I’ve settled on a more concise way to say it. It’s not that the way I had been articulating my mission is wrong. It’s more that it was longer than it needed to be and more of a how than a why.
My why is to grow powerful people.
My how is by learning and teaching so that others can better survive and thrive by understanding knowledge.
There are themes I care about still, Purpose, People, Context and Culture. These rhyming names (and the one above) are inspired by Tristan Harris and his colleagues at the Center for Humane Technology. They taught me the importance of punchy, rhyming or alliterative phrases as memory devices.
I’ve worked to grow powerful people many ways throughout my life.
I started with myself, of course. Trying to be stronger, physically, mentally, emotionally. As a boy and as a son and as a student this focus was a large part of my life. Wen I joined the Marine Corps and served as an Intel Officer my learning and teaching so that others could survive and thrive became very literal. My efforts to grow power people expanded substantially to my fellow Marines and to the population we deployed to protect. When I became a husband I re-focused on building a strong marriage and partnership. In business school commerce, strong businesses that do good in the world became a large part of the effort.
But having daughters was the biggest clarifier I have experienced. My mission is to grow them, into powerful people. Strong, unapologetic, kind, capable of great gentleness but steadfast firmness. That’s what I’m here for. For them most of all, but for their mother, their broader family, their city and state and nation, the society, the planet, the humanity in which they live also. All human kind. That’s what I’m here for.
Grow Powerful People.