The latest episode, including my interview with community strategist Jeff Siegler, author of Your City is Sick is out and you can find it on YouTube, Apple, and Spotify. Every town in America needs a Jeff Siegler.
This week, my friend Jason Brown, a brilliant executive coach and ally in all things deep work for over 25 years did what he does best: he asked me a killer question.
Before I give you my answer. Write down yours. Three things. One thing. Five things.
The first of my five items (J made me pick 5) came to me like a lightning bolt. In no small part because of this week's Damns Given interview with Jeff Siegler. I hope you'll jump on your podcast app or YouTube and give it a listen. Jeff made me better, just by sharing in his lived wisdom, and I've thought about his interview often since I first recorded it.
I love that Jason's question forces us into an unfamiliar qualifier: Beautiful. The aesthetic is the personal, so answers will vary. But I'm sure of one thing: to make a beautiful world, we'll need beautiful businesses, beautiful institutions, beautiful communities, beautiful teams.
We will need leaders who have done the work to be oriented to expansion. So many leaders are in reaction or contraction. Or defense. But expansion, opening up the capacious places so that new things can grow, is the only way we can decompose the extractive systems that are stealing from every venture in America, and rebuild the networked tissues of trust that have been pulled to shreds.
I know so many of you are here because you want that world with me. And you are using our time together in the podcast and in this newsletter and... for those who choose to... in our work together - to build that beautiful world.
Here's my list... Let me know what you resonate with. And what we can lock arms and work on together.
Recommit to locality. Mixed use, front porches, shared spaces. We are citizens of a patch of dirt before we are almost anything else.
Drastically reduce algorithm dependency. Anywhere you let an algorithmic feed make decisions for you, you are atrophying your agency. Without muscular agency, we are sitting ducks for autocracy.
Partner up. By 2027 the majority of workers will work alone, outside of a company. The one consistent answer from our Guild on peak performance: stop working so alone.
Face the trustfall. Everyone around you is 2-3x more lonely, anxious, and overwhelmed than they appear. We cannot build if we don't accommodate for the neurological damage that has been done by our rent society. Gentleness is a superpower.
Reduce centralized power. Authoritarian power — in any direction, in any system — is a root cause of cultural decay. Cultural power, economic power, political power all needs to be broken up into small more fricative pieces. "Less power for their team, more power for my team" is a continued recipe for cultural decline.
Give me a reply and let me know your list of what needs to happen for a more beautiful world. Or maybe just a more beautiful company or team. And if you're wondering why this might matter, my interview with Jeff Siegler has some very good answers.
Forward, forward,
Nick
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