My friend Jim Clifton wrote a brilliant new book entitled THE COMING JOBS WAR, which frankly changed almost all of my thinking, on almost everything I am doing. That's saying a lot. It is, without question, one of the best books I have read in the last 20 years. It may in fact be the best, in 20 years, and I read a LOT.
Here is where I am today. The new war is not military, it's economic. Is about jobs, a way of life, the march towards prosperity, and opportunity for all. That's why I am all about the silver rights movement, or "making free enterprise work for all."
Here is my advise to all local city leaders and city leadership — schedule a monthly meeting with all your top leaders. Bring them from government, from community, from academia, from the private sector, even include faith and the media if you can — and focus all of this intellectual amd dreaming fire power on one single, pressing question every week or month; "how does this community or city create the next generation of jobs." That's it. That's the only agenda item for the meeting.
And the meeting cannot be or become a 'what I'm against' agenda, a fear-based leadership style I detail in my bestselling book LOVE LEADERSHIP: He New Way to Lead in a Fear-Based World (Jossey-Bass). It has to be a 'what I am for' one. It has to be an agenda to win the future, and not just to survive our today. Surviving today brings on images of cutting expenses and raising taxes, which might by the way be necessary. But winning the future is so much more about creating future opportunity, growing the pie and growing the economy by CREATING MORE JOBS. But not just jobs by big businesses, or jobs in government, but the source that most jobs come from — small businesses, entrepreneurs and start-ups.
This is the state of mind that every local leader should be in. Every governor, every county official, every mayor, and every city council person. Every month, and every week if they can. And here is what we are doing.
Dreaming, about a new generation of jobs.
John Hope Bryant is a thought leader, founder, chairman and CEO of Operation HOPE, Bryant Group Companies, Inc. Magazine/CEO READ bestselling business author of LOVE LEADERSHIP: The New Way to Lead in a Fear-Based World (Jossey-Bass), the only African-American bestselling business author in the U.S., and is chairman of the Subcommittee for the Under-Served and Community Empowerment for the U.S. President’s Advisory Council on Financial Capability, for President Barack Obama. Mr. Bryant is the co-founder of the Gallup-HOPE Index, the only national research poll on youth financial dignity and youth economic energy in the U.S. He is also a co-founder of Global Dignity with HRH Crown Prince Haakon of Norway and Professor Pekka Himanen of Finland. Global Dignity is affiliated with the Forum of Young Global Leaders and the World Economic Forum. Mr. Bryant serves on the board of directors of Ares Commercial Real Estate Corporation, an NYSE Euronext publicly traded company, and a division of $54 billion Ares Capital.