19 Jun Do our leaders need to use more the pedagogy ?
I would like to refer here to my article of this blog titled «Tecnocracia and Liderazgo» (Technocracy and Leadership in English). You can use translator if you do not read English, but anyhow I would like to do a short summary now. What I pointed out there is that today our leaders are immerse in technocratic world, where usually they manage too much information. All of us have at hand today lots of data available at our finger tips. Also we can access and process quickly all this information using the advantage of what we call the society of the Information Technologies. But all of us know well what happens when we have excess of information. The decision taking process is affected negatively. I mean: We take more time to take decisions. And not always this means better decisions. Because the good leaders, the people with experience, use to take «good enough» decisions with just limited information. Good enough for me means: Quick, coherent with the settled goals, and controlling the risk, forecasting alternatives such «what I will do if finally happens this unexpected result.»
The decision taking process is the most crucial human activity for his survival. Since child we learn from our fails, and mistakes, improving this process. Only some few people deploy the outstanding skills to lead the others. Just because they probably learn fast from the «try and fail process», which is the main one used to gain experience in all areas. Also because they have a good mix of intuition and analytical mind set. Or also because they process a lot of possible not expected results, allowing them to manage and control properly the risk. And also to reach the goal quickly by successive approximations to it. In my professional life I identified a big lack of training on this. Let me take in more extended way in coming weeks.
In this article also I tackle other consequence of this behaviour. Go too much into details means that we are open to be distracted from the important. Today our leaders are more populist. Also the CEO´s of the big companies. They are more close to what the mass media says or the investors, that in doing a good decision process. Which finally means that the mass media has exaggerate power of influence. And behind the mass media there are lots of individuals that pay for it and that are confused among all this excess of information. But, despite off that their opinion can not be consistent, they play a big role of influencers thanks to the big influence that the mass media have on governments and companies. This, jointly to the ultra fast response we have today to transmit information, sale and buy stock values, etc. is making our world a bit crazy and our economical and social model in crisis.
Let us analyse what happens this last months in Europe: Debt, attack to Euro, development or control, countries rescues, etc. Is amazing to see people commentaries, also in newspapers. Most of the times digging into details, and probably doing wrong assessments. But surely influencing and moving the stocks values up and down, as well as many other economical indicators. We need someone that has the skills to have bird view and wider vision. And make things simpler for the none expert people.
In my humbled opinion we need to start for the top. Is not because the European Union did not do the right things. Or because this or other country do wrong things, or sell debt in excess. The main problem is that in the occidental world after almost 67 years without big wars, and good rate of development, we have not been able to develop the right new social and economical model. We consume in excess, we lost many human values, and our economical mechanisms are obsolete. For instance, stock market now, with the speed we move on, is more a tool to speculate and make money to few ones, rather than a place to create value to companies and market. And simplifying, which some times is good, the owners of our debt and our destiny is mainly in hands of few people: Arabian, Russians, Chinese, and some others. Should we seat down with them? Because probably they are scaring about how we move around all this confusion managing their investments. And the worst for them is that they can not take their own decisions in the countries they invest !.
But this is just an small example and I do not want to make this article longer. Also during many years we offer our back to big problems like Africa and emerging countries like China and India. And now all is global and all influence our life’s. Energy management should be done at global level. We need consensus, but we see what happens up to now, for instance, when we apply global agreements like Kyoto Protocol. Our planet need to be seen as a global subject. Definitively the right people in the world needs to be seated at the same table. With the wiliness to move positions and agree the best for all. Not easy task. But I am confident. Just because the current crisis is showing us that we have reach our limits of stupidity. With luck in 9 or 10 years we can be leaving with this new models full in place.
And I close this dense thoughts coming back to the title of this article. We need that our leaders first, and our mass media after, be simpler when they explain this problems. Is so important!. I encourage them to use their best skills on pedagogy to teach all the individuals that listen and read them. Let me know to use the example of Mariano Rajoy, leader of the Spanish Government trying to explain the agreement with the European Union some week ago to rescue the banks. Despite of the efforts to make it simple, lots of commentaries arisen after the weekend increasing the turbulences of the market. And what we need now is simplify the messages, coherence, some patience and seat down the right people to talk as soon as possible. At least, my opinion is that the European Union finally is starting to dialogue in a positive way.
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