The Forces of Mediocrity - Origins of Lead Change Part 10

Remarkable visions and genuine insight are always met with resistance. Seth Godin, Tribes

Our world is marked by a pull to the ordinary. Anything exceptional looks different. We claim to applaud the different, but many things, in fact most things we really like the new, but not necessarily different.

Look at just about any area of our world and you'll see it. Teens struggle to be different than their parents but similar to their peers. We can't look too different or we'll be shunned. The same goes for our pizza or our music or our clothing.

And our communities. I felt a tremendous pull to do what everyone else was doing. "Mike, you should get a bunch of people to help you create a great curriculum and sell it to people." Or, "You should charge dues and create a group like a professional association." Many friends suggested that I repeat a path that other organizations or businesses had followed. And maybe I should have done just that.

I felt like I'd wasted a lot of effort after our first face-to-face meeting in 2010. I admit feeling like a failure when hundreds of people didn't sign up to pay a premium membership to the group. Or when thousands didn't register for our webinars or when they didn't purchase our book. Yes, each effort does a little better but nothing to date has set the world on fire. (We have exceeded my most honest expectations on just about everything, but we're not over the hump.)

For me, this isn't about selling something. Membership in Lead Change isn't transactional. If you change from reading a free copy of our book, in the end, that's exactly why we wrote it. If your leadership improves because we're connected, that's exactly why we're involved in Lead Change to begin with. Lead Change is about mobilizing character-based leaders to make a positive difference. It's about impact. If we look like everyone else, let's stay home. If we're going to be another whatever, let's forget it.

Character-based leadership is about being your best you. We're the Lead Change Group. We want to mobilize leadership revolutionaries. If someone else is doing that, join them, and we'll do something else.

But if not, then check this group out and see if you can maximize you're life's impact.  You may even help someone else maximize theirs. Don't lose another opportunity to make your world better.

This is the tenth part of a series on the origins of the Lead Change Group based on one of the key books that inspired me to take action: Tribes by Seth Godin. For links to all the posts, check out this page.

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