Content is a commodity. Take your pick of entertainments, places, ideas, tinned foods, holiday destinations. The thing with content is it can be digested very easily – most often like soft porridge oats that require no chewing – and requires little action.

Action. The most precious human resource in the world. It is the people who have acted upon social injustice that have changed our world. Those who started with doing just something that have shaped our history. It those who acted upon a dream, a vision, who pulled what was previously thought impossible into the realm of realirt.

Amidst the commoditisation of content, the measure of clarity is its ability to provoke this invaluable resource.

If I could say one thing to every person in the world, it would be this: you are educated above your level of action, and before you learn another thing, I want you to simply use the information you already have and unleash your action.

But because I can’t, I’ll share with you how I have learnt to help those around me activate action. It’s all about an IDEA:

  • Inspire – show them what part they can play, not necessarily in the whole world, but in their world.
  • Decision – help them see it starts with a decision to do.
  • Example – point them to a great example. Better yet, be the example.
  • Action –  ask them write down right there and then the next step… and commit to do it.

As one wise man succinctly put it two thousand years ago, “don’t merely listen: do.” Here’s to a generation of doers.