Tag: Nelson Mandela

Next-Gen Leader

With the passing of Mandela, the world raises a legit question: will there be another one in the horizon of equal moral stature!

Yes and No.

This is why. Gen Next grows up digitally.

Search at their fingertips.

Conversation has long tail.

Everyone is well-informed by those tweets (Welcome Pres George H.W. Bush to Twitter). Tweet not Twist!

They invent services, fix things and carry none of the analog legacy. Instead, they identify more with sports and entertainment figures than WW II heroes like Churchill.

Attention is their new currency (Ashton and the hash tag). Wardrobe malfunction is the norm. Instead of avoiding disruption, they build it into the planning and implementing process.

Everyone thinks different including rival Samsung who opens factories in Vietnam instead of China. The older generation is looked at as having dementia (shut down the government?)

Morgan, Madoff and not Mandela? Rather, their hero is one who cooks his own meal and takes the bus to work. The new Pope (who just spoke up against CEO salaries which used to double-digit higher than workers, now triple-digit).

Next-gen leader is currently backpacking in Nepal and Napoly. picking up on the nuances of a globalized and inter-connected world while building and rebuilding homes torn by tornadoes. They play by the rules, but not rewarded for points just yet.

Burden with school debt, they decide to get our of the box altogether, postponing their parent’s white-shoe

career for a chance to experience the many shades of grey.

I hope they connect the dots, and not just cross the t’s.

My daughter dances with the number one hip-hop team in the US. Her group is composed of multi-ethnic LA (she was a few years old when the LA Riot broke).

To her, the conversation about race is just as passe as AOL ‘s “you’ve got mail”.

Kids in the Ukraine and Turkey, Tunisia and Egypt are all aspiring for real change, and not just a phone upgrade

To them, bigger is not better.

And the Beatles are still cool.

If a seventeen-year-old whose cancer death “Clouds”  can rally 5,000 people at the Mall of America for a choir, than we still have hope.

This time, it’s not going to be a towering figure as we had hoped for. It will be multi-tasking multi-racial and multi-platform leaders.

Every kid knows how to self-invent, self-promote and seek self-correction (at least the spell check). The Internet with its power growing by the minute will raise the bar.

Tech language will bind everyone together better than the Queen’s language.

And the new frontier is out there, in space and under the ocean. New leader looks for role models in influencers and thought leaders whom they trust, digitally.

You cannot hide but be the truth, the transparency  and the trust they are looking for.

Their votes will be crowd-sourced and cross-checked, not a replay of Florida in 2000

Next-Gen leader has emerged on this side of the digital screen. We just don’t know it, or refuse to recognize him, or more likely, her.

It’s that fast and furious, or common like our Inaugural poet. It’s staring in our faces, from the screen. Next-gen leader has to play both sides of digital divide, virtuality and reality, not both sides of the aisle.

Ladies and gentlemen, may we welcome our new leader, via podcast and broadcast, via tweets and texts and via whatever platform they will and surely will invent. We just did not know we would someday ride in EV and get stuff delivered by drones.

Stay healthy and stay tuned (because we are going to live very long life) to be witnesses to change.

New world requires new leader. Just that they will come in packages we might not like or are comfortable with. In MN, they voted for wrestler and SNL comedian. Someday, our leader might come with tattoos and ear rings in non-traditional places. You might wish it otherwise, but it’s the new reality brought to us by the virtual world we had created in our own image. For now, the Pope will do.

The racist that is us

The world mourns for a beacon that was Mendela.

It rains in the stadium and inside the heart.

Racism was an ingrained system up to the Civil War, fought in World War, struggled in the 60’s and onto the 90’s in Apartheid.

We simply don’t like color folks, first in speech, than in hush-hush, now only in thoughts. Keep it to yourself.

But if it’s the Huxtables (neighbor, doctor and well-mannered) than it’s OK.

Recently down in Florida, it still happened when a nephew of a resident got shot in a struggle. Zimmerman got off free, than later, in jail for beating up his girlfriend. A diametrical replay of Rodney King who also got arrested for other charges after the LA riot.

Man inhumanity to man spreads across the color line.

What Nelson Mendela did which made him great? He simply went to a ball game (just like Rosa Parks who chose to sit in front of the bus), and not a soccer game, but a Rugby game (lilly-white). He refused to be drawn into a downward spiral, the mean streak of violence piling on top of violence, which eventually destroys both sides. This cycle polarizes us, and perpetuates itself,  inflating the dark side in each of us, the racist part. Studies show that fear passed on from generation to generation, that includes the fear of the bogeyman.

For me, Mandela was more than a symbol of reconciliation, or racial struggle, or political triumph.

He was and remains my symbol of hope. Of thought leadership. Our Gandhi. Creative problem-solving, while setting aside personal feelings (and the urge to take revenge).

27 years of honing his thoughts and feelings in confinement.

Of nursing the dim light of hope. Of  life-long learning.

Then, boom! Stadium and podium, concert (Bono) and ball game, Bishop and President.

Sometimes, in traffic, a minute is too long for us. And when pre-judging someone, 5 seconds are too long.

