The building blocks for life success lie in a hand out to a sprawled body on the field, in action for the sake of others, in the score always being 0-0. Raw talent only gets so far. The sun rises and shines on those who have higher sense of purpose, who work hard, who persevere, who demonstrate leadership in all its facets.

The kids went on to win a silver medal. Attitude is everything.

Funny how kids can pick simple words up quickly and apply it, but our aging messes it all up for most of us….

Close your eyes. Just do it. Now think about communities that you really love, communities that really stick in your mind or imagination. Have a picture? You thought of Las Vegas didn’t you? You little rebel. Here’s the thing though. I bet you didn’t think of five hundred. You thought of two or three. They are more than just a dot on a map to you. They are colorful rainbow dots. There’s something different in a world of homogeneous. The grass grows greener for you there. They put an instant smile on your face.

Is this place your community? Perhaps not. Because these places are too rare. Because it takes a magic potion of people working together with intent to build a dream, and the tenacity to make it happen.

While some communities are healthy, too many communities are ill. We keep treating the symptoms with a governance patchwork of muddle-through actions without treating the disease. Terrorism is never discussed as  global inequality and loss of hope that breeds it. Gun rights discussion never results in mental health treatment policy. Animal licensing occupies municipal Council mindshare while thinking about the future festers. Thinking is hard. We are stuck in the trees while the forest is dying.

What’s the disease? We need only two words to answer: Trust. Disrespect.

We lack the trust to have the bigger and deeper discussion about who we are, what matters to us, and what our shared vision is as a society. Our societal, attitudinal baseline toward governance is disrespect. Reputation is poor. We don’t think governance can perform.

Trust in North American governance is at its lowest…ever.

When asked what top qualities were for a municipal elected official in Canada in a Leger/Yahoo Canada poll in 2013¹, 40% responded “Honesty/Integrity.” However, the second highest ranked response was “I don’t know” at 37%. “I don’t know” is unsettling, lacking a worldview of what we want from politicians. How confident are you in your elected representatives? The same poll indicates for municipal elected officials, 48% say “I don’t know,” “not at all,” or “slightly.” It gets worse from there with 57% at the provincial level, and 61% at the federal level.

In the US, an annual 2014 Gallup Poll² asked respondents to rate the honesty and ethical standards of a multitude of professions. In 2014, nurses ranked first at 80% rated “very high.” Members of Congress rank last at 7%.

How hard the row is to hoe when one imagines sitting in a governance meeting planning the future with pitchfork-wielding townsfolk sharpening the tines….just because….it’s in our cultural DNA to have an ill-will temperament toward government.

Do the pitchfork wielders have reason to sharpen? Perhaps yes based on what we see around us. Politicians have become caricatures. Faceless, nameless bureaucracies plod. Decision making plays the small game having routed the big ideas with “yeh buts.”

You want better for your community but you see the momentum of push for bigger because it fits an understood model of big business capitalism vs “communist,” more socially-conscious capitalism. There’s singular focus on basic services, but not elevated lifestyle services. Everything you read from your community sounds just like the community down the road: something for everyone, open for business, city amenity with country charm, quality of life.

“Engagement” creates just another well-intentioned document that is vacuumed on the shelf. The vocal, grumpy minority who are uncomfortable with change or have their personal agenda, drive “democracy.” The silent majority is dis-engaged and say they are too busy to care, or don’t feel they can influence the direction of the machine. We value Aunt Sally’s cool bakery and all the stuff that makes us different but we get cookie cutter neighbourhood and battleship grey big box stores…just like Anywhere. We want “Somewhere,” not “Anywhere.”

“Home” is such an emotionally laden term we answer with when asked to describe our community. We raise our kids there, nurture connections to people and place there, and hopefully find greater meaning in our lives there. We are likely to be eternally present in beginning and end dates on a headstone there.

We all quietly want our communities to inspire us, and be inspired in its action. We all want to be proud of the community we live in. We want to love our community with all the depth of the word: love. Yet most struggle to put words to why we feel where we live has a hole in its soul.

You gotta love…or hate…the paradox of the love-hate relationship with governance, the only mechanism we have to build and sustain this thing called community.

Whoa, that’s depressing. How do we resolve the paradox in the name of love? The answer is that we need to re-set our baseline attitude toward governance.

If we drew a pie-chart, 50% of the problem with lack of inspiration from community is governance itself, while 50% of the problem is our collective negative attitude toward governance. The rub is that our negative cultural attitude is shaping the “governance itself” problem.

Have you every driven by the highway construction hole muttering about the three hard hats standing with elbow on shovel while one hard hat is in the hole digging? Now take your cynicism and multiply into cultural norm.

Don’t believe it? Ask yourself if you have ever sat down and told your children with all sincerity that their career highest calling needs to be government.

We de-risk government via our complaining about anything that reaches more ambitiously. We call it wasteful, or write letters to the editor proclaiming government to be inept, before initiative gets one leg of its pants on in the morning.

Within the system – that boogeyman called “bureaucracy” – anyone with novel ideas is drubbed until they capitulate and come into work going through the motions, waiting for the pensionable-years retirement plan. Talent leaves, or isn’t attracted to governance. And so the brilliant within government who view their work as a calling, with inboxes toppled over with burnout work to do, soon find themselves “acting dumb so people will ask for less.” And the dimmer lights there for a paycheque steward the processes, systems, and red tape that makes us even more expressive about our frustration. The cycle of dysfunction grows. Reversing negative or status quo momentum becomes something akin to peeing into a firm breeze.

