Posted by graeme on October 26, 2011 · Leave a Comment
“Something has to be done”. “We have to be seen to be doing something”. These are basic human responses to crisis and fear: a deep seated desire to respond, react, control. It’s instinctive, and hard to ignore.
But it is almost always ill-advised.
I had this thought while watching a TV programme (Steven Spielberg’s Taken, if you must know) and one scene showed a young boy who refused to join in the exercise the teacher was taking the young people through. The teacher blew a whistle – to warn the students of a nuclear attack. The students all jumped under the desks. This was standard practice in US schools in the 1960s.
I remember doing exactly the same exercise in the 1980s in South Africa. We were told that the Russians might attack our schools with jets and missiles, and that the best way to protect ourselves was to dive underneath our desks. I am not sure any of us kids actually believed the story (why would the Communists target our school, after all?), but we had great fun when classes were disrupted by those bomb drills.
It was ridiculous of course. But it came straight out of government’s “we have to do something” playbook. That’s the same playbook that is in operation today with, for example, airport security. The stringent security measures imposed since 9/11 are easily bypassed by any frequent flier, and make very little logical sense to anyone. But we all dutifully take off our shoes and belts, carry only 100ml of liquids and submit ourselves to the authoritarian powers of the security personnel every time we fly. Why? Because “something had to be done”. We couldn’t just do nothing, could we?
It’s ridiculous.
And yet, that’s how many companies behave too. A few people spend too much time online, so Facebook is banned for everyone; one person abuses their expense account, so the whole system is shut down; one client complains, and the whole company’s focus shifts to respond; and so on. I am sure you have plenty of examples in your world of rules and regulations that are there simply because “we had to do something”. (I’d love to hear some of them, by the way).
This is the instinct that causes people to react so badly during online interactions. Without taking the time to try and understand what has been said and its intent, we take offence, feel indignation and respond aggressively. We’ve all done it. Something had to be done. But it would have been better if we hadn’t done it.
This is not a clever way to live your life or run your business. What do you think can be done to escape this mindset?
Posted by graeme on October 24, 2011 · 1 Comment
This post was first published in the WITS Journal, June 2011.
The “Great Recession” of the past few years has been more than merely an economic downturn. As this decade unfolds it will become increasingly clear that it also acted as an accelerator for a few key trends that have the potential to fundamentally change the way we work. Companies that recognize the shifts taking place, and begin to act in response, will find themselves clear winners in the “war for talent” that is about to be rejoined.
It was common in the 1990s for HR directors to declare that the biggest challenge facing their organisation was a “war for talent”. Booming industries and growing companies were demanding more and more highly skilled staff to fuel their expansion. Head hunters and recruiters were driving Ferraris and the brightest stars in each industry could name their price and move companies whenever they wanted to.
All of that stopped abruptly on 15 September 2008 – the day Lehman Brothers collapsed. Since then employee attrition has dropped dramatically as companies stopped hiring and talent stopped moving. And business leaders have rightly focused their attention on surviving the downturn. Over the next few months and years, the inevitable upturn will gather momentum and growth will return. Companies that anticipate growth need to start planning for it now, or be left behind in the turbulence that lies ahead. And that especially includes strategic human resource planning.
A Talent Exodus
I work with a global team that researches the trends shaping the world of work. We’re increasingly sensing that our corporate clients should brace themselves for a tidal wave of key employee departures over the next few years – especially among their 20- and 30-something staff.
The talent exodus will happen for at least three reasons. (1) Some companies have ‘abused’ their staff during the downturn, taking their hard work under tough conditions for granted. As soon as an opportunity to move comes along, disgruntled staff will be tempted to take it. (2) By the time we see an improvement in the economic conditions, it will be ‘time to leave’ for many younger talented staff. This generation wants to keep their CVs ‘warm’ and see their personal development as critical. Many have felt stagnant in their careers because of the downturn, and are ready to move on. (3) When companies want to increase in size and start rehiring, they would prefer not to recruit someone who is currently unemployed, and will go head hunting (in your company) instead.
Business leaders are going to discover that we are not going to go ‘back to normal’ after the downturn. The recession has been more than just a financial meltdown. The structures of many industries are changing with new rules for success and failure, legislative and regulatory changes are reshaping industries, and people’s attitudes and expectations have shifted too.
