Lessons Of The Dancing Guy, When To Lead And When To Follow

by | Dec 1, 2011 | Uncategorized

Today I was reminded of the Derek Sivers TED talk “How To Start A Movement” in which he analyzes a popular YouTube video of a guy dancing on a hillside at music festival. What reminded me of this video, and its lessons was an opinion piece in The Chronicle of Philanthropy, “Calling All Boomers: Don’t Start More Nonprofits”.  According to the piece, a recently release study revealed “that 12 million baby boomers want to start their own nonprofit or socially oriented business over the next decade.” I think we can all agree that it is wonderful that so many people are moved to do good.  But as the author, Mark Rosenman, suggests, is this really the best way for them to affect change? We have an addiction to the new and shiny — cars, housing, mobile handsets, tablets, laptop computers or cameras — this addiction, like any, follows a predictable path until the new and shinny thing does provide the thrill or satisfaction that it once did. It’s the story of America over the past 25 years, but it cannot go on forever. To quote Bill Maher, “All bubbles burst.”  The notion that what is needed to solve some social ill, or intractable problem is a new nonprofit organization or social venture business flows from our addiction to new.  We may assume that if organizations have been around for so long and has not solved the problem, they must be incapable of solving the problem.  The presence of unsolved problems may, to some, be evidence of the ineffectiveness of existing organizations working on the problem thus leading to the...