Professor Wen told me about his own aspiration to make Beijing University a world-class university on the level of Harvard or the University of California -- where he earned his Masters and PhD.

Professor Wen, in addition to his other responsiblities, is in charge of the Shenzhen branch of Beijing University, which includes a medical school, business school, law school, and environmental school. He said he wanted to attract distinguished scholars from around the world and produce ground-breaking research.

He said both faculty and students supported the idea of raising Beijing Univestity to world-class standards, but sometimes came up with reasons and excuses for not adopting these, such as saying, "We want a school with Chinese characteristics, not just international standards."

He said that if he asked faculty members if they wanted a world-class university, they will say yes! But if he told them that meant publishing scholarly articles with ground-breaking ideas, they would say "that's a good idea for the guy in the other department, but not for me due to my special situaiton."

I had the opportunity to have dinner this week with Professor Hai Wen, VP of Beijing University, at the Capital Grille in Boston. My motivation for meeting Professor Wen was to connect with people who could help put leadership development on the top of China's political and economic agenda.

I started off talking about the article I wrote last May, "Better Leaders, Better China," during which I told him that I admired China's new president, Hu Jintao. Professor Wen responded by asking me a lot of questions about Masterful Coaching, even asking me if my aspiration was to coach Mr. Hu. I responded with a mixture of boldness and humility....yes!

An article by McKinsey & Company shows the biggest limit to growth in China won’t be lack of hard assets like capital, steel production or oil and gas, but leadership.

Many Chinese companies are growing fast, but suffering from leadership lag, which is the time between plotting a new growth strategy and the time it takes to find the leadership talent to execute it.

The fact is that, while some Chinese companies have the potential to double their size every 3 to 5 years, it takes much longer to develop leaders who can run such an enterprise, and therein lies the rub.

On my last trip to China in May where I spoke at CEIBS (China International Business School) I observed that the people with CEO, President, Vice President after their name would, by comparison, seem very junior standing next to their counterparts in the USA, Europe, or Japan.

According to my friend, Bill Patterson, an executive at Conoco Phillips, it can take 15 years to develop a senior leader and manager who has the competence to take charge of a major business unit with profit and loss responsibility.

That's the best of the bad news for China in this case. The McKinsey article pointed out that less than 15 percent of China's college graduates in business, engineering, or law schools would have the skills to land a job in a multinational company.

My point is that for China to continue to grow and develop at its present 15% clip, it must put leadership development and talent development at the top of its political and economic agenda.

If you have some advertising and marketing skills and want to make a difference you may want to contact Maurice Levy, chief executive of Publicis Group, an advertising agency based in Paris. (http://www.publicis.com/corporate/en/).

Levy saw the handshake between Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Mahmoud Abbas, the recently elected president of the Palestinian Authority as a great opportunity to make a difference—using the skills of an advertising agency to develop a marketing campaign based on the idea of peace. Says Levy, "the hardliners on both sides have been much more effective at marketing than the peacemakers as all the bloodshed of the past four years tells us.” The campaign which would involve multi-media approach on tv, radio and newspapers would run simultaneously in Hebrew and Arabic. “We can’t do a lot on the political and diplomatic side but one thing people in communications can do is help people on different sides of the fence understand each other better.

While cautious that his idea could turn out to be just another false start, Levy says the outlook of the campaign has brightened from a year ago when he started discussing the campaign with public funding agencies, and Arafat was hiding in a bunker, under siege by Israeli forces. Now things have improved, he said, with a “dramatic shift in the ambience.” What do you think of this idea? Let me know!

Be sure to see the documentary movie,  Born into Brothels, winner of the Sundance Film Festival Audience Award. The film takes place in Calcutta's red light district with a group of unforgettable children — courageous, feisty and wickedly funny.

Zana Briski is a photographer who takes them on a transformational journey by teaching them to photograph their own lives. In the process the children begin to distinguish them “selves” as from the deplorable circumstances they have been living in the squalid brothels. They also begin to see they can create a “new future” rather than just falling into the future they would otherwise inherit—a life of prostitution. Briski shows tremendous determination in going through the bureaucratic nightmare to necessary to take the children out of the brothels and enroll them in boarding school.

print and book sales go directly to support the children's education. The film is an example of one individual's ability to make a difference. Check out http://www.kids-with-cameras.org/home/. I’d be interested in hearing about any opportunities you have to make a difference in your world with skills that you normally take for granted. Lets hear from you!

I love stories about individuals who find ways to make a difference in their world without necessarily being affiliated with a big organization.