MAG:  Rosabeth Moss Kanter is a distinguished professor at Harvard University, former editor of the Harvard Business Review, best-selling author, worldwide consultant to organizations.  She has been named one of the 50 most powerful women in the world, and one of the most influential business thinkers in the world.  Her newest book, America the Principled: 6 Opportunities for Becoming a Can-Do Nation Once Again, is one of the best books I've read in years.  If we could all read this book, we could start on a new path.  Good evening, Dr. Kanter.

 

RMK: Thank you for that very nice plug for America the Principled.

 

Mag: I was privileged to work with Dr. W. Edwards Deming through the years, and have always followed your work and used it in change.  I am so pleased to see that you are applying almost everything you know to changing America rather than just organizations. ...  You start out with a quote: "Now is the winter of our discontent," and you talk about now being the winter of America's discontent.  Could you explain what you mean?

 

RMK: For the last seven years, we've had a very negative mood in America, more so than what we had in the exuberant 90s.  Maybe we overdid it in the 90s, but it was a time of peace and prosperity, we were positive about globalization, we thought that new technology was going to create new opportunities, and then we entered the 2000s, the 21st century, and  we hit a recession almost immediately, because we had overdone it a bit with young dot com companies.  Then we had the terrorist attack in New York, and all of a sudden things clamped down.  We became afraid; we lost that national, positive, can-do exuberance.  When we started to come out of that collective depression, we discovered that countries we used to think of as less developed, like India and China, were suddenly booming.  Then people began to fear the loss of American jobs and that again dampened the national mood.  I think much of our political discourse contributed to that.  We heard about clashes of civilizations, as though the enemies are out to get us all the time, and it was so extreme as though it was everyone who wasn't from America.  Then we started an unpopular war, and our allies were not with us.  So it's been a very difficult time.  Even now, our economy is distressed, although the stock market has been booming, but there are also weaknesses.  We haven't addressed many problems at home because of all the energy and attention spent on the war.  On the whole, the view of America around the world is increasingly negative, even though people still like us as people, better than they like the country of America these days.  That's sad to me; this is not the country I grew up in and it's not the country that I want for our future.  So I want to help us build on our strengths, get back to our core principles again, and be a force for good in the world, and that would help us at home, as well.

 

MAG: You also talked about how Americans have lost faith in their government.

 

RMK:  We've had 25 years or more of rhetoric that says that "government's the problem, it's not the solution.  It's your money, not the government's money."  Well, as our new governor of Massachusetts said when he was running for office, "Yes, it's your money.  But, it's also your roads, your bridges."  When the bridges started falling in Minnesota, I thought taking care of our infrastructure is one of the things we expect government to do in a competent way.  But politicians have been saying, "I'm running for office so I can shut government down," and we did have a government shut-down for a day in the 1990s.  That isn't the kind of country I want.  We never thought that we should have big government in America, we always thought that government that governs best, governs least.  But you can't govern least if you don't govern well, and that means respect for public service.  During the Clinton administration, they had a program called "re-inventing government" where they managed to save taxpayers money because they managed to shrink the size of government while providing better services.  They were able to do this because they appointed people who were really good people and they believed that public service was an honorable calling.  In the 2000s, in an environment where there still is all this rhetoric about needing tax cuts while trying to pay for a very expensive war, the rhetoric is still very anti-government, and yet we're spending more.  The size of the government is larger than it was before.  So there's something wrong there, and I think that ought to be fixed also.  I want to restore respect for government as something that's honorable, and that leaders can run in an ethical fashion, responsive to the voters and their constituencies.

 

MAG: You talk about going back to the ideals and the ideas on which this country was founded--needing a new vision for America, a return to an open society.  Could you discuss that?

