Through the miracle of modern technology (and help from Cara and Aidan) you’re reading this as I am cruising with Heather in the warm and beautiful Caribbean Sea. It’s a great time for us to reflect on the past few months of preparing to welcome the newest member of our growing book family and prepare for the editing, production, and roll-out process ahead.

I am very excited about the next stages of further growing my new book Growing @ the Speed of Change. As she did in helping her brother, Dave, with The Wealthy Barber, Susan Chilton will bring her great humor and strong editorial skills to polish my raw manuscript into a gleaming gem of personal leadership. This book’s focus on personal and workplace changes, self leadership (we all need to lead), and adversity is intended to be both timely and timeless. Currently our worldwide economic turbulence is causing massive change at personal, organizational, and societal levels. This is a great time to step back, redefine success, and remind ourselves of the basic choices we have; to lead, follow, or wallow. We urgently need everyone in all walks of life – and all parts of our organizations – to step up and provide inspired leadership action. I call it inspir-actional leadership.

This is also an excellent time to remind ourselves that our long line of ancestors have stood at innumerable crossroads throughout history and made tough choices. The leaders among them resolutely moved themselves, their families, and their organizations forward toward a better future. That’s why today we enjoy an incredible standard of living that would have been unimaginably grand to them. We need continual reminders of that timeless wisdom and hard-won experience that is still highly applicable to meeting today’s challenges and opportunities. And how to enjoy more of the vast wealth (not just financial) we’re surrounded with.