obama: build or destroy

“your people will judge you on what you build, not what you destroy”  

— Barack Obama, President, ’09 Presidential Inauguration

we are so used to destruction.  the reality of it is, destroying is easier.  it’s easier to tear down your employee or coworker rather than lift him up, or to criticize google rather than build your own, or to tell someone they can’t instead of telling them that they can.  as a marketer, it’s easier to develop ideas that destroy value by adding clutter to the system rather than developing breakthrough creative and ideas that add value to our consumers’ lives.  my biggest criticism of business school and the case study method was that so often we learned how to rip apart a company and critique what they were doing wrong; much less often did we learn how to really do it right.  too often we go the easy route.  

we should determine that every day we will build customer value into the system rather than destroy it, and that we will build upon the hopes and dreams of one another, and that we will build and leave a legacy in both our business and professional lives that we can be proud of.  building takes work; but the reward is much greater.  after all, according to barack, that’s how you’ll be judged.

Filed under: inspiration, lifemark, personal branding, quotes, 2009 inauguration, advertising, attention, barack obama, business school, clutter, dreams, legacy, marketing, obama, value add