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None of the impressive empires of the past survived. I’ve been reading about the Dutch empire, especially in the years 1600-1800 with the Dutch East India Trading Company. They learned a few lessons from earlier empires (e.g., Alexander and before him the Persians, the Romans – they knew little about the Aztecs and African empires) but could not last.  The British empire (late 1600’s to mid-1900’s) midwifed the modern world we know…and did not last.

All these empires were transitional from sufficient historical perspective.  For many decades, even centuries, they seemed immovable, certain, unchallengeable.  And then they weren’t.  I’m a patriotic American, yet fully expect there will be an end to the American empire, too, because this is the nature of empires.  I will do my part to see it does not fail on my watch.

Reminder to self:  Grip tightly only that which will last. 

What lasts? Grass lasts. 

Trees are remarkable; grass is amazing. Grass gets eaten, beaten down, pooped on, scorched, yet it humbly perseveres.  Grass goes dormant in dry seasons and resurges after a rain. Many grasses sink their roots down 12 feet and more. Grains like corn, rice, and wheat are grasses, as is bamboo. Grass seeds recovered from the Egyptian pyramids germinated 5000 years later. Grass the main crop of Ireland, though only animals eat it directly.  We know of grassy areas in Ireland which are thousands of years old.  Many ruined castles are surrounded by far-older grass. Grass is practically immortal.  Grass will outlive any empire.

But I don’t know how to be grass.  Human beings are created differently than grass.

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I am always heartened by the story of D-Day, June 6, 1944.  The creative partnership of allies, logistics, innovations, the tenacity, the courage, and thousands of stories of sacrifices.  It was a high point in a decade of greatness.  We do war differently now, but one wonders if we would have the toughness to do that again.  If I’m forced to answer, I would say, No.  We’re not the same people we were.

Last week I wrote this:

“A world is supported by four things: the learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the righteous, and the valor of the brave.  But all these are as nothing without a ruler who know the art of ruling.” (from Dune by Frank Herbert)  We’re short on wisdom, justice, prayers, valor, and leadership, too.  These are intentional, formative outcomes. 

How can we think about forming more (and better) wisdom, justice, prayers, valor, and leadership?  These are the building blocks of what lasts.

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Wisdom is abundantly available.  Wisdom is lacking where it is ignored.  John Wayne reputedly said, “Life is hard, and it’s harder when you’re stupid.”  I’m not worried about good people with average IQ. The biblical opposite of wisdom is foolishness. Foolishness is more treacherous to a healthy society than lower intelligence as measured on an IQ test.  I have a very high IQ, based on some tests.  Give me the same test in Swahili and I’ll be lucky to be guess enough to be labeled a moron.  Ask my wife and kids if they think I’m always a genius :- ).  Wisdom is about how to live well, and there’s no wisdom ‘bell curve’ scale.

The opportunity for us as individuals is to soak in wisdom, often, and allow it to transform our hearts and minds.  The opportunity for us collectively is to create environments where wisdom is honored and communicated.  A peculiar challenge of our tech-centric world is that younger people look less to older people for guidance on how to do things, because older people are less savvy with the latest tech capability. 

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Many people today are rightly worried about justice.  There is plenty of injustice in world history, and today. Corruption of systems of legal justice was a hallmark of the decline of the Roman Republic.  For at least 60 years sincere (and some insincere) people have torqued the US justice system into a means to advance their agendas, punishing those who resist their preferred idea of progress.  Using law as an expression of power has gone way beyond evaluating behavior against the standard of law.  In recent years it’s been trendy to talk about economic justice, social justice, racial justice, and environmental justice.  Justice is broad and deep, but I observe that putting adjectives in front of the word justice generally leads to amplifying our pride, immaturity, and insecurity, rather than giving people a sense of ‘rightness’ that leads to peace.

I confess that I don’t know how to alter the trajectory of our legal systems.  Not every country has an effective legal structure. Maybe some of you can guide me and others in this.  I am certain, however, that we need great people, deep people, for justice to flow, and to create/restore systems that people will trust. 

