By Jean-Jacques C. Vitrac
International Vice President
Global Strategic Research Institute
Our world is going through severe growing pains…
“Austerity, riots and strikes have become common place throughout Europe” says Scot Faulkner, former CAO of the U.S. House of Representatives, adding that “in America, the arbitrarily heavy-handed spending cuts, known as the sequester, have reduced voter support for Congress to record lows” (1).
Worldwide, other Western economies – Asian or European - are experiencing a severe crisis too, blaming global business, global ecology or global politics for it. Millions of people are without a job when thousands of corporate executives complain they cannot find the employees they need: if most candidates have the required college education and are highly qualified, they lack the necessary vision and the basic skills expected from global leaders: initiative, drive, dedication and enough passion for their job to succeed in a growingly hostile and changing environment.
But if we blame the new global order for much of our difficulties, very few people in business today can make a difference between international trade, multinational corporations and global business. Too many corporate executives or world leaders bring old answers to new challenges. Even in some of the best colleges and universities, the same old curriculum is offered to the next generations of graduates. And text books are the same as the ones used by previous generations of students.
So how can we face these new challenges?
How are we going to change a situation where some financial institutions are “too big to fail” while some start-up companies are too small to fly or to obtain funding, too frail to gain momentum or too shy to shine among the corporate stars and constellations of this new global economy?
It is easy to complain about a lack of leadership when at the same time we ridicule and criticize some of the most daring and successful executives, blaming them for simply being entrepreneurial, creating jobs and paving the way to success for those who invest in their global ventures. And if we all agree to identify the many problems plaguing our global society today, few are those who contribute solutions to our various new challenges.
We need in fact to define a new global paradigm where we first fully understand and identify this new global order, and then develop a new discipline, a new ethic and a new set of rules – managerial, administrative, legal and political - to deal with this new social and professional environment.
We must also realize that we all have a responsibility to bring global change home and shape this new global order. At a time when the whole world is “on line”, accessible through social media and global networks, we must all learn the needed social skills to understand our “new global partners”, their culture, their sensitivity, their expectations and their particular socio-economic rules.
We must “learn to learn” not just in our college years but at any moment in our life, when we are confronted with different situations and different business, legal or political practices. We all need to learn that our domestic truth is not necessarily the universal truth.
Politicians and public administrations must start behaving like businesses and realize that their constituents are in fact their customers, those paying their bills and those who need to be satisfied. And that it is simply unacceptable for politicians to increase endlessly our debt-ceiling as it is for families or for corporations.
Public works in America seem almost a medieval heritage compared to other developed countries in Europe: we are the only nation in the world with flagmen and pilot cars on roads and highways, and when we have to cut budgets, these prehistoric remains of the early days of our country survive perfectly well when we have to shut-down schools and public parks for lack of proper funding.
Our public utilities are also fairly primitive still when our technology could bring our country to the next level of productivity. Why should Germany be more advanced in solar energy than California, Texas or Florida? With all the land available in our country, why don’t we develop more wind farms? And why are we short of water with such an extensive coastline when countries like Spain or Israel already have desalinization plants to extract soft water from oceans?
Following the path of major global think-tanks such as the Club of Rome, the Davos Economic Summit or Initiative of Change in Switzerland, the Global Strategic Research Institute (www.globalstrategicinstitute.org) has been founded in California to identify this new global paradigm, bring the corporate world to share their experience of the global economy and their difficulties in securing proper funding for their global projects. We all need to disseminate new ideas, new concepts and new solutions to better adjust to this new global order. The Institute is bringing together some of the most brilliant minds – business and financial executives, political experts and university professors – to identify the new challenges, bring new solutions and define a new global ethic for this century. This new global order is providing us with a new frontier to explore, understand and shape. And with a new forum for citizen diplomacy.
-----------------------------------------
(1) From an article published by Scot Faulkner in the Washington Examiner and posted on his blog “Citizen Oversight” on April 9, 2013.
