Yes, i totally agree with Paul Polak, Jacqueline Novogratz, CK Prahalad, Stuart Hart, Nancy Barry and the others who think a new, business, approach is needed to help combat poverty. It is, for sure. It helps create new products that the poor need and can afford, and can access. It helps create jobs. It empowers the poor and unleashes them do work hard to reduce their own poverty. It can be sustainable. It can be scalable. There are many many books and reports written about this approach, how it is changing the world, how it is changing the business world and how it is making aid and traditional appraoches to poverty reduction/eradication a waste of effort, time and money.
However, as much as I agree with them, I have to say that there are a number of things that determine poverty, and the business approach will nto solve all of them. It will not help put children in school, not will it get rid of corruption, or write laws that protect citizens, or protect citizens by enforcing those laws (though business could play creative roles in all of these, in some way).
Aid is still needed -more aid and better applied. Governance is a key issue, and one, unfortunately, where so little progress is being made. Ultimately irregardless of how one tries to reduce poverty, be it through aid, loans, business etc... a country needs a good government that sets the right framework for a country (i.e. laws that are implemented), does what is best for its citizens and so forth.
With issues like poverty and Climate Change, where incredibly fast progress needs to be made on a massive scale, there is a need to engage governments and improve the aid agenda (where actually some progress has been made, despite constant environmental degradation, increasingly unfair trade, increasing population growth, wars, greater incidence of diseases amongst others) AND for business to utilise business approaches to poverty reduction. Let's pay more attention to the business approach, but not forget the need for aid and 'traditional approaches to poverty reduction'.
Blanket statements criticising 'traditional approaches' as useless, are not useful. Instead one needs to see how they have helped and learn lessons to improve traditional approaches, and use their lessons in business approaches. Ultimately business will find it very hard (though possible) to thrive when there is no effective government creating an effective marketplace.
Showing posts with label peace. Show all posts
Showing posts with label peace. Show all posts
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Tragedy of the commons and climate change
Sustainable Development is really about the Tragedy of the Commons: the concept that when there is a common resource, each of us seeks to exploit it so much, that it becomes over exploited and thus depeleted so we all lose out.
This can be applied to almost anything and ultimately is an issue of how much competition is good, and how much collaboration is good. Nowadays there are numerous new ideas that are part-competition and part-collaboration, not the least the concept of open-source where something is created and then given away for free, or the concepts of wikis where contributors help create something for free, because they recognise that the value of what is created by all contributors will be beneficial to everyone.
As leaders we need to explore these problems and seek new solutions; we also need to examine waht solutions work and imitate them elsewhere. We need to be fast, we are depleting all known resources too fast. There are very few cases where we have collectively worked together to stop a particular resource being depleted, or even begun to rehabilitate it. Despite knowing that deforrestation is bad, deforrestation is getting worse, globally, not better. Despite knowing our sources of non-renewable energy are limited, we are using more, not less, of them. Despite knowing our population is growing too fast and each of us are consuming more than the planet has to offer, the global population continues to expand and individual consumption continues to expand.
In rare cases, we have managed to overcome issues, collectively, such as the hole in the Ozone layer, that is now no longer getting worse; but this was an easy issue to overcome, one that was really about technology and uncontroverisal political decisions. Even in cases of war, with real-time, immediate consequences of death, we are unable to solve collective action problems. The 'we' is both the losers, the outsiders and the winners.
The search still goes on for ways for each of us to understand the long-term negative impacts of our current actions on our own future. Not just on our children's future -but our own future. Can new forms of media and communication lead to new forms of collaboration, or will they lead to new forms of competition? What mix of collaboration and competition is requried to solve our problems -when is competition better and when is collaboration better, what happens when some want to compete and some want to collaborate?
This is the problem we have with climate change -where some see they lose they refuse to collaborate, but others see that without collaboration everyone will lose. The solution is to ignore the past, forget the past and move on. This is not easy, but is the only solution. We cannot complain about others being richer or better-off. We need to all work together to ensure a better future for us all, without worrying about the past, because if we continue to complain, criticize and seek retribution or compensation, we will not move forward. This is the problem -not just that we cannot see long-term, but that we cannot forget the past. That, the problem with human nature, is the real tragedy.
