Monday, January 19, 2015

MLK's Lessons for Life and Work

This blog first appeared today on my LinkedIn profile page.

It’s Martin Luther King, Jr. (MLK) Day here in the United States, and that means a few things: a day off for public employees; celebrations in our urban cities and some suburban towns at churches and community centers; and TV, radio and internet news stories about those local and national celebration events.
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. shared in an August 2013 post in The Root (later republished in PBS.org) that Julian Bond once said [MLK] commemorations focus almost entirely on Martin Luther King, Jr. the dreamer, and not on King’s other accomplishments or aspirations he worked so hard for.
Here are 8 of likely 100s of takeaways from Dr. King that anyone could curate equally or better than me. Ideas from a person who eventually got a day named after him, and whose lessons apply to each of us, whether black, white, brown, green, fuchsia, invisible or purple people eater.
1. Don’t just talk about it.
If you believe in a dream, vision, or simply a new way of doing things, commit to it, stick to it, share it and work toward it. Or don’t bother talking about it at all. Otherwise, people around you will see it as empty words, even though they won’t usually call you on it out loud.
2. Be willing to disrupt the status quo.
To achieve change, innovation and/or improvement, it usually involves someone taking a risk of some kind—whether as simple as not being liked for a day, of being branded as trouble, or actually risking personal danger or reputational damage. It takes guts. But if you aren’t willing to push an idea forward, refer to #1 above.
3. Persuade without pummeling.
People will likely be more apt to consider your ideas if you don’t start your first meeting with a sledgehammer approach. Learn as much as you can to understand those who disagree with you, who fight against your ideas or who seem to waste endless hours blocking your every move. Then zone in on those areas of potential mutual understanding or interest, and go from there. Use a strategy.
4. Don’t try to do it alone.
You can’t do it alone. Build alliances and partnerships, find like-minded collaborators and lead them forward toward your goal.
5. When empowering or guiding others, don’t wait until the perfect or the exactly right or the most prepared moment.
These are King’s words from a March 6, 1957 radio interview immediately following Ghana’s independence: "I often feel like saying, when I hear the question 'People aren't ready,' that it's like telling a person who is trying to swim, 'Don't jump in that water until you learn how to swim.' When actually you will never learn how to swim until you get in the water. And I think people have to have an opportunity to develop themselves.”
6. Sometimes, just go with your gut.
The now famous “I have a dream” section of the King presentation that day was not actually part of his prepared written speech. (And that written speech was carefully prepared and edited many, many times in advance.)
According to a 2011 story in The Washington Post, King speechwriter Clarence Jones said he saw King push the text of his prepared remarks to the side right before delivering the famous “I have a dream” lines.
Three months later, King explained his decision to go off-script: “I started out reading the speech … just all of a sudden — the audience response was wonderful that day — and all of a sudden this thing came to me that I have used — I’d used it many times before, that thing about ‘I have a dream’ — and I just felt that I wanted to use it here” (quoted in David Garrow’s Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference).
7. Things may not be popular when you do them, but could have a much longer and lasting impact.
Speaking of The Washington Post, apparently the paper did not even mention King’s speech in its coverage of the march the next day. Other well-known leaders criticized the speech. But eventually, it had an impact around the world.
8. A long or even average lifespan is not guaranteed, so try to do what you want to do, need to do, or can do now, rather than waiting for a “later” that may never come.
King was a whopping 39 years old when he was assassinated. 39. He may have made it to a “40 Under 40” list technically, but not to a 50 for 50, a Sensational 60 or a Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious 70 list.
As regular non-famous folks, most of us aren’t likely to get assassinated. But we’re human. We’re not supposed to live forever. And statistically many of us will die well before we plan to—whether from heart disease, cancer, an accident or several other not too planned or fun occurrences.
Don’t quit your day job to climb Mount Everest unless you really want to and have some sort of plan after the attempt. Do just try to make the most of every day, in little, medium, and larger ways, and in whatever ways are meaningful to you.
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 John Senall is the principal and founder of Mobile First Media and Digital Healthcom Group—communications, marketing and digital consultancies. For more information, call 716-361-9124 or email john@mobilefirstmedia.com.