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Some of my readers aren’t religious, and many aren’t Christian.  Yet I find prayer is a common experience.  I remember a man telling me years ago, “As long as there are math tests, there will be prayer in school.”  I believe we’re designed for prayer, even though it is a mystery.  There’s no formula, no incantation (though we’d love that) because it’s a conversation with the ultimate Free Agent.  God answers because He wants to, not because He is compelled to.  I say frequently, to remind myself as much as inform others, that God is more willing to converse with us than we are with Him.

Prayer is crucial for transformation because we’re powerless to truly fix ourselves, and so much is outside our direct control. Righteous people deliberately pursue peace and the good of others. I appreciate Bruce Waltke’s comments: “The righteous are willing to disadvantage themselves to advantage the community; the wicked are willing to disadvantage the community to advantage themselves.”  Let us be grateful that there are some righteous people praying in this way. May their tribe increase!

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Valor is bravery executed.  Military valor is one category in the broader need for valor in a troubled, confused world.  There are other arenas where valor may be even more difficult because it’s unseen and unrewarded. Will we be courageous when we’re put to the test?  Or will we shrink back?  There are many tests coming so we will find out.  I have not been in military combat, but I have been in physical confrontations.  I can attest to the truth in the statement, “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.”  The key is to pre-decide to act despite fear, and continue.  

The English word ‘decide’ comes from the Latin cidre, which means “to cut off.”  We get suicide, herbicide, insecticide, regicide, and so on from cidre, too.  When making a decision to act bravely, we need to cut off the alternatives.

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Paul of Tarsus described leadership in just 17 words in his first letter to the Corinthian church: “Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be courageous; be strong. Do everything in love.”  I’ve been studying, practicing, and teaching leadership for many years. Those 17 words capture the whole breadth of the kind of leadership we need for the cascading crises to come. It’s a statement about self-leadership, too, which is always the place to begin.

(I wrote a short book on this verse.)

The best way you can foster leadership in others is to model it yourself.  There is no substitute for good examples.  Like all crafts, leadership is partly learned and partly caught.  Take on apprentices in this craft to perpetuate leadership into the next generations.

Wisdom, justice, prayers, valor, and leadership.  We can pursue these, and lasting strength can emerge again.  Let’s encourage one another!

We have an impending sense of cascading crises ahead.  Inflation, demographics, technology advances, debt structures, collapsing trust in nearly every institution, corruption, fatherlessness, motherlessness, decreasing mental health and education levels, addictions, wars, geopolitical tensions boiling over, demographic decline, and social pathologies. We (collectively) have made many decisions which created this set of wicked problems where every solution is still bad.  What does this mean for our generation and the next, and what shall we do?

Based on trendlines, I expect 2026-27 will be the crunchier years.  There is unease, and more coming.

I don’t see the end, but I can see a challenging path ahead.  This will be like the Lemon Squeezer on the Appalachian trail or Fat Man’s Misery in Mammoth Cave.  You contort your way through it, humbling yourself rather than striding tall.  There is beauty and richness on the other side. No way around, must go through. Excess baggage cannot be accommodated.

Biologists and sociologists agree that enduring societies (animals or human) require cooperation, cohesiveness, and altruism.  The fragmentation and angst we experience today are because these are in short supply.  They aren’t default or natural states. They require submission, sacrifice, selflessness – the antithesis of our internal, untrained norm. They require deep modeling because they are only learned by example. 

“A world is supported by four things: the learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the righteous, and the valor of the brave.  But all these are as nothing without a ruler who know the art of ruling.” (from Dune by Frank Herbert)  We’re short on wisdom, justice, prayers, valor, and leadership, too.  These are intentional, formative outcomes. 

What will you and I model today?  What example will we set in the coming weeks and months?  What will we lay down, and pick up?

The deep solution:  We need to be mature adults.  We need to foster more mature adults.

