I FINALLY submitted the manuscript of my new book ‘Enough’ yesterday. I started it in 2007 after a dinner conversation about how each person’s unfolding capability was the secret engine that provided the energy for their working journey. And this happens without most of us having a clue about how it works. One of Nature’s best kept secrets.
The conversation moved to high mode individuals whose working journey’s impact others (like our boss maybe) and to those, whose journey impacted increasingly larger groups (political leaders of substance) and to those fewer still, whose actions affected and impacted millions.
Finally we ended up chatting about that tiny, tiny group who create legacy, so powerful, so pervasive, so strong; that their names endure through history and are today household names. Be it for good or bad.
It was then the idea of my fiction thriller book began to grow. What if one such person was born in the 21st century? What would they be like? What would they do?
My work as a Career Path Appreciation practitioner had provided a rare and wonderful insight into how people’s cognitive capability grew and the science behind actualization (we call it flow). Elliott Jaques Growth Curves gave me a rational, logic tool for understanding and predicting. I could explain why, how and when. I was not only intrigued, I was hooked on how high potential individuals manifested
Over the period 2005 – 2016 I reached out to some well known leaders and was fortunate enough to be able to chart a number of work journeys from a capability growth perspective – (Muhammed Yunus, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Nelson Mandela, Ayan Hirsi and James Lovelock) and I even did an historical piece (Evils vs Good: Similarities between Adolph Hitler and Nelson Mandela). These individuals were on Growth Curves that marked them as unique, extraordinary human beings.
I avidly read ‘The 100’ – a ranking of the most influential people in history by Michael Hart – and he drew up his list according to some criteria – influence the key one; not only rear view mirror but windscreen as well and influence NOT through a movement or event, but individual, personal influence. Hart goes on to say influence is ranked by their individual particular achievements. This is not a general condition applied and he disregards the argument, ‘it would have happened anyway.’
I think Michael Hart missed out one other factor, and that is their creation of a new language, symbols, and practices that forms with their legacy.
Evidence is that many of the people in his list did create a new language for large parts of humanity – for example – Muhammad (1), Isaac Newton (2), Jesus Christ (3), Buddha (4), Confucius (5), Albert Einstein (10), Euclid (14) and Darwin (16), not to mention Karl Marx (27), Adam Smith (30) and Henry Ford (91). They all created a new language. Interesting the first five slots are occupied by thought leaders on religion and spiritual development.
So the new book is about a small girl from West Africa who is one of these leaders destined to make it into the first five slots of Hart’s book and I have made her a Mode XVI on our Growth Curves.
She is possibly a human mutant and may be a force for good or evil. I originally called the book ‘Prime Legacy’ but changed it to match the name of the movement she would go create – ‘ENOUGH“
I hope you will enjoy it… it was one of the toughest and most challenging, yet humbling commitments I have undertaken.