2009 has been more maelstrom than magic. Faced with rolling shocks ranging from the great crunch to swine flu to the passing of a pop king and tarnishing of a tiger, most people have felt a gust of blowback. It feels pretty good to be at year-end, and I’m hoping that people, families, businesses and communities the world over will be able to flip the switch from survivor mode to come-back mode. On my read, 2010-20 is going to be a more hardworking and meaningful decade, a time when abundance is generated by hard work rather than borrowing on the cheap, when creativity rides in as a revolutionary, when social impacts are accounted for up front – and when success is earned. I got an inspiring note of gratitude recently from a marketing student, Lisa, who I encouraged half a dozen years back. As a struggling student she dug deep to get through her MBA, topped her class, and now plans to go for a PhD.
A return to old fashioned hard-work and to big creative shifts takes me back to my Red Rose Roots in Lancashire where I grew up on the unswept side of the street. Red is for boldness, passion, optimism and that priceless feeling of “nothing is impossible” that we lived for in the 60’s revolution. Lancashire of course is an inventive powerhouse. From the jelly baby to the Beatles, from cotton to the Co-operative movement, the region has been rolling out magic since it birthed the industrial revolution. Here’s to the Red Rose County, here’s to the red of Christmas, to a big creative year ahead – and season’s greetings to all.
