In the wake of the presidential election, I have had a lot of discussions with people who have a grave concern about the direction of business in the next four years. If the presidential election was a mandate, you could surmise that 51% of the people of the United States prefer the government to fix all of their problems. Business innovation and hard work seem to have taken a back seat to more federal control of the lives of citizens in exchange for a handout of some sort. The next big question is: what will happen to taxes in the coming years? Obviously someone has to pay for all of this. If the majority of the country is content to stay at home and take a government handout, who pays for it? 

The Land of Innovation seemingly has become the Land of Indolence. For those who are looking to the government to be the pacesetter for business, let me remind you that the federal government – or any government for that matter – does not have a great track record when it comes to new, ground-breaking ideas that rev up the economy. That sort of thinking comes out of business, not bureaucracy. Just weeks ago we reset our clocks from daylight saving time to standard time. We run our lives on this time, with four time zones across the continental United States (Alaska and Hawaii have their own time zones). Do you know where the idea of having time zones came from? You might think it was a government mandate. You would be only partially correct. In 1918, Congress voted to make four official time zones across the United States and put them under the control of the Interstate Commerce Commission. However, the idea came from the railroad business. In the late 19^th century, the railroad was the great connector of travel and commerce. Travel times that had taken days on horseback or weeks on foot were reduced to hours by train. The speed of travel caused a problem for the railroads. Every little town had its own time. People set their clocks by the sun, calibrated by high noon. You could leave one depot at 1:00 and travel for an hour, only to find that the next stop listed the time as 1:45, not 2 o’clock. Keeping the arrival and departure times for so many time zones became a source of confusion and frustration. A new solution was hatched: four time zones across the United States. This was the collaborative idea of the railroads. Not wanting to wait on Washington to debate, compromise, check the political climate and stall the idea, the railroads put the four zones into action in 1883. It was not until 1918 – 35 years later – that our four time zones were officially recognized by the U.S. government. This was long after they had already become the standard for keeping time across North America.

If business needs to be the innovative leader, where is the leadership coming from? Business has been bracing itself for a seismic shift in benefits with the federal takeover of health care, higher taxes, more regulation and the threat of rising energy costs. Profits have become a dirty word in our current situation. What is next? Who wants to raise their head out of the trenches when you are sure to get shot? What is the plight of business when it appears that half the country feels that they are entitled to something for nothing? There is a shift that needs to occur in the thinking of our general population or we will go bankrupt trying to pay for their handouts. That may require that we revisit our definition of the American Dream. Hard work is not something to spurn, but something to aspire. If we are to save our country from bankruptcy, it seems to me that it has to start there. Making something from nothing used to mean you started out from a meager position and worked to improve your situation. That is still possible in the United States. But making something from someone else’s hard work is slothful. That is shameful. That message has to start at the grassroots and make its way back into our society. There is no virtue in laziness. Until we can change that attitude, we will be subjected to the new aristocracy: those who dole out penalties for trying to advance in life beyond the level of the federal handouts.

If there is one thing business can do to change our direction, it is to help change the culture. I do not think that is going to happen with politicians. Just like the shift to time zones, business has to champion this idea and the government will eventually follow. But we cannot wait for the government to act first or it will be a longer wait than most of us have time left on this earth.