Teslas, Cities on Mars, and Dreaming Big


Every week I watch at least a couple of TED Talks. There’s so much to learn, so many topics discussed. This past weekend I watched a fascinating TED Talk interview with Elon Musk. Musk has a way of dreaming big world-changing ideas, and making them a reality. His recent projects include Tesla automobiles and trucks, SpaceX, digging tunnels under Los Angeles for high speed transportation, solar powered homes with amazing batteries, and much more.

In the interview, they were discussing Musk’s plan to colonize Mars. The interviewer asked, “Why do we need to build a city on Mars with a million people on it in your lifetime?” I was inspired by Musk’s response:

“It’s important to have a future that’s inspiring and appealing. There ought to be reasons that you get up in the morning and you want to live. Why do you want to live? What’s the point? What inspires you? What do you love about the future? And if the future doesn’t include being out there among the stars, and being a multi-planet species, it’s incredibly depressing if that’s not the future we’re going to have.”

You and I may not dream about starting a city on Mars, but I think Musk’s questions are important: What gets you up in the morning? What inspires you? What do you love about the future? These are questions that leaders need to ask every day. What do you want the future to look like in your department, in our organization? What does it take to get there? Musk not only asks the big questions, but he then takes action to make the dreams reality. What actions do we need to take to improve the future of our hospitals, and the people we serve?

Section One of Called to Lead quotes President John Quincy Adams: “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader.”

Called to Care Action

Schedule some time to dream about the future. Include your team members in the dreaming process. Together, talk about what you’d like the future to look like in your area, and what it takes to get there.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Modeling the Way, Clarifying Values

Over the last several weeks, we’ve been looking at principles of leadership as expressed in the book The Leadership Challenge: How to Make Extraordinary Things Happen in Organizations , by James Kouzes and Barry Posner. The authors’ first principle for leaders is to Model the Way. They suggest that this begins by Clarifying Your Values, identifying those values that are most important to you as a person and as a leader. The authors state: “To become a credible leader, you first have to comprehend fully the deeply held beliefs – the values, standards, ethics, and ideals – that drive you. You have to freely and honestly choose the principles you will use to guide your decisions and actions. Then you have to genuinely express yourself. You have to authentically communicate your beliefs in ways that uniquely represent who you are.” Kettering Health Network has identified five values that drive our organization. These values are: Trustworthy Innovative Competent Caring Col...
Read more

Lessons From Rudolph

Image
In the spirit of the holiday, I share this blog from Tameka Williamson – leadership lessons from Rudolph. Join in and sing along with me……. Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer had a very shiny nose. And if you ever saw him, you would even say it glows. All of the other reindeer used to laugh and call him names. They never let poor Rudolph join in any reindeer games. Then one foggy Christmas Eve, Santa came to say, “Rudolph with your nose so bright, won’t you guide my sleigh tonight?” Then all the reindeer loved him, as they shouted out with glee, “Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer, you’ll go down in history.” Oh, the memories of sitting down and watching this classic TV show every year as a child. Well, this week marked the 50th year of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. As I tapped into my inner child and watched this TV classic, the following leadership lessons began to unveil themselves in my mind. I immediately thought about how there are multiple lessons we can glean from Rudo...
Read more

Engagement From the Bottom Up

At this point, you’ve had the opportunity to process the scores for your team from the Employee Engagement Survey. You’ve probably shared that information with your team, or are doing so very soon. So what happens next?   An article in Forbes addressed this issue. They suggested that too many organizations try to create solutions from the top of the organization, which all are expected to follow. The author, Kevin Kruse, suggests this is the wrong direction. Here’s his thoughts:   “…the problem with this brainstorm-at-the-top approach is that over 70% of the variance in engagement correlates to the  manager  (source:  Gallup Business Journal , April 8, 2015). In other words, who your boss is counts more than anything. Front line leaders are the  regulators  of engagement.”   Kruse goes on to talk about sharing the information with the team:   “…have managers share their results with their own teams. This is not an HR meeting,...
Read more