Question: Hurricane Katrina

Question: Hurricane Katrina

Imagine you are at an intersection in New Orleans the day after Katrina. All electricity is out. How do you proceed as an honorable, average citizen trying to negotiate the streets with stewardship?

Advancing societies of the new millennia will experience unique material stresses and ideological tensions, which can only be addressed by leadership from stewards who practice reasoned and virtuous management. An answer on Hollywood Squares (4/12/04) claimed that there are a thousand times too many people on earth to be sustainable (What more authoritative source can you ask for?). The population in India alone, which is well over one billion, is projected to grow geometrically. Scary images of Malthusian holocausts are not that hard to imagine. Besides all this competition for the basic things of the world, we, individually and collectively, seem to be more intolerant and angry. Mix all this with the fact that mainstream mankind is going to have all kinds of higher order needs, wants and desires being stimulated by an escalating awareness fueled by the internet and mass media.

“We all live downstream”

Even a growing “Taliban mentality” (like we saw in Afghanistan in the 90’s) will not stem the tide of human population growth and material progress. Rather, I predict that such ultra-conservatism will ultimately be isolated and either assimilated or eradicated. The spirit of capitalistic entrepreneurship cannot compromise in a truly competitive world, because no person or group has exclusive rights to this earth, its ideas or systems - even a part of it. In today’s free world, open and free mass communications, which take place in the media, in cyberspace and wireless networks has changed every aspect of human reasoning and motivation. Cyberspace has especially defined new vistas for free thought, free distribution of information, free collection of information and free debate of information. No question about it, a stronger force of individual and personal freedom has emerged in the entrepreneurial systems associated with cyberspace, which with wireless enhancements will soon connect everyone in exquisite information and marketing networks that geometrically spiral awareness! Exploding populations will expect more of everything, more open communication, more ability to network, more opportunity, more accountability, more service, more quality, more value and so forth. Clearly, it follows that we will need higher and nobler behaviors from all participants in the emerging economic systems; or we need to find more humane ways to dominate, enslave, control and constrain the more restless and growing masses. When you get right down to it, either the doom or the gloom path will increase the need for those special managers with vision and inclination to imagine and implement fundamental change, the entrepreneur. It also follows that mass communication will make every behavior and event (including the managerial ones) more open to public scrutiny. Entrepreneurs and other managers will simply have to be smarter, better and more ethical in creating high-profile organizations that simultaneously provide for human growth and are sustainable.

Dan Quinn (1995), in his book Ismeal contrasts "leavers" and "takers" during his conversations with a gorilla. The "takers" impose their will on nature and man too aggressively. They coerce into submission forms of resistance and opposition, because it’s most expedient, it’s easy and they can. The "leavers" have a great deal of stewardship, because they appreciate the plight of the gorilla and understand that it is not noble for man to ravenously destroy and consume every gift that has been given by nature.

The virtuous "leaving" qualities, unfortunately, have not been generally used to describe business leaders or entrepreneurs over the last few centuries (partially justifying counter-cultures like the Taliban); rather they have been generally associated with "taking." I’m obviously talking about a new breed of manager who has matured past mere efficiency, effectiveness and profit to a higher enlightenment that fosters visions and imaginings that are true, larger and futuristic. There are many management theorists, like myself, who predict that our future organizations will be replete with such enlightened managers who are intent on creating more value, with less waste and fewer externalities -- and all at a lower cost. I predict that these entrepreneurial managers will be systems thinkers who usher in an era of stewardship in organizations that will set the pace for hyper-progress. In this new era, entrepreneurs, in particular, will have to be more socially conscious, aware and plugged into their communities, and will intentionally form and manage "good" organizations. Socially conscious entrepreneurs will become the champions of societal goals with creative kinds of organizational structures and configurations that leverage social responsibility and produce great profit. Reckless entrepreneurial profiteering will still occur occasionally, because there will always be “honest incompetence” and there will be those exploiters that think “freedom means that anything goes;” but the pendulum will shift toward “genuine competency” and “integrity.” In the stewardship-age, the predators will be more accountable for their behavior, both internally (to the peers of the organization) and externally (to the peers of society). Exploiters will be generally ostracized and policed by a profound societal awareness. A story in Fast Company (2003) illustrates the kind of philosophy that underlies the connotation of a steward. The story in Fast Company followed an entrepreneurial eye surgeon in India who they affectionately call Dr. V. He does cataract surgery for free, just so people can see and live contributing lives. His basic motivation is that society will be better off (his clinic does about l00,000 surgeries each year in the poorest part of India); yet he is able to make a profit from those who can pay, (no one is required to pay) and volunteer to do so. This is a great story of stewardship and economic success based on a very powerful entrepreneurial cycle of giving, not taking.

In order to form a more perfect union, America’s founding fathers organized this nation systematically. They established a few basic systematic tenets. Most of all, they built a social system designed to keep sustainable balance between law and freedom, and which could virtuously govern this nation for the long term. Above all, they recognized that system externalities, even in a pioneer/frontier world, had to be regularly analyzed and governed by the collective citizenry. They unconditionally recognized the importance of precious human freedom to foster and stimulate, in all facets of life, vigilant and outspoken participation in common and personal good. Our founding fathers knew that pursuit of a more perfect union meant the pursuit of perfect freedom. Similarly, I believe that the pursuit of personal and collective self-interest is the path to perfect stewardship. Our founding fathers knew that great caring and integrity could never be regulated into existence. Yet, the debate still rages today regarding the degree we can trust this freewheeling balance to be good and productive in our modern economic systems, and whether God approves of it.

