"SELF-RENEWAL" and "EXCELLENCE" In the 1960's, John Gardner wrote two of his most influential books, "Excellence" and "Self-Renewal." Each has had a large impact across a wide array of fields, proving insightful to business leaders, public figures, and regular people. In "Excellence," Gardner posed the question: can the United States be both equal and excellent? In the late 1950's and early 1960's, many social critics began to be concerned about what was seen as too much conformity and not enough individualism and creativity in America. For example, in 1956, William Whyte wrote about the "organization man," in a book by the same name, about the conformity of men working for large corporations. At the same time, the United States saw itself in a competition with the Soviet Union, and thus any setback -- such as the Soviet Union launching a satellite into space before the US -- was viewed as a defeat of American capitalism to Soviet communism. In the book, Gardner touched on the themes of education, meaning, shared purposes, and leadership. The following passage from "Excellence" sums up Gardner's argument: "If the man in the street says, 'Those fellows at the top have to be good, but I'm just a slob and can act like one' -- then our days of greatness are behind us. We must foster a conception of excellence that may be applied to every degree of ability and to every socially acceptable activity. A missile may blow up on its launching pad because the designer was incompetent or because the mechanic who adjusted the last valve was incompetent. The same is true of everything else in our society. We need excellent physicists and excellent mechanics, excellent cabinet members and excellent first-grade teachers. The tone of our society depends upon a pervasive an almost universal striving for good performance. "And we are not going to get that kind of striving, that kind of alert and proud attention to performance, unless we can instruct the whole society in a conception of excellence that leaves room for everybody who is willing to strive -- a conception of excellence which means that whoever I am or whatever I am doing, provided that I am engaged in socially acceptable activity, some kind of excellence is in my reach." "Excellence" President John F. Kennedy so admired "Excellence" that he asked Gardner to edit a book of presidential speeches from Kennedy's first year in office. In addition, the President also put Gardner on the list for the Presidential Medal of Freedom; Gardner would receive the medal in 1964, a year after Kennedy's assassination. That same year, Gardner published "Self-Renewal: the Individual and the Innovative Society," which echoed the themes in "Excellence." Yet, Gardner drew on his experiences at Carnegie Corporation, as a member of many corporate boards, and as a consultant to six federal agencies, to expand the scope of this book to include discussions on: personal renewal and its inhibitors, social and institutional renewal, freedom, attitudes toward the future, and the interplay between individuals and groups. Here are some passages from the book: "Exploration of the full range of our own potentialities is not something that we can safely leave to the chances of life. It is something to be pursued avidly to the end of our days. We should look forward to an endless and unpredictable dialogue between our own potentialities and the claims of life -- not only the claims we encounter, but the claims we invent. And by potentialities I mean not just skills, but the full range of our capacities for sensing, wondering, learning, understanding, loving, and aspiring... "A society whose maturing consists simply of acquiring more firmly established ways of doing things is headed for the graveyard -- even if it learns to do these things with greater and greater skill. In the ever-renewing society what matures is a system or framework within which continuous innovation, renewal and rebirth can occur. "Our thinking about growth and decay is dominated by the image of a single life-span, animal or vegetable. Seedling, full flower, and death...But for an ever-renewing society, the appropriate image is a total garden, a balanced aquarium or other ecological system. Some things are being born, other things are flourishing, still other things are dying -- but the system lives on." Gardner's belief that people and society need to embrace change -- questioning how things are done and prevailing attitudes -- foreshadowed a period of intense change in American society. The decade following the release of "Excellence" was one were social conventions were flouted, the role of women and minorities in society was questioned, and personal enrichment and fulfillment was emphasized.