I have a Dream.... Remembering Martin Luther King Jr.

http://www.usconstitution.net/dream.html

'This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with a new meaning, "My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring." '...

'And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!" '

"Such a powerful speech! It is truly a Gold Standard for those who aspire to being visionary leaders. Really, it is a Gold Standard for all of us who aspire to be clear communicators and leaders of others – or even just leaders in our own lives."

http://garybclayton.com/leadership/2010/06/visionary-leadership/

Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The law designating the third Monday in January as a federal holiday honoring the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was signed into law by President Reagan in 1983.

(Photographs have been sourced from the Net)

Leaders usually have the role of capturing and communicating vision. They must see it first and then help everyone else to see it so that they form a 'vision community.' That was what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. did as he spoke to people about his dream from the steps of the Lincoln Monument in Washington, D.C. nearly 50 years ago.

"The fact that Obama's inauguration is taking place on Martin Luther King Day – a federal public holiday to celebrate the birth of the civil rights leader – carries great symbolic resonance."

It will be the second time that this federal holiday has coincided with a presidential inauguration. The first was President Bill Clinton's second inauguration on Monday, Jan. 20, 1997."

(Photographs have been sourced from the Net)

And I love this quote by  by Martin Luther King, Jr. because it talks about demonstrating professional pride.

"If a man is called a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all of the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well. "

And this one too:

"Judge a man on how he reacts to failure, not to success.”

And when we talk about the relevance of this great man's thoughts in today's world, I would like to highlight this one on 'Relationship And Networking Leadership' from the book, Leadership @ Infosys because it stresses on the power of collaboration:

"We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.  Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly." ~ Martin Luther King Jr.

Consider this for a minute.  Where did you hear about your favourite restaurant? How did you find that mechanic or hairdresser you swear by? Where did you find your best employee? How did you decide to stay in that great hotel on your favourite vacation? They probably were all results of a coincidence, a chance conversation with a friend or colleague, which snowballed into these wonderful outcomes.  What we do not often realize, though, is that these coincidences and chance happenings are all the results of the relationships and networks in our lives.

The quote by Martin Luther King Jr. above captures what has become a widely accepted truth in business.  Even so-called 'individual contributors' no longer have the luxury of doing completely independent work.  In today's flat world national boundaries, time zones and even lines of authority are quickly becoming meaningless.  Thus, it has become not just possible, but imperative to build relationships and to network, to weave our threads into a 'single garment of destiny'.

And here's wishing Prez Obama a very successful second term!

http://creative.sulekha.com//yes-we-can-again_595308_blog