Answers are always hard to come by. The challenge is which answers are we looking for and who can we enlist to collaborate to find those answers.

We have to go through the process of defining:

• What do you want to change
• What is your purpose
• What do you value
• How Do You Navigate uncertainties
• What is your role in creating commerce and culture
• How can we ask big questions that lead to progress and challenging each other

The first interview in this section was hosted by Brian Grazer, a producer and Academy Award and Golden Globe winner for his work, including his high profile show Empire. He sat down with actress Taraji P. Henson, star of Empire.

Grazer spoke about how important it is to encourage people at an early age. He could not read until he was in the 6th grade, but his grandmother encouraged him to use his curiosity. He learned to look people in the eyes and reach into their heart. His book, “Face to Face: Art of Human Connection” examines many of these issues.

Despite his accolades, he says that the words have to be interpreted by the character and the actor. He says Henson created one of the most iconic characters of the decade by showing her desire for justice.

Henson talked about her career and her feeling that she was done with TV after her role on “Person of Interest”. She felt that the show was too corporate, had too many opinions and she wanted to be more of an artist.

She went to perform at a Pasadena playhouse and says that her agent made her read the script. She was hesitant about taking on the role of “Cookie” because she felt she had been pidgeon-holed into edgy characters and that she had more depth. She didn’t want to play another edgy character and yet taking on the role of Cookie was just that because Cookie was coming back into the world after a 17 year sentence for selling crack. She said she loves when her characters make her nervous. She tries to humanize her characters and connect with their flaws.

Mental health is very important to Henson. She stands strongly against the concept of perfection by telling people that “Perfection is the perfect lie.” She looks at the fact that mental health is a very under-discussed issue, especially in the African American community. She started a mental health foundation named after her father and needed to find a culturally competent therapist to help.

Ultimately, her key is that people need to listen more. Not just listen in one ear as they are busy tweeting, texting or watching TV. Don’t just ask someone how they are, and then just keep walking.

Liz Phair then got on the stage and spoke about art as a vehicle for the truth. She gave credit to her mother who was a docent at the Art Institute.

In her memoire “Horror Stories” she talks about the urgency created by the last few years and how during the last election cycle, she became that old crabby man who yells at the TV. She wasn’t seeing values reflected in our countries leadership and that the madness was taking hold.

This session focused on three social entrepreneurs who are using their companies to make a difference in the world.

SETH FLAXMAN–Democracy Works

Seth created a voting app that increases voter turnout and focuses on educating people who they are voting for, not just how to vote. They develop alliances with colleges and other organizations.

They have raised over $15M already on their way to a $20M round of financing. As a non-profit entity, they earn money from for profits, with approximately 1/3 of their money coming from partnerships. The balance is split between individuals and other foundations.

They are a source of all polling place data to help people find out where to vote and want to be part of the evolution of the foundation of trust.

MICAELA CONNERY–The Kelsey

Perhaps the most impressive speaker of any of the Chicago Ideas Week sessions we attended was Micaela Connery. Her mastery of the topic and her ability to articulate her vision and achievements set her well above even much more accomplished speakers.

The Kelsey creates housing for people with developmental disabilities. The challenge most of the 6.1 million developmental disabled people looking for housing are the issues of affordability, accessibility and inclusivity. She spends her time organizing the process and securing funding for new projects. Typically, she has found that it is more efficient to build new units than to retrofit older units. In each development, she targets the following distribution of units:

• 25% at market rate
• 25% for workforce/middle income housing
• 25% for affordable housing
• 25% for residents with developmental disabilities

Micaela emphasized how underserved this market is and that most of the residents want to live in integrated housing. She feels that those with developmental disabilities are completely left out of the housing discussion. She thinks this is an important role of philanthropy because it allows someone to push the envelope and take risks that others will not take.

JASON KANG–Kinnos

Jason’s product helps prevent infections in hospitals by “highlighting” areas that haven’t been properly cleaned because his products turn the cleaned area blue for a few seconds. The statistics are staggering when you look at the fact that 1 in 25 people in a hospital get an infection and there have been 99,000 deaths which most of us would classify as a preventable death.

As with all start-ups, Jason talks about the struggle of how to make the company sustainable and how to develop the relationship that are needed to make the organization successful.

• Packers-Lions Controversy—This really is not a Packers/Lions issue.  It is an issue that is occurring on a weekly basis in the NFL.  There is a lot of difficulty officiating games properly when every single play is examined with a microscope and the benefit of slow motion replay, high definition television and thousands of “experts” weighing in on Twitter.  The NFL probably made things worse instead of better in the wake of the blatant miss in last year’s NFC Championship Game between the Saints and the Rams.  Trying to re-adjudicate judgment calls to the microsecond are going to bring us to the same point that we have been at with the catch rule, where for a few years even a minute movement of the ball would cause a pass to be ruled incomplete.  If you focused the cameras on any play and zoomed in on the offense and defense lines, you would likely see holding or a hand in a facemask on every play.  It is hard to see where the NFL is going to be able to clean this up. But at minimum, there were some very funny memes to come out of the game.

• Chicago Ideas Week.      One of my favorite weeks of the year is Chicago Ideas Week.   A week-long program focused on larger societal issues and a series of presentations that are like mini Ted Talks, CIW annually turns out some provocative sessions.  The ones that I was able to attend this week included:
  • What Will The World Look Like in 2050
  • Does Activism Make a Difference
  • It’s time to kick Your Addiction to Algorithms
  • Do We Have All the Answers
  • Who Draws the Line Between Right and Wrong?
  • Entrepreneurs can Change the World
  • Who Do Your Kids Trust More:  You or YouTube?
  • Leaders Aren’t Born, They’re Made

• JT Foxx                 His MegaSpeaker series was held in Chicago this week.  JT Foxx bills himself as the World’s #1 Wealth Coach.  I first went to one of his events about 15 months ago.  At the outset he can come across as arrogant and condescending.  After you have a chance to listen to him for several hours and hear the way he engages with participants and hear from those that have attended multiple events, you realize how much depth there is to his systems.  He has built a terrific team led by Francie Baldwin and by Brent Turley.  Brent always opens for him, much in the way that Joseph McClendon frequently opens for Tony Robbins.  He bills his presentations as a way to help people get speaking opportunities, but the reality is that the events are so much more.  He helps them focus on getting a mentor, branding and being decisive in their decision making as a way to get better results in their business.  If you have a chance to attend one of his events, you can feel the energy and passion he has.  Despite his critics, he is an extremely hard worker and travels around the world speaking and putting on events.  Typically over 320 days per year!! His upcoming MegaSpeaker event has 2000-3000 people in Anaheim and attracts high level entrepreneurs from across the globe.  If you can handle a bit of the schtick, you might get a lot of benefit out of it.

• Airwick VIP Pre-Poop Toilet Spray.   So I usually don’t question the powers that be and their marketing strategies, but after having to endure this ad for the last month on the sports talk radio morning shows, I can no longer remain silent.  Let’s put aside for a moment that it plays about 4-6 times per hour (and sometimes more) during the 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. timeslot.  Let’s also put aside the fact that it seems to be targeted at women (or maybe I am misunderstanding that.  But what troubles me the most with this commercial, it that it seems to be giving women, young ladies, and girls the feeling that they need to “hide” their bodily functions from their boyfriend or spouse.  The mom on the commercial literally tells her daughter that her father did not think she pooped for three years.  Really?  I doubt he is that dumb.  But the commercial might be.  The only redeeming performance in the commercial is the (presumably) teenage daughter giving her mom the typical teenage attitude when spoken to about her “body changing”, “needing protection” and the mom’s other inane comments.

HUMOR FOR THE WEEK

MOTIVATION FOR THE WEEK

Are algorithms good for our lives? They impact everything we do in an age where people live on their phones. Would you be up to the challenge of turning off your phone for a full day? Most people are not! The apps themselves have many positives, but we have all seen some of the negatives that arise from cyberbulling and general haters. Still, they can help us in the case of an emergency and can give us immediate information that is tailored to our interests.

As we look at the decisions that are made for us, we have to be aware of potential traps to make sure that we do not develop bad habits. Brad Keywell sat down with Dick Costello, the former CEO of Twitter and they talked about how we should and should not manage relationships with our digital platform. Costello shared some interesting insights into his time at Twitter and how being the head man created problems because nobody is willing to talk to you. One of my favorite elements from what he discussed was the concept of telling staff that nobody is allowed to say “Dick said _______________”. In other words, if you want to rationalize and support your work and/or behavior, you cannot use the crutch that Dick said something or that you thought Dick said something. He gave an interesting example of how an off-handed comment led to the removal of all plants around their headquarters. At the end, he gave three recommendations which made a lot of sense: 1) Stop treating all Twitter accounts (and other social media accounts) equally; 2) Recently created accounts should be given less weight than reputable brands and long time participants, a step that prevent the spate of recently set up accounts; and 3) Make people earn their way into the eco-system–you will earn the reputation that you have.

