to make high quality decisions, rooted in integrity, that are in the best long-term interests of our constituents, we will lurch from one crisis to another and be forever searching for a better decision than the last one.

Every now and then, a unique opportunity occurs and I want to tell you about one.

There is a very special place, unlike any other in North America called Hollyhock. It is a not-for-profit retreat center located on Cortes, a small island off the west coast of British Columbia. The minute you step off the ferry you know you have left the hectic world behind. This is a serene, beautiful and healing place - ideal for deep learning.

When my wife Tricia and I first visted Hollyhock in the 1980’s, we were so taken with its splendor and powerful energy that we began teaching there - the breakthrough personal results we were able to achieve in these incredible surroundings was a gift for us and our students. Hollyhock is blessed with giant redwoods, 39 feet in circumference, in old growth forest where we hold our sessions in log meeting rooms in the midst of sacred nature, and where we can rise early to breathe in the morning sunrise on the ocean, or laze with our new friends while eating fresh-caught oysters over an evening campfire on the beach. And during the week one can luxuriate with meditation or massage, take a hottub and feast on some of the finest vegetarian cooking (mostly grown on Hollyhock’s land) that I have ever tasted.

Tricia and I will be leading a retreat over five days in June which will draw from leading-edge corporate philosophy, deep personal reflection and growth as a leader, astrology, religion, wisdom teachings and energy healing and everything in between.

Hollyhock is an unparalleled centre of learning and connection that exists to inspire, nourish and support people who are making the world better. A visit to Hollyhock, Canada’s Leading Educational Retreat Centre, is the start of a journey, often a journey of a lifetime. Come and join Tricia and me for a remarkable learning experience and a journey of a lifetime.

It is humbling to witness a savant - because to do so can fill many of us with wonder and mystery.

If you met 26 year-old Derek Paravicini in the street, you might be drawn to judgment. He is blind, has the intelligence of a three-year old, and cannot dress or feed himself.  But if you listened to him on a concert hall you might be speechless - he has the musical mastery of a genius and posesses ”universal absolute pitch”.

It’s all in how we see it, isn’t it?

In my corporate work with top executives, I see so many people judging others - not smart enough, not producing enough, not leadership material, not agressive enough, not good with people, not this, not that. And in addition, we judge silently on a series of hidden tracks - by race, color, gender, religion, beliefs, looks, weight - the screens we use are endless - and they are the cause of the majority of dysfunctional behavior I see in teams.

Leadership is about reducing the circle of those we exclude and widening the circle of those we include—until there is only one circle. As Howard Winters remarked, “Civilization is the process in which one gradually increases the number of people included in the term ‘we’ or ‘us’ and at the same time decreases those labeled ‘you’ or ‘them’ until that category has no one left in it.” Inspiring others requires that we include them, not exclude them. As Edwin Markham wrote, “He drew a circle that shut me out; Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. But love and I had the wit to win: We drew a circle that took him in.”

Watch these two remarkable videos and think about how we could all be more inspiring if we judged others less.  After all, we might be standing in the presence of an overlooked genius.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kwjDLHX92w

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGOH1xzNCOU

My good friend Catherine Ryan Hyde, bestselling author of Pay It Forward, inspired our very popular “Inspire Change” coins. Now she has written another tour de force, this time about first love, a modern-day rendering of West Side Story born on a New York City subway car and nurtured under the windmills of the Mojave Desert.

The subway doors open and close, and in one moment Sebastian’s and Maria’s lives are changed forever. Rendered in Catherine Ryan Hyde’s stirring and evocative prose, CHASING WINDMILLS is a poignant love story that will leave you yearning for a subway ride that is a fraction as enchanting.

Letting go becomes the purest expression of love in this extraordinary novel.

Both Sebastian and Maria live in a world ruled by fear. Sebastian, a lonely seventeen-year-old, is suffocating under his dominant father’s control. In the ten years since his mother passed away, his father has kept him “safe” by barely allowing him out of their apartment. Sebastian’s secret late-night subway rides are rare acts of rebellion. Another is a concealed friendship with his neighbor Delilah, who encourages him to question his father’s version of reality. Soon it becomes unclear whether even his mother’s death was a lie.

Maria, a young mother of two, is trying to keep peace at home despite her boyfriend’s abuse. When she loses her job, she avoids telling him by riding the subways during her usual late-night shift. She knows her sister, Stella, is right: She needs to “live in the truth” and let the chips fall where they may. But she still hasn’t been able to bring herself to do it. And soon he will expect her paycheck to arrive.

When Sebastian and Maria wind up on the same train, their eyes meet across the subway car, and these two strangers find a connection that neither can explain or ignore. Together they dream of a new future, agreeing to run away and find Sebastian’s grandmother in the Mojave Desert. But Maria doesn’t know Sebastian is only seventeen. And Sebastian doesn’t know Maria has children until the moment they leave. Ultimately, Maria brings one child, her daughter. Can she really leave her little boy behind? And, if not, what will it cost her to face her furious jilted abuser?

In this tremendously moving novel, Catherine Ryan Hyde shows us how two people trapped by life’s circumstances can break free and find a place in the world where love is genuine and selfless. Buy or earn more here.