During the drafting of this post, David Roberts and I talked about mentoring as part of a wide-ranging skype conversation, then I read his September 1st post which, from a conversation with Philippe Lukacs, notes these “Three Requirements for Societal Innovation”:

1. Accept the value and potential in each and every human being.
2. Search for mutuality among both people and organisations.
3. Learn to appreciate more nature and the environment (which I find myself recasting as “Learn to appreciate more the variations in human nature and the daily impact and opportunities of social and natural environments.”)

Yup, I thought, with the small twist of wording noted above, my 54 first cousins were innovative mentors: value as ethic, mutuality as mode, appreciative as mindset, future thinking as focus, creativity as norm, history as those interactively and distinctly functioning vertebrae that held us up but we guided to new places by other…