I build communities. I spend my workdays building networks of business executives and my evenings organizing reading communities. Projects include the helping and learning network for executives, The Councils, customer experience consulting at Creative Good, phone-based facilitated reading groups at The Reading Odyssey and creative thinking at the Gel conference.
I build help networks for executives because I believe that learning how to ask for help can build leadership, trust and create a new kind of culture in the business world. The Harvard Business Review is publishing a case study in April 2009 that I've written on the importance of asking for help.
I run reading groups to rekindle imagination and create a context where adults can philosophize about the important questions. The groups meet by phone and web with guest lecturers from leading scholars from Cambridge, Harvard and elsewhere. Entering it's fourth year, the Reading Odyssey has run reading groups on Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides, Plato, Aristotle, Old Testament, Euripides, Aeschylus and more modern classics like "On the Origin of Species" (planned for 2009), "Team of Rivals", "Seeking Wisdom", "Innumeracy", "Snowball", "Paradox of Choice", "Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers" and others. Authors and editors like Bob Strassler, Robert Sapolsky, Barry Schwartz, Alice Schroeder and Dan Ariely have also given guest lectures to my groups. Every year, I also run ROAM - Reading Odyssey Annual Meeting - at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where I take readers and scholars through a private literary tour that I designed and then host them for a long evening of food and discussion in the Trustee's Dining Room.
I also run online campaigns on important topics designed to build new kinds of communities. For example, in January 2009, I started a Facebook group to celebrate Darwin's 200th birthday, which drew together 230,000 people in 14 days, attracted 10 of the top scientists from Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Cambridge, etc for a live webinar and media coverage in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the BBC. Importantly, the efforts also built a 300 person volunteer team behind-the-scenes which is continuing to work together on other projects.
And now I'm running this seriously playful Facebook group encouraging people to tap into their creativity to combat the climate of fear that is gripping our world.
