Riding the current when the current is you

Published 1:47 am Thursday, April 2, 2009

By Staff
Just hours before the start of the New Year, I lifted a glass of Pinot Noir to my lips and made a silent toast to like minds. A common goal, common interests and eyes aimed in the same direction.
A few months later, it seems as though a collective move toward like minds is not going to be easy.
But it also seems as though it has never been more necessary.
Everybody needs a like mind. That's when the little tiny nerve endings on the countless curvy parts of the brain start to wake up with some electric current. The place where ideas are born.
Following the sudden resignation of GM's CEO Rick Wagoner, many have speculated on the government's role in the situation that seems to be spiraling out of control in Detroit.
At the same time, I couldn't help but notice Wagoner's suit as filed video footage played over the television screen. And then I couldn't help but wonder if the situation would be any different if one of the guys, several degrees removed from Mr. Wagoner, working long shifts out on the line might have been the one in the posh office with the button tufted leather chair and gold tipped stationary.
If you've ever stepped inside a machine shop, a tool and die shop or out into a factory line you'll notice the offices still have the distinct feel of the eighties. At least they do here in Midwest America, Main Street America or whatever you'd like to call it. Save for some fancy computer monitors, the world is comforting in a nostalgic sort of way.
I wonder if the situation would be different if the government were meeting with guys who know not just the names of all their employees, but the names of their wives and their children and their grandchildren.
In the same respect, I wonder if journalism would be having as tough a time these days if the big boys were actually run by newsmen. I read about various companies and news divisions whose leaders simply aren't newsmen. Which is a shame. And a peek into why it's possible news, from television to newspapers to blogs and iReports, has become an industry of commentary rather than unbiased journalism and solid reporting.
Daydreaming of like minds at the helm, the big automakers would have never ceased invention. Instead, they'd be sitting on a wealth of new ideas and new prospects for our automobiles that would have seen more men and women keeping their jobs.
Newspapers might have a different look about them. A way to appeal to those who still like to pick a paper up in the morning, smelling the ink over a hot cup of coffee and letting their time while away while they get caught up with what's happening in the world.
Journalism outlets would have significant opportunities to make money and still garner respect from the public they were built to stand up for.
If those who worked their way up from nothing were sitting at the head of some of the biggest financial institutions, I wonder if the judgement would have a different air. I wonder if we'd all be a little bit more responsible, respectable and taken care of.
But daydreaming never got anyone anywhere but a few moments down the road with little productivity to show for it.
Necessity, they say is the mother of invention. So I hope that we start inventing.
The Great Depression may have tested the perseverance and resolve and will of its generation – but it also bred ideas. A recent Businessweek article listed some of those inventions, like the first commercial car radio (1930), the supermarket (1930), the laundromat (1934) and possibly the most important of them all…the chocolate chip cookie (1933).
The history of each product breaks down to simple values, invention of the utmost purity and earnestness.
Steve Prokesch, a contributer to Harvard Business Publishing's Editors Blog, wrote almost a year ago about the need for this kind of thinking in an entry titled "Recession: The Mother of Invention?"
The key seems to be, as Prokesch describes it, an understanding of how to meet and satisfy the needs of customers. Entrepreneurialism flourished where dark skies seemed to hover. "What lessons can managers glean from the 1930s?" Prokesch asked. "The main one, of course, is that the current wave of market upheavals and shifts are providing opportunities for innovation and growth. If you're game for a challenge…" Prokesch said it might be time to reassess, capitalize and take a new approach.
I hope some of those values shine though as this nations divide seems to get deeper between the suits and the souls of the businesses that built this country.
I know there are plenty of men and women going to work in the mornings with ideas circulating, charging the electric currents. I hope that those men and women begin talking about those ideas.
Find a like mind and start cultivating.
Change the course once again.