Who Protects American Individuals?

     Perhaps no country in history has valued individuals as much as the U.S.  American ideals amplify the rights and value of individuals – we talk about individual freedoms and opportunities and making life better in the future.  The American Dream is ideally open to everyone.  But who provides the safeguards that protect American individuals and allows them to assert their individuality?  
     At the basic level, each American has assumed responsibility for his or her own well-being and rights.  If you are an American, you have to watch out for yourself.  You are expected to work, earn a living for yourself, and provide for your family.  You have to guard your own home and personal safety the best you can at moments of danger.  Yet, no American is empowered to assert his or her prerogatives upon other individuals without justifiable cause.  We all live under the same laws that protect individuals and maintain social order.
     There have been times and places in which people had to defend themselves in the wilderness or on the frontier because nobody else was around to help them.  For most Americans, however, individuals tended farms and ranches, built businesses, and labored within communities.  Once Americans came into social organizations, they were expected to help their friends and neighbors and to live by the law.  Uninhibited individualism might have led to people willfully fighting and killing each other.
     The law as practiced by communities provides the police on patrol.  It also provides the courts and prisons that back the law up with consequences.  And who makes the law and pays for its enforcement?  In the U.S., from the earliest colonies, it has been the people working together through a prescribed process within communities.  Directly or indirectly, they made the laws, raised the taxes, and operated the public institutions.  In the final analysis, communities protect and serve American individuals in regard to personal safety, property rights, civil liberties, due process, and public health.
     To carry this point further, who protects American workers and consumers as well as honest business people in the pursuits of earning a living or building a fortune?  There have always been bad guys in stores and offices as well as in the streets.  Many business people are not criminal but are still self-serving and greedy while taking advantage of other people.  Who protects workers from inhumane conditions and treatment?  Who protects American consumers (who are also citizens and voters) from broken promises, misrepresentations, cheating, and swindles?  Again, the communities do, at all levels.  Local governments, for example, have passed zoning laws to protect private property and neighborhoods.  They have also passed building and health codes and maintained standard weights and measures.  State governments also protect individuals from certain business crimes and abuses of workers and consumers.  So, too, does the Federal government at the national level.  The whole purpose of regulations passed and enforced by communities is to protect individuals and maintain the integrity of the free enterprise system.
     In the face of combines to monopolize interstate products, services, and prices and in the face of nationwide corporations that proclaim “Let the public be damned!,” the protection of individual rights from abuses of Big Business was the one community that represented all the people:  the Federal government.  Or so argued President Theodore Roosevelt over 100 years ago.  In a growingly complex and rich commerce, the national community has to regulate the national economy.  Meanwhile, Americans through voting, expressing opinions, and demonstrating peacefully must guard against the abuses of the Federal government as well as those of huge interest groups, especially when the interests of a few, as expressed in hidden political donations and intense political lobbying, dominate government policies over the interests of the many. 

    

© 2017 Stephen M. Millett (All rights reserved)          

The Most Important Word

     I used to ask my MBA students what was the single most important word in business.  Many would respond “profits,” and indeed that is how many business people think.  But the most important word is “trust” – without that no business can be conducted.

     Customers buy products and services that they trust from providers that they can rely upon.  The quality and consistency of goods and services are reflected in their reputations and brands.  It may take years for a company to build an attractive brand, which can be quickly destroyed by an accident or loss of consumer confidence.  Businesses also have to trust each other:  if you pay out money, then you expect value in return, each and every time.
     When people know each other and share positive experiences, they might make agreements based on a handshake.  They trust each other to do as promised.  In far more impersonal and complicated situations, we rely on contracts, which are legally binding agreements whereby the law provides trust.

     Likewise, there was a time when people shopped at the same stores all the time – the storekeepers knew which customers wanted what products and whether they could be trusted to pay their bills.  In addition, an individual might use the same bank over a lifetime.  Credit from stores and from banks have always been based on trust, both personal and legal.  Today when we use our credit cards we trust that most if not all merchants will accept them and that the credit card companies can be trusted to protect us from fraud.
     Not all businesses, unfortunately, are trustworthy.  Some seek as much profit as soon as possible.  They cut corners.  Some businesses will act unethically; some will even break laws.  While many business people can be trusted – it’s in their long-range interest to be so – there will always be those people who cannot be trusted.  They may deceive customers and take advantage of them.

     Trust is also the most important word in government as well as in business.  Our system works because we trust it.  The power of the Constitution, like the value of our money, ultimately rests upon the full faith of the American people.
     Trust relates to  fairness, and as I wrote in my book, American Ways:  “In both private and public affairs, the management of fairness requires the sharing of information, transparency of procedures, the participation of stakeholders in decisions, and people abiding by the results of agreed-upon processes.”  (p. 339).  Since colonial times, officeholders at all levels have needed to build trust in many of the same ways that businesses have built it.  They have to offer services consistent with expectations and at acceptable prices (taxes).  They have to do what they say that they will do.  They have to be honest and abide by the law.  They have to include many people in their policy-making in order to achieve full cooperation and they have to be transparent with the real-time sharing of full information.  No lying, suppressing facts, contradictory stories, and broken promises. 
     Perhaps someday in the future we will see these qualities of trust restored to American governments.

© Stephen M. Millett (All rights reserved)  

            

     

Money in a Hurry

     Several years ago a senior economist told me that most business people manage “by the seat of their pants.”  I didn’t understand then what he meant, but I do now if I equate “by the seat of their pants” to a decision-making and investment-making style that emphasizes the here and now.  We might call it management by the moment.

     For example, in the early 1990s I was consulting for NCR, which was in the process of being acquired by AT&T.  I was told that when the CEO of NCR was asked how long his company had been in existence he allegedly replied about 424 quarters.  Indeed, a company’s stock price often goes up or down based on nothing more than the most recent quarterly report.
     The focus of American business on short-term performance dates back to the 1620s.  Governor William Bradford was outraged when the London investors pressured him for profits when his Plymouth colony was barely surviving, having lost half of its population during its first winter.
     The American short-term perspective has been based in part on the gold rush mentality that drove early European colonization of the New World.  During the 1500s, the Spanish pulled out enormous amounts of gold from Mexico and Peru, leading many generations of investors and immigrants to believe that in America the streets were lined with gold.  The colonists of both Virginia and New England, however, discovered no gold – but with hard work and some luck they produced crops (such as tobacco, corn, and wheat) and products (such as flour, lumber, and rum) that eventually paid off handsomely.  The real gold rushes came later in North Carolina (1799), Georgia (1829), California (1848), and Alaska (1896).  We still have periodic gold rushes today, but they occur mostly on Wall Street.
     There is an old American saying that if you are going to get rich then quick is the best way.  Yet, so many successful enterprises have taken years to develop, while most startups fail.  The get-rich-quick mentality survives despite common sense and history; many business people manage resources, employees, and processes with an eye to sooner rather than later results.  The problem, however, is that short-term thinking can lead to short-sighted decisions.  People become too satisfied with the expediency of today and put off potential problems to tomorrow.
     American business people in the 21^st century will have to learn to think in the long-term because global competition and financial risks have become so great and the periods of return have become so long that they can no longer afford just short-term thinking.  They have to stop solving today’s problems when doing so sacrifices new product and service R&D, market positioning, and brand-building.  They must remember that all businesses survive on customer loyalty and repeat business, and they have to understand and anticipate how consumer behavior changes over time.  You have to satisfy customers both in the present and the future.

© 2017 Stephen M. Millett (All rights reserved)