. . . It doesn’t mean the others are wrong
That is what we can learn from the Bush-Cheney debacle? Media described the Bush-Cheney team’s view of the world as “bunker-mentality”. And not surprisingly they fell into a leadership trap that is best described as: “when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail”.More precisely, leadership to them meant flexing muscles as opposed to flexing the mind. That is why teachers live by the mantra: if the student hasn’t learned the teacher hasn’t taught. Likewise, every teacher will say that they learn from students all the time. The same is true of leadership: if the enterprise hasn’t executed the leader hasn’t led. And every leader will say that they learn from their team all the time.
When Bush-Cheney could not get the American public to follow their lead they resorted to twisting the truth and sowed fear. And to add insult to injury they simply flexed the US’s muscles. Ergo: they went down in flames. They could not generate new ideas because of their bunker mentality – and so they concluded that everyone else was wrong and they were right.
If we continue down the road we’re in, we would find ourselves digging deeper and deeper into a sinking hole? Yet we seem to see the speck in others’ eyes – and have become experts in dissecting their flaws but not emulating their successes? We have become like the goat in class giving teachers excuses for our performance or under-performance? Failure is complex; success is simple – it speaks for itself?
We have to emerge from our own bunker and get some fresh air – a fresh view of the world?
The first time the writer came to Eastern Europe – still relatively new to the free market system – he talked to his clients about the requisite mindset to succeed in a competitive environment. They had a couple of beliefs that had to be nipped in the bud: (a) driving turnover is exhilarating; (b) low prices get their brands accepted; and (c) keeping the factory low-tech makes for low overhead.
“Driving turnover if you can go to the bank at the end of the day to dump money is exhilarating, but I don’t see how you can with your margin numbers, you have to kill a couple of brands – you cannot fall in love with a dated idea. Low prices are not a competitive advantage in the absence of healthy margins. You want to be a marketer of brands – and in control of your destiny, not a hostage to commodity pricing and a victim. And low-tech manufacturing will not allow you to expand at an accelerated pace to reduce overhead.”
Filipino business people would laugh at these scenes – or do they in fact espouse the same uncompetitive beliefs? But fast-forward 6 years, these same people are: (a) driving turnover while optimizing its dynamic with margins; (b) pricing based on value of product promise while optimizing its dynamic with volume and (c) operating 3 different state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities while continuing to drive overhead down.
(That’s the gut of competitiveness – not to get passing marks against the global competitiveness checklist?)
The bottom line: Their mindset is totally changed and the people are indeed exhilarated. And the writer has learned quite a bit from folks who knew next to nothing about capitalism; and ready to leave them alone because they are now equipped to take on all-comers including giant MNCs, and making beachhead in the West. They sought liberation . . . and are in hot pursuit – making global competitiveness indeed an imperative for us?
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