Trying to Make Sense of It All
I was taken by an article by David Leonhardt in the New York Times ‘The Morning” feature of June 5, in which he interviewed David Gelles, a Times reporter. Gelles essentially argued that we can attribute the current malaise in America to a change in management philosophy associated with Jack Welch, legendary CEO of General Electric. It said that, ‘ Incomes started growing more slowly for most workers, and inequality surged’ in the late 70’s and 1980’s. This has since come to be recognized variously as the decline in the middle class way of life, the elimination of traditional jobs, and the base for chronic discontent that has fueled such different things as drug abuse by young people, teenage suicide, music based on angst and discontent, increasingly frequent mass shootings, the Trump movement, reactionary judicial decisions like the impending reversal of abortion laws in the USA, increasingly reactionary political personalities and general feelings of powerlessness, disenfranchisement and being stripped of entitlements.
I taught corporate strategy to University classes during the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s and presented the (Jack Welch) General Electric business portfolio and personnel management approach to dozens if not hundreds of classes, so in this sense the NYT article is personal to me. Heaven forbid I could be a contributor to the current societal malaise; but could I be? Of course I could! The decline of the middle class in Canada and the USA and the increase in income inequality has to do with management technique, but it also has to do with technological change, productivity changes, the post WW II development of other country’s economies, lower wage structures in other countries, the internationalization of commerce and the aggressive polarization of political views. Further, the argument between whether there should be a focus on financial results versus operational excellence and employee pay levels (pay inequality) has been around since long before Jack Welch.
So can we blame all our current societal problems on Jack Welch as the NYT article suggests - Absolutely Not! But, do we have serious societal issues to deal with - Absolutely Yes!
How do we deal with our current societal issues? Ultimately the same way progressive social thinkers have advocated dealing with them and dealt with them in the past. Not by solutions dominated by ideology or by single discipline thinking; like engineering, law enforcement, psychology, sociology, economics, political science, history, chemistry, physics, or health care. Nor can effective solutions be driven by politicians who primarily take advice from an increasingly technocratic and cynical group of political consultants.
The solution will be led by multidisciplinary thinkers working with more enlightened political leaders. There is no solution that is not political. Politicians are possessed of the requisite skills to bring together and get action from conflicting disparate situations. I feel however, that the nature of political advice that this group of enlightened politicians receive has to change. Instead of it being technocratic and driven almost exclusively in some cases by manipulative techniques which are perhaps necessary for election period activities where the focus is on identifying and delivering voters, we need more and better advisors who have broad social perspectives, better understand the issues we are facing and are steeped in concern about finding solutions that enhance the social good. David Gergen could be a role model for this type of person.
I cannot help but think that the way out of our current situation involves education, understanding and reductions in perceived inequalities. Solutions are obviously not easy, but perhaps they start with political leaders recruiting and empowering a new type of advisor. This could come about as a result of better educational institutions trying to do more to train this type of advisor.
