Editor’s Note: This song was given to me by my daughter, Caitlin, who represents the point of the song – balance. The music and rhythm also bring me upbeat, just like she does.

Author’s Note:  This is the first of the last two installments of my 12 month/article journey through “lessons from building a foundation”.  I promised last month that the last two articles of this series would be a compilation of short stories and lessons attached to each so, here goes:

Editor’s Note: Ever since hearing a presentation 20 years ago from a surgeon who said “30% of your health is chance (heredity), 70% is choice (how you treat your body and mind) this issue has interested me greatly. I’m not a health nut but I strive to do more good to my body than bad. This article, given me by my friend, Brad Roller, is alarming but in a very helpful way, in my view. Hope you enjoy.

“Life does not consist mainly – or even largely – of facts and happenings.  It consists mainly of the storm of thoughts that is forever blowing through one’s mind.”  Mark Twain

Editor’s note:  I went back and forth on featuring this book due to Kagan’s known conservative credentials and the books rambling nature.  But in the end, two ideas, one past and one future, are powerful.  The past is that the United States became “sole world power” somewhat ambivalently.  That is, Kagan says, over history we tend to 1. Resist getting engaged in conflict, 2. Engage only when there appears to be a human cost that we feel can no longer be ignored and then 3. We become uncomfortable with the power we’re given by our engagement.  The second, far more importantly, is Kagan’s future view from past learning which is that we must decide now not later how to act as one of two or three world powers since we will soon no longer be at the top alone.  His conclusion, as noted in the excerpt below, is that this is not a one dimensional issue, as it is so often considered.

 Editor’s note:  The Southern Cross is a constellation long loved by sailors.  The song is one of the early, more obscure Crosby Stills and Nash songs but is one of my favorite for its harmonies, its melody and its meaning. The song is about failed love but as the excerpt below suggests, has a far broader meaning to me.  Peace. 

Author’s Note: This is the 10th in a series of 12 articles about the mistakes we’ve made building our foundation since 1997. I’ve decided the last two articles will be a specific timeline of who we’ve connected with and what we learned specifically in our primary growth years – 2007 to the present. I hope you enjoy these articles. Feel free to contact me at any time.

Editor’s Note: This irreverent “journey through the new Third World” by Lewis is at once vastly entertaining and concerning. Within the past year or so, he visits Iceland, Ireland, Greece, Germany and California to measure the fallout of the financial crisis. Interviews with many key players in these focal point geographies suggest to the reader that the crisis a. looks obvious in retrospect and b. is not nearly over yet. And while I’d already had this fact drilled into my head in MBA school in 2005-2007, he reminds me that the clearest sign of trouble ahead is our government (all levels) un-fundable benefit commitments to public workers and pensioners.

Editor’s Note: Somehow this article from 16 months ago got lost in my clippings file and yet is still worth publishing. It’s a brief Charlie Rose interview with two academics and two journalists. It’s a great clip in my view of what seems to me to be an American society issue – the bifurcation of incomes.

Editor’s Note: The company referenced in the article below “Investing in the Bottom of the Ladder,” by Jody Heymann, demonstrates that for-profit companies can do better by paying and treating their lowest paid employees better. The two companies I’ve been most directly involved in are primarily impacted by their lowest paid workers (WorkPlace Media and Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers). In fact, over 350 of our 400 workers live on the margins. Like Great Little Box, it seems obvious to us that the better your treat your “lowest rung of the ladder” employee, the greater your overall success – financially and societally.