FELDSTED: It’s hard to be a progressive … or … tossing money at this, putting a band-aid on that, and creating a new program (to distract from long-standing problems) is not working
These days it seems that many people, in particular
younger people, no longer gravitate to traditional political parties. They
think of themselves as ‘progressives’ and favour changing of our traditions,
values and society in general. If you
inquire about what they stand for, they use the term progress.
I have nothing against progress. I have little
desire to return to carrying water from a well, using kerosene lamps including
maintaining the darn things, outhouses, scrubbing boards, houses with little or
no insulation, wood stoves and many other things I grew up with.
However, progress requires a few things that
progressives lack:
- Before we can move forward you have to understand where we are, and how we got there … we did not suddenly reach adulthood out of nowhere. We have a history, and have achievements and accomplishments, made over time
- As a society we have made many poor decisions. We have to know what they were, and what the results were, to avoid the same traps in future
- We need some world experience, to make our own mistakes, and hopefully learn from them. Life is unpredictable and capricious. Whatever plans we have must consider illness, injury, demotions, job losses, natural catastrophes and other elements that can knock our plans sideways
- We need practical experience with cause and effect. If we do “A” what results can we anticipate, and what are the results of a worst-case scenario. We need a plan “B” if things don’t work out as expected.
Progress does not well up out of thin air. You have
to have some specific objectives and a plan to meet those objectives. It is
called strategic planning and is in common use. We begin by establishing who we
are and how we got here. That is not all that easy. Most of us don’t employ
honest self-evaluation of ourselves, or our organizations.
Once we know who and what we are, we consider what
we want to be. That is the easy part, but it will undergo a lot of change as we
proceed.
The we need to map out a plan for getting from
where we are, to where we want to be. What specific steps do we need to take to
achieve our goals?
Whatever we are, we use resources – a facility,
equipment, financing, manpower and management to list some. Now we have to look
at how much of those resources we can free up to work on meeting our goals.
That’s where the going gets sticky as we have to assign resources to each step
we mapped out. It is where our goals start to shrink as we don’t have the
resources to accomplish them all. The
result? We need to make some hard
decisions as to which are most important.
I don’t see much strategic planning by governments
at any level. They seem to be swimming in a sea of ever-changing demands and choose
objectives randomly. We have numerous problems that have been problems for
decades. Tossing money at this, putting a band-aid on that, and creating a new
program (to distract from long-standing problems) is not working.
We can’t wish our way to progress – it takes hard
work and planning. Progressive too often stands for change, but change alone is
inadequate to meet our needs. Change without an objective and direction is
meaningless, empty, and unsatisfying. We have had many changes thrust on us
recently, but those changes have increased, rather than diminished, social
dissatisfaction and unrest.
That indicates we are on the wrong
path.
John Feldsted
Political Consultant
& Strategist
Winnipeg, Manitoba
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