Leader, or Opportunist?

Like most people, I like to pretend I'm smart on a couple of topics. But this past week I've had to ask:

Are my strategies progressive, or regressive?

The focus of our direction impacts what we do with the resources we have.

Are we focused on the next summit, or hawkishly looking back for ways to profit from those who follow in our path?

We live in an era where money is flowing like never before. I get dozens of emails every week with tips on how to take more money out of other people's pockets and put it into mine.

But is that really what success is about?

Is that the legacy we want to have in a generation that is straddling so many tipping points? That we got the most money while the world fell apart around us?

I feel like we have become a society obsessed with building tollways upon tollways to cross a street. Imagination is being replaced with how-to tutorials, and dreams are mass-produced in cheap plastic. Gurus are a dime-a-dozen, and legacies are turning into spreadsheets of debt.

The world has enough entrepreneurs. It needs leaders. It needs cartographers to map out this brave new world as a public service to anyone who wants to pick up a map and go somewhere, not panhandlers who leave a toll on each landmark.

So this is a call to all of you more interested in leaving legacies than tollways.

Yes, we all need to make money. We all need to survive and support those we are responsible for. But when we have found our stride, may we lead the way, rather than tax it. May we all judge our success on how well our work supports the whole, and not how well it gets the whole to support us in our self-indulgence.