Assistance Requested: AP Global Leadership Survey

You can’t solve a transformational problem with transactional solutions

Here is a quick idea that I’m hoping someone who is connected to the Associated Press will share with them.

It is to do a Global Leadership Survey on current or potential leaders who appear to be both wise and influential as demonstrated in their thinking, judgment calls and track records.

As I peruse the world and leadership landscape it appears to me that both have devolved into transactional myopia. That means that everything has been reduced to some form of negotiation and rather than “win win” solutions being arrived it, it appears too often that “zero sum” is the game du jour and gridlock is the result.

As I also view the current spate of leaders, they run the gamut from bright to smart to not so smart to stupid and then of course throw in impetuous, contemptuous, dogmatic, controlling, CYA focused and just plain foolish. True there are the occasional bright ones, at least from a raw intelligence point of view, but their ability to impact positive change is so slight that they would do best to go back to their university where they can wax and wane about all things intellectual and esoteric.

What the world drastically and even desperately needs are leaders who are both wise and influential.

By wise I mean, the ability to know what’s important with regard to the near term and long term future and well-being of humankind and what should therefore be given priority and on the other hand what is unimportant and could be put on the back burner or just dropped.

As important as wisdom is, equally important is being influential.

That means being able to engage and attract people to align with that vision of what is important. I prefer the word influential over persuasive, because influential is about attracting people to a position that they come to of their own free will and are less likely to change their mind.

This is in contradistinction to persuading people who may agree to something in the short term, but then change their mind as soon as they sense they have been “bait and switched” or that certain important and relevant information has been conveniently kept out of the discussion.

Wisdom without influence becomes a well intentioned tree that falls in the forest that nobody hears.

I have also selected the Associated Press because it is ranked as the world’s #1 neutral news source.

Please accept my apology if the above notion seems overly puerile and naive, but if it seems like something that has merit, please pass it on to the AP.

I have that deep ache.

How about you?