If my assertions are correct, then we are about to enter an exceptionally turbulent time for recruiting, engaging and retaining staff. Creative approaches will therefore be needed to secure the necessary ‘human resources’ your company needs to thrive as the upturn begins. Here are some ‘thought bullets’ to get you and your team thinking about changing the way you manage your most important and best people. Different times require a different script.
Our “Most Important Assets”
Almost every annual report claims boldly that the company’s staff are their “most important assets”. Yet, they don’t treat them that way. After rounds of layoffs, companies have piled all of the old work on the few people who were ‘lucky’ enough to keep their jobs. And the training they might have needed to do the new jobs was cancelled too.
It’s not too late (nor is it ever too early) to start actually treating your staff with both respect and understanding. Have you said ‘thank you’ recently – especially for the extra effort in recent months? In what physical ways are you living up to the statement that your people are your most important asset? As an additional thought, why not allow everyone in your company an opportunity to ‘apply’ for a ‘new’ job inside your organisation. Instead of leaving to seek new challenges elsewhere, allow them to find those new challenges with you.
Talent is as Cheap Now as it’s Ever Going to be
Over the next few months and years, many companies are going to look to ramp up their assets: plant, facilities, warehouses, logistics, infrastructure and the like. The cleverer ones will do this pre-emptively, snapping up bargains and buying the assets cheaply. There is no doubt that merger and acquisition activity will increase dramatically too. So, why do so few companies have the same attitude about their human assets? You know you’re going to need more people, so why not go out and get them now? Even if you have to debt finance it (like you would with other assets), talent is never going to be cheaper or easier to find than it is right now.
Increase Their Pay Faster Than Yours
Senior leadership in most corporates have not suffered as much during the downturn as their staff – not unless they accepted incrementally higher pay cuts than they asked staff to take (reducing a CEO’s salary by 10% does not have the same effect on lifestyle and means as reducing the receptionist’s salary by the same percentage). As growth returns, and salaries start increasing, companies need to ensure that lower ranking staff get bigger percentage increases than the senior staff. That will send a strong and powerful message throughout the organisation. In fact, you should commit to do doing this now – you have to be sending the right signals now in order to ensure your employees aren’t going to be looking elsewhere.
Stop Paying Bonuses and Start Using Real Motivators
Talking of remuneration, recent research shows clearly that paying financial bonuses only works as a motivator for people doing manual labour. For everyone else (and that’s pretty much everybody engaged in the modern workplace), financial bonuses increase activity but actually produce the opposite outcomes from what was intended. This may sound counter-intuitive but the research is unequivocal (reflect, for example, on what outcomes the banking industry has recently achieved with their bonus incentives system). The best recent book on the issue is Daniel Pink’s “Drive”. You could also search for research on bonuses by Dan Ariely or watch a 15 minute talk by Pink at http://tr.im/pinkrewards.
Managerless Teams
There is also interesting research available on teams that have had unintended, long-term management absences (a manager away on extended sick leave or compassionate grounds, for example). In almost every instance, the team that remains without a manager improves their performance and outputs after an initial period of decline and sometimes a bit of chaos. Not every team needs a manager. Now is an ideal time to think of radical restructuring and reconfiguration of your hierarchies.
Total Talent Management (or Fire the Managers who don’t take this stuff seriously)
Back in the 1980s, most manufacturing companies had “Quality Control” departments. But then along came “Total Quality Management” (TQM), followed quickly by “kaizen” and Six Sigma. The principle is now obvious to us: quality control cannot happen only at the end of the manufacturing process. Quality needs to be everyone’s issue, at every stage of the process. And that’s the reality now in almost every manufacturing company I know – there are no more quality control departments.
And that’s what needs to happen to “talent management” over the next decade. It needs to be every manager’s problem – an item on every manager’s performance review. And even more importantly, you need to make this is a deal breaker issue with your leaders. If they regularly cause talented people to leave, then you need to fire them (regardless of what other contributions they might make). Talent is too precious to waste through bad management.
Let them loose, and watch them fly
Over the past decade or so, increased competition, the speed of change, globalisation and new technology have made business increasingly more complicated. Simultaneously, reduced layers of management and bureaucracy have passed responsibility and authority further down into our organisations. We thus expect people at all levels to act with the type of understanding, critical thinking, initiative, agility and responsibility that just a decade or so ago were largely reserved for people in the executive suite. Your people need to be trained for this, and mentored in it too.
