Continuing with Godin:

“What we have to think about is: Is it your opportunity?”

Slide of Adam Smith up there now. Talking about the pin factory. I don’t think Godin likes Adam Smith (standardization).

“The person who owns the factory makes the decisions. But now, the means of production is no longer a factory, but a laptop. The thing that lets you connect with anyone in the world. The thing that gives you what every ad agency has. And guess who owns it? The worker. Anyone who has a white collar job has their hands on the world. And you can chose to do something with it if you want to.”

“Is this the end of the job? There is something after the job: being an artist.”

“Don’t just do your job. Make a comment.”

“The receptionist — the one you fired to replace with a voicemail system — she was an artist, because she responded like a human.”

Talks about these artists that create paintings in a village in Europe. That’s art. The people who mass produce a painting by Picasso or such, not artists. Just reproducing, copying.

Culture of compliance: doing something just because boss tells you. In these cases, most people just do the minimum.

Henry Ford: Changed everything in the 20th century because figured out that mass production created productivity. But it was a culture of just having to do what you were told. Faster you went, more money made. Factory mindset is just keep the line moving. Managers and leaders are different. Mangers: Do what they did yesterday, and try to get their people doing it a bit faster. This system of “following the rules” has infected our spiritual organizations as well. The notion of interchangable parts leads to a culture of interchangable people. We create a culture of fitting in, because that’s what makes the factory work. And then you are ignored. Leaders are different.

You have a chance in this post-industrial age to do it differently.

We tend to say to this: “OK, what’s the map.” Wrong question. There isn’t one. “If I could tell you how to do it, it wouldn’t be art anymore.”

Competence is no longer scarce. It is thus no longer sufficient to get a job. You need to be an artist: take initiative. Don’t just comply. Be engaged. Do what matters to you, and be remarkable in it.

How many channels are there now? If you count Netflix and the Web, a billion.

The Betty Crocker notion of make a product, buy TV ads, and it will sell, is gone. We’ve branded ourselves to death.

“This light never turns green.”

There’s a slide up there now of a grave stone that says Santa Clause, with a little kid crying in front of it. Funny. (Pry have to see it!)

“The TV industrial complex is being replaced by an age of Tribes. A tribe is a group of people who share a culture, a goal, an idea. Who want to be together.”

“We used to have just three tribes in our life: spiritual, work, community. Now there are far more”

“Deep in our DNA, we want to be in sync with people. Not everyone in the world, but our people. This desire to be in sync is where tribes come from. And tribes need leaders. Who will connect the people, be clear on where they are going and why they are going there. And this is the opportunity of your lifetime, if you want to do work that matters, because you don’t have to do it by yourself.”

“Someone watching here today is going to change everything. They’re not going to do it because someone told them to, but because they decided to and because it’s important.”

“We grew up with this idea that if you have a product, create an ad with some babies or doctors in it, and it will sell. This idea that you promote things from a position of power. The TV industrial complex. Create a product, get TV ads, leading to more sales, leading to more money, leading to more TV ads.”

“Leads to average products for average people (except for maybe Pop – Tarts). Why? Because if you want to make something for everyone, you have to make something everyone wants to buy. Mass is built into our culture.”

“But right here on our watch is a revolution.”

Next post.

They aren’t full of text and bullets, but pictures. During the sound check he made the great point that using PowerPoint as a visual aid hits a different part of the brain than your words, so it works. But if people have to read your text while you talk, they have to do two things at once, and it doesn’t work.

Adam Jeske, one of the other guest bloggers I’m working with, took excellent notes on her session, which you can read here.

It’s also worth checking out his blog, Executing Ideas.

Godin is up next.

Got to interview him for my book a bit ago as well. It was very generous of him and I am very appreciative! (It was also great insight that goes right to the core.)

I might post the video shortly (3 minutes); or, I might just hang onto it exclusively for the book. I haven’t decided yet. Any thoughts?

Here are my notes from the Cory Booker’s session:

Brief Info on Cory Booker

Mayor of Newark since 2006. Rhodes Scholar. Degrees from Oxford, Yale Law School. Urban reformer. Founded non-profit Newark Now. 1,000,000 people following him on Twitter. Recently entrusted with $100 million donation from Mark Zuckerberg to address education.

Core Points from His Message

“How do you stand up when everything around you is telling you to let go?”

“The challenge of the lesson I’m sharing with you is that I’m still seeking to be a better proponent of it myself. It’s not something I learned at Oxford or Yale, but what I learned from my parents.”

