More than eight years since the 9/11 terrorist attack a gaping hole remains in the center of New York City with no sign of closing any time soon. A perspective article by Harold Sirkin (Boston Consulting Group) blames politicization, a “naysayer” mentality, decisions by committee, and bureaucracy. Plans laced with political agendas are first proposed, then evaluated as to why they won’t work, forwarded to committees who try to please everyone, and then implemented through a mind-numbing process. The result: don’t expect the hole to be filled in until sometime between 2014 and 2018. Mr. Sirkin and his group see the indecision and delay in restoring ground zero as symbolic of America’s drift into mediocrity, “shackled” by its bias towards talk instead of action. I think the hole goes deeper, to the heart of modern western culture.
There’s no question politicization, negativity and committee ineffectiveness are the hallmarks of bureaucratic institutions. Like a cultural cancer they insidiously multiply in the lesions where leadership, responsibility, ownership and discipline once thrived. Gradually these characteristics have eroded if not altogether disappeared from our culture, in favor of a nondescript, lowest common denominator pluralism.
Leadership has been displaced by our insatiable desire to “fit-in” or be “OK”, compromising our personal independence and integrity in favor of public opinion polls and consumer surveys. The discipline of “thinking” has been diminished to scanning information prepared by others and going with the majority opinion, as opposed to deciding for ourselves. Personal ownership vacillates with public opinion; our cultural ethos a victim of too much compromise.
Organized religion used to provide a moral compass but the simplicity of the “absolutes” it provided has been lost, if not forfeited, replaced by moral relativity and amorphous ethical principles. Life’s grey areas have expanded to accommodate majorities of people fearful of making hard personal decisions and sticking by them; the “black and white” absolutes of life have been relegated to thin margins on the border of sensibility and the edge of conscience.
Discipline is never fun or easy. Letting life just “happen” is easier than making decisions and living with them. Displacing our personal responsibility onto a committee or onto society in general gives us a free pass to avoid the consequences. If our marriage fails, kids turn to drugs, our world crumbles and our career dead-ends it’s always because of something beyond our control…it’s never our responsibility; there’s always something wrong with our institutions or with society, but there’s never anything wrong with us.
In fairness, avoiding decisions and sidestepping accountability is one of the only coping mechanisms remaining in a complex world drowning in opinions but having little in the way of useful facts to help us face tomorrow. There’s a support group for every failure but little encouragement for success. Avoiding decisions may help us cope with the fear of failing, but it also helps us cope with the fear of success…of sticking our neck out or being too far ahead of the crowd.
The ground zero hole is still in New York because committees don’t lead or make decisions, people do. Similarly, the holes that exist in our society are there because people aren’t willing to take accountability for themselves. As hard as we might try to water-down accountability, avoid leadership, or shirk responsibility, we can never avoid the consequences of our action or inaction. What we need is the courage to lead and be accountable, to take ownership and accept responsibility, to confront our fear of failing as well as our fear of success.