To be successful in the coming decade of turbulence and opportunity will require the involvement and commitment of everyone throughout your organisation. You’re in danger of losing your best staff if you don’t focus creative attention on them right now. The benefits of doing so will be a strategic advantage that will be difficult for your competitors to match. And we’re all going to need some of that if we’re to survive and thrive in the years ahead. The input required now will be well rewarded in the near future.
Graeme Codrington is a founding partner of TomorrowToday.biz, and a respected trends analyst, author and keynote presenter. His latest book is on “The TIDES of Change”, about the five disruptive forces shaping the new world of work, and will be published in late 2010. More details at http://about.me/graemecodrington
Posted by graeme on October 22, 2011 · Leave a Comment
The world has changed. Fatherhood has changed with it – dramatically. As a father of three, who also researches and speaks on social change, I want to highlight just a few of the changes since my grandfather became a Dad for the first time. And allow me to suggest that things might not have changed that much after all.
My grandfather, Reg Codrington Sr, was posted to Cape Town during the Second World War as a member of the British Merchant Navy. There he met and married my grandmother, Ethel Ball. As was common then, she fell pregnant fairly soon after they were married. As a British serviceman serving abroad, he had an important privilege: any children born to him while in uniform anywhere in the world would be considered British by birth. So, he and my grandmother stayed in Cape Town.
When my grandmother went into labour, my grandfather was so determined to ensure his child would be British that he first quickly got dressed in his military uniform before taking her to the hospital. He wanted to be literally “in uniform” when my aunt was born, so there would be no doubt in anyone’s mind that she was British. This was more important than my grandmother’s birth pains.
These days, of course, expectant fathers make sure the bags are permanently packed and ready to go. Some even practice driving the route to the hospital. But, given modern technology and our penchant for choosing C-sections, most fathers these days book the birth date and time of their children in their diaries months in advance.
How times have changed.
The typical scene in my grandfather’s generation was of the expectant father waiting in the pub with his mates for the news from the hospital – or the home – that he was a father. Cigars were then lit and he had to buy the next round of drinks. In my father’s generation, in the 1960s and 70s, the men generally stayed at the hospital, but had to sit outside the delivery room. Neither my grandfather nor father knew whether they were having a son or a daughter. Remember when nurseries were painted neutral colours and you had a boy’s and girl’s name ready just in case?
Today, fathers are not just in the delivery room, they are often taking photos and videos and twittering away on Facebook while their wife – or girlfriend – is giving birth. And thanks to modern painkilling drugs, it’s even possible for some fathers to avoid being sworn at by their contraction-enraged wives.
It’s not just the experience of becoming a father that has changed over the past few decades. Fatherhood itself has changed dramatically.
Take discipline for example. There was a time when children called their fathers “sir” and didn’t ask any insolent questions, let alone talk back to them. Or, if they did, a short, sharp clip across the back of the head was an acceptable response. When I was growing up, and asked my father, “Why?”, often the only response I got was “Because I said so!”. Today’s children won’t let their fathers get away with that. They want to know why, and if there isn’t a good reason, then they won’t do it. I’ll be honest: as irritating as that can be, I do sometimes think my kids have got a point. Why, indeed?
Back in 1955, the 13 May edition of the Good Housekeeping magazine ran a feature article called “The Good Wife’s Guide”. It was a serious attempt to help women look after their husbands better. Here are some of the gems of advice from that article:
- Have dinner ready. Plan ahead, even the night before, to have a delicious meal ready on time for his return from work.
- Minimize all noise. At the time of his arrival, eliminate all noise of the washer, dryer or vacuum. Encourage the children to be quiet.
- Make him comfortable. Have him lean back in a comfortable chair or lie him down in the bedroom. Have a cool or warm drink ready for him.
- Arrange his pillow and offer to take off his shoes. Speak in a low, soothing and pleasant voice.
- Prepare the children, wash their hands and faces and change their clothes. They are little treasures and he would like to see them playing the part.
It seems unbelievable that this article was serious. Yet, my earliest childhood memories indicate that my father had something like this in mind for our family. That’s not an option these days, with dual income families and working parents. Today’s fathers are expected to contribute to both the running of the house and hands on caring for their children. There is a lot of joy to be had in rolling around on the floor with your children a few moments after arriving home from work. But it does take its toll, and today’s fathers are often exhausted by the many roles they must fulfill.