This can be applied to almost anything and ultimately is an issue of how much competition is good, and how much collaboration is good. Nowadays there are numerous new ideas that are part-competition and part-collaboration, not the least the concept of open-source where something is created and then given away for free, or the concepts of wikis where contributors help create something for free, because they recognise that the value of what is created by all contributors will be beneficial to everyone.
As leaders we need to explore these problems and seek new solutions; we also need to examine waht solutions work and imitate them elsewhere. We need to be fast, we are depleting all known resources too fast. There are very few cases where we have collectively worked together to stop a particular resource being depleted, or even begun to rehabilitate it. Despite knowing that deforrestation is bad, deforrestation is getting worse, globally, not better. Despite knowing our sources of non-renewable energy are limited, we are using more, not less, of them. Despite knowing our population is growing too fast and each of us are consuming more than the planet has to offer, the global population continues to expand and individual consumption continues to expand.
In rare cases, we have managed to overcome issues, collectively, such as the hole in the Ozone layer, that is now no longer getting worse; but this was an easy issue to overcome, one that was really about technology and uncontroverisal political decisions. Even in cases of war, with real-time, immediate consequences of death, we are unable to solve collective action problems. The 'we' is both the losers, the outsiders and the winners.
The search still goes on for ways for each of us to understand the long-term negative impacts of our current actions on our own future. Not just on our children's future -but our own future. Can new forms of media and communication lead to new forms of collaboration, or will they lead to new forms of competition? What mix of collaboration and competition is requried to solve our problems -when is competition better and when is collaboration better, what happens when some want to compete and some want to collaborate?
This is the problem we have with climate change -where some see they lose they refuse to collaborate, but others see that without collaboration everyone will lose. The solution is to ignore the past, forget the past and move on. This is not easy, but is the only solution. We cannot complain about others being richer or better-off. We need to all work together to ensure a better future for us all, without worrying about the past, because if we continue to complain, criticize and seek retribution or compensation, we will not move forward. This is the problem -not just that we cannot see long-term, but that we cannot forget the past. That, the problem with human nature, is the real tragedy.
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Overcoming differences is neccessary -and maybe even possible
There might still be hope! When I consider nationalism and countries that make progress in extraordinary times; both point to hope in our fight against massive problems like Climate Change. Why? Because when we fight against a common enemy, we bring everyone together and achieve something that otherwise we cannot do.
The world has not worked together to really tackle a common enemy ever before, and this is a big test. However many regions or countries or groups of people have done just this before. By overcoming our differences we can understand that we are, fundamentally, all after the same, and when something threatens that, we can work together. It is not easy, and it is rare that a challenge is so great that it can bring us all together. For the moment, Climate Change is certainly not bringing us all together, in the way that, say World War 2 brought the entire UK (and many of its colonies) together to fight a common enemy.
Many in the World do not care about climate change, because they are not affected by it, or do not think they will be affected by it… and this is a huge issue. This is what must change; otherwise we are accepting that, until the whole World is affected by the issue, we will not tackle the issue. Of course, by that time, it will be SO much harder to deal with the issue. But I suppose this is normal, looking at how much easier it might have been to stop Hitler before 1939, when Chamberlain refused to deal with the issue head-on; instead Britain waited until the problem was so much bigger before actually trying to tackle it.
So, can we learn from these (and other) lessons and get together to fight the common enemy now, when the battle can still be won, and can be won with less disruption, loss of live, damage etc than if we continue to wait? We are evidently starting to find out.
The world has not worked together to really tackle a common enemy ever before, and this is a big test. However many regions or countries or groups of people have done just this before. By overcoming our differences we can understand that we are, fundamentally, all after the same, and when something threatens that, we can work together. It is not easy, and it is rare that a challenge is so great that it can bring us all together. For the moment, Climate Change is certainly not bringing us all together, in the way that, say World War 2 brought the entire UK (and many of its colonies) together to fight a common enemy.
