Although it didn’t show a great deal of promise in its opening paragraphs, this op-ed in the Christian Science Monitor from Robert Kapp rapidly metamorphizes from a homely caterpillar about the Chinese economy (if you want to read that check out Tom Friedman’s column on any given day) to a beautiful butterfly on the competitive advantages that our economy has that China will be hard put to match.
The advantages he lists are:
- Trust between strangers
- Service-focused organizational design
- Everyone a stakeholder
- Emphasis on action
- Employee initiative
- Follow-up
Read the whole thing.
I might add that all of these attributes are ones very likely to be lost unless we restore our course rapidly and surely.
As I believe I’ve said before, I’m not really worried about China since I think that the country’s internal contradictions will prove formidable barriers to its leaders achieving their goals. To provide just one example, consider that just finding enough literate people to serve as mid-level managers has proven to be a substantial barrier to some companies’ expansion plans there.