Fathers have always had to struggle to find the balance between their work and their home commitments. Whether it was due to war, the difficulties of working at long distances without good international travel or communications, or the apartheid government’s policy of homelands that separated men from their families, fathers in days gone by often had to live and work far from home. There was often very little contact with their children and wives. Today’s fathers might have the option to work from home, but with cellphones locked to their ears and laptops blocking their children’s access to their laps, being at home and being available for their families are two very different things.
On the wall next to my desk is a little hand painted sign, presented by my loving children at a Father’s Day a few years ago. Its message reminds me of the sacred duty, the scary privilege and the supreme joy of being someone’s father: “Anyone can be a father. It takes someone special to be a Dad.”
Each generation of fathers has had to deal with the issues of the era in which they lived, and each was influenced in different ways by the society around them. But every father everywhere has something in common. Each of us wants the best for our children. This is the challenge that fathers – Dads – of every generation have had to face: how to be a good father, husband, employee, boss, friend, son and man – all at the same time, and how to give our children the best possible start in life and be the best example for them. The challenge may be great. But the reward is priceless. You get to be someone’s Dad! That makes it all worthwhile.
Dr Graeme Codrington is the co-author of “Future-Proof Your Child: Parenting the Wired Generation” (Penguin, 2008). He is a business strategy consultant, international keynote presenter, husband to Jane for nearly 20 years and father of three young daughters, Amy, Hannah and Rebecca. He lives in London and has a home in Johannesburg. He can be contacted on graeme@tomorrowtoday.uk.com
Posted by graeme on October 19, 2011 · Leave a Comment
Earlier today I was interviewed by Mark Murphy on BBC Radio Suffolk about the death of the landline. It was a nice little segment, and you might enjoy listening to it. Sorry about the quality – I didn’t have time to set up anything better before we got going.
Listen to the lead in here, and the 6 minute interview here
Posted by graeme on October 17, 2011 · Leave a Comment
I am sure you’ve been following the news of protests around the world. The OccupyWallStreet protest that started a few weeks ago spread this past weekend to other capitals with protestors clashing with police in places such as London and Rome. What are they protesting against or for, though? Maybe you haven’t been watching very closely.
You should. History is going to judge these events as the beginning of something big. The way the rich have been behaving in many countries is now under unprecedented scrutiny, and will not be allowed to continue. How this will all play out is not yet clear. History tells us that when the rich and poor get too separated, the poor rise up and kill the rich. That’s unlikely to happen (although it can’t be ruled out, even in the most ‘civilised’ of nations), but something will happen.
Society is changing. Right now. All around us.
We need to stay informed. And involved.
I was recently made aware of an excellent ‘primer’ on the issues underlying the current protests. It is from Vanity Fair of all places, but by the amazing economist Joseph Stiglitz, and is available on their website here, or in an extended extract below.
Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%
Americans have been watching protests against oppressive regimes that concentrate massive wealth in the hands of an elite few. Yet in our own democracy, 1 percent of the people take nearly a quarter of the nation’s income—an inequality even the wealthy will come to regret.
By Joseph E. Stiglitz
It’s no use pretending that what has obviously happened has not in fact happened. The upper 1 percent of Americans are now taking in nearly a quarter of the nation’s income every year. In terms of wealth rather than income, the top 1 percent control 40 percent. Their lot in life has improved considerably. Twenty-five years ago, the corresponding figures were 12 percent and 33 percent. One response might be to celebrate the ingenuity and drive that brought good fortune to these people, and to contend that a rising tide lifts all boats. That response would be misguided. While the top 1 percent have seen their incomes rise 18 percent over the past decade, those in the middle have actually seen their incomes fall. For men with only high-school degrees, the decline has been precipitous—12 percent in the last quarter-century alone. All the growth in recent decades—and more—has gone to those at the top. In terms of income equality, America lags behind any country in the old, ossified Europe that President George W. Bush used to deride. Among our closest counterparts are Russia with its oligarchs and Iran. While many of the old centers of inequality in Latin America, such as Brazil, have been striving in recent years, rather successfully, to improve the plight of the poor and reduce gaps in income, America has allowed inequality to grow.
