James D. Smith

Greetings friends and searchers!

I once bought a new pair of boots and went hiking along Tiger Leaping Gorge, in Southwestern China. The mountains are not far from Tibet. The amazing beauty and depth of grandeur of the mountains held kept me spellbound. I hiked in the mountains for three full, long, sometimes grueling days. After the hike, I enjoyed a tourist-style bus ride back with a group of Korean Tourists. My friend and I arrived at a small city where a foot massage was suggested as a great way to reward our feet for such a job well done. Upon taking off my new boots I discovered my feet in poor shape due to the tightness of the boots. Instead of relief, the foot message brought such pain to my tender toes!!! Ouch. Timing is everything. I'm sure the experience of this otherwise wonderful treatment would have been exquisite any other time!

In the same spirit of timing, I trust your visit to this page finds it a good fit with your journey of life. Value and strength, sense and power, is my goal for myself and you in all I write, study, do, or propose. Balancing power and freedom, knowledge, openness, science, feeling, and all the other ranges of relationships is what my work is all about. I have learned the wisdom that only human knowledge has natural set of contradictions called "dialectics". The rest of the universe appears as a much more coherent, connected, and spontaneously organized being.

While titles and degrees, like PhD-MBA-MILR, tend to bring a sense of difference between those who have and others who may not have, life is deeper than all that. My goal is and always has been to use my knowledge and energy to connect with everyone on a level that provides some "lift". A man I respect, Robert Greenleaf, would call this "Servant Leadership". It is the simple idea that we serve ourselves when serving others. We enrich ourselves when enriching others. Any knowledge I have of sociology, or finance, or science was gained so I could serve you. The books I write, audience to whom I speak, jobs I do, projects I promote, are all done for you and each of us to be our best. That is the intent and I trust the actions will match in the outcome.