 

RMK: The open society idea, that's how the country started.  I always thought, and still do, that this is the greatest country in the world.  I love other countries.  I love to travel, I love the food, the interchanges of people, but I always thought that there is something special about America.  My grandparents came here from Europe to flee an oppressive regime, as many people did.  We were a nation of immigrants.  We were the first nation that was defined not by race or ethnicity, but by standing on the same territory.  AND we always welcomed people.  Now, we didn't always do it easily, there was always some resistance to immigrants, but we were open to the future.  Our minds were open to new ideas.  Perhaps that's even more important than our borders being open -- our entrepreneurial spirit that has made our country so strong.  Our ability to innovate -- that's kept us prosperous all these years.  Now that we are no longer the largest producer of engineers and scientists, China and India are coming up strong, we don't know what will happen when Europe gets its act together as a united Europe, so we don't stand alone in quite the same way as we used to.  But we'd still have all that ingenuity and brain power if we'd put it to work, so we can't afford anything that closes people's minds, including an administration that says that there's certain kinds of science you can't do.  The states are now taking on stem cell research themselves, because the federal government put on limitations.  If we close our minds and don't explore and discover, then we don't have much of a future.  So, I would like us to return to something that, ironically, is our way of creating an even brighter and better future.

 

MAG: In any change, you have been a proponent of the importance of vision and identity.  Do you think we've lost that vision and identity?

 

MRK: Of course, vision is a very important part of creating the future; it's an important part of leadership.  I think we ought to make sure that we're looking for people who have vision.  We're now in a presidential race. I think we shouldn't just ask, "What's your plan and how much is it going to cost?" on specific issues. I think we should also ask, "What's your vision? What's the picture you can paint about what we can do?" Now that picture has to have some reality behind it.  But if you don't inspire people ...  Growing up, during the presidency of John Kennedy, he put a national vision before the American people, to put a man on the moon, now we'd say "person not the moon," but it was very inspiring to all of us.  It pulled us together as a nation, there was something we could all be proud of.  If Boston could come together as a community in enthusiastic support of our Red Socks, we need that same ability to inspire people to get behind some great causes.  What if we decided to be the greenest nation on earth? We're not, actually, and many European countries are ahead of us in developing green technologies.  But what if that were a national mission or purpose?  We inspire people, it could be sources of funding, we could check how well we're doing.  It's not as concrete as a single man on the moon, but we could find the equivalent.  And I think that's what leaders do if they want us to change.  Otherwise, we stay in the winter of our discontent.  You posed it very well, that is a lesson I learned about change a long time ago, that people will stick with a painful present if they don't believe that a positive future is possible.  So I wrote America the Principled to help people believe that a positive future is not only possible but it's something that we can do regardless of who is in the White House.

 

MAG: But we have to lead with that greater vision and that's difficult today because everybody wants something very concrete, where a vision is of a higher nature and can be ambiguous.  All those statements that move us like "All men are created equal," "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," "I have a dream," they're visions that touch us.  But it's hard to put them down to the concrete.

 

RMK:  I think you need a combination of both to make change.  You need an inspiring general statement that is large enough that it encompasses everybody.  A vision needs to be inclusive.  Then you need a first step.  You need actions that people can take to realize the vision.  So I think it would be irresponsible for a leader to say things and then not act on it.  For example, we know that improving K through 12 education is important for this country, and it's not only the inner cities that are falling behind, but in some suburban schools where our kids who are really smart and who have all kinds of privileges are still not doing as well on international tests such as science as kids from some other countries.  So education could be a grand national purpose.  So then came the "No child left behind" act.  That sounded really good as a vision.  But it wasn't funded very well, and schools were forced to do all kinds of things for which they didn't have the money and they were being held accountable for things they couldn't control.  So you're absolutely right, you have to have first steps in order to make change but you also need the grand vision.  So it's a combination of both of them.  If you're going to ask people to go through the hard work of change, then you have to call them to a value they care about, and you have to show them that they are going to see some results pretty soon, that everybody else is doing that, too.  We had a pretty wonderful opportunity right after a horrible tragedy which was 9/11.  After 9/11, people were ready to serve, but we did not have a national call to action.  We have a national service program called Americorps, and we've had lip service in the past few years about a modest expansion of the number of young people who can serve their country as civilians, but mostly, we've been calling people who don't want to go to serve in the military in Iraq, and we have not yet gotten that sense of service back into our communities.  I know people are hungry for it.  One of my six opportunities to become a can-do nation in America the Principled is community service, and I know people care about that.

 

MAG: One of my favorite quotes is from Proust, "The real act of discovery is not in finding new lands, but seeing with new eyes."

 

RMK: That's a lovely quote.  That seeing with new eyes, absolutely.  Everything I talk about in America the Principled is both idealