Choosing Change
In today’s world, when something is broken we tend to throw it out. No real thought or consideration, just out with the old and in with the new, shiny replacement that promises to make life easier, better and more vibrant than before.
But the older I get, the more I begin to question the validity of this promise. Does starting over with something new always fix the problem? Or does it simply create new ones while masking the struggles that drove us to change in the first place?
It’s a chicken-and-egg question for sure, but one that has been on my mind quite a bit lately. Why? Today, we live in a world where there is widespread social media addition, toxic work cultures, health inequity, income inequality, global warming, rapidly eroding public infrastructure, rising political divisions and rising incidents of hate crimes. Today, we are experiencing less and less happiness. So, do we increase happiness to solve the ills of our times, or do we solve the ills of our times to increase our happiness? A chicken-and-egg question for sure. As I ponder the balance between repair and replace, I’m often taken back to my childhood. Back to those hot summer months spent squeezing every drop of life out of the day on some big adventure before racing home once the streetlights signaled the approach of night. And man, that’s the truth of it: when I was a kid, we had fun and we had happiness! But it’s more than that. When I really dig into those moments from the past that stick with me even today, I notice a few key things, patterns if you will, that help me understand how where I’m from shaped who I am and who I hope to be as an adult.
First, you need to know that I was fortunate enough to grow up in a neighborhood where folks were not blessed with an abundance of wealth. This is important. Especially in a society that more and more is falling victim to the belief that money is the only path to happiness. My family and my neighbors were far from wealthy, but we had wealth I couldn’t see as a kid. I grew up smack in the middle of a poor, working-class, melting-pot neighborhood. We never tried to use money to solve our problems, because we didn’t have it. Instead, folks got together to find solutions that leveraged the resources we did have. We didn’t replace things, we fixed them. All in the name of advancing the community!
As a kid I was free to roam from house to house where other kids my age lived, and I watched parents work together to fix cars, repair homes, feed the sick, watch each other’s kids and, most importantly, respect each other’s cultural differences. Yes, I was fortunate to grow up in a community rich in opinion, rich in values and rich in all that is great about America – her diversity. And I want to share the beauty of that diversity with as many people as possible. Why?
Diversity increases productivity.
Diversity provides new and refreshing perspectives.
Diversity grows acceptance and diminishes discrimination.
Diversity inspires with new ideas, practices and views.
Diversity is human strength, beauty and love.
I am happy to say that I grew up in a community where there was not a lot of overt racism – the killer of diversity. In our neighborhood there was brown and black and white and yellow and red. Everyone simply got along. I learned a lot of Spanish, some Mandarin Chinese, a little Hindi, a touch of Arabic, a sprinkling of Bengali and even a tad bit of Russian (Kak tebya zovut?). We ate dinner at each other’s houses. We played together. We laughed together. We fought amongst each other. We made up just as quickly as we got mad. But never did we think any one person, or family, or culture, was better than another. We lived together on American streets, in an American neighborhood, in America, and we loved it in a way kids back then loved by just being kids.
All of this, this mix of people and experiences, drove my fascination with the possibility of things. Not just what was, but the endless, infinite landscape of what could be. I’ve never been a person who sits and accepts; instead, I question, and I ask, and I work to find solutions where others look for replacements.
It’s that working-class poor coming out in me. It’s a habit that started when I was a child and continued when I left home in July of 1983 to join the United States Army. At the time, I realized that while I loved my family, my friends and my neighborhood, I still wanted to see more and experience more. The military was my vehicle to a life that extended beyond my neighborhood. By enlisting in the U.S. Army, I was introduced to a world of opportunity. I was selected to attend the United States Military Academy Preparatory School in Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, with the promise that if I successfully completed the school’s academic and military course of instruction, I would receive a military appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point. I entered West Point as a cadet in the summer of 1985 and graduated as a second lieutenant in the summer of 1989.
The truth is, I learned many leadership lessons while I was a cadet at West Point, lessons that would serve me well in the Army, later as a law enforcement officer, and overall as a leader. The foundation of my leadership training consisted of 11 principles:
Know yourself and seek self-improvement.
Be technically and tactically proficient.
Develop a sense of responsibility among your subordinates.
Make sound and timely decisions.
Set an example.
Know your people and look out for their welfare.
Keep your people informed.
Seek responsibility and take responsibility for your actions.
Ensure assigned tasks are understood, supervised and accomplished.
Train your people as a team.
Employ your team in accordance with its capabilities.
As you read these principles, you have two choices. You can take them as words, skim them over and leave them behind, or you can live them. Choosing to live them is a much deeper commitment, one that has both changed and shaped my life.
West Point set the foundation for the next phase of my life, not just as an individual but as a leader. A leader with a voice who was willing to work to fix the big problems without easy answers. It drove me through my time as a law enforcement officer and leader and led me to keep asking the hard questions even as I looked for real and lasting solutions.
Today I am an African American law enforcement and corporate security professional working in one of the most significant times in our country’s history. Tensions are high. Conversations are hard. Answers are far from easy. But in a way, that drives me. It drives me to dig into habits formed in childhood as I work toward solutions that fix the problem rather than just masking it with something shiny and new. I know the system isn’t perfect. Trust me, I’ve lived in it every day for more than 30 years. But understanding that something is broken gives us the perfect opportunity to fix it.
This mindset, this fascination with the possibility of things, is what led me to become a co-founder of diversitypop.com, where the focus isn’t about throwing out what is broken but about digging in and doing the work that will allow us to fix long-held, systemic problems in real and lasting ways.
America is not perfect by any means. America is a work in progress, but overall there has been significant progress made in the pursuit of the promises of our unique democracy. Yet today we are all bearing witness to persistent and constant conflict over who belongs and who does not belong in our society, and this conflict is eating away at the promise of America and diminishing the benefits of her diversity.
In this context, I began to think about how history will treat this specific period of time. In this context, I began to think about how my grandkids will view this time we live in now. In this context, I began to think about how I will answer future generations when they ask, “What did you do to make things better in this time?” These questions drove me to have open, honest and tough conversations with my classmates from West Point. These conversations centered on answering a very important question: What can we do together to make now and the future better?
Our collective thinking, our familiarity with each other, our unique collective experience at West Point and in the U.S. Military, our respect for each other, and our diversity led us to develop and launch diversitypop.com with the goal of increasing diversity everywhere.
The diversitypop app is a go-anywhere training program designed to help individuals grow diversity awareness and inclusion instincts in an easy, self-paced way. Diversitypop is designed for business, with customization options and activations that make diversity equity and inclusion training interesting, easy and impactful. The 12 co-founders of diversitypop are all U.S. military veterans and believe the following:
Diversity can be scaled for everyone.
Blind spots limit our fun.
We can condition diversity.
Leaders lead, everyone.
Cultural awareness is contagious.
Diversity is our destiny.
This is the kind of working-class innovation to which I proudly contribute!
Overall, the goal is pretty simple. I want everyone to have a seat at the table. I want us all to throw out the garbage that is holding us back as we sit down and collaborate. Just like we did when we were kids on those hot summer afternoons, when we had no money and no resources and yet still managed to find answers and options in unexpected ways and places.
Guess what? Those solutions? They still exist. They are all around us in fact. We simply have to be willing to do the work and find them. Little by little. Day by day. Each of us doing our part. That, my friends, is how we change the world.