Time to Lead the Leaders

I was the keynote speaker at, ironically, a state-run employment services agency conference recently. The attendees were talented professionals, highly motivated to get back to work. The topic of the conference was online networking and using LinkedIn more effectively. This audience was attentive and asked thoughtful questions. Then it hit me. These people need to be working fulltime now! There is something very wrong with the once prosperous country I've known.

Businesspeople are champing at the bit to break out of this dragging recession. The problem is they're scared. Massive regulations and threats of new taxation hover. They don't trust Washington because they've been burned too often by politicians making promises impossible to fulfill.

Remember the articles during the last couple years about organizations applying for stimulus money or lining up to take advantage of this or that stimulus program? To be frank, I was disappointed in stimulus seeking executives. To me they seemed like perfectly capable men and women seeking a handout.

Remember all the talk of "the recovery" as though there was or is one? There is no economic recovery. We've been flat-lined or in recession since 2008. It's simply a case for wishful thinking by many in government and the media. They contort numbers to point toward a growth trend, but, so far, it's nothing but talk or wishful thinking.

Pockets of companies and industries are thriving but they are the exceptions and I'm sure there are some in this audience doing well now. Note that even during the height of the Great Depression, 75 percent of the workforce was employed. The fact remains that unemployment is a chronic national problem, unknown in this country for most of my lifetime... until now.

Conventional wisdom in media is very often wrong. The lame, broken-record recovery talk that's starting to fade for lack of fuel is a prime example. The reasons for this deep-rutted, stubborn recession are numerous and by design. Americans don't wait around this long to reverse the cycle of economic slowdown. We're still an enterprising people.

There are deliberate policies and practices in place such as alarming government borrowing and spending that are badly misdirecting our money. Over-burdensome regulations on energy, labor and health care are just a few of our country's myriad systemic economic problems. Suffice it to say there are presently some problem people occupying positions better suited for others.

So where do we go from here? The ballot box in due course but what about this week or next month?

We go to our colleagues, associates, customers and suppliers and we start having some very important conversations. We start taking matters into our own hands. We remain steadfast in the direction of growth and ignore the distractions. We pick up the slack and rid ourselves of the slackers in our companies. We also pick up the slack by helping out the needy in our neighborhoods and stop assuming some agency or church will handle it. We must be that agency and we are the church!

Perhaps most importantly, we need to begin leading our "leaders." They have failed in large numbers and it's useless listening to them spew the same unworkable policies demanding we only double down. Is there anyone who thinks more massive government borrowing and spending is a good idea right now? The only reasons we keep borrowing for a short-term false buoyancy is fear and ignorance. We're afraid of total economic collapse just like we were during TARP. There's an acronym for this kind of FEAR: False Evidence Appearing Real.

Fear is what keeps us from tackling what we know to be major issues in our country; fear of what we think MIGHT happen but probably won't; fear of what we think the other side will do to us! Same thing in our businesses. We don't take action for fear we MIGHT fail. We fear the criticism of peers, clients and competitors. We fear penalties from regulators. Sometimes we don't act when we should because we don't have all the answers; the fear that we could be missing something important.

Here we go again: "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." By the way, it was Napoleon Hill who wrote that phrase for FDR to use during the Depression of the 1930s.

We're dangerously close to "Atlas Shrugged." That means entrepreneurs - wealth producers will completely stop risking their capital because they know most of their eventual profits will be seized or redistributed, so why bother working so hard anymore? Psychology; human nature is a major factor in the laws of economics and good intentions cannot change that - ever.

The short term solution to the bad economy is to buck fear, amass courage and take action in spite of potentially burdensome regulation or policy. Only the private sector can produce goods and services to create real value and honest wealth. Government can only tax and regulate wealth-producing activity, and has it ever! It's time we quietly ignore public and media distractions and concentrate our attention and activities toward private enterprise. There are no government solutions other than smaller, honest government. We in business are the best hope for a true economic recovery. It will take hard work and enough of us have to be willing to lead. I'm game if you are. Eureka! That's the key!

There is tremendous power in collaboration - the "master mind alliance" as Napoleon Hill called it. Empowerment comes from trust and faith in God and each other. If I trust that you'll have my back and I promise to watch yours, I'm more confident that we'll both succeed. Working together always works.

This may be my preachiest article to date and I'm no preacher! I'm simply a man who's experienced economic cycles for the last 30 years and has learned lessons. Doing the same things over and over expecting a different result is insanity. These are insane times.

An "age of wisdom" may be the future result of actually learning the economic and cultural lessons of today. I believe the country is starting to wake up and that may be the best economic news we can hope for at the moment.

Press on!