Economists long ago tried to justify the vast inequalities that seemed so troubling in the mid-19th century—inequalities that are but a pale shadow of what we are seeing in America today. The justification they came up with was called “marginal-productivity theory.” In a nutshell, this theory associated higher incomes with higher productivity and a greater contribution to society. It is a theory that has always been cherished by the rich. Evidence for its validity, however, remains thin. The corporate executives who helped bring on the recession of the past three years—whose contribution to our society, and to their own companies, has been massively negative—went on to receive large bonuses. In some cases, companies were so embarrassed about calling such rewards “performance bonuses” that they felt compelled to change the name to “retention bonuses” (even if the only thing being retained was bad performance). Those who have contributed great positive innovations to our society, from the pioneers of genetic understanding to the pioneers of the Information Age, have received a pittance compared with those responsible for the financial innovations that brought our global economy to the brink of ruin.
Some people look at income inequality and shrug their shoulders. So what if this person gains and that person loses? What matters, they argue, is not how the pie is divided but the size of the pie. That argument is fundamentally wrong. An economy in which most citizens are doing worse year after year—an economy like America’s—is not likely to do well over the long haul. There are several reasons for this.
First, growing inequality is the flip side of something else: shrinking opportunity. Whenever we diminish equality of opportunity, it means that we are not using some of our most valuable assets—our people—in the most productive way possible. Second, many of the distortions that lead to inequality—such as those associated with monopoly power and preferential tax treatment for special interests—undermine the efficiency of the economy. This new inequality goes on to create new distortions, undermining efficiency even further. To give just one example, far too many of our most talented young people, seeing the astronomical rewards, have gone into finance rather than into fields that would lead to a more productive and healthy economy.
Third, and perhaps most important, a modern economy requires “collective action”—it needs government to invest in infrastructure, education, and technology. The United States and the world have benefited greatly from government-sponsored research that led to the Internet, to advances in public health, and so on. But America has long suffered from an under-investment in infrastructure (look at the condition of our highways and bridges, our railroads and airports), in basic research, and in education at all levels. Further cutbacks in these areas lie ahead.
None of this should come as a surprise—it is simply what happens when a society’s wealth distribution becomes lopsided. The more divided a society becomes in terms of wealth, the more reluctant the wealthy become to spend money on common needs. The rich don’t need to rely on government for parks or education or medical care or personal security—they can buy all these things for themselves. In the process, they become more distant from ordinary people, losing whatever empathy they may once have had. They also worry about strong government—one that could use its powers to adjust the balance, take some of their wealth, and invest it for the common good. The top 1 percent may complain about the kind of government we have in America, but in truth they like it just fine: too gridlocked to re-distribute, too divided to do anything but lower taxes.
Economists are not sure how to fully explain the growing inequality in America. The ordinary dynamics of supply and demand have certainly played a role: laborsaving technologies have reduced the demand for many “good” middle-class, blue-collar jobs. Globalization has created a worldwide marketplace, pitting expensive unskilled workers in America against cheap unskilled workers overseas. Social changes have also played a role—for instance, the decline of unions, which once represented a third of American workers and now represent about 12 percent.
But one big part of the reason we have so much inequality is that the top 1 percent want it that way. The most obvious example involves tax policy. Lowering tax rates on capital gains, which is how the rich receive a large portion of their income, has given the wealthiest Americans close to a free ride. Monopolies and near monopolies have always been a source of economic power—from John D. Rockefeller at the beginning of the last century to Bill Gates at the end. Lax enforcement of anti-trust laws, especially during Republican administrations, has been a godsend to the top 1 percent. Much of today’s inequality is due to manipulation of the financial system, enabled by changes in the rules that have been bought and paid for by the financial industry itself—one of its best investments ever. The government lent money to financial institutions at close to 0 percent interest and provided generous bailouts on favorable terms when all else failed. Regulators turned a blind eye to a lack of transparency and to conflicts of interest.
When you look at the sheer volume of wealth controlled by the top 1 percent in this country, it’s tempting to see our growing inequality as a quintessentially American achievement—we started way behind the pack, but now we’re doing inequality on a world-class level. And it looks as if we’ll be building on this achievement for years to come, because what made it possible is self-reinforcing. Wealth begets power, which begets more wealth. During the savings-and-loan scandal of the 1980s—a scandal whose dimensions, by today’s standards, seem almost quaint—the banker Charles Keating was asked by a congressional committee whether the $1.5 million he had spread among a few key elected officials could actually buy influence. “I certainly hope so,” he replied. The Supreme Court, in its recent Citizens United case, has enshrined the right of corporations to buy government, by removing limitations on campaign spending. The personal and the political are today in perfect alignment. Virtually all U.S. senators, and most of the representatives in the House, are members of the top 1 percent when they arrive, are kept in office by money from the top 1 percent, and know that if they serve the top 1 percent well they will be rewarded by the top 1 percent when they leave office. By and large, the key executive-branch policymakers on trade and economic policy also come from the top 1 percent. When pharmaceutical companies receive a trillion-dollar gift—through legislation prohibiting the government, the largest buyer of drugs, from bargaining over price—it should not come as cause for wonder. It should not make jaws drop that a tax bill cannot emerge from Congress unless big tax cuts are put in place for the wealthy. Given the power of the top 1 percent, this is the way you would expect the system to work.