Being a mature adult comes from doing.  Let me unpack more of my thinking and recommendations.  Candor: I will have to work very hard to do this consistently well.  Two days out of seven will not suffice. 

These problems are bound up in interlocking systems, with feedback loops and cross-interactions.  Improving any system requires toughness in two ways.  First, there must be agreement on what to optimize.  (You can’t optimize for everything simultaneously; you pick one and then a distant second.)  Second, there must be willingness to endure some pain because all systems get worse before they get better.  This challenges our selfishness and preferred narratives.  Perseverance must not be in short supply.

Despair and resignation are not the answer.  Neither posture is worthy of human potential, and certainly inconsistent with our design role as God’s stewards on Earth.  Why let your enemies rejoice in your passivity? We must be optimistic people of hope, believing there are reasons to go forward, confident of a larger story at work even if we don’t understand it.

“Trusting in princes” is in part how we got here.  We need better leaders, and we can’t abdicate our responsibilities to them.  When called to lead, lead as an Under Shepherd. When called to select leaders, select based on character as well as competence.  When called to follow, follow well and faithfully.

We must not act from anger.  Anger is a gift from God, the hard to ignore emotion which points to a gap between what is and what should be. But anger allowed to morph into ‘energizing rage’ is fuel for evil, not goodness, for destruction, not building and redeeming. 

I emphasize adult maturity because pandering to the least mature among us has exacerbated every problem we face.  Two examples:

There have been too many squabbles about “words are violence,” and “microaggressions triggering me.”  I wish every young person hears hard things said in love, and a stream of insults and thoughtless opinions.  That’s how one learns to distinguish useful truth from “sound and fury, signifying nothing.”  That’s a path to healthy self-management with appropriately thick skin still sensitive to others.  

Immature people want to win the ‘biggest victim’ title, and wallow in entitlement.  We should instead be rewarding hard work, effort in the right direction, pressing ahead despite obstacles.  Knocked down a few times?  Get back up more.  Some people were born with advantages and had good families, and many weren’t.  There have always been inequalities and differences, and expecting some system where everyone is guaranteed equal outcomes is the height of immaturity.  Demanding that version of ‘fair’ will require a different universe.  We must not let cowards rule the world, nor bullies.

“But Glenn, there are people who desperately need help,” you say.  Yes.  There is always enough for the bottom 10%.  Many of these people need extra help only for a season, and some longer.  There is never enough for the bottom half to be fully dependent on others, avoiding growing up and taking responsibility for themselves. Caring and supporting the weakest among us is ministry which builds up.  Accommodating immaturity, however ‘kind’ it may appear, is counterproductive to healthy organizations at every level.

Maturity is about behaving in ways that foster integrity – of self, of families, of communities, organizations, and nations.  Immature behaviors fuel dis-integration.  “You shall know them by their fruits.” 

Embrace effective policies and technology helps while surrendering your fantasies about quick fixes.  The only way our economic, social, technological and political solutions work is to be accompanied by deep and mature people.  

Love people, not just the idea of people.  Love individuals in all their messiness.  Make many friends.  Seek mentors and be a mentor.  Cheer on your peers and fellow travelers.  Maximize in-person, real-time conversations, and be wary of screen-and-ai-mediated ‘friends.’  Resist the seductive power of celebrities and digital avatars to grab your heart.

Practice gratitude, celebration, and joy.  We get more of what we celebrate – so recognize even the smallest of victories and moments of goodness.  Are we breathing?  Our work is not done.  Remind yourself often that God is doing 10,000 things at once even if we’re aware of only three of them.  He keeps his promises, and will turn everything meant for evil into good.

Practice kindness, forgiveness, redemption, and justice-with-mercy.  Collectivist, statist ideologies cannot bear these things.  Liberty-loving people need them.  Convert enemies to friends where you can.  Imitate good, not evil.

