Keeping an Eye on Technology Futures, No Hidden Agendas, New Attitudes, No Platitudes!
For example, higher pay is equated with better performance. In America, the hotbed of Capitalism, CEOs get paid 25 times as much as their counterparts in Europe and other advanced countries, as if this confirms that American leadership is superior. The recent business debacles exposed the lie.
Business magazines like Fortune, Business Week and Forbes list the biggest and the best companies, the highest-paid CEOs, the biggest bonuses. They do little to expose transgressors, and usually report failures AFTER they occur.
But clearly, bigger is NOT better. Growth brings bureaucracy and inefficiency. Innovation and individual motivation cannot be scaled up.
What about Profit? Famed management guru Peter Drucker wrote, "Profit is a myth - it's cash flow that counts." Some of the biggest businesses became dysfunctional, and could only recover through huge cash stimulus. But this merely masked the intrinsic problems. Viability for a flawed business cannot be bought.
Let me proclaim clearly that I am an avid, passionate Capitalist. I am NOT advocating some new socialistic agenda, but rather am pointing out new global economic realities. The promised benefits of Keynesian economics are fizzling. Sadly, no 21st century John Maynard Keynes has emerged to prepare the intellectual ground for such a change in thinking.
Nearly a century old, Keynesian concepts are nearing the end of their useful life. The strategies that are being adopted seldom get at the real issues. The old thinking is running out of steam. It cannot be sustained. It is broken.
Once you recognize the flaws that are causing current problems, you begin to see "the system" differently. The fallacies and inconsistencies in current business thinking start to become more obvious.
Our American constitution prescribes the pursuit of happiness through "enlightened self-interest". But current business thinking seems to have forgotten the "enlightened" part. After the Enrons and the Tycos of almost a decade ago, how many more AIGs and Lehman Brothers do we need to reset reality?
My eFriend Robert 'Doc' Hall writes, established power does not treat criticism lightly. Perhaps real change can come about, not through early warnings, but only after complete breakdown. Social and economic systems do not usually fail through outside attack; they implode from within.