America’s inequality distorts our society in every conceivable way. There is, for one thing, a well-documented lifestyle effect—people outside the top 1 percent increasingly live beyond their means. Trickle-down economics may be a chimera, but trickle-down behaviorism is very real. Inequality massively distorts our foreign policy. The top 1 percent rarely serve in the military—the reality is that the “all-volunteer” army does not pay enough to attract their sons and daughters, and patriotism goes only so far. Plus, the wealthiest class feels no pinch from higher taxes when the nation goes to war: borrowed money will pay for all that. Foreign policy, by definition, is about the balancing of national interests and national resources. With the top 1 percent in charge, and paying no price, the notion of balance and restraint goes out the window. There is no limit to the adventures we can undertake; corporations and contractors stand only to gain. The rules of economic globalization are likewise designed to benefit the rich: they encourage competition among countries for business, which drives down taxes on corporations, weakens health and environmental protections, and undermines what used to be viewed as the “core” labor rights, which include the right to collective bargaining. Imagine what the world might look like if the rules were designed instead to encourage competition among countries for workers. Governments would compete in providing economic security, low taxes on ordinary wage earners, good education, and a clean environment—things workers care about. But the top 1 percent don’t need to care.
Or, more accurately, they think they don’t. Of all the costs imposed on our society by the top 1 percent, perhaps the greatest is this: the erosion of our sense of identity, in which fair play, equality of opportunity, and a sense of community are so important. America has long prided itself on being a fair society, where everyone has an equal chance of getting ahead, but the statistics suggest otherwise: the chances of a poor citizen, or even a middle-class citizen, making it to the top in America are smaller than in many countries of Europe. The cards are stacked against them. It is this sense of an unjust system without opportunity that has given rise to the conflagrations in the Middle East: rising food prices and growing and persistent youth unemployment simply served as kindling. With youth unemployment in America at around 20 percent (and in some locations, and among some socio-demographic groups, at twice that); with one out of six Americans desiring a full-time job not able to get one; with one out of seven Americans on food stamps (and about the same number suffering from “food insecurity”)—given all this, there is ample evidence that something has blocked the vaunted “trickling down” from the top 1 percent to everyone else. All of this is having the predictable effect of creating alienation—voter turnout among those in their 20s in the last election stood at 21 percent, comparable to the unemployment rate.
In recent weeks we have watched people taking to the streets by the millions to protest political, economic, and social conditions in the oppressive societies they inhabit. Governments have been toppled in Egypt and Tunisia. Protests have erupted in Libya, Yemen, and Bahrain. The ruling families elsewhere in the region look on nervously from their air-conditioned penthouses—will they be next? They are right to worry. These are societies where a minuscule fraction of the population—less than 1 percent—controls the lion’s share of the wealth; where wealth is a main determinant of power; where entrenched corruption of one sort or another is a way of life; and where the wealthiest often stand actively in the way of policies that would improve life for people in general.
As we gaze out at the popular fervor in the streets, one question to ask ourselves is this: When will it come to America? In important ways, our own country has become like one of these distant, troubled places.
Alexis de Tocqueville once described what he saw as a chief part of the peculiar genius of American society—something he called “self-interest properly understood.” The last two words were the key. Everyone possesses self-interest in a narrow sense: I want what’s good for me right now! Self-interest “properly understood” is different. It means appreciating that paying attention to everyone else’s self-interest—in other words, the common welfare—is in fact a precondition for one’s own ultimate well-being. Tocqueville was not suggesting that there was anything noble or idealistic about this outlook—in fact, he was suggesting the opposite. It was a mark of American pragmatism. Those canny Americans understood a basic fact: looking out for the other guy isn’t just good for the soul—it’s good for business.
The top 1 percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn’t seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1 percent eventually do learn. Too late.
Source: Vanity Fair, May 2011
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