Seek wisdom.  Talk with older and experienced people.  Read old books, especially pre-Gutenberg books.  Study history to be “wise as serpents” – not be a better serpent, but to be aware of the schemes and patterns of evil.  Faramir in The Lord of the Rings is a good model – an honest and brave man, who because he did not lie was able to easily discern the deceits in others.  Observe evil without absorbing it.  Be wary of your entertainment lest it mortify your wisdom.

Live in the creative tension between individuality and togetherness.  Both and, not either or.  The easiest way to defeat an enemy is to create or foster divisions which sap their collective strength.  A consistent law of power is to avoid galvanizing and unifying your enemies against you.  Nothing amplifies divisions like unchecked egos.  Unity requires laying down the primacy of egos in favor of desirable outcome for a larger group.  Yet the larger group must support individual flourishing.  Use these truths to filter news, campaign information, and propaganda (but I repeat myself) shoved into your eyes and ears. 

Don’t tolerate or celebrate lies.   I encourage everyone to read How Do You Kill 11 Million People?: Why the Truth Matters More Than You Think by Andy Andrews.   Imagine how different the world would be if a critical mass of mature adults were systematic truth-tellers.  And — this is crucial – we must stop lying to ourselves.

Pain and suffering are real, but they’re temporary.  They will not define us if we allow them to do their work maturing us.

Be both safe and adventurous.  We are the beneficiaries of centuries of risk-takers who went before us.  Our descendants need us to take risks, too.

Living this way has a cost.  Leading yourself and others correctly and wisely inevitably triggers a kind of resistance.  Be not surprised when some will sabotage and undermine you.  Generally, people prefer to be at least slightly more successful or better than others in a group. Perhaps they do this out of jealousy or contempt.  Perhaps they hate what they cannot have.  They act like an infecting microbe.  The immune system of a healthy adult takes about 10% of his metabolic baseline energy; there is a constant war against invaders.  This reality of leadership is disturbing, and expensive.  Weak leadership is far more costly. 

This is a long, perhaps idealistic list.  I’m convinced we need to stride towards these things.  We’ll stumble and pick ourselves up again.   In the last year I’d probably score about 30% against these ideals in my best days. I can and must do better. My objective is to encourage you.  The word means “put courage into you.”  You’re stronger than you think, and you’re not alone. 

About 60% of the adult human population is going through an election this year.  I’ll focus on the US election in November (though much of what I’ll say here applies broadly).  Elections amplify our fears and hopes despite abundant evidence that political “solutions” are limited.  An election is a marker on a river of events, the sweep of history.  We’re currently living the story we will one day tell. 

What can we say about events 6 months after the US election?  Let’s begin with what won’t change, no matter who is elected.

Prices will remain about where they are for some time. Inflation will not disappear. The US will not be suddenly less indebted. People will remain deeply divided over the same issues that divide us today. Significant state by state variation of some laws, taxes, and regulations will continue.  Existing laws will remain on the books.  Existing wars will not cease immediately.  Climate shifts happen slowly, over decades and centuries. Enemies of the West will remain enemies.  You’ll get the same quality of education at existing institutions. People will struggle to change their preferred narratives and ways of explaining events. People will still be deeply flawed, unable to save themselves or create a utopia via laws and regulations. Artificial intelligence is exciting and promising but will have no independent agency. The global demographic decline will continue.

What could change in that period?

Policies which affect energy, prices, regulatory constraints. Enforcement of existing laws. Executive orders and new proposed laws. Different leaders of institutions and government offices, with different priorities and viewpoints. Amplification/suppression of certain voices. The pace of some changes (e.g., alternative education solutions, state legislation reacting to voter pressures). Perceptions of economic factors.  Perceptions of country strength and resolve.  Strategic decisions on industries which get more government support, and level of protection of US companies against global competition. Even more things can change over years.

