Working and Doing Business on Earth: Responsibilities of Global Citizenship

Back in January, in the run-up to Putin’s Winter Olympics in Sochi, I went out on an editorial limb with This Impassioned Post about exploring our responsibilities toward our fellow inhabitants on this planet in the context of the work we do.

This is a conversation I strongly believe we should be having in all our forums; from classroom, office and boardroom to TEA Summit & IAAPA and as part of most every gathering of professionals in our – and every – industry.

The problem is egregious and insidiously complex. There are no easy answers, and not everyone’s answer or level of responsibility will be seen as the same.

Fundamentally, I believe it is up to us, to us and the leadership whom we inspire, to see that the Discussion is Had…irrespective of the disparate approaches to responsibility and resolution.

Human Rights – Women, Children, LGBT, Genocide of any sort – simply needs to be a subject that is present and discussed in order to begin to achieve enlightenment and, I would hope, some ease and resolution. But, we gotta be talking about it.

It April, at the TEA Summit, though we failed to achieve seeing the subject addressed in official forum, the kickass and insightful men of Season Pass podcast sat down with me for a high-energy and in-depth conversation including the topic of Global Citizenship and Responsibility in the context of Human Rights. It is a pretty great ramping up of the conversation, and was released, yesterday.

You can listen to it HERE; and I urge you to do that.

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I think pretty much everyone who reads this will agree that Human Rights is an ever-present and rapidly escalating issue, here on the planet. I don’t know that there is a country that is exemplary on Human Rights…besides maybe Canada…and I doubt that there will be widespread agreement on a course of action.

What I hope to see Agreed is the need for active discourse, and this is a call for that.

We are responsible for the quality of Life on this Planet; what we breathe and eat and drink, who is allowed to participate in the management of their own lives (um, everyone…), who has the right to decide how we live and who we love (um, no one…).

These are industries with work all over the Planet; we have access to people at every level or caste in virtually every country in the world.

How might we best handle this responsibility?

Listen. Decide. Act.

IMHO.

And hey, subscribe to The Season Pass! These guys deliver a GREAT show…even when they’re not interviewing me…

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