To Succeed W.Va. Can’t Be Infatuated with Misery
Written by Skip Lineberg on August 28, 2007
A few months ago, I attended a lecture by Stephen Dubner, co-author of the best-selling book Freakonomics. The book is heady, quirky, interesting, and informative. You must understand this book is written by economists that study questions in depth. I’m talking thousands of data points and years of observation. None of their answers are anecdotal or thrown together hastily.
“What is it that separates the winning economies around the world from the losing economies? What is that marginal difference between the most prosperous nations and those that are mired in poverty?,” Dubner asked rhetorically.
Wow - what a great question! My ears perked and my brain immediately tuned in. As a proud resident of this wonderful Mountain State, which continues to lag and struggle, despite its resources, spirit, natural beauty, location and other valuable assets, I was ready for some advice. And here’s what Stephen Dubner said:
The economic winners have a clear and widely known plan. They have an overarching set of shared priorities. Whenever adversity hits, as it invariably does (everywhere), the top performing nations and their people quickly “shake it off” and get back on plan. By contrast, the underperforming economic nations become infatuated with individual misery. When adversity strikes the laggard nations, they allow it to consume their every thought and action. He added that these poorest of nations seem to wallow from one episode of misery to the next.
Since that meeting, Dubner’s insight has replayed in my head many times. For me, it begs many questions about West Virginia. Many of us are committed to making WV a better place. To wit, I believe that we must question the reasons why our beloved state struggles, in order to find answers that will enable us to escape those struggles.
Do we have clearly articulated state priorities? Do you know what they are? Okay, can you recite them? (There was a time when I could recite our top four or five state goals. Today I am not so sure.)
Secondly, when adversity strikes, do we quickly shrug it off? Or do we tend to wallow in adversity, becoming mired in it?
Have we, West Virginians, allowed ourselves to become infatuated with misery? Do we drag along from industrial disaster to flood to national criticism? Do we sulk from one bad ranking report to the next utility outage to the next job loss report? From my perspective, I think we do have such tendencies. Dubner’s insight rang true to me. You might say it hit me “right between the panhandles.”
If we apply Dubner’s above economic insight to our shared West Virginia plight, the question becomes: What to do about it?
Step one: Let’s get clear on our priorities. And this means supporting new plans for a change, instead of tearing down those who bring new ideas forward. After all, part of leadership is being a good follower!
Step two: We need to become more adept at overcoming adversity more quickly. Let’s learn to deal with bad news or misfortune and move on. We’ll need to become more optimistic and more thick-skinned. That will be hard, no doubt. As Brian Alcorn (see below post) and others have suggested, the next time an unfavorable news report has WV ranked at or near the bottom, let’s process the information and then set it aside. We’ll need to return our focus on the forward-reaching plan, recognizing that today’s measurements and conditions are temporary, as we are forging progress through change.
West Virginia, let’s become infatuated with winning and succeeding, while we embrace change and forge bold, new, publicly-shared plans.
~ Lineberg is Partner/Chief Creative Officer at Maple Creative. His commentaries appear regularly at Marketing Genius, a blog focused on marketing, research, advertising, public relations and business strategy.
Posted in Business, Culture, Economy, Government, West Virginia
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August 28th, 2007 at 10:19 pm
The Past is Just That
In West Virginia, our attitudes have been conditioned to often look at reality from a negative perspective, and I believe this is the result of a state history filled with political scandal and corporate abuse. “Fatalism” is a point-of-view that suggests we are powerless in determining our own future, and we must quash this mentality.
In order to get things turned around, we must learn from our history. To ensure the mistakes of the past are not repeated, we must take responsibility for our future. Partisan politics is not the answer, and neither is preferential corporate treatment. We should all work with what we have been given (as Brian Alcorn suggests), and be concerned with leveling the playing field so that true opportunity can flourish.
Skip suggests we “become infatuated with winning and succeeding.” That’s a vision I support, how about you?
August 29th, 2007 at 10:12 am
West Virginia is Ripe for a Renaissance
I had a professor once who used an old Chinese proverb to describe WV. He put it much more eloquently than I did because I don’t remember it exactly, but he compared the state to crabs in a pot. Apparently, if you put a bunch of live crabs in boiling water, and one tries to escape, the others pull it back in. I sometimes feel like that’s how West Virginians are. Anytime we get something good (the Clay Center, the new ballpark, new businesses, etc…) people are always predisposed to see only the negatives and not the good that these things can bring.
I think WV is ripe for a renaissance. We could become a really cool little state if we wanted to. Unfortunately, we’re going to have to ditch the “poor me” attitude, look for opportunities, and learn to accept some change.
August 29th, 2007 at 3:48 pm
But there has to be some definition of success and not everybody’s definition is the same. For too many West Virginians success is a new 4-wheeler. Wealthy would be a back-up 4-wheeler. And the people who run the state know this and use those types to lower the bar, keeping wages down and discouraging a diversified economy. That hasn’t changed since the railroad pierced the mountains and it probably won’t change until coal has no value. Call me a fatalist, but until the industrialists are done with us we won’t be able to shed our colony status.
September 18th, 2007 at 1:08 pm
It seems that I too share in the thought of a more economically developed West Virginia. As I continue to post my thoughts and opinions on various subject matter you will find that I do business in about every small and large town in our state. As I meet new people in my travels, I hear these wonderful people clinging to the past. “I remember when the steel plant closed. The town will never be the same” or “Remember when those floods wiped out the entire valley back in 1915? A lot of businesses never re-opened”. Of course these are just examples but you get the idea. However, I do believe a great victory was won when the casino style table games were voted in. I do not possess the luck involved to gamble so I keep away. With this vote and and ultimately 1000 jobs eventually coming our way, not including the revenue from tourism, I believe “The worm has turned.” Maybe this will be the beginning of a new economic turn in our area, or maybe a fiasco in itself. Nonetheless, I see it as positive change and it is always welcome in my state.