There are plenty of wildcards.  How long is the honeymoon period for new leaders?  Will election procedures be viewed as fair? Will social unrest spill into violence?  What’s the mix of personal responsibility and ‘victimhood’?  Who will be willing to do the hard work of building and rebuilding institutions?  What will gatekeepers and people in power structures do to retain their status?  What happens and how quickly with geopolitical tensions – especially China, Russia, and Iran, but also Poland, Hungary, Turkey, and France?  Will there be large-scale natural events (pandemics, massive earthquakes, coronal ejections) which affect millions of people?  How many people will accept the truth, even when it hurts?  We’re in a silent recession now; businesses getting squeezed by inflation, rising wages, a declining pool of skilled workers, and softening demand for their services.  Will concerns coalesce into a general recession?

A Navy SEAL was asked what helped him get through BUDS and selection.  He shared his story of a low point, a few weeks into BUDS.  One of the training cadre was running alongside him in the sand and said, “You know, about 50,000 other guys have already done this.”  He said that singular thought powered him the rest of the way through selection, one hour and one day at a time.

It’s worth reminding ourselves – and other leaders in our sphere of influence – that’s we’re not the first to experience these challenges.

Effective leaders develop a toolbox.  I thought it was worth sharing what’s in my toolbox.  These get used over and over.

80/20 thinking – iterative and fractal

S-curve recognition

Mindmaps to clarify messy thinking

Imaginative pre-mortems, then after-action reviews

Rolling work forecasts for team planning

Force diagrams to design change-shaping work

Effective 1:1 and staff meetings

Delegation

Feedback to improve future performance

System causal loop diagrams

Portfolio management tactics

Calendar management and controlling time/effort allocation

Assumption testing

Stepping up and out, observing without absorbing

Prewiring strategic decisions with stakeholders

Frameworks for effective updates (verbal, written)

Mantras and preaching-to-self tactics

Change-shaping strategies

Rhythms of work and recovery (multiple scales)

Budgets: building and managing

Strategic networking

Negotiation

Queries to get to root causes and below-the-waterline issues

The apprentice model

“Getting Things Done” next-step capture, execution, and reviews

Scenario planning

Exploiting ideas from other disciplines and industries

Breathing tactics for managing emotional situations

Interviewing and onboarding strategies

Distinguishing reversible and non-reversible decisions

Project oversight: Who does what task by when?

De-risking project work

It’s the *combination* of these tools which creates the extraordinary. Also, a tool isn’t useful until it is used.

What’s in your toolbox?  What do you need to add?  Which tools require more practice for you?

The current and next generations of machine learning and AI tools will improve efficiencies and allow employees to accomplish more.  This tech trend will make people-related issues the bottleneck even more than today.  (We saw this historically in the industrial revolution period, too.)  Remember that AI tools have no capacity to appreciate the big picture or your organizational context. 

In short, ai will require more skilled leadership in the workplace, not less.  This will be true for commercial and non-profit organizations, and in families. 

AI creates opportunities for all leaders to grow and the best leaders to shine brighter.

Reminder to self:  Despair is a self-fulfilling prophecy.  It’s not a leadership tool.

A mentor of mine used to say, “You’re either coming out of a crisis or going into one, and the time between is variable.” 

It’s a well-known leadership “trick” to tell folks things like “The whitewater is rough now, but around the bend the river will smooth out.”  It might, but more often, there will be more rapids ahead. 

More effective leadership approaches:

Be plain about current and future challenges.  No sugar-coating.  Don’t promise easy or quick solutions.  Don’t promise things you can’t fully control (e.g., no layoffs, extra benefits). Promise that you’ll be with them.  Help them see a future state of being stronger having come through these difficulties.  Be realistically positive, not falsely cheery.  

Leading at this level will first require excellent self-leadership.  This is where your real work begins.

(This is adapted from a draft chapter of a book I’m writing.  Feedback appreciated!)

I’ve yet to meet a person who says, “I want my ideas to be misunderstood.” (Some people want to be misunderstood, because it suits a personal narrative and offers endless excuses – think of immature teenagers and some world leaders — but that’s not our concern today.)

Though we all communicate, few connect.

