MountainMornings

One of the very first internships the Bride had in college was working for the Children’s Defense Fund, http://www.childrensdefense.org/ Marion Wright Edelman’s bipartisan DC watchdog advocacy group. This was a coup, landing a summer job in our nation’s Capital with such a stellar company. Well, it’s graduation time again and I’m thinking of my BFF’s daughter, Natalie, a Georgetown grad who just received her MBA from the S.C. Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University. An ex-Peace Corps worker in Mali, she was studying at the Johnson’s Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise and we’re expecting great things from her! Major congrats to Natalie on winning this fellowship and mazels to her parents, Lee and Al Bear: http://www.johnson.cornell.edu/About/News-Publications/Article-Detail/ArticleId/2671/Natalie-Grillon-Samuel-Curtis-Johnson-Graduate-School-of-Management-MBA-2012-Named-Acumen-Global-Fel.aspx

Here is one of her recent tweets (from Facebook, I’m not on Twitter, yet) – “not too late for tribal ties to detach MNLA separatists and Ansar Dine Tuaregs from Islamists for negotiations?” I could barely follow this, since like most Americans I am too provincial and not thinking globally enough. But her tweet came on the heels of watching this TED lecture my business psychologist brother, Dr Jim, sent me about Tribal Leadership: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/david_logan_on_tribal_leadership.html

If you’ve ever wondered how we could actually change the world, this is the video to watch. “Three doctors walk into a bar,” sounds like a joke but more importantly it is a meeting of a Stage 3 Tribe. How do we go from a Stage 2 “Life Sucks” world view to Stage 5, with a “Life is Great” world view? David Logan talks about doing world polls, he argues that leaders must be fluent in all five Tribal stages, to build world-changing tribes as Desmond Tutu has done in South Africa. The true leaders in every country must be able to network and connect people from different tribes.

Now let’s zoom in like a Google map on the US of A. It looks to me like our political leaders are still in Stage 3, boasting about who has done a better job, what failed policies the others have initiated. Nobody is getting 60 votes to pass any kind of meaningful legislation, like say equal pay for equal work…it is the most rigid, intransigent group of leaders legislators I’ve ever witnessed. And then this morning I heard that President Clinton gently tried to persuade the DNC to stop attacking Mitt on his ‘stellar’ business record, and instead follow through with the GOP’s likely outcome should their guy get elected: “The alternative would be, in my opinion, calamitous for our country and the world.” Do you see what he did, he zoomed out! Yes, he was saying that not tackling some hard issues like education, entitlements and yes, taxes, will lead our great country down the rabbit hole that Europe seems to be in. And Clinton is someone who knows about economics, his presidency reigned over one of the most prosperous economic times in our country’s recent history. And let’s not forget, he was the last president to balance the federal budget.

We are sitting on a precipice. 2001 Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz just published a book titled The Price of Inequality. I feel as if he is like a prophet, warning us about the plagues to come should we continue wearing blinders.”There are good reasons why plutocrats should care about inequality anyway—even if they’re thinking only about themselves. The rich do not exist in a vacuum. They need a functioning society around them to sustain their position. Widely unequal societies do not function efficiently and their economies are neither stable nor sustainable. The evidence from history and from around the modern world is unequivocal: there comes a point when inequality spirals into economic dysfunction for the whole society, and when it does, even the rich pay a steep price.” http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/2012/05/joseph-stiglitz-the-price-on-inequality

…and My Boat Is So Small.” The 99% are beginning to realize that while CEOs prosper, their shareholders do not. Income levels are at an all-time low and the recent jobs statistics look grim. “…while the rich have been growing richer, most Americans (and not just those at the bottom) have been unable to maintain their standard of living, let alone to keep pace. A typical full-time male worker receives the same income today he did a third of a century ago.” Ha, I wonder what the female worker is receiving?

Congrats to all the graduates out there, and good luck on your job search. And Major kudos to the Dr Bride who just found out that she passed her oral boards! Yippee!! She is now a full-fledged, board certified ABEM member and fellow of the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP). We are so very proud. Here are my two fellows at my niece’s wedding a few years ago!