What’s the Greatest Thing You Could Ever Do?

Printer-Friendly:  Greatest Thing You Can Do - Will Marre

“So what’s up with you?”  That’s the little vocal bullet Aaron shot at me over breakfast at the 101 Diner.  I was meeting with him and John about the message of my new corporate responsibility website.  Aaron is a marital arts expert with like a 150-degree black belt in some form of Asian violent-tranquility loosely translated as “Green Willow.”  Well Green Willow man started pelting me with jabs about the tone of my recent political blogs.  “Dude, your anger is showing.”  Aaron continued, “Are you sure this is what you want to be known for?  Being Mr. Angry Man?”

“Well,” I shot back, “I am not thinking of what my brand is. I am frustrated about what’s going on with our political debate, so I am just being authentic.”

Then John, the other Green Willow warrior and an expert in consumer opinion research said, “If you had a one sentence message, what would it be?”

Without hesitation I pulled out a stack of notes from a file I had.  I just finished reading a book called Inside Steve’s Mind about Steve Jobs’ amazing turnaround of Apple.  I turned to my last note that captured Jobs’ mantra.  It read, “Imagine the greatest thing you could ever do and do it!”  I said, “That’s it for me.  That’s what I want to encourage everyone to do.”

So John responded, “So make that your signature.  No matter how frustrated or inspired you might be at what’s happening, end your blog or speech or whatever with a suggestion from that greatest thing viewpoint.”  I’ve thought a lot about the advice from the Green Willow brothers in the past 24 hours, and I say I must agree.

A few days ago I was in Phoenix facilitating a strategy meeting for 75 leaders and board members of a non-profit called Fresh Start (wehelpwomen.com).  For nearly a decade they’ve been helping women who find themselves desperate, often battered, and stuck.  Through education, mentoring and some focused social service they literally help women who have the gumption to try to climb up to self-reliance and growth.  Now they are ready to take what they’ve learned to a new level by expanding in several directions.  The people in that room were fiercely dedicated, very bright ordinary citizens doing the best thing they can imagine doing.  And it’s working.  Big time.  That’s what’s best about America.  About all of us.

Well I am all jacked up about the goodness of my fellow citizens when I get clobbered with reality.

One of the ladies I met at lunch is a psychologist in her late 50’s, a grandmother who until a year ago made her living lecturing all over the country.  She told us her job had to change, however, because somehow her name got on the terrorist watch list.  It used to take her an additional four hours at the airport to be invasively screened.  Now she said the airlines tell her to not even bother trying to fly!   This woman is as close to being a terrorist as the Easter Bunny.  But one million Americans are on the list.  She told me she has tried every way possible to be thoroughly investigated so she could get off the list.  Being from Arizona, she tried Senator McCain, her congressman, and even directly appealed to President Bush.  Nothing.  There was no trial, no review, no recourse.  Her basic civil liberties to travel were ripped away from her and she has no recourse.  So here I am in this very inspiring setting with these very inspiring people and I am angry, again.  Damn.  So let me just say my peace and then mention something positive.

Your response to my recent posts have inspired me.  If most Americans are being as thoughtful as you are in choosing who to vote for we have a lot to be encouraged about.  Thank you for your comments and ideas and the reasonableness of your arguments.  It seems to me that whom we elect does matter.

It matters because of the things that happened to my new psychologist friend.  Our leaders do create an agenda of our society that either makes it more fair and opportunity driven or more unfair and fear driven.

At the same time what matters most is how we live our individual lives.  These volunteer leaders will continue to help elevate the lives of women no matter who’s elected.  Likewise, our lives matter when we make them matter.  So I agree with the Green Willow men.

No matter what, in all and every circumstance, imagine the greatest thing you could ever do and do it.  That’s how the world will change.

So that’s what I am going to try to do.  I’ll tell you more about it next week.  In the meantime, what do you think about all this?  Am I too angry?  Is doing our best thing all we can really do?  What are the best things you’re doing or want to do?

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Exxon - Exxoff

I guess I am a little ticked off tonight. Here I am watching the Olympics and I am bombarded with Exxon ads featuring high-minded employees touting Exxon’s $750,000 contribution to fight malaria with mosquito nets.

Then I go to my computer and I get a feed on a Corporate Social Responsibility website called Responsible China (!) praising Exxon humanitarian work. Okay. I know Exxon actually does contribute to humanitarian causes in all kinds of oil-rich off-the-beaten-path countries. It is good and at the same time it is pathetic. Honestly, Exxon spends millions more on advertising costs telling us how good they are rather than on being good! More importantly, Corporate Responsibility and clear-eyed ethics do not pursue a core business that is wildly destructive to the environment, is a primary engine of climate change, and exploits consumers in an economy-wrecking policy of manipulated oil markets all the while refusing to adequately compensate for or even clean up their infamous Alaska oil spill. Now they expect us to feel warm and fuzzy because they throw pennies to poor people. Exxon made $40.6 billion in profit in 2007. They are the world’s most profitable company.

If ExxonMobil really understood Corporate Social Responsibility, they would be the biggest investor in clean renewable energy. Instead their CEO disputes the scientific basis of climate change and publicly reminds us that they are an “oil company, not an energy company.” So their investments are going into lobbying for more oil leases to drill for American oil they can sell to the highest Asian bidder. And to find better ways to extract oil that, after all, nature created.

How does that sound to you? To me it sounds like a very weak justification to pursue toxic self-interest. It has a name. It’s called “negative innovation,” which are improvements in products that destroy the planet, exploit people and eat our future. Let’s see…is there a connection? Global warming, world wide inflation, growing extreme wealth of middle eastern tyrants and Russia and the oil industry. And I’m supposed to feel good about Exxon’s Corporate Responsibility? Isn’t it ironic that rising temperatures are actually causing a rise of mosquito-born tropical diseases even as Exxon buys mosquito nets? (It’s like tobacco companies selling breath inhalers.)

This is all a tragedy. A failure of ethical vision. What’s crazy is that there is big money to be made by creating clean renewable energy (Just ask T. Boone Pickens, PickensPlan.com). And for Exxon to only dabble in it while they increase shareholder dividends is strategically stupid. If Exxon wanted me to feel better about taking a day’s work worth of income from my daughter every time she fills her tank, it would come from knowing they are using her money to create a healthy, sustainable, non fossil-fuel energy future. But they don’t care. Not really.

So here’s what I tell business leaders. Any time we justify the suffering of others as necessary or inevitable, we become the cause of that suffering.

Our worldwide oil economy will likely cause immense suffering in forms of wars, poverty, pollution, climate caused natural disaster, and other unanticipated tragedies. For those who are presently prospering from oil not to take the lead in solving the catastrophic problems caused by it is…well you know what it is.

So, Exxon don’t try to make it something different through public relations. Indeed, it is what it is.

Day-pay in a tank.

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