Happy New Year!
With the New Year come New Year’s resolutions. (Mine: blog more!)
And with New Year’s resolutions comes pessimism. (Uh oh.)
Amid newfound commitments to diet, exercise, visit museums, throw fabulous dinner parties, and write more in our blogs, naysayers recount doom-and-gloom statistics of the tiny number of people who will keep those resolutions past Valentine’s Day – let alone till the next time we crack open champagne and sing Auld Lang Syne.
If we can’t even stay away from the Krispy Kremes and leftover apple strudels in our private lives, how can we ever hope for groundbreaking reform in public life? Is President-Elect Obama’s “Change We Need” really change we can keep?
It seems to me that in order to make permanent the kinds of changes that are so desperately needed – improvements to our health care system, to our economic woes, to the public education system, and to our foreign policy, just to name a few – we may need to take a page from what works (and what doesn’t) in making changes to the smaller stuff. As any seasoned resolution-maker can tell you, the hardest changes to keep are the resolutions to do things you hate: exercising instead of watching TV, eating sorbet instead of ice cream, cooking healthy food instead of takeout. The easiest, of course, are resolutions to do more of the things we love: use all our vacation days, call old friends, get a new hairdo.
As simple as it sounds to keep the “easy” resolutions, I think there’s something profound in what makes those resolutions easy to begin with. The things we love are often the things we’re good at. The things we hate, on the other hand, are things that seemingly require wholesale changes to who we are or how we live our lives. We succeed at keeping resolutions when we play to our strengths – not when we try to become something that we’re not. It’s an easy lesson to remember when it comes to athletics (I’m klutzy, so I run, but I don’t play basketball), but somehow much harder when it comes to New Year’s resolutions (I will develop musical talent!).
That’s as true for corporations as it is for individuals. Companies that try to spur faster growth by copying P&G’s approach, or by being more like Nike, tend to be far less successful than companies whose growth strategies build on what they’re already good at. That doesn’t mean ignoring lessons learned elsewhere, but it does mean applying those lessons judiciously and with an eye toward an organization’s own strengths. When IBM decided to get into the services business, it didn’t succeed by becoming more like Accenture. It succeeded by becoming more like IBM. Capitalizing on its existing organizational strengths and assets to get into the services business helped ensure IBM’s long-term success.
The simple idea of playing to your strengths is hard enough on a corporate level, but it seems to disappear entirely when it comes to formulating national policy. So maybe it’s time to return to the obvious. Our national resolutions could be far more successful if we could only figure out a way to frame them in terms of doing more of the stuff we love – the stuff we’re good at as a nation.
Now for the hard part. What do you think we’re good at? And how can we apply that strength in ways that could shape national policy?
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3 comments:
This sounds like a wonderful idea. Now, what can we all agree we're good at?
Tough question, but here's my idea.
Growing up, what I learned about this country and what I was proud of was our penchant for taking the world's misfits and giving them a chance to succeed. Whether it be scrappy immigrants or home-grown kids off the street, we have prided ourselves on the idea that everyone who works at it has a chance to make it here.
I'd say this was, and still can be, our brand message. We have, over a couple centuries, attracted a bunch of people willing to work to better their lives, and the nation has prospered as a result. This is the strength we can build on. In recent years, we've fixated on being The Superpower, and it's clouded our much older identity - The Go-Getters.
People still want to come to the US, because despite recent setbacks, we are still The Best in many ways. I say, let's encourage it. Sign me up for liberal immigration policy. While we're at it, let's renew our emphasis on education, and work towards a small business / startup-friendly regulatory environment. To fund whatever we need to do to have that happen, let's back off that Superpower image. Reducing our military budget from ten times the next biggest spender to besting them by a factor of seven would free up 200B per year to spend on education and research/innovation/small enterprise incentives.
Kung Fu, of course.
Oh wait, that's China.
First off - great discussion topic, Lauren!
Secondsies - I'd like to second Brian's points about revving up our socio-economic escalator, and creating the infrastructure for scrappy individuals/businesses to rise to the top. Entrepreneurship and good ol' American greed definitely qualify as things that America is historically "good at," that we need to now get better at.
How to do that is the sticky wicket, however, and it's a little out of my paygrade to know the answer. I'm sure, in part, that it has something to do with increasing the liquidity and availability of financing - to a greater extent than the TARP funding has been able to accomplish so far. And further regulation of the financial markets and enforcement of those regulations is necessary - greed takes us far, but only if it plays within the rules.
I'm also sure that we need to invest more in our K-12 education system to develop the brains that will develop the next airplane, automobile, or Internet. I agree with Brian that we should continue to be the premiere destination for the geniuses born abroad to come and stretch their wings. I'm glad Einstein came here instead of to Russia, for example. But we also need to do a better job of fertilizing our own genius farm - there's bound to be a few more Gates' and Fords' out there. We have to make sure they learn to read by 9th grade.
Thirdly - One other area where we've historically been great, and recently been god-awful has been serving as a role-model to the rest of the world - on civil liberties, humanitarianism, commerce and culture. The admiration of the rest of the world used to be a force-multiplier for our international influence to an extent at least equal to our advanced military technology. That admiration is largely gone. I'd like it back. I think a lot of Americans are ready to do what it takes in this regard as well...
Some of this starts abroad: Being better listeners at the international table will make us instantly more popular, even if we ultimately come to the same conclusions as our hard-headedness would have. It would also behoove us to keep an eye on the way our "allies" treat their own citizens. If a hundred million people feel oppressed by their government, and see it propped up by our government's strategic needs, or by our thirst for oil, that resentment turns toward us. See, e.g., Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, etc.
Some of this also starts at home: In 1776 we guaranteed rights to citizens that no one had ever dreamed of - government by the people; freedom of speech and religion and press; freedom from unreasonable search and seizure. Since then we've slowly slid from the front of the pack in this regard. Our election(finally) of a President who is not a white Christian man is a high-profile step in the right direction, but we need to do more - more to increase economic, educational, and political opportunities for minorities and women; more to protect minorities from racial profiling and official discrimination; and finally more to create true equality for homosexuals. We have to clean our own house before we have the moral authority to train our critical gaze on the rest of the world.
Once Americans get the ball rolling, we've proven we can be very good at this type of change.
Fourthly - while I agree we have to do better at what we're "good at," I also think that we need to be open to improving in areas where we historically stink. For me, personally, that includes getting exercise, getting a full night's sleep occasionally, eating healthier, etc. For the U.S., those areas include behaving environmentally responsibly, caring for the sick and impoverished, keeping special interests out of policy decisions, and playing soccer.
It's great to be better at what you're good at. It's sometimes important to learn to be good at what you're not. I like eggs benedict, but if I don't start eating healthier I won't see forty. So I will try (for the umpteenth year in a row) to eat healthier. I consistently fail, but I make a little more progress each year (last year - to June!) Likewise, the U.S. may just have to suck it up and deal with its environmental and energy problems. We're not good at it, but we also have no idea how we'd do with another ice age, so maybe it's worth a shot. If America only ever did things it was good at, it would be a very different place - slavery, or at least segregation, would still exist; we'd have an isolationist foreign policy; women wouldn't have the right to vote or own property. Sometimes our greatest strengths can come out of facing our greatest weaknesses head on. If we could dig ourselves out of those holes, surely we can tackle pollution, healthcare, and pork, no?
Soccer may be a lost cause.
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