The racist in us needs a re-education. Be it 27 years or life time. But start now. To understand and be understood. What if you were born dark-skinned? or white for that matter. The burden is on us to reach out, to say “Hi, my name is….. Good to meet you”. I know a friendly person when I come across one. Don’t you? Because if we don’t, we simply transfer that fear to the next generation, and before we know it, history repeats itself due to our ignorance or inertia. Then, some facist or racist leader will rise (hopefully with another style of greeting if he/she is creative enough) and recycle those stirring speeches we all know so well ” they took our jobs, they come with strange ” costumes” etc…”.

Then the crowd will nod, and the crowd will call themselves the Majority vs the Other. And mass hysteria will take over

The right to bear arms etc… and our children will have to do it all over again. I hate that, don’t you. So mourn, but not too long. Mendela would rather see us take action, smile at strangers regardless the size of their bodies or the color of their skin. It only takes a small effort to reach out, to click on the mouse and send a text or endorsement. Recognize the racist that is us, and manually override it. Let not your small inherited fear dictate how you behave in today’s world. I hope that world is full of Mandelas, full of hope and humanity. We got work to do. Let not the small stuff steal  our game of Rugby.

Reading Idea Man

What would you do if you hit the PowerBall jackpot?

Paul Allen, Idea Man, had several ideas: space travel, mind mapping and music.

What would you do if you had no money at all?

You would day-dream (travel inside your mind), visualize what you would do if  you had money (like Charlie Chaplin, leaning out of the window to eat his home-grown grapes) and of course, go on free YouTube to listen to your favorite songs.

Rich and poor, we share the same hopes, fears and dreams.

The yearning to better ourselves.

Some do it the hard way (monk self-immolation, Mother Theresa, Nelson Mandela prisoner # 46664), others the ideal way (Bill Gates and Paul Allen).

I like the new tech billionaires.

They are more eco-friendly, more hip (recording studio on Octopus, world’s fourth largest yatch).

They got out of the tech boom and bust, while we continue with the real estate bubble.

Now when I hear of construction build-out, I got flashbacks.

Our next frontier lies in understanding the brain, the diseases and how our psychological make-ups (sub-conscious) dictates or hinders our choices.

We barely understood creativity. How one idea sparks another.

Paul’s best line in the book: often times, failure carries with it the seed of success.

Every so often, someone came along, did or said something that made us think .

We thank them for it. We are challenged by them. We build upon their shoulders, and yes their failures.

Paul Allen isn’t the only Idea Man. But he one who puts money behind those ideas he thinks might work. Ideas and action.

All along, he enjoys coding, playing music and reading. A classic American guy growing up in the 60’s: high-tech and high- touch (Jimmy Hendrix). Jam on. Even in between two cancer surgeries. That’s what life is all about.

Always between chapters. Always being rewritten and revised. Always tried and failed, then try again. Idea  Man. Action Man.

Male figure

We all need a hero. Someone to look up to.

Even subconsciously.

Most of the time, it’s our Dad.

When mature enough to know there are shades of grey and our Dad had been far from perfect, we grew confused.

The same happened when our leaders betrayed us.

From coach to banker, from monk to priest, they failed us one by one.

I remember a ranking that had lawyers, politicians and used-car salesmen at the top (of low trust) and physicians, teachers and firemen on the other end (of high trust).

My Dad (and in his younger version, me) was far from perfect.

He carried on simultaneously two families, fathered and nurtured two young kids (me and my half-sister).

But until I have a free weekend, seeing the Pho (noodle soup) place next to a Catholic Church (Bac Ha)  that memories flushed back. I understood now that he had struggled with his own moral dilemma. And however short,  those times he did spare for me, were quite special (Sunday breakfast, fried donuts and book browsing). Those outings to me were like Proust‘s A la Reserche du Temp Perdu. Time waits for no man.

I saw the list of “Icons we lost in 2011”.

I know the male figures of our time are far from being perfect: if they are not ill (Steve Jobs) then they acted on those self-destructive impulses

(Madoff), or both (Sandusky – and to a certain extent, Paterno).

My Dad breathed his last with us at his death-bed.

I saw him struggle. Indeed I had seen him struggle all his life.

Heroes don’t exist in a vacuum.

In fact, we need heroes in spite of their problems.

Those naive enough to think that this world exists for us need their heads reexamined.

There will always be a Hitler, or a Bin Laden.

But there will also be Churchill, Gandhi  and Nelson Mandela.

TIME’s person of this year was the Protester.

A few years back, it was YOU (me).

What happened there? The YOU in digital forms stopped being heroes, leaving only a small portion of dissenters (who called themselves 99 percenters) out there in the impersonal public square.

When people feel strongly enough to die for a cause, it’s time our leaders pay attention.

Maybe we have failed one another.

Maybe we are all immature, like ancient popes who insisted that the sun orbit around the Earth.

Male or female,  we all fell short of our own expectations.

My Dad certainly did.

I certainly am, and just recently admitted that to myself.

I have learned to think for myself, outside of the box and bubble. For the first time in  my  life, I understood my nearest male figure.

I am on my way to accepting him for who he truly was, and with redemption, who I have become.