Many in the World do not care about climate change, because they are not affected by it, or do not think they will be affected by it… and this is a huge issue. This is what must change; otherwise we are accepting that, until the whole World is affected by the issue, we will not tackle the issue. Of course, by that time, it will be SO much harder to deal with the issue. But I suppose this is normal, looking at how much easier it might have been to stop Hitler before 1939, when Chamberlain refused to deal with the issue head-on; instead Britain waited until the problem was so much bigger before actually trying to tackle it.
So, can we learn from these (and other) lessons and get together to fight the common enemy now, when the battle can still be won, and can be won with less disruption, loss of live, damage etc than if we continue to wait? We are evidently starting to find out.
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
Has Development failed?
This article questions whether the theory of 'development' as proposed by the UN, World Bank and IMF mostly, has failed. The article makes sense but has a ridiculous notion of development, only focusing on those 3 organisations who though shoot above their weight in some developing countries regarding their influence on policies, really have very little impact at all because they only worked at the governmental level until recently.
Development in its modern sense is about government -yes, in theory good governments lead to their citizens creating their own development by operating in a peaceful society which respects rights and gives the freedom to make the most of the market. Unfortunately most governments in impoverished countries are not like this, and trying to change those governments has (as history has shown) only made things worse. Stability and peace is the most important requirement for development. It would be nice to have functioning education, healthcare etc.. or even a functioning market, but without these, it is necessary to help create them.
If governments cannot create them, then other actors must and this is whether civil society comes in: NGOs, trade unions, co-operatives and of course, individuals. Of course there is a role for business/entrepreneurship too. Development is about all of these actors, and it is not failing; it is struggling to be efficient in overcoming the government deficiencies, the market deficiencies and the instability most developing countries are in.
Secondly development as seen by grass-roots organsiations, individuals themselves, and now even by the UN/IMF/WB is now seen as the opposite of what the article describes: it is about bottom-up, empowerment, skill provision, access to markets and so on. It is about partnership between different societal actors and it is about, eventually, reforming those limiting factors -especially government, through a gradual process. It takes time to educate citizens, train teachers or health workers, or create distribution channels for medicines, credit etc.
Once countries have skilled empowered citizens, they will inevitably be able to enter government or create new (capable) governments. If the WB/UN/IMF model has failed, that is really of little significance to development now, as those actors are now so minor. Much more important are civil society actors, entrepreneurs and 'foundations'. Development has barely even started yet... but in the last decade or more, it is sure that there are enough cases of it working in different ways in different countries to prove it can work. Just give all those actors the chance to do their bit and it will work, from the bottom-up.
Unfortunately development takes a long-time. That must be accepted. Unfortunately there are bad people doing bad things which is continually restricting development's potential. That must be accepted and worked around. There are many exciting examples of development taking off -explore the nextbillion.net, ashoka.org and hundreds more organisations that are connecting technology, people and organisations to create more success and scale-up successes to create greater impact.
Development in its modern sense is about government -yes, in theory good governments lead to their citizens creating their own development by operating in a peaceful society which respects rights and gives the freedom to make the most of the market. Unfortunately most governments in impoverished countries are not like this, and trying to change those governments has (as history has shown) only made things worse. Stability and peace is the most important requirement for development. It would be nice to have functioning education, healthcare etc.. or even a functioning market, but without these, it is necessary to help create them.
If governments cannot create them, then other actors must and this is whether civil society comes in: NGOs, trade unions, co-operatives and of course, individuals. Of course there is a role for business/entrepreneurship too. Development is about all of these actors, and it is not failing; it is struggling to be efficient in overcoming the government deficiencies, the market deficiencies and the instability most developing countries are in.
Secondly development as seen by grass-roots organsiations, individuals themselves, and now even by the UN/IMF/WB is now seen as the opposite of what the article describes: it is about bottom-up, empowerment, skill provision, access to markets and so on. It is about partnership between different societal actors and it is about, eventually, reforming those limiting factors -especially government, through a gradual process. It takes time to educate citizens, train teachers or health workers, or create distribution channels for medicines, credit etc.
Once countries have skilled empowered citizens, they will inevitably be able to enter government or create new (capable) governments. If the WB/UN/IMF model has failed, that is really of little significance to development now, as those actors are now so minor. Much more important are civil society actors, entrepreneurs and 'foundations'. Development has barely even started yet... but in the last decade or more, it is sure that there are enough cases of it working in different ways in different countries to prove it can work. Just give all those actors the chance to do their bit and it will work, from the bottom-up.
