Accelerated Change

“How do I make myself over and over again?” – Mike Skinner

Accelerated Change

Mike Skinner was sitting next to me, near my left elbow.  He is the former President of Coinstar, an International company that processes more than $3 billion of coins annually.  He’s one of America’s best and brightest! We were enjoying a lunch meeting, working together with other allies, to speed economic development in Idaho through Cooperative Venturing™.

Cooperative Venturing is the Wayne Brown Institute developed process of combining extraordinary business talent with promising early stage, economy-accelerating companies.  Its whole purpose is to accelerate change for the better.  Better means higher paying jobs, a more agile economic base and increased wealth for everyone.  It’s focused economic change.  But, it is also change on another, more basic level.

It embraces the most vital parts of capitalism, individual creativity and self-interest, while altering the competition model through cooperation.  So, Cooperative Venturing is a counter intuitive process that takes time to understand.  It is challenging to implement because of the ever-present human drive for selfish personal profit.

So, It’s impossible to implement without the proper framework in place.  That’s what this lunch was about.  Creating the necessary cooperative framework on a statewide basis.  It is a framework that needs have guardianship and the flexibility to change constantly as new components are always necessary.

Mike was addressing the challenge of this standard by asking the question “How do I make myself over and over again?”

That’s when I thought of you and how I could apply this concept to personal growth.  And, it dawned on me that you and I could use the principles of Cooperative Venturing to accelerate our own growth.  What can we do to accelerate change for the better?

One common phrase used to describe someone who has changed for the better is “He is a self-made-man.”  And, it describes a competition based personal model.  But a faster, more effective personal change model requires a small shift in focus to one of cooperation.

“Hi Dad, I need to talk with you, but I’m having lunch with my mentor.  May I call you when I’m finished?”

It was my daughter Kilee calling me from Ohio where she is rolling out a new initiative for Wal-Mart Corporation.  She applies the principles of Cooperative Venturing exceptionally well.

She watches for openings to make positive changes, puts a plan in place to make the change possible and then builds a team of real smart and talented people from a national talent pool to cooperatively roll it out across the corporate system!  It saves her company millions of dollars every year.  It makes the company stronger and better!

So, how do you and I make ourselves better over and over again?  We watch for areas where we need to improve, we make a plan to create change and then we reach out to the smartest and most talented people we can find to help us.  But there is a trick to this.

Make sure you’re constantly obtaining new human resources.  Old friends are great!  But, had I never met Mike and befriended him, I would never have benefited from what he’s able to teach me.  Make new, high quality, friends constantly!

Let’s ask Mike’s question regularly.  If we will, while following the unique steps of Cooperative Venturing, we’ll enjoy accelerated change and become more than we ever imagined.