I hope the next generation will also come to that same realization:

that we all fall short. And that we are mature  enough to forgive ourselves and others, including our leaders, or those male figures  in the news lately.

Re-occupy yourself!

When I boarded my flight to Vietnam, Penn State was losing to Nebraska.

And after I landed in Vietnam, I read about New York “tent city” had been re-occupied by the Mayor.

Here in the land of motor scooters, and kids try to conjugate in English, I can put those problems  in perspective. It’s true that I have felt shaken that my University’s reputation was now tarnished.

But the moment I sat down with my Cafe Sua Da, and the first lady who walked around selling lottery tickets (the equivalent of Mexican child peddlers selling “Chicklets) approached me, I knew I was home.

I learned a hard lesson: it’s not the place. It’s the time and how mature we are at handling those curved balls life throws at you.

If Nelson Mandela can rise above the hatred, Khan can get out of jail to restore a nation, and Churchill never gives up, so can we. Those giants weren’t giants as we now know.  They were dirty (in detention), desperate (isolation) and constricted (as in London bombing). But they rose to the occasion, and never lost hope.

Vietnam is playing catch-up (its President thanked President Obama at recent APEC meeting for siding with Vietnam when China acted up on territorial dispute) starting with early school age (mandatory English).

I remembered how my mother, a school teacher herself, paid out a large chunk of her meager salary to send me to English classes. My first lesson “It is raining, isn’t it”. It will soon stop raining here, but the flood water in Thailand has yet to recede.

MNC’s are rethinking where they should place their manufacturing facilities to avoid similar occurrences (delay in part shipment). Perhaps Vietnam could be a viable alternative, provided that its workers are up to task. I know they already are resilient, heroic and resourceful. Now the hard part: get trained up in soft skills and softwares or risk becoming Asian sub-contracting factory due to skill gap.

That easy way out has with it myriads of unintended consequences such as pollution, traffic congestion and wage pressures as happening in China.

The other alternative has long-term benefits but also has its price: invest in its work force and young population.

It’s not just English. They will need a whole new mindset, one which is complimentary to their built-in advantages. Instructors will need to equip students to think, to respect quality (the Japanese way) and not to rely on the flow of FDI with its own unintended consequences.

Right now, its neighbor Korea has just entered WTO. I stopped in Korea for a flight change, and couldn’t help notice the wealth and inflationary level those folks are experiencing (Starbucks and Tiffany). I got a book “23 things they wouldn’t tell you about capitalism” in paper back (it costs me $31.00).  I hope I got a good lesson out of it from this Korean author. But more than that, I wanted to thank my mom for sending me to French school, Vietnamese school and English school. It’s been a long road since “it’s raining , isn’t it” to “23 things they won’t tell you”.

The only thing I have left to tell you is, “re-occupy yourself”. It’s not the park or the campus, New York or Happy Valley.

It’s in your mind. I am sure Mandela and Khan both learned that while in the can.

They didn’t let the outside walls occupy their inner liberated self.

A Jewish author says it best ” they can take my body, but not me who occupies it – I paraphrase”.

Yes, my body as of yesterday’s reading, requires Lipitor. I am not a young English student who can eat any junk food outside the school yard. But inside, I plan to “re-occupy” that 140 lbs of me for the long haul. Don’t even think of trespassing it.

My list of Influencers

Despite their flaws (who doesn’t have one please cast the first stone), these are the people I look up to:

– President Carter with his commitment to build housing for the poor

– President Clinton out of that place called Hope

– Jim Elliot, the late great missionary who died for his cause

– Danny Devito who despite his “short-coming”, managed to secure a starring role in Taxi

– Nelson Mandela, there is no need to elaborate here

– Cheryl Crow for touring and making it as an artist in a predominantly male rockers club

– Norman Mailer for speaking out and writing up monumental pieces of literature

– Charlie Chaplin, who saw the inhumanity of the system, and in the process makes us laugh without a need for words

– Robert Redford who started Sundance Festival to encourage young film makers to step up to the plate

– Kevin Costner whose ambition has been unmatched, and he has lived out his role in Water World (not oily world)

– Hillary Clinton who personifies multitasking, self-reinventing and America itself

– Steve Jobs who got booted out of corporate America, but somehow, turned crisis into opportunity, the Yin into the Yan

– John Travolta, the comeback kid to become the star that he meant to be in Pulp Fiction and still counting

– George Harrison and Eric Clapton, to have their sweet guitar “gently weeps” for Bangladesh flood victims

– and most recently, senator Kennedy, who could have just kept quiet and sailed around the world for 40 years.

Each one of us take a play page from the many “sparks of divinity” without knowing it.

They inspire us, and show us new heights.

No, they are not naive. They know the costs and consequences of their action.

But they also know the opportunity cost of their inaction.

While  TIME and Forbes lists are updated annually,

Our pantheon of the gods need daily update.

Like our heroes, we are to use talent and technology for social change.

In the process, we better ourselves,.

Silicon Valley has come to you. It’s up to you to start meeting “gentle people” online.

No wonder TIME People of the Year a few years back was YOU. The burden is now on YOU.

Become my new influencers as I yours. We do need each other to make it through this world and leave behind a better one.