Ramesh Srinivasan, author of “Beyond the Valley” spoke about how many major societal advances come out of public projects, the internet being a shining example. He also spoke about how many of the largest companies in the world own nothing, except their systems: Uber, Facebook, Air BNB and Alibaba. He estimates that 47% of existing jobs could be based on AI and machine learning but that the challenge will be making sure that we do not perpetuate existing biases.

Julie Zhou, author of “Making of the Manager” shared her experiences with AI attempts and the challenges of being responsibly intentional.

This session had a ton of great information and it was challenging to capture it all. I think next time I need an AI robot to help me take all of the notes!!

Rolling Stone Senior Writer Jamil Smith hosted this session to look at how we can make changes in our world.

The first interview involved Heidi Stevens and Cleo Wade, as they examined how Cleo decided to make an impact on the women’s prison population. Cleo set forth her definition of HOPE defining it as: “the belief that our tomorrows can be better than our todays.“

Cleo reiterated that it is important to recognize that it is not merely wishing for the best, but working towards the best. You want people to allow for what is possible and to build communities by telling stories. She provides live advice columns for the Women’s Prison Association. One of the things that she does is to ask people “What story would you tell if you knew that it could save one person’s life?”

Cleo’s research has shown her that women are the least visited people in prisons. She is pushing to help preserve their dignity, invest in spaces that help avoid trauma in the first place and to put more focus on how we help them re-enter the world. She emphasized that it needs to be an “us against the problem” mentality, so that we all need to collaborate to attack the problem.

Jamil Smith then sat down with Dan Edelman, founder of the famous Edelman PR firm. He started talking about their research which actually showed that consumers would be more likely to buy products from a company whose CEO stood up to gun violence. He feels that the NRA is actually holding back progress and acting counter to its own interests. He says that most gun owners are disappointed and feel that they are now getting a bad rap because of the irresponsibility. His message is that “it is okay to stand up to the NRA.” His recommendation is to focus the efforts on two critical points: 1) Proper background checks; 2) Safe storage of the weapons.

Edelman believes that the focus needs to shift on restoring the responsibilities that go with gun rights, as opposed to the frequent demand for unrestricted access. He thinks that requiring background checks for every gun sale and removing the rights from domestic abusers would help close some of the loopholes.

His research shows that 4.6 million children live at homes that do not have locked guns. The NRA has helped pass a law that prevents pediatricians from asking a family if there is a gun at home and if it is locked up.

Gun violence kills over 100 people every day. We need to train teenagers to interrupt the cycle of violence in their own homes.

The challenge of the state laws is that guns can cross state lines as easily as cars do. In Chicago, 20% of the guns come from Indiana. So we need to make sure that the solutions are federal because otherwise we are only as safe as the state with the weakest gun laws.

We would all like to know how progress will impact us as we move into the future. This session provided insight into the ways we can envision that future.

Bina Venkataraman, author of “The Optimist’s Telescope: Thinking Ahead in a Reckless Age” talked about how despair is a factor because many people in the world feel that they do not have the vision, choices or understanding on how we can make things better. Our job as a society is to make people that they have those choices.

She spent a lot of time traveling around the world examining what people do to make better decisions. She had these two recommendations:

• Learn to imagine: Write a letter to future self. This allows your imagination to take perspective of a specific person in the future. It also gives you the freedom to take on any role you choose in that future.
• Play the long game: It is important to lock in policies for the long term. Giving people predictability is a crucial factor in allowing this to happen.

Architect Massimo Lepore took the stage to discuss what we can do to prevent climate change. He supports many NGO’s that are working worldwide in critical areas. His research showed him that 70% of people will live in urban areas by 2050. One of our tasks is to figure out how we can prevent the abandonment of rural areas. Figuratively, he wants to create a “green wall” movement to help prevent deserts and water.

Throughout the presentation he threw out lots of interesting statistics but the one that might have been most disturbing is that literally a TON of plastic goes into our oceans every 4 minutes. The challenge is that a lot of that waste comes 3rd world countries that are not capable of stopping or reducing that flow.