Learning from icons like Steve Jobs and the genius of America

A COLLEGE drop out and global genius is dead. Steve Jobs was a very private person, eccentric and brash. He was fired from the company he founded Apple and was brought back to resurrect it and make it one of the most valuable and admired companies on earth, its stock earlier this year the most valued.To most of the world, Steve Jobs was Apple and Apple was Steve Jobs. What happens to the company’s stock value is now anybody’s guess. A few months ago, I drove past the new Apple campus in Cupertino, California.

Several years earlier, I had the privilege of having Apple managers in a Global Business class that I taught in the Silicon Valley and got to know the company. No nation on earth can replace the “Genius of America” and the “Genius of Steve”.

Lesson one: Never underestimate the power of imagination

The people who came from all over the world to create the greatest economy and nation on earth never went to college. A few like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates attended college, were bored and dropped out. Many of those who went to the most prestigious colleges and universities and got their MBAs, brought about perhaps the greatest economic and financial crisis and near meltdown in the USA and the world.

They also brought the global economy to its knees. We are still reeling from this and are not out of the woods yet. It probably will get worse. Free enterprise, with all its flaws, where everybody benefits and has an equal opportunity to improve their lives, is still the greatest system in the world. Sadly, one human and systemic flaw – greed – took over. Europe gets worse by the day with one of the greatest empires in the world, Greece, nearing shut down. What would Plato, Aristotle and Socrates have thought?

The USA has been, and always will be, a nation of immigrants. Immigrants like the family of Steve Jobs. Other than the American Indians, everybody can trace his or her roots to somewhere else in the world. Since its creation, whenever a crisis struck any corner of the planet, it was America that came to the rescue.  Here in Sri Lanka, I can think of no better example than the Tsunami. I was in Los Angeles when this happened and witnessed ordinary Americans glued to their television screens and heartbroken by the unfolding scenes in Thailand, Indonesia and Sri Lanka.

President George Bush immediately dispatched his father and Bill Clinton to lead and coordinate the relief efforts along with the UN in these countries. Bitter lessons were learned from the past when America should have acted immediately and did not.

Lesson two: Nobody’s perfect

No nation is perfect and the USA is no exception. It has made many mistakes and continues to pay a price for them economically and politically. There is a tremendous price tag to being the world’s superpower. So many of the world’s business and government leaders in every corner of the globe have either studied or lived in America or the West.  The greatest centers of learning are still in the USA and West. Several of Sri Lanka’s greatest sons and daughters were educated in America and the West. The greatest centers of learning in China, India, Singapore and other leading nations enjoy deep partnerships with leading American and western universities.  Leaders from all over the world such as Sonia Gandhi go to America for specialised medical care. No two people, and certainly no two partners in a marriage, agree on everything. No two nations will agree on everything. But this must not damage the relationship. Sri Lanka’s apparel industry has been and always will be heavily dependent on the USA and the West. The founder of the great Chinese company, Ali Baba, said that he studied in America and that the inspiration for him and so many business leaders in China was, and will be, America and geniuses like Steve Jobs.

He wanted America to succeed and get through its current economic crisis. India’s most prestigious companies like Infosys, TCS and others are very “American” and depend heavily on the USA. They are “American” and yet very “Indian”. They draw on the best, not the worst, of both business cultures.

Lesson three: Accepting reality

Yet, why do many Sri Lankans and others around the world want China to beat America - including many who have lived in and been educated in the USA? These are not two competing sport teams to cheer. The global economy however, is.

Today, no two economies in the world are more interconnected than the USA and China. One should not beat the other. They must work together. At the heart of the “problem” between these two great nations, is that they have never really understood each other. China is governed by engineers and the USA, by lawyers! They come from totally different worlds.

With so much at stake both economically and politically in the global economy, there are bound to be disagreements. Each sees the world differently but need each other desperately. One good thing that has happened is that the US Treasury Secretary and the new US Ambassador to China speak fluent Mandarin!

What does all this mean to Sri Lanka? First, let us stop bashing America and the West. Almost everyone in Sri Lanka loves American and western music, entertainment, jeans, fashion, Coca Cola, Pepsi and yes, McDonalds, Pizza Hut and now Domino’s! Just look at the number of American and western colleges and universities represented in Sri Lanka! There is hardly a person in this island untouched by America.

Consider almost all the English channels on cable. Sex and the City and Desperate Housewives are “must see” television to so many of the Hi magazine audience! In an IDP camp sometime ago, I saw a displaced person who had lost almost everything wearing, a Calvin Klein t-shirt. Another in the same camp and a bus conductor in Colombo were wearing a shirt with the letters FBI on it! And what can I say about Victoria’s Secret?

Songs that will never die, like This Land Is Your Land and Neil Diamond’s America makes one wonder why so many want America “beaten” by China. So many Sri Lankan’s tell me, “They are finished man”. Remember the words of America in Neil Diamond’s classic movie The Jazz Singer? “From everywhere around the world, they are coming to America…”

Lesson four: Keeping good ties for the future

My question to every reader is: Do you really want America to beaten? Do you really want China to be the world’s greatest economic and military superpower? Don’t get me wrong - China is a great nation and civilisation. By becoming the world’s factory, it has amassed huge piles of cash that are invested heavily in US bonds because of its confidence in America. This confidence has now been shaken, but America still remains the best bet. China is not America. Both have much to learn from each other. The nation that gave the world Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Sam Walton, Walt Disney, Thomas Edison, Tom Hanks, Oprah Winfrey, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King and put the first man on the moon, will be back! Could any nation in the world, other than an African nation, have elected Barack Obama as its leader? The USA has lost its way and is in “intensive care” because of sheer human greed, an inherent flaw in the free enterprise system. Democracy also is hard and messy. Is the alternative any better?

2012 may be worse than the two prior years, but America will be back. Why? Because China, Japan, India, the European Union and almost every current economic and emerging power, desperately needs the USA to succeed. Yes, even Sri Lanka. Its coffers depend on the West continuing to buy our apparel and other products. Culturally and emotionally, Sri Lanka has been more historically linked to America and the West than any other part of the world.

Lesson five: While appreciating the past

Ceylon was a part of the British empire. They gave us the language of the world, English, and what was once an excellent education system. Now this system is in crisis with foreign universities and some sort of “international” school in virtually every block in Colombo. Today, the biggest demand in Sri Lanka is for English language classes! Every time I venture out, I find myself correcting the English of almost every front line worker in this country! Very often, it is beyond the front line.  So let us come to our senses, remember what American and global icons like Steve Jobs taught us, and stop bashing America and the West. Only in America was a Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Thomas Edison and Walt Disney possible. No two people or nations will agree on everything all the time.

(The writer is Founder/Chairman, Center for Global Leadership Worldwide LLC. He can be reached via [email protected].)