Vital Speeches finds challenges outnumber opportunities two to one

Slamming together Vital Speeches of the Day this morning, I wasn’t sure whether I had or hadn’t inserted a George Allen speech into the final document, so I searched for “Allen.” Allen was there—but what the search also turned up in the month’s dozen speeches, 42 uses of the term chALLENges.

The entire document is 40,000 words, so I did the math and found that “challenges” makes up almost one percent of the words in these speeches.

A wicked smirk pulling on my cheek, I did a similar search for “opportunities.” Nineteen. So about 1.5% of the words in the best speeches in the world are either “challenge” or “opportunity.”

As for why so many challenges and relatively fewer opportunties? Hey, these are tough times indeed.

But I wonder if I didn’t just stumble into a new measure of overall well-being. Mulling over a monthly Vital Speeches Leadership Confidence Index ….

Today the Dow Jones was is up 100 points on higher-than-expected Leadership Confidence Index figures. Vital Speeches of the Day reports that this month in speeches delivered by public- and private-sector leaders, “challenges” outpaced “opportunities” by only 15 percent, the lowest number since Vital Speeches started keeping records, in 2010 ….