Unfortunately development takes a long-time. That must be accepted. Unfortunately there are bad people doing bad things which is continually restricting development's potential. That must be accepted and worked around. There are many exciting examples of development taking off -explore the nextbillion.net, ashoka.org and hundreds more organisations that are connecting technology, people and organisations to create more success and scale-up successes to create greater impact.
Monday, July 02, 2007
Not Zimbabwe again
A topic I have not touched for a year or more; orginally writing about how the West should be ashamed for not doing something about a country that is constantly getting worse. Well, finally, as the problem has got worse, some other African countries have been forced to do something. Not because they really want to help of course, but because the problem is so bad that at least a third of Zimbabweans have fled their own country, many to South Africa. The migration is having such an impact on South Africa it has been forced to at least acknowledge the problem and started to apply some pressure.
The pressure makes no difference; Western countries ignore the problem; Zimbabwe gets worse. Inflation at 3,000% was bad, now it is above 15,000%. Prices triple every month. Salaries double every 3 months... an imbalance that means poverty is just getting worse and worse -a vicious cycle has taken hold leading to worse health problems and worse educational facilities. How can this cycle be broken? Even if Mugabe falls, even if the transition to a stable leadership could be relatively smooth (which would be a first through out the World), how long will it take to recover? to rebuild, to retraing, to re-attract talent...
But first we need to convince our governments to do something. To get rid of Mugabe and his cronies and try to help Zimbabwe find itself a decent leadership. Then we can think of trying to help. The future is not good. If anything it is, unfortunately, a case of how bad can a dictator mess up a country, before it actually self-implodes? It seems, regrettably, like we might be finding out in the next year. At least something might change soon -but only because the situation is so bad. And what do we do about it?
The pressure makes no difference; Western countries ignore the problem; Zimbabwe gets worse. Inflation at 3,000% was bad, now it is above 15,000%. Prices triple every month. Salaries double every 3 months... an imbalance that means poverty is just getting worse and worse -a vicious cycle has taken hold leading to worse health problems and worse educational facilities. How can this cycle be broken? Even if Mugabe falls, even if the transition to a stable leadership could be relatively smooth (which would be a first through out the World), how long will it take to recover? to rebuild, to retraing, to re-attract talent...
But first we need to convince our governments to do something. To get rid of Mugabe and his cronies and try to help Zimbabwe find itself a decent leadership. Then we can think of trying to help. The future is not good. If anything it is, unfortunately, a case of how bad can a dictator mess up a country, before it actually self-implodes? It seems, regrettably, like we might be finding out in the next year. At least something might change soon -but only because the situation is so bad. And what do we do about it?
Sunday, October 22, 2006
Decline in leadership- what next?
When your leadership role decines, and this seems inevitable, what do you do? Try to postpone the inevitable; try to prevent it through eliminating the competition; accept the decline and manage it to your own benefit or are there other options?
Some could argue the USA faces this option in the next 20-30 years. As sure as people cannot live forever, empires cannot live forever and the USA will need to sacrifice its individual dominance of the World at some point -maybe to China, maybe to China and India combined, or maybe it will just have to share its dominance with either of those (or Europe etc)?
Previous empires have tended to implode through over-stretching or because the competition beat them (often in a group) or because someone else just developed to be better.
Let me introduce: The Project for the New American Century is a non-profit educational organization dedicated to a few fundamental propositions: that American leadership is good both for America and for the world; and that such leadership requires military strength, diplomatic energy and commitment to moral principle. Now this seems to imply that the USA will not give up its leadership position.
Fair enough -let PNAC research this (and who knows how much support it actually has from the 'powers that be'. But what would be better for the USA is to also have another think-tank entitled: Project for the Non-American Century which could explore what the future might look like under a different country (or group of countries)'s leadership. It could explore what the US could do to ensure it still benefits from this decline, how to deal with the psychological implications, how to prevent a nuclear attack on the (overtaking) competition and so on.