We are getting the government we deserve. Our negative attitudes become self-fulfilling prophecy. It’s taken us a couple of generations to arrive at our grumpy state of affairs, like watching a slow-happening accident. Unfortunately, the repercussion is governance that defaults to lowest common denominators rather than pursues highest forms of aspiration. That impacts everyone, not just a few.

Just over 20% voted in municipal elections in my home Province of Alberta in 2017. Such a privilege extended to us in democratic, developed countries. In many parts of our world, people die for the right to vote. We don’t even vote and we show up to complain about everything. That’s how entitled we’ve become.

We’re only two generations removed from folks who endured the Great Depression and a World War, back to back, and knew everything about not taking anything for granted, the power of collective not ego, and the honour in a handshake promise.

My grandpa scraped black toast and ate it. My kids are bummed when the eggs are cold. Holding a door open is such a simple reflection of collective well-being. How generous are we to others? Recently, a woman with a bum knee and an armload of coffee on a ferry was amazed I held the door open for her. Tangible acts of generosity are increasingly endangered. I’m sure the innovation stream beyond the “Be kind rewind” VCR-era plea to renters was completely motivated by the fact that someone anticipated that no one would rewind today.

In the words of US President Woodrow Wilson in the early 20^th century with respect to public service, “You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more simply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.”

Here’s our state of affairs today, reflected in the comment section of a Leger/Yahoo Canada poll²: “We complain incessantly. There are some good elected officials, but since we put all in the same boat I feel the talent pool is in a sharp decline. We treat these people like garbage and many work for peanuts. I have asked some great people to run for office and they just look at me and say ‘why would anyone put themselves and their families through that.’”

Humanity’s rule of order has a thin veneer. Governance requires re-investment from all of us. It’s a living, breathing organism that requires sustenance. It requires a lot more love and a lot less hate. It requires the deeper meaning of the pursuit of happiness that asks you personally to answer the questions: who are you and why do you matter? Then more deeply, who is your community and why does it matter? Finally, how does your community become a muse for your own sense of purpose and destiny and what are you going to take personal responsibility for in contributing to make it happen?

When you’re lying on your deathbed, what achievements will bring a smile to your face? It’s reasonable to assume your consideration of achievement revolves around what you give, not what you take. There’s something greater than “I.” It’s “Us.”

Or take the deeper meaning of life or your community, or democracy for granted until it’s not there. It’s our choice that we manifest in our attitude and our actions.

Let’s start with the simplest of starts: a light switch. Flick it on. With a single action, you now believe that acting in the service of others isn’t a matter of generosity, it’s a matter of obligation to future generations. One of the roots of our happiness is our generosity to others.

Let’s move on to universal truths that most can believe in. Most secretly want to be proud of, and inspired by, their community. Where to best do that other than our home community, where we are most connected to people and place? “Legacy” can be an immensely powerful governance (and life purpose) word. Our happiness equation includes the pursuit of life’s higher meaning.

To move into the future ambitiously, we need to start thinking differently about our role in enabling a more invigorated future, with the communities we live in at the core. We need to re-frame governance among government itself, and re-socialize governance within a society using a new set of keywords: Transformative; Purpose; Things That Matter; Soul; Emotional Attachment; Meaning; Engagement; Connection; Conviction; Heroes; The Incredible; Belief in Better.

Let’s imagine we create a social contract with our communities. This social contract is called The Promise.

The Promise we make to ourselves is that we are open-minded, ideas-friendly, collaborative, constructive, and productive. We are more fearless and less angry. We all share a responsibility to lead. We assume individual responsibility to walk the talk of Abraham Lincoln’s address: “Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.”

The Promise we make to others is that we engage in, and even drive, community dialogue about its future. We promise to directly participate in community stepping stones forward. We find core value in less worldview of self and more worldview of sum greater than parts in collective quality of life.

“I have miles to go and promises to keep,” said Robert Frost. Or if you prefer less waxing poetic, as the ever optimistic Dory said in Finding Nemo, “Keep on swimming.” Keeping The Promise is about belief – that we can rise and shine, that tomorrow is better than yesterday, and that obstacles are only for moving around or over. You have all the power when you realize the choice is yours alone, the choice costs nothing but grey matter to make, and no one can take it away from you.

Multiply you by enough freshly-empowered residents around you and the space between the ears becomes THE difference between communities “going places,” and those “going nowhere.” Government effectiveness is all about human capital.

Attitudes are easy to change. Beliefs and behaviours take longer and require commitment to shift. Our attitudes, beliefs and behaviours are the foundation for performance. This book questions patterns in our beliefs and behaviours and seeks to build a new bridge to the trust that underpins enablement of government performance. If we know what’s wrong – “the what,” it’s easier to make it right – “the how.” You can nod and mutter about how true to life the errors of our ways are, but please then go do something about it. Understanding the patterns gives you the power to lead the way past them.

Our communities are lights in the jar – places at the core of our soul in the pursuit of happiness and meaning of life, but trapped in the spin-cycle of average. We need to unleash their spirit to satisfy, innovate, and inspire. We need to reach highest aspiration we have for our community.

How? This book discusses five ways to leap the hurdles that stand in the way of exceptional spaces, places, and people.

This book is for the restless and the rebellious – those who look at entrenched systems, processes, and status quo that doesn’t reach high enough. This book might be described as informative, entertaining, and a little bit crazy. We can laugh at ourselves, and we can learn from it. When we move out of the way of ourselves, as both a cynical society and an operational but not necessarily imaginative system of governance, we make room for magic to happen.

¹Leger/Yahoo Canada Poll, 2013

²http://www.gallup.com/poll/1654/honesty-ethics-professions.aspx