Globalization of Leadership
Tags: Economics, Leadership, Politics
Did anyone else happen to notice the new buildings going up in Dubai? I mean besides the giant artificial islands they have been creating in the gulf over the last several years. The nearly completed Burj Dubai is now the world’s tallest building, a true marvel of architecture, Art, design, engineering, and initiative. And oh yes, it is a beacon that screams of the fantastic economic wealth that underpins the great endeavor.
As these recent photos by David Hobcote show – be sure to click through on the images to see the full resolution shots — the scale of the building is simply staggering, dwarfing the nearby skyscrapers to the point of needing a new descriptor. Cloud-topper? Stratoscraper? (Story continued below)
I wonder what the Taiwanese and the Malaysians will do now that their Tapei 101 and Petronis Towers developments respectively have slipped to second and third place in the standings respectively. Where is the US in the worldwide rankings of architectural greatness and aspiration, you ask? Sadly, today’s best US architectural effort, the Sears Tower in Chicago, doesn’t even make the medal stand coming in a sad 4th and looking to slip ignominiously down to 5th place when China’s Shanghai World Finance Center is completed later this year.
And speaking of medal stands, were any of you shocked to watch China take so many more gold medals than the longstanding US powerhouse for the first time in recorded Olympic history? (China: 51, US: 36, and Russia is getting uncomfortably close with 23 ) The tragedy to me was that I didn’t find either of these bellwethers surprising. From world-class architecture and construction to world-class athletics, and yes, world-class economic growth rates, the leader’s baton has slipped from the grasp of the United States.
To be sure, the US economy is still the largest in the world by a good margin, and the US won more medals overall in the Olympics. And yes, it will take some time yet for the countries that are growing faster and inventing and manufacturing more stuff to make up the large technological and economic lead the US established to become a superpower over the last century. But the very best-of-the-best, the very leading lights across this vast field of disciplines are no longer home-grown in our country. And it’s not just about buildings and athletics; these are but indicators of national-scale excellence in ascendancy versus decline. In medicine and health care, the first entire face and whole-arm transplants happened abroad. The very latest display and communications technologies are developed and manufactured in Japan and Korea. The world’s computers are manufactured in Taiwan and China. The most fuel efficient cars are invented and produced in Japan.
Most troubling of all, for the first time in our nation’s history, other countries and international organization are taking the US to task for torturing people across several international US deployments spread across different continents, a situation clearly much more pervasive and high-level policy driven than this administration’s claim of individual rogue officers can explain. We have quite literally abandoned the standard and leadership of national moral authority. The US has lost its leadership position across too many fields, and these broad and general trends across diverse manufacturing, finance, health care, technology and innovation, trade exports, foreign dependence, diplomacy, communications, and overall economics and trade paint a more than worrisome trend and future picture for the United States. We are abandoning world leadership wholesale.
It strains credulity to imagine that this national trend of abandonment across so many varied areas could possibly happen all at once, by coincidence. These national trends are the clear result of national-scale policy and culture which has simply not kept up with changing times in a changing world. So if we would like to preserve our way of life and our economic prosperity, and with them maintain our ability to influence other countries, assist those in need, and wield global military power to check those who abuse their own, then as a nation we need to either drastically improve how we play a now global game, or we need to change the game itself in such a way that our American ingenuity can remain at the forefront of a global civilization by example and industry rather than through hubris and castigation.
Do any of you readers have any good examples of national policy gone awry?
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4 Comments, Comment or Ping
Ron
Might your expectation of seeking”national policy gone awry” itself be the core enabler of the problem? I’ve moved around the globe frequently on business matters. Do you want to know what I sense? I sense that we as American’s are (especially in comparison to Asians) not as hungry and determined to succeed. There’s something going on at the grass roots. I see it in the young people we hire in my organization. Its a tacit ambivalence regarding our American social economic system. Said differently, while all government and academic pursuits are somehow pure in motive there is uncertainty about the morality of private business and economics … especially among college grads. “Is making a profit really exploitation?” As such the energy for business and economics (and ingenuity) is shifting elsewhere (to law, social sciences, political science etc). Meanwhile there’s an increasing expectation that “ingenuity” is a national policy, that its government enabled, and not something personally expected of individuals seeking profit. That’s OK I suppose … but I’ll bet that all the global entrepreneurs out there will consistently outrun our national policies. So a national policy gone awry? I’ll give you two. First any government action that claims national policy drives ingenuity. Second, any national educational policy that teaches dependence on national policy.
Sep 17th, 2008
Phillip Alvelda
Perhaps. I do believe that culture is a nebulous thing to pin down regarding its influence on productivity and the economy in general. But national leadership has a responsibility to make sure that policy doesn’t ultimately undermine national goals.
As an example, the No Child Left Behind legislation, while well meant, and targeted at a general lack of accountability in the public school system, ultimately has delivered two very important unintended consequences: 1.) the entire school system is now focused on improving standardized test prep performance in reading and in arithmetic, an arguably different end than fluency in innovation and creative use of subject matter and skills to solve real problems, and 2.) since there was no funding offered in support of the NCLB initiatives, the schools have had to strip all their other programs, most notably innovative science programs, in order to focus their strapped budgets on the math and reading tests critical to their school evaluations. A staggering number of innovative science programs have been progressively shut down nationwide just when everyone is starting to cry for more science, technology, and innovation support.
That is policy gone awry.
Sep 17th, 2008
Ron
No Child Left Behind legislation, to my point, is meta legislation gone arwy because its (federal level) legislation that should not exist. More importantly it tries to solve by measurement an unwillingness to fundamentally restructure the school systems. For an interesting perspective on creativity in schools go to http://www.ted.com and look for the video of Ken Robinson’s presentation. Beautifully stated.
Sep 19th, 2008
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