Even more interesting it could explore peaceful means of how the US could retain its leadership role in a way that is good for itself and others; in partnership with others. Unfortunately political international partnerships (e.g UN) rarely work due to the inherent fundamental need to preserve one's self-interest over all else... simple game theory does not adequately explain irrationality based on human kind's selfishness; or if it does (I am not an expert) then why has no one put forward suggestions to make partnerships like the UN Security Council or WTO work better?
The Leadership of the US needs to be responsible to itself and to others by creating several scenarios of the future and explore each one in detail. Instead of just presuming there is only 1 possible scenario (continued dominance) and exploring how to best ensure that scenario happens. As we are slowly, slowly realising we are an interconnected species on a small planet (witness climate change) and we have to put the 'whole' ahead of ourselves. Other species seem to be able to do this. Are human beings up to the task?
I would hate to see yet another cold war of some king... one that might end up warming up just a little too much..
Some could argue the USA faces this option in the next 20-30 years. As sure as people cannot live forever, empires cannot live forever and the USA will need to sacrifice its individual dominance of the World at some point -maybe to China, maybe to China and India combined, or maybe it will just have to share its dominance with either of those (or Europe etc)?
Previous empires have tended to implode through over-stretching or because the competition beat them (often in a group) or because someone else just developed to be better.
Let me introduce: The Project for the New American Century is a non-profit educational organization dedicated to a few fundamental propositions: that American leadership is good both for America and for the world; and that such leadership requires military strength, diplomatic energy and commitment to moral principle. Now this seems to imply that the USA will not give up its leadership position.
Fair enough -let PNAC research this (and who knows how much support it actually has from the 'powers that be'. But what would be better for the USA is to also have another think-tank entitled: Project for the Non-American Century which could explore what the future might look like under a different country (or group of countries)'s leadership. It could explore what the US could do to ensure it still benefits from this decline, how to deal with the psychological implications, how to prevent a nuclear attack on the (overtaking) competition and so on.
Even more interesting it could explore peaceful means of how the US could retain its leadership role in a way that is good for itself and others; in partnership with others. Unfortunately political international partnerships (e.g UN) rarely work due to the inherent fundamental need to preserve one's self-interest over all else... simple game theory does not adequately explain irrationality based on human kind's selfishness; or if it does (I am not an expert) then why has no one put forward suggestions to make partnerships like the UN Security Council or WTO work better?
The Leadership of the US needs to be responsible to itself and to others by creating several scenarios of the future and explore each one in detail. Instead of just presuming there is only 1 possible scenario (continued dominance) and exploring how to best ensure that scenario happens. As we are slowly, slowly realising we are an interconnected species on a small planet (witness climate change) and we have to put the 'whole' ahead of ourselves. Other species seem to be able to do this. Are human beings up to the task?
I would hate to see yet another cold war of some king... one that might end up warming up just a little too much..
Monday, September 25, 2006
Stability
Stability and change. Most people, especially in the corporate World will argue that you need to continue to innovate to succeed. In literary terms you can find 'sayings' both for and against change; in political terms everyone is always talking about change; in our personal lives we are always against change and upheavals.
I find this topic interesting just because in different situations, leadership might require stability, and others might require change -and it is impossible to create any kind of generalisation or advice on this. There are, of course, issues related to responsible leadership: a duty to understand what impacts changes might have on people (many are unforeseen) or a duty to be brave enough to change ahead of the times rather than after the times, in order to remain competitive.
I want to focus on the Political World though: Looking at Iraq, life was not great before Saddam Hussein, and it will hopefully be much better 'after him' -though when the 'happy' 'after him' period arrives is anyone's guess. Change is never easy (personally, politically or professionally) and Iraq is a simple way of asking, is the change process worth it? Even if the end result is better than before the change, the change process might be so bad (or so long) that is outweighs the benefits of the change altogether.
People like stability; people do not like to take risks and there needs to be a big enough motivation to take risks; or else those risks won't be taken. You could argue that in Iraq things were not bad enough (yet) that people were willing to risk doing whatever was needed to change the status quo. Now its clear that it is not so simple as to say that the US acted like an external consultant, assessing that 2002 was the time that the change should happen: that the risks were good enough (because there were many reasons for their intervention); but looking at a political situation through a corporate viewpoint draws interesting parallels.
