Today, there was a great article in my local paper, the Daily Gleaner.  Check the full story out at Talk about 5,000 reasons to smile.  

A young woman was walking downtown in Fredericton, New Brunswick when she spotted a Hong Kong Bank envelope lying on the ground.  In it?  Five thousand bucks.  Yikes!  

And what did she do?  Well, to start… When she got home, she told her father and they counted the money – I’m sure they had the same WOW reaction that any of us would – and he simply said to her, “I’m going to leave the decision up to you.  Do what you feel is right.”

Fortunately, there was a cheque (or check if you prefer) in the envelope of cash so the woman was able to make a couple calls and connect with the rightful owner.  As you can see from the article, the owner was very grateful to have had an honest person find and return the money.

In a world where “finders keepers” can often rule the day, this is a great example of someone doing the right thing for someone else… a complete stranger no less.  We are absolutely surrounded but lots of good people and every day, there are people, a lot them anonymous, doing the right thing, making a difference and leaving a positive mark.

Doing good feels good.  Just ask Erica Myshrall of Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada.    

I’ve been thinking a lot about the future…  Heady questions have been the order of the year in 2011.  It’s been a year of introspection and thinking for me.

I grew up in Fredericton, New Brunswick.  After moving away (briefly to attend McGill University in 1987 and again in 1993, after graduating from the University of New Brunswick, to pursue my career in Halifax and Toronto… then graduate school and more “experience” – plus three kids – in Boston… yes, this is a truly horrible run-on sentence), I returned ‘home.’  If you know nothing about New Brunswick, you can read here.

I’ve been thinking about how New Brunswick can become better.  By better, I mean prosperous and more sustainable (or self-reliant).  We have historically been a disadvantaged region, and quite frankly, I’m tired of it… We need to be better if we are to see future generations build their lives here.

So what does it take for a province like ours to become “better?”  What can we be the very best at?  We need to discover our “hedgehog” to borrow from James Collins’ “Good to Great.”  Finding the intersection of what we’re absolutely passionate about, what we’re capable of being the best in the world at, and what drives our economic engine…

Enough academia for today…

I think we can be the smartest province in Canada… highly educated people who are fit, healthy, and happy … have an incredible capacity for research and development … are hard-wired to be entrepreneurial… are starting more companies and social enterprises than anywhere else… and want to leave a positive mark on society… and change the world.  While daydreaming during a meeting, I wrote the storyboard for this simple video …

I can imagine that kind of future.  Can you?

I read an interesting blog post today at B2C – business 2 community – published by Jim Clemmer (find it here).  In his post, the author recounted a leadership workshop that he had facilitated and the discussion surrounding the importance for organizations to “change rather than be changed.”  In the post, the author refers to a video called “Shift Happens: Did You Know?”.  I had not seen it before but found it quite interesting. I did a quick search on YouTube and found the one below (it looks to be the original, and I prefer the music so thought I’d show it here). The research in the video was conducted by Karl Fisch, Scott McLeod and Jeff Brenman.