The Call to Globalize

If people, companies and organizations of all kinds are drawn together to form associations for the purpose of exchanging information, networking, solving problems and addressing opportunities—it stands to reason that local contacts are better if linked to regional networks, which in turn are better if they are linked to national networks, and so on.

Ideas have no boundaries, and history has shown that those societies, which create such boundaries or walls, eventually whither and die. It follows from this that those associations that will do best are those that succeed in linking the largest number of the planet’s best and brightest minds. Who does not want to be in the mainstream of human thought?—particularly in those areas that are critical to your livelihood as a professional, as a researcher, or as a business.

The problem of globalization is not whether you should—you really have no choice, any more than you can choose not to breathe! Globalization is simply a fact of life—the defining trend of our times. No, the real problem of globalization is how best to do it—how best to identify the markets that are most important for your organization, as well as the types of sustainable programs and governance structures that will have the greatest change to grow and thrive in those markets.

Simply put, the organizations that are asking themselves these questions right now are the ones that are still going to be calling the shots fifteen years from now.

Self-reliance—Virtue or Vanity?

Emerson’s essay on this topic is inspiring isn’t it? But as articulate, logical and inspiring as Emerson’s essays are, I think that the sage of Concord was articulating, rather than inventing, the values of a national culture that prides itself on the perceived self-sufficiency of those who settled our country.

But is the source of our country’s historic strength really to be found in this idealized notion of self-reliance, or is it to be found rather in the qualities that made another concept possible: e pluribus unum—out of many, one? It seems to me that being able to create a unified vision out of many cultures and languages is a far more noteworthy achievement than boasting of pride in owing nothing to anyone.

Isn’t this—creating a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts--what the “third sector” is all about?

If our nation leaves a legacy to the human race, it will be perhaps because we could show that mankind could rise above its tribal past to create something greater. I recall an anthropologist describing an ancient hominoid skeleton that had lost its arm in an accident. It would have been impossible for that hominoid to have survived such a wound, but the wound had healed—showing that there had been someone else who cared enough and who knew enough to save his life. It was with this realization that the anthropologist knew he was looking at the remains of a human being and that mankind had emerged from his animal origins.