Who should instigate change? The internal staff (or citizens) or the external consultant/new CEO (revolutionary leader or attack/'invasion' by another country)? How can the change process be best managed -and what is the goal of that change? Interestingly I think looking at Iraq from a business point of view it's clear that the US (apologies for simplifying such a controversial and complex issue) had a vision for the 'post-change period', but had only though of the first few strategies for getting there, underestimated the time to complete the change, forgotten to think about what the impacts of the change might be on different stakeholders, ignored what the 'competition' might do, misjudged the time frame and so on. Anyone reading this could draw their own parallels to various situations.
The end of the day is that business knows how hard change is, there are thousands of models and theories and good and bad examples.. there are though some simple rules that most MBA schools will teach. But what about political change? Even looking at more modest changes, like a domestic election leading to a change in political party leadership, there seems to be no real understanding of how to create the change, what the vision is, what the strategies are and so on. At least, that is a very initial statement.
With deeper reflection, I believe that there are many successful cases of political change, and what seems to be common with all of them is that change was so desperately needed that it was simple and obvious to work out the details, the strategies, to get stakeholder support etc. Nowadays most western countries don't have serious need to change, therefore whatever supposed changes they initiate (and most mainstream parties in most developed democracies seem to be very alike) they are not very successful. Now if change was really needed then an extreme party (communist, fascist or whatever) would take over... therein lies the issue: these parties will take over once the need is great enough and they get enough support. However it is in the current mainstream parties interests to stop that from happening.
The competition in the corporate world is much greater; the need for change is often more pressing and more is at stake. Politically countries can afford somewhat to just be stable, making minor changes, and sometimes companies can do the same -other times companies cannot afford that whatsoever. So maybe politics needs to look at itself from a corporate viewpoint; to look at issues about stakeholders, visions and strategies, goals and accountability, 'change or die' perspectives, scenario planning, competitive analysis and so on. This is an interesting topic to explore more of in the future.
Meanwhile I'm more interested in the 'tipping point' that leads to successful changes.. when are what pressures so great that change happens? who instigates the change? was the change worthwhile? For me, time is the most important issue with change. Try to make the change quickly. Get it over with, then tweak it. Everyone will argue with change, no-one likes change, everyone is suspicious of new things and demands will change, pressures will change... so much will change as time drags on that the whole change process becomes based on a cause that has changed and a vision that is no longer relevant. So, responsible leaders need to understand this (no matter what they are leading), they need to prepare, research, strategise. But most of all they need to get their timing right. Make the change at the right time -get it finished when that time is still right.
Then start thinking about other issues in change mangement: expectation setting, vision setting, leadership, buy-in, progress communication, stakeholder participation and agreement etc etc. How much of this has ever been done politically? Only when the situation was so bad that enough people could easily identify the problem and the problem was so serious that it had to be changed NOW and quickly has political change been successful (of course other factors are useful too, like outside support or copying other successful models) -overall change is about time, and about need. Right now some of the world is slowly starting to realise that change is needed, and quickly, to stop climate change or HIV/AIDs. But the world is not there yet. The pressures for change are not direct enough, not important enough, not relevant enough to create the tipping point needed. Lets hope though that this change will come, it will come quickly, be done quick enough, and be successful. Isn't is scary to compare the battle in Iraq with the battle against HIV/AIDs?
When will the end come? Who really wants the end? Are those who have the means to end it willing to end it or do they know how to end it? Is it just getting worse? The longer it goes on, the worse it gets -that is for certain.
I find this topic interesting just because in different situations, leadership might require stability, and others might require change -and it is impossible to create any kind of generalisation or advice on this. There are, of course, issues related to responsible leadership: a duty to understand what impacts changes might have on people (many are unforeseen) or a duty to be brave enough to change ahead of the times rather than after the times, in order to remain competitive.
