Politics everywhere
The public got a nice, shimmering spotlight on just what goes on in Washington, and they didn’t like it one bit.
It’s so easily for the public to get lost in details thrown at them over politics done a long time ago, by partisan sources who are all too happy to spin the news one way or another. But this recent debt-ceiling “debate” pretty much showed you what you needed to see over what makes deals happen, and it reminded of this Frontline documentary about what Obama did to make his health care deal happen.
But that got me thinking about the ideals that go into a negotiation, and the reality that comes out of it. Obama was elected promising so much, but then you have to work with the people who are given to you, and vice versa.
In politics, business, or even discussions about interior design, of all things, you have to compete your vision against everybody else’s views, and come up with a compromise. Coming to a deal is not as easy as it looks, and all too often it’s been easier to just give up, and let the other side have their way.
That’s easy, if it’s going to involve something like the interior painting of a house, where the repercussions are mild. But what about if it’s your business vision? What if you need funding, but have to temper your ideal against the reality of outside criticism, criticism that holds the purse strings? It makes me wonder about the market as a whole, and how it is supposed to be the efficient sorter of great ideas versus bad, when it might be the efficient sorter of great compromises, versus bad ones. Maybe you had aims to be the next big social network, but had to niche yourselves in order to garner funding, and that niche strategic move was eventually too narrow. Or maybe the other way around, even.
That’s the sort of thing that not only happens between companies, but also inside them as well, with direction having to compete with that always distorting element of internal politics. The “market” is nothing more than a collection of companies, which should be a synonym for people with conflicting interests. Throw down that mental wall, and think of all these institutions (Goldman Sachs, Facebook, your local Chinese food restaurant, GM, etc) as a bunch of people gathering at this point in time, and things get more complicated: these collections of people all have to collaborate and compromise (unless you have a sole proprietorship, or have consolidated control), in order to execute. But the challenge is having to create a smart result, made difficult by so many other perspectives. My time at Thunderbird had me dealing with people from all over the world, and that was a great introduction to competing visions. You’d think the people in Congress spoke in different languages too.
With new businesses, maybe the best thing would be to not just go with an initial concept, but move further along to an actual working prototype, and maybe even launch that product on a beta basis, in order to build support for your vision, and have that gather steam. That way, you’re not as vulnerable to outside investors who “don’t get it”. However, it’s a balancing act, because these investors can offer you sobering advice that you have to internalize as you move along. It depends on whether you can be humble and practical enough, to accept criticism constructively. Again, it’s on knowing when to compromise, and when to stick to your principles (or vision).
(An interesting article about the background of this debt-ceiling debate)
