Inspiring change for the new year

This month, with a new year, a new president, and new economic and political turbulence, many leaders are seeking fresh inspiration for change. Maybe annual New Year’s resolutions can offer the necessary focus. Dry January? The Surgeon General says you may need to extend that. Budget more and dine out less? That might work until Valentine’s Day. Read more? Well, that’s always a good idea — especially with book recommendations from a trusted source. For me, Martin Luther King Jr. Day is coming at just the right time, offering a chance to use his January commemoration as a source for practical resolutions, deep thinking and even deeper renewal. So what might MLK advise us to resolve in 2025?

For starters, MLK would tell us to put down our phones. He’d want us to read 'The Extinction of Experience: Being Human in a Disembodied World', the deeply engrossing new book by technology writer Christine Rosen. We are increasingly lonely, and alone, all online, all the time, checking our phones within minutes of waking up and on average 205 times a day. That constant digital engagement is crowding out actual experience, genuine interaction and our overall sense of community and self. Rosen details how screen time is changing boredom and creativity, face-to-face communication, and the specialness of travel. Why collect your thoughts while waiting in line when you can easily watch something instead? Why visit a grieving colleague when you can just post on their feed? Why plan a trip and experience serendipity when you can watch it comfortably from your desk? MLK would love this book and its call to awareness of the wonder of real experience, the messiness of life and our need for each other in community. As he once observed “Through our scientific and technological genius, we've made of this world a neighborhood. And now through our moral and ethical commitment, we must make of it a brotherhood.”

MLK certainly understood the value of neighborhoods, and he’d ask leaders to resolve to do more to create and sustain them. That’s why I found journalist Megan Kimble’s recent book, 'City Limits: Infrastructure, Inequality, and the Future of America’s Highways', so compelling. She takes us on a drive through Austin, Dallas and Houston to start. Every major American city has a highway running through it, Kimble explains, and all too frequently, legislative leaders focus infrastructure funding only on highway expansion, adding lanes to accommodate even more cars — often at the expense and literal destruction of thriving neighborhoods in marginalized communities. Kimble thinks they have it backwards, and she posits that highway removal, fewer cars, and an overall expansion of urban and suburban transit instead would generate greater economic activity and even deeper social connections.

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These are timely solutions for an increasingly divided America. Change policy, places, and eventually, hearts. MLK would want a transportation policy that promotes easier mobility and greater economic opportunity for all — and he’d want CEO’s and elected leaders to read this book.

MLK’s most direct advice for 2025 is also the most difficult: talk with someone you don’t like. In an era of fraught family conversations, enrage-to-engage social media platforms, and prospective homeowners using an app to determine the political leanings of potential neighbors, you may need some serious help. That’s why I’d recommend that you read 'Order Out of Chaos', a useful and absorbing new book by communications expert and experienced kidnap-for-ransom negotiator Scott Walker. Navigating difficult conversations requires emotional intelligence, detailed research, active listening and breath training. Walker’s practical tips on how to prepare, avoid obvious mistakes, and deeply listen with empathy (not sympathy) are incredibly worthwhile.

Difficult conversations lead to personal growth and as MLK observed: “We must all learn to live together as brothers—or we will all perish together as fools.” New Year’s resolutions can motivate us toward our best selves. With MLK’s inspiration, we can really make them count.  

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Larry Gennari is a business lawyer and chief curator of Authors & Innovators, an annual business book and ideas festival. Watch recent interviews with authors here. Gennari also teaches Project Entrepreneur, a business fundamentals bootcamp for returning citizens, at BC Law School.