International Vice President
Global Strategic Research Institute
Our world is going through severe growing pains…
“Austerity, riots and strikes have become common place throughout Europe” says Scot Faulkner, former CAO of the U.S. House of Representatives, adding that “in America, the arbitrarily heavy-handed spending cuts, known as the sequester, have reduced voter support for Congress to record lows” (1).
Worldwide, other Western economies – Asian or European - are experiencing a severe crisis too, blaming global business, global ecology or global politics for it. Millions of people are without a job when thousands of corporate executives complain they cannot find the employees they need: if most candidates have the required college education and are highly qualified, they lack the necessary vision and the basic skills expected from global leaders: initiative, drive, dedication and enough passion for their job to succeed in a growingly hostile and changing environment.
But if we blame the new global order for much of our difficulties, very few people in business today can make a difference between international trade, multinational corporations and global business. Too many corporate executives or world leaders bring old answers to new challenges. Even in some of the best colleges and universities, the same old curriculum is offered to the next generations of graduates. And text books are the same as the ones used by previous generations of students.
So how can we face these new challenges?
How are we going to change a situation where some financial institutions are “too big to fail” while some start-up companies are too small to fly or to obtain funding, too frail to gain momentum or too shy to shine among the corporate stars and constellations of this new global economy?
It is easy to complain about a lack of leadership when at the same time we ridicule and criticize some of the most daring and successful executives, blaming them for simply being entrepreneurial, creating jobs and paving the way to success for those who invest in their global ventures. And if we all agree to identify the many problems plaguing our global society today, few are those who contribute solutions to our various new challenges.
We need in fact to define a new global paradigm where we first fully understand and identify this new global order, and then develop a new discipline, a new ethic and a new set of rules – managerial, administrative, legal and political - to deal with this new social and professional environment.
We must also realize that we all have a responsibility to bring global change home and shape this new global order. At a time when the whole world is “on line”, accessible through social media and global networks, we must all learn the needed social skills to understand our “new global partners”, their culture, their sensitivity, their expectations and their particular socio-economic rules.
We must “learn to learn” not just in our college years but at any moment in our life, when we are confronted with different situations and different business, legal or political practices. We all need to learn that our domestic truth is not necessarily the universal truth.
Politicians and public administrations must start behaving like businesses and realize that their constituents are in fact their customers, those paying their bills and those who need to be satisfied. And that it is simply unacceptable for politicians to increase endlessly our debt-ceiling as it is for families or for corporations.
Public works in America seem almost a medieval heritage compared to other developed countries in Europe: we are the only nation in the world with flagmen and pilot cars on roads and highways, and when we have to cut budgets, these prehistoric remains of the early days of our country survive perfectly well when we have to shut-down schools and public parks for lack of proper funding.
Our public utilities are also fairly primitive still when our technology could bring our country to the next level of productivity. Why should Germany be more advanced in solar energy than California, Texas or Florida? With all the land available in our country, why don’t we develop more wind farms? And why are we short of water with such an extensive coastline when countries like Spain or Israel already have desalinization plants to extract soft water from oceans?
Following the path of major global think-tanks such as the Club of Rome, the Davos Economic Summit or Initiative of Change in Switzerland, the Global Strategic Research Institute (www.globalstrategicinstitute.org) has been founded in California to identify this new global paradigm, bring the corporate world to share their experience of the global economy and their difficulties in securing proper funding for their global projects. We all need to disseminate new ideas, new concepts and new solutions to better adjust to this new global order. The Institute is bringing together some of the most brilliant minds – business and financial executives, political experts and university professors – to identify the new challenges, bring new solutions and define a new global ethic for this century. This new global order is providing us with a new frontier to explore, understand and shape. And with a new forum for citizen diplomacy.
-----------------------------------------
(1) From an article published by Scot Faulkner in the Washington Examiner and posted on his blog “Citizen Oversight” on April 9, 2013.
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