I want to focus on the Political World though: Looking at Iraq, life was not great before Saddam Hussein, and it will hopefully be much better 'after him' -though when the 'happy' 'after him' period arrives is anyone's guess. Change is never easy (personally, politically or professionally) and Iraq is a simple way of asking, is the change process worth it? Even if the end result is better than before the change, the change process might be so bad (or so long) that is outweighs the benefits of the change altogether.
People like stability; people do not like to take risks and there needs to be a big enough motivation to take risks; or else those risks won't be taken. You could argue that in Iraq things were not bad enough (yet) that people were willing to risk doing whatever was needed to change the status quo. Now its clear that it is not so simple as to say that the US acted like an external consultant, assessing that 2002 was the time that the change should happen: that the risks were good enough (because there were many reasons for their intervention); but looking at a political situation through a corporate viewpoint draws interesting parallels.
Who should instigate change? The internal staff (or citizens) or the external consultant/new CEO (revolutionary leader or attack/'invasion' by another country)? How can the change process be best managed -and what is the goal of that change? Interestingly I think looking at Iraq from a business point of view it's clear that the US (apologies for simplifying such a controversial and complex issue) had a vision for the 'post-change period', but had only though of the first few strategies for getting there, underestimated the time to complete the change, forgotten to think about what the impacts of the change might be on different stakeholders, ignored what the 'competition' might do, misjudged the time frame and so on. Anyone reading this could draw their own parallels to various situations.
The end of the day is that business knows how hard change is, there are thousands of models and theories and good and bad examples.. there are though some simple rules that most MBA schools will teach. But what about political change? Even looking at more modest changes, like a domestic election leading to a change in political party leadership, there seems to be no real understanding of how to create the change, what the vision is, what the strategies are and so on. At least, that is a very initial statement.
With deeper reflection, I believe that there are many successful cases of political change, and what seems to be common with all of them is that change was so desperately needed that it was simple and obvious to work out the details, the strategies, to get stakeholder support etc. Nowadays most western countries don't have serious need to change, therefore whatever supposed changes they initiate (and most mainstream parties in most developed democracies seem to be very alike) they are not very successful. Now if change was really needed then an extreme party (communist, fascist or whatever) would take over... therein lies the issue: these parties will take over once the need is great enough and they get enough support. However it is in the current mainstream parties interests to stop that from happening.
The competition in the corporate world is much greater; the need for change is often more pressing and more is at stake. Politically countries can afford somewhat to just be stable, making minor changes, and sometimes companies can do the same -other times companies cannot afford that whatsoever. So maybe politics needs to look at itself from a corporate viewpoint; to look at issues about stakeholders, visions and strategies, goals and accountability, 'change or die' perspectives, scenario planning, competitive analysis and so on. This is an interesting topic to explore more of in the future.
Meanwhile I'm more interested in the 'tipping point' that leads to successful changes.. when are what pressures so great that change happens? who instigates the change? was the change worthwhile? For me, time is the most important issue with change. Try to make the change quickly. Get it over with, then tweak it. Everyone will argue with change, no-one likes change, everyone is suspicious of new things and demands will change, pressures will change... so much will change as time drags on that the whole change process becomes based on a cause that has changed and a vision that is no longer relevant. So, responsible leaders need to understand this (no matter what they are leading), they need to prepare, research, strategise. But most of all they need to get their timing right. Make the change at the right time -get it finished when that time is still right.
Then start thinking about other issues in change mangement: expectation setting, vision setting, leadership, buy-in, progress communication, stakeholder participation and agreement etc etc. How much of this has ever been done politically? Only when the situation was so bad that enough people could easily identify the problem and the problem was so serious that it had to be changed NOW and quickly has political change been successful (of course other factors are useful too, like outside support or copying other successful models) -overall change is about time, and about need. Right now some of the world is slowly starting to realise that change is needed, and quickly, to stop climate change or HIV/AIDs. But the world is not there yet. The pressures for change are not direct enough, not important enough, not relevant enough to create the tipping point needed. Lets hope though that this change will come, it will come quickly, be done quick enough, and be successful. Isn't is scary to compare the battle in Iraq with the battle against HIV/AIDs?
When will the end come? Who really wants the end? Are those who have the means to end it willing to end it or do they know how to end it? Is it just getting worse? The longer it goes on, the worse it gets -that is for certain.
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