the power of one

I'm making good use of a gorgeous snow day in Atlanta by writing a keynote for the Georgia International Leadership Conference in February, and as I run through speech ideas and themes, I came across this video that served as great inspiration in college:

(The Power of One video, courtesy of YouTube)

I'm not sure that I'm qualified to be a keynote speaker on leadership and a global world, but I do know that it takes only one person to create something, to build something. It's up to us to decide what that something is going to be. Whether we lead for better, or for worse. To paraphrase the inauguration speech of President Obama, your people will remember you for what you create, not what you destroy.

Thomas Friedman closes his book The World Is Flat with this, and I will close my speech with the same:

“I can’t tell any other society or culture what to say to its own children, but I can tell you what I say to my own: The world is being flattened. I didn’t start it, and you can’t stop it, except at a great cost to human development and your own future. But we can tilt it, and shape it, for better or for worse. If it is to be for better, not for worse, then you and your generation must not live in fear of either terrorists or tomorrow, of either Al-Qaeda or Infosys. You can flourish in this flat world, but it does take the right imagination and the right motivation. While your lives have been powerfully shaped by 9/11, the world needs you to be forever the generation of 11/9 – the generation of strategic optimists, the generation with more dreams than memories, the generation that wakes up each morning and not only imagines that things can be better but also acts on that imagination every day.”

The power of one is the power to do something.
Anything.