“Newton’s third law: for every force there is an equal counterforce generated in nature”
Cancel culture, ESG, and CRT cannot succeed because they are divisive, racist, and deny the pursuit of excellence and promotion of meritocracy. No society that turns its back on excellence and meritocracy has ever succeeded. Just ask the Soviet Union. This whole crazy experiment is doomed to failure. Shareholders are already balking at ESG investment strategies. It is only woke, super-large investment houses that are keeping this afloat. They are the oligarchs of today. At the end of the 19th century, it was railroad and transportation trusts that dominated the economy. Teddy Roosevelt broke them up with new antitrust laws. These same laws are still on the books and should be used again. It is time for a reckoning.
Companies that drifted into the woke agenda are waking up to the damage caused by an ideology rooted in grievance and division
Companies that drifted into the woke agenda are waking up to the cultural and institutional damage caused by an ideology rooted in grievance and division. Organizations are becoming slower, more brittle, more risk averse, and sluggish in responding to both danger and opportunity. And no wonder, given the corrosive nature of these ideas. No one with a lick of common sense believes this nonsense, yet we remain muted. The time to push back and speak up has come.
As the woke agenda fails and the world enters a period of slower growth, or perhaps worse, a new crisis will emerge. The burning question for leaders will be “How do you restore the soundness of your company, your institution, and your economy? How do you cleanse yourself of these self-destructive values and practices?” It will amount to a massive detox exercise.
This new agenda is not about abandoning progressive ideas but about challenging them. Do they make sense? Do they make organizations stronger and more cohesive, or do they have the opposite effect? The key to digging ourselves out of this mess is to reorient ourselves around the customer and the shareholder, but especially the customer.
Quality Improvement revolution. Focus on the customer and deliver value, and you will prosper
Leaders must stop allowing one narrow constituency after another to capture precious corporate resources when, in the end, it is only the customer that matters. When the customer's needs are met, shareholder needs will be met, employee needs are best met, and so will the needs of society.
This brings us back to antecedents of the Quality Improvement revolution. Focus on the customer and deliver value, and you will prosper. It is not all that complicated. But if the focus instead is on racism or reverse racism, grievance, division, pronouns, and micro-aggressions, it must and will corrode your institution. This ideology infects whatever it touches and too many CEOs have been content to go along to get along. But the tide is turning, albeit slowly, but inevitably. Public institutions, lacking the discipline of a bottom line, are particularly vulnerable to this infection. Many of our universities may already be beyond redemption. They have become intellectual wastelands where healthy debate and...