America will be a force in this debate because we are the extremists in believing that good arises from the bottom of society as much as the top, and that this is God's will. We therefore are zealots regarding personal choice. For Americans, progress means that America can neither return to gross entrepreneurial exploits of an ignorant past (e.g., eco-system excesses brought on by robber-barons and ignorance, who cared little about eco-systems or human systems); nor can we blindly accept centralization pressures from elitists, bureaucratic regulators or special-interests (e.g. fundamentalism, communism and other totalitarianism which are narrow and frightening in their extremism and zealousness). Americans stand the best chance to achieve the balance needed fro true stewardship, because we seek balance as part of our initial vision. As Americans see it, balance is the intended nature of virtue, moral excellence and righteousness in life’s contradiction-filled business, and we willfully proselytize this idea.

“Send them now the sheaves to gather ere the harvest time pass by (The Call for Reapers, John P. Thompson, CMA Hymnal, p444).”

I further propose that economic excesses must, and will be, regularly analyzed with cutting-edge stewardship that is largely imagined by American entrepreneurs, who lead management thought to the effective and efficient ideologies. Learned, enlightened and entrepreneurial managers at all levels will invariably drive the cutting edge of creative, innovative and fresh forces of change, progress and advancement of truth in a free world. Nevertheless, centralists and other totalitarians will continue to be particularly insidious in espousing their own versions of stewardship. Autocrats have historically arisen out of entrepreneurial initiatives to grasp direct control over all behavior, because they ultimately assume that the same liberty that provided them their opportunity cannot be trusted (e.g., study the birth and history of the Nazis, the Taliban, autocrats like Sadam Hussein and you pick a religious fanatic or any fascist). On the contrary, the stewardship thesis that I propose assumes a new kind of bottom-up self-regulation where the free citizen, along with entrepreneur, voluntarily chooses to become a stronger partner in the search for balance, unity, and collective sustainability. American society will nurture enlightened communities that demand that citizens and entrepreneurs behave that way. As Mintzberg (1996, p.400) puts it, for us to be a worthy society we must, “have responsible and ethical people in important places.” In particular, I believe entrepreneurs will be trained at a young age to objectively understand the concrete and metaphysical interrelationships among the physical and human resources of this planet that are often mercilessly exploited for inappropriate ends. Stewardly managers will gradually establish a new collective awareness and longer-term vision of the perils of excessive selfishness. American entrepreneurs in particular will do this better than anyone else, not so much because they want to naturally; rather, because American society will expect it, socialize it, demand it and watch for it on T.V. and in cyberspace.

We see all around the litany of externalities that mankind inherits from ignorant past generations (our ancestors), which we must bear for a very long time (polluted air, water and soil, depleted ozone, deforestation, species annihilation, etc.). America has had plenty of environmental disasters. However, Americans have learned a lot from these mistakes as Americans lead in exploring, exploiting and populating every corner of this planet. Especially, Americans are capitalists that have learned that entrepreneurs who are pursuing self-interest for profit can’t be allowed to be too self-indulging, for their own good as well as society’s; again, America leads in achieving a balance. At the same time, we are learning that collective interests can be served without big hierarchical government, as long as America has stewardly entrepreneurs who are profoundly connected and interdependent. The decentralized steward model produces localized decision making that is consistently smarter and more effective than that of the centralized bureaucrat. As a part of this process, modern economic actors are learning to cooperate and police their own behavior day-in and day-out, as they are watched over by even-more litigious individual citizens who see themselves as collaborators that have their own entrepreneurial and other management responsibilities. A "society in general" orientation is becoming more embedded in everything Americans do. That’s just the way it is!

“Your prison is walking through this world all alone (The Eagles, Desperado).”

Compounding the sustainability problem for modern managers is this hideous problem that they must find ways to pay for past sins while still progressing civilization forward. A new philosophy is emerging; one that is inter-generational and inter-connected. Any rational systems thinker knows we are all responsible to past generations, the current one and future ones. There are no disconnects through time. Every human that has lived, and will live is linked systematically through space and time. No true steward desires to produce current wealth for which our grandchildren will have an onerous debt to pay; nor can the steward sweep past mistakes under the rug. Our new entrepreneurial societies in America can only lead as long as we are genuine stewards. A "Developmental Era" must occur in which we develop these more socially conscious entrepreneurs who behave naturally and automatically in more sustainable ways; and all citizens will need to partner with them and watch over them locally, at the point of attack. If I had to coin a macro-economic term that would reflect these new ideas and replace terms like capitalism or communism, I'd name this new kind of socio-economic system perspective "Stewardism." George W. Bush used a Robert Frost quote in his first nomination acceptance speech (8/3/00), "To occupy the land with dignity," in an effort to abundantly reflect the essence of the kind of civilized stewardship that he possessed.