Communicating in a way that connects is hard. Mark Amidon said, “Language is a means of getting an idea from my brain into yours without surgery.” Language, for all its power, is messy. I know a patent attorney who describes the process of torturing English into a sentence that can mean only one thing. Effective communication is prized because the payoff is worth the work. Mark Twain famously pointed out “the difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter—’tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.”

When is communication particularly difficult?

When there is limited shared vocabulary or context.

When someone prefers not to hear, often because it challenges their presuppositions.

When information is presented in fuzzy, ambiguous, or disordered fashion.

When you’re communicating with people who can’t focus for more than 48 seconds. (Which is most of us, today.)

In short, this is a daily challenge. 

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There are at least 400,000 actively used words in the English language. There are perhaps 50,000 words no longer in common use. This doesn’t count slang, jargon, invented technical words, chemical compounds, anatomy structures, and product and drug names.

You’re fluent in English when you know about 10-12,000 words; about 90% of everyday writing uses 3500 words.

I adore words. I am facile with a large vocabulary.  

I also know this: The simpler my sentences, the plainer my words, the more likely I am to communicate effectively. This is true even for the most technically complex information.

The best-converting sales copy is written at 6th-8th grade level at most. This is true in the US, Mexico, Brazil, Germany, Sweden, India, and Thailand, across multiple languages.

Most of the seminal scientific papers and political books in history read at a 10th grade level or lower, though they are communicating challenging ideas. Large sections of Plato’s Republic, for example, read at 7th grade level.

The entire Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) reads at a 7th grade level. Howard Hendricks insisted his seminary students structure their sermons to “put the cookies on the lowest shelf.”

What does this tell us? 

Effective communication is simple (not simplistic). The recipient’s brain stays focused on the meaning, not being tripped up by “what does that word mean?” and “I’m lost, where is he going with this?”

Take this to heart if you want to connect.

Use short sentences. Use 3 points instead of 7. Drop adjectives and adverbs. Omit needless words.

This only happens through attention and effort. Writing means rewriting. Even ‘informal’ verbal updates require forethought about content and structure.

Recommended resources: 

How to Speak, How to Listen (Adler)

Elements of Style (Strunk and White)

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You might be thinking, “But when I’m talking with other people in my same industry, I need to use many obscure and fancy words and acronyms. I can’t just use 3500 words of vocabulary to explain something.”

You should use a shared vocabulary when communicating in a shared context. You’re free to use acronyms and jargon – these are intelligent shortcuts unique to every discipline. Working across disciplines is different. A molecular biologist talking with an accountant or musician should limit the buzz words unknown outside her tribe.

Even within a shared context, simple sentences and well-structured thoughts are needed for getting ideas across. Bottom-line up front (BLUF), not a torturous chronology. Keep related ideas together. Don’t force your audience to work harder.

I pull this out periodically and review it.  Perhaps you need a list like this?

What is my why?

Physically strong to care for family members

Lean, fit for longer healthier life – which prolongs contribution

Prayer and meditation, intercession

Understand patterns of events to anticipate troubles and guide others to thriving

Study and Intellectual stimulation

Courage

Wisdom

Aim:  Be a large, clean conduit of God’s goodness to flow to people He puts in my sphere of influence.

A helpful question when I’m faced with (even small) decisions: “What will future Glenn think about this choice?” 

Perhaps this is key to maturity.

Maturity is the ability, in the moment when there are two paths to take, two voices in your head, and they cannot both be correct, to choose the right one. 

I think I’m like most people in this:  I dread the start of intense exercising, and for the first few minutes I think “This hurts, why am I doing this?”.  Afterwards I feel great, with a strong sense of accomplishment. 

The same is true of tackling unpleasant-but-necessary tasks.  Especially tasks that are new or I’m not good at (yet). 

When I eat healthier food, I can better distinguish real hunger from useless cravings.  It becomes easier to say to my tummy, “You’re fine, quiet down.”   

I’m currently working on a training plan for my thought process.  The inner dialogue centers on “This is what progress feels like.”   

What mantra do you need to develop?