“You will always face in this life outrageous adversaries. People that will try to trip you up. Friends who won’t act in your best interests. You must be the one who regardless of the storm is willing to stand.”

“You drink deeply from wells of freedom and opportunity and dignity that you have but did not dig. You have a choice: are you going to grow dumb, fat, and happy on the basis of other people’s sacrifice and struggle, or stand up and use all your blessings to move forward and serve?”

“My parents exemplified love in action. Unyielding faith, fearless hope.”

“You are a result of a grand conspiracy of love. People stormed beaches in Normandy for you.”

“Many people will try to seduce you into mediocrity. Don’t fall for it. You were born an original, but most die copies.”

“You have access to untold opportunities, but you must claim them. Don’t accept your existence as it is. Rise.”

“We are the result of people who did not see the world as others saw it. In the midst of sweatshops, they saw workers rights. In the midst of slavery, they saw freedom. We are here because of people who had the extraordinary vision and the courage to stand up and do something about it. To me, what you see in the world is less a matter of the facts that are there than more being a reflection of who you are. Your attitude about the world says nothing about the world, but speaks to your character.”

“I’ve found in my journey that I can talk about the world all I want and deplore the darkness and point fingers of blame real easily, but in truth that is nothing but spitting in the wind. The only way to make change in this world is for it to start with yourself. Now I see people every day in my city exhibiting that kind of courage. We as a people, if we live our values, can create radical transformation. Human history is, and American testimony in particular, is a testimony to the achievement of the impossible. But before you tell me what you teach, show me how you live and give.”

“Sometimes you have to fast and pray.”

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

“So now I end with a simple call, that my dad gave me as a boy: Let us now stand up. Let us stand because people stood for us and fought for us and bled for us. Let us stand because … change never rolls in on the wheels of inevitability. Let us stand because ‘liberty and justice for all’ must be a passion and purpose every day. And if we stand like this, then we will find a way to get to the roof.”

Three Reflections

1. I loved his emphasis on character. At the heart of character is not seeing yourself as a victim, but as someone who is proactive — someone who can stand up for change. Hardship and adversity will happen to all of us. You cannot make a difference if you respond to that by blaming others and pointing the finger. You have to respond constructively and take responsibility to continue doing the right thing, in spite of adversity. Sometimes people respond cynically to all the problems they see, and they think they are justified in thinking this way because there is indeed lots of injustice in the world. But  in reality, “your attitude about the world says nothing about the world, but speaks to your character.”

2. I also loved the fact he did not just talk about character, but exemplifies it. He has clearly made a massive difference for good in his community and as mayor of Newark.

3. I appreciated his story at the end about the importance of sometimes having to fast and pray. We cannot rely only on your own strength, and that’s not what leadership is about. The tasks are too great, and God honors it when we realize that all strength ultimately comes from him, not ourselves.

“Large organizations often don’t want entrepreneurs.” But let’s look at their performance as a result: Over 30 years, out of the Fortune 25, only 6 remain. Over 10 years, 13 of the 25 have fallen. So the half life of the Fortune 25 is 10 years. They are disrupted by entrepreneurs or transacted out of business. None of you can tell me you can run one business model through your life and career. You have to systematically be going to war with your business model and reinventing it 3-5 times in your career.”

“Focusing on economic outcomes to the exclusion of any other variable is a problematic construct. The notion that we can address economic issues separately, and then only deal with sustainability and social issues if there is anything leftover, doesn’t work. You can’t deal with those things sequentially, but have to do so simultaneously. That requires significant invention and entrepreneurship.”

“Peter Drucker, who shows up in this Summit all the time, says: ‘Most of what you hear about entrepreneurship is all wrong. It’s not magic, it’s not mysterious, it’s a discipline, and like any discipline, it can be learned.’ We are all entrepreneurs, only too few of us get to practice. My job now is to show you how easy it is to practice it.”

Some posts now from Len Schlesinger, President, Babson College, Harvard Professor, Former Vice-Chair, Limited Brands

“The leader is committed to a reality that doesn’t exist yet; everyone else is quite content in the world as it exists now.”

“Everyone shows the Martin Luther King ‘I Have a Dream Speech,’ and then sits down and wonders how they can develop a vision just as articulate and compelling. What they forget is that King took 3 years smashing the way things were before he could get people energized about an alternative future. You can’t get ‘there’ until you are very clear about aspects of ‘here’ that you find unacceptable.”

“What is unacceptable about how things are now? The fact that 2 billion people live on less than $2 per day.”

“Entrepreneurship goes a long way toward enabling the kind of future we want to have.”