Planning Decisions, Inc.

THE BOTTOM LINE FROM CHUCK LAWTON

Maine, the Emotional Impact of Globalization and Leadership

Published Saturday January 19, 2008

For you have but mistook me all this while:
I live with bread like you, feel want,
Taste grief, need friends: subjected thus,
How can you say to me, I am a king?
~William Shakespeare Richard II, Act 3, Scene 2

I spent an evening at Bates College this week wrestling with the assignment to “Re-imagine Maine in the 21st Century.” Our panel discussed the grand historical trends of globalization, the struggles between free and fair trade, the threat of rising sea levels and the overriding urgency of global warming. The audience of students, faculty and local citizens peppered us with questions and comments about the industries and jobs of the future, cap and trade systems for reducing greenhouse gases and the merits of buying locally grown food. Finally, a gentleman stood up and said (and here I paraphrase the gist of his question), “I’ve heard a lot about science and a lot about economics and a lot about good ideas for the future. But I haven’t heard anything about fear. I teach at a community college, and every day I deal with people who are afraid—afraid they’ll lose their jobs, afraid they’ll lose their homes, afraid they’ll lose the standard of living they’ve spent decades building. What do I say to them?”

His question brought the discussion to a halt and the room to silence, the abstract alternatives of a cerebral public policy debate replaced suddenly with the flesh and blood of human emotion. The immediate answers were, of course, pragmatic. “You’ve come to the right place.” “You need to upgrade your skills.” “In the 21st century, we need to compete with workers across the globe.” And all of these answers were, of course, correct.

But, gazing across the room at the giant 3 by 8 foot charcoal drawing that perfectly captured the lanky essence of our former Senator, Edmund Muskie, in whose room we were meeting, it occurred to me that these answers—true as they were—did not address the heart of the gentleman’s question. Our culture seems increasingly to worship only success—complete success. Be number one or be worthless. Nobody cares about number two. Ohio State is a failure. The Patriots will be a disappointment if they lose even once. If you don’t finish number one, you’re voted off the island…or out of the Presidential race. Don’t make the grade, and “the Donald” will march you into the Board Room and announce loudly, “You’re Fired!” Given these standards and the stakes of the competition, it’s no wonder people are afraid. And it’s no wonder there is so much resistance to change.

Yet resistance is futile. It only delays the inevitable and increases the difficulty of confronting reality. Looking again across the room, I considered our panel—a one time college drop out, globe trotting jazz pianist and radio producer turned fair trade consultant, an international attorney nearly driven out of business by the aftermath of 9/11 who reinvented herself into a carbon offset trader, a former teacher, bureaucrat and failed fashionista turned Sunday morning pundit.

Instead of focusing solely on “Who’s number one?” on the undefeated, the billionaires and the celebrities, we need to pay more attention to failure. It’s far more empowering. The way our questioning community college teacher needs to answer his students is by saying, “Yep, you may be right. You very well may lose your job. But it won’t be the end of the world. Thousands of others have lost their jobs too. And, while they’ve gone through tough times, they’ve survived…even thrived. You can too.”

The point of being competitive in the global economy is not to win every time, but to be resilient and get better. Rather than fear and condemn failure, we must embrace it as part of an inevitable process. Businesses and jobs may disappear, but skills can always be improved and redirected. Again, this is easy to say intellectually, but hard to accept emotionally. And that’s exactly why we must address the emotional side of the problem. Rather than treat losing a job as a failure, we must acknowledge it as normal, something we all face one way or another, one time or another.

The key to Maine’s economic prosperity in the 21st century is her people, not some ideal, super-prepared, everyone’s above average people of Lake Woebegone, but the actual, real live, bread eating, grief tasting, friend needing people we’ve got right now. We all need to recognize this fact—our workers our schools, our businesses and our government. We may not have all the skills we need today, but we can get them. What we need are vastly more flexible business and educational institutions and vastly more accessible opportunities for learning, not certificates, not degrees, but learning—the opportunity to try once and get it wrong and then try again and get it right. We can do it. Many of us have, and the rest of us are going to have to, for the alternative is to leave our state for those who will.

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