Just by looking at Barack Obama we can see a presidency that was, so far, only possible in American series, like “24”. In fact, the film industry in the USA is a strong vehical to prepare the local culture for significant changes. In TV series or action movies the police captain, US President, military leader, is almost always black while the action heros share white and black equally. Watching TV on a regular basis one gets accustomed to the fact that the world is run by black people. It is then not at all strange to see that the US is capable of voting for Obama when everyone shouts for change. What better change than changing 200 years of history by having a charismatic, black president?!

From such point of view the lobby through Hollywood for correct human balance, is historic and has reached its glorious peak when Obama is installed tomorrow. Obama is the living image of a paradigma shift just by standing there. No where else in the world such powerful visual effect of change can be achieved as in America. And this moment in world economic history is also unique and powerful. But all this is marketing cosmetics with a temporary effect. The rise of the “Obama era” has been followed by the entire world but all attach a different significance to the image. America is in deep trouble internally and the rest of the world has followed the American crisis. The US leadership has been the de facto world leadership for the last century, for the better and the worst.

Obama takes the leadership seat while the world is cracked on the verge of breaking up. Obama’s image and charisma suggests a powerful change but Obama is surrounded by people who are recognized by their value and wisdom, achieved in the old paradigma. They do not at all reflect the in depth change that is needed to be carried out in the USA, let alone in the rest of the world. The recently announced economic injection of billiones of dollars into the American economy is not at all transformative, nor do we hear a paradigm change in the words in the speeches of the new president. Too much is expected at this stage from Obama. He has to build in the beginning on a team that does not immediatly equal the in depth change radiated by the image of the new presidency. What we have seen sofar is a face to change the world but a national executive team that represents “more of the same”. I expect in 2009 still little from the USA on world scale or even locally in the US itself. Even though the country has been in crisis a lot longer than Europe the energy of change has been focused only at the change of the absolute top. This will materialize tomorrow, but is a first step only. They still need time now to become aware of the depth of the paradigma change that will truely challenge the American beliefs sofar. That leadership will not depend on Obama only but also on his executive team, while focused on the US primarily with all the unrest and risks that such changes imply.

The rest of the world will be forced to take signficant decisions by themselves which is an interesting prospect on its own. During the development of the credit crisis (october 2008) we could see the USA struggle with their decision making process around the options available to them. Europe, in particular Holland, took the lead by deciding on capital injections into the financial systems in an attempt to keep the money going around. The US followed this decision rapidly accepting the European/Dutch leadership for once. In December 2008 the US assumed its leadership role again, against the advice of European intellectuals, by injecting large sums of money into the car industry. That decision shows the extreme lack of transformative vision in US government to date and the decisive economic leadership potential available right now in Europe. Which is why Europe should take the stand now in the paradigma shift and lead America the way the coming 4 years with example. Obama has all the potential to make the shift happen in his country only, but now needs to rely on European example and wisdom to make his first term a success.

Obama does represent the face to world change, not by taking the lead in the world but by stimulating other leaders to stand up and make the shift happen, for the sake of America and the rest of the world. We owe it to Obama, we owe it to America and America owes it to the world.

(Peter Drucker reference sourcing: Mr. Adriaan Meij, www.ame.nl )

In 1995 Peter Drucker stated that “companies that make less profit than their costs of capital actually make no profit at all, they in fact destruct welfare”. Using this economic reason we go a little further and state that “companies that have no sustainable ideological basis for the material successes actually parasite on themselves and the environment”. Combining both criteria we get our multidimensional model and we use that to index companies along the multidimensional axes representing a forward equilibrium between the moral policy development and capital development. Money is a means not a goal.

We index groups of companies of a same sector and came to the conclusion overall 99% are destructive for welfare due to an excessive material focus. In Holland a colleague company (www.ame.nl)  publishes the index of the top 120 ICT enterprises concluding that they all together invoiced over 631 billion euros world wide, employing nearly 2 million people full time and destructing all together 14 billion euros of our wealth. This loss was the total balans. The companies representing 78% of the total turnover and over 54% of the amont of companies where the worst performers. The balans was lifted to the current level over a deficite of 14 billion by the 22% of great performers. 

Interestingly we did a similar research but without the statistics, since we are more interested in the policies in the boardroom connected to the identity of the company, on supermarketschains, banks and wasterecovery companies. The result was equally staggering  as the ICT branch. Over 75% was not even bothered about their moral responsiibilities distroying happily our habbitat in order to make a profit. Oly a few actually bothered and were even the ones tha presented better overall financial results. All this indexing only shows that large organisations are not at all used anymore to create added value and compete by subtracting values (cheaper labor, cheaper materials, cheaper housing, etc.). When you sum all that up you come to the conclusion that business is destroying everthing we care just by trying to be successful. We did not need a credit crisis to get into trouble, in the end it would have been something else that would have done the same trick.

It appears to be difficult to get back to a situation of competing on added values because of the material mindset of business nowadays. But it is imperitive to do so if we want to get back, in years, to a stable economy again. The world has avoided to change according the laws of sustainability for over 20 years follow the all destructive path that we can visualize now with numbers. We are now confronted with billion of people wanting to live life with welfare instead of a few hundred million. This means that things need to be transformed rapidly, we have no time. So we might as well get started.

If interested download f.o.c. the document “the convenient solution to the inconvenient truth”.