Have you heard of Benjamin Zander? If you are a classical music buff, you might. He is the conductor for the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, a teacher, a master cellist and an inspirational speaker.

In October of this year, Zander spoke at the PopTech Conference about the power of inspiration.

Zander opened his talk talking about “The world of the downward spiral” or as he puts it, “the world of ‘it can’t be done’”.  The other world, as he shows on the second flip chart, is the world of radiating possibility. The world of human potential.

I found Zander’s talk not only to be personally inspiring, but he has a real message to businesses. You can inspire your employees to be more and encourage them to accomplish more by leading them towards “embracing life’s possibilities rather than living in the downward spiral”.

He uses the story of the shoe salesmen who go to Africa in the 1900′s. One writes back, “Situation hopeless, they don’t wear shoes” while the other one writes “Glorious news! They don’t have any shoes yet!”

Given the choice, wouldn’t a business be better served by the employee who is always seeking the opportunity rather than the who bemoans the lack of it?

The video is about a half hour long and is one of the more inspirational videos on this topic I’ve seen. If you have the time, I highly recommend watching Benjamin Zander and his fascinating speech.

‘Chelle Parmele
Palo Alto Software