In his recent talk at the London School of Economics (listen the podcast here for free), Thomas L. Friedman, bestselling author of The World Is Flat
His reasoning goes like this:
- In the late 1800′s, when the US railroad bubble collapsed, it left the country with an amazing railroad network.
- In the early 2000, when the dot com bubble burst, it left us with a highly developed Internet infrastructure.
- When this latest credit bubble broke at the end of last year, it left us with nothing more than half-built condos and worthless credit.
This got me thinking: In the end, companies go down all the time, people lose their jobs every day, and there is no such thing as financial security. The world is fragile and unpredictable. If my employer went bankrupt, pretty much no one would notice. Or even more, if my tiny home business didn’t fly, who on earth would care?
That’s why we need to ask ourselves a new question: If your company went down today, what would be the legacy it left behind?
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I love your final point and the great info. The only thing I would add is that we don’t realy know what tis downturn will leave behind. Will the stiumulus packages leave behind a legacy of infrastructure for example? Bridges, Roads, sporting facilities?
David Hutchisons last blog post..Goalie News Friday February 27, 2009
@David: That’s a good point. The stimulus packages, if done correctly, might leave an important legacy.
I hope at least some of that legacy will be about making the world a greener place…
Great thoughts. It will be interesting to see what comes out of this depression. It could be something good. Let’s hope so. :)
@Jetro: Thanks Jetro! I hope it will be something good.
But at the same time I’m afraid that the depression is used as a means to put focus and money to all wrong things, like trying to do everything possible to maintain the status quo.
I hope I’m wrong, and individuals like ourselves will change the outcome of the depression…
“If your company went down today, what would be the legacy it left behind?”
Interesting question. Initially, I thought of many good things that I can mention as the legacy of my company (if it goes bust). But then I realised that maybe I am thinking of these good things because I can afford the luxury of imagining without myself actually being negatively affected (well, not that I am not at all affected, but at least I have my job…). Generally, I have observed that there is some time before company goes bust. That time is quite painful and can give one very bitter memories. Now, I am definitely not a type of person who can stand tall & easily forget unprofessional (and probably unethical) behaviour, which I think almost always happens when the company is about to go bust.
Well, I think the last bubble left us a collection of very sophisticated hedge funds and not so sophisticated but equally profit-creating Ponzi schemes :-)
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Good thoughts. I think that to a certain extent we’re participating in a culture of helping on the web. Blog business models involve giving away an enormous amount of information – much of which was not free in the past. If one of these blogs fail, the rest go on.
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So What was Friedmans message??! There was none
@Sean: Hey that’s a great thought! Blogging is different from just any other business in that every one of us (well, most at least) are helping others so that even if we give up at some point, our thoughts still carry on to new blogs…
Also, blogging is cool in the sense that you can always let it rest for a while, and then pick it up when you have something to say.
@sess: I just received Friedman’s book in mail a few days ago. Haven’t read it yet, but I’ll get back to the message thing once I have.
Nice post, the whole economy is just like high and low tide, we can only hope that this whole bullshit does not start too many wars when the governments start printing more money due to them not being able to pay the bills. Good old recession will come sooner or later.
Jarkko,
It’s my first time here on your blog. The question you put at the end is very valid.
“That’s why we need to ask ourselves a new question: If your company went down today, what would be the legacy it left behind?”
My reasoning is, that this latest financial crisis, although did not leave us an amazing railroad network or a highly developed Internet infrastructure, it actually left us something more valuable than that.
And what it left us with (not exactly left yet, though) is a better awareness of the fact that we need to manage our financial systems in a much better way.
It threw in our faces some really important questions, that I hope, once we answer, will make us wiser as human beings sharing this planet Earth.
Good post. Short and to the point. Stumbled!
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It matters for me :)