"We are here to add what we can to life, not to get what we can from life."
- William Osler

Just came across that and it's a reminder of something good leaders know and do - contribute and serve. The ridiculous attempts to save 'bonus cultures' and other old-think approaches to life and the world - "My role in life is to accumulate and consume as much as possible" - that are going on all around us at the moment may be the last throes of a primitivism we are moving away from, with the climate debate prompting us to shift how we think of our lives away from accumulating and consuming.

For leaders, Ken Blanchard puts it this way - That we have too many self-serving leaders and not enough leaders who serve.

It's the move away from a scarcity to an abundance attitude that we are all inching towards (those of us who are comfortably off, that is) - from waking up thinking 'What can I earn/accumulate today to stave off...what, starvation?' to 'What can I contribute today?'

As people know who love their work, when you go out determined to contribute, you find people queuing up to buy your services anyway.

Or I may be a fanciful old hippy.

Labels: climate change, Ken Blanchard, meaning of life, post-consumerism, self-serving leadership, servant leadership