This last Tuesday we were gifted the opportunity to spend the day at Disneyland which is only 15 minutes from our home. The kids had a blast and Mom and Dad were exhausted. Happy 4th of July.

With the untimely death of Tim Russert, this article from the Wall Street Journal was a profound reflection of what is real and what is a mirage in this life, and I quote:

In a way, the world is a great liar. It shows you it worships and admires money, but at the end of the day it doesn’t. It says it adores fame and celebrity, but it doesn’t, not really. The world admires, and wants to hold on to, and not lose, goodness. It admires virtue. At the end it gives its greatest tributes to generosity, honesty, courage, mercy, talents well used, talents that, brought into the world, make it better. That’s what it really admires. That’s what we talk about in eulogies, because that’s what’s important. We don’t say, “The thing about Joe was he was rich.” We say, if we can, “The thing about Joe was he took care of people.

See here for the for full column

Do we do irrational things that make no common sense - authors Ori and Rom Brafman propose that we do in their new book, “Sway - The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior”. This relatively short book (an easy Sunday afternoon read) is a further contribution to an increasing number of books on the whole idea of behavioral economics and the like, perhaps most notably written about by Malcolm Gladwell in “Blink”. In fact I felt like I had read the first half of Sway somewhere else as the authors identified “sway” factors such as; loss aversion, value attribution and diagnosis bias - different terms perhaps but the same fundamental ideas as what I have read elsewhere. The last couple of chapters were for me the most helpful on our need for perceived fairness and the impact of pleasure versus altruism.

So, an enjoyable afternoon read - sure, but frankly it was so full of illustrations that I had to work hard to actually pull out the concrete components. Content headings, definition identification and/or summary table would have been useful to help summarize the well-told story. For full disclosure, I was sent this book for free - as I read it I was constantly challenging my perspective knowing that I had been sent a copy by the publisher - I wonder what “sway” that impacts?

Kevin Roberts, CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi captures in his blog, just one of the reasons I love being home (unfortunately I don’t get to go home very often working for non-profit income versus an advertising income).

Kevin writes:

I call New Zealand home. There’s nothing better than stepping off the plane in Auckland, taking a deep breath and putting on my sunglasses because the light is so bright. We are talking about one of the most beautiful places in the world, but what I love most are the New Zealanders themselves. They are an intriguing mix of passion, easy-going comradeship and intense loyalty, spiced with guts and creative eccentricity. Look them up.

As you may know, I have been working with our Missio team for some months now in helping them with branding and development of book publicity for their new book “The Tangible Kingdom”.

Now the book has been published and is available for purchase at Amazon.com. You can see the film we developed for the book here at YouTube, or join the Facebook Tangible Kingdom group, download a free pdf Tangible Kingdom remix, or finally visit the book webpage.

Hugh and Matt are great team leaders and I think, having read a few books for of this genre, the key distinction is that this book is written by practitioners. So much of this genre is written by theorists or theologians (which are necessary) - The Tangible Kingdom has the feel of dirt under the nails, these guys really practice what they write.

Christy and Danny got married on Saturday - congratulations to them. It was a beautiful ceremony outside on a warm Californian evening in Oxnard. Jen and I enjoyed the wedding, enjoyed a night away where we could actually sleep in and then had a great brunch on the beach in Malibu on the way home. Thanks to Mimi who came from Atlanta to watch the children.

You know the world is changing when Jaguar/Land Rover (British automotive icons) - currently owned by the American giant Ford - is being sold to Tata Group, an Indian conglomerate. A change of empires! For more on these trends, be sure to read Tom Friedman’s “The World is Flat” - a fantastic book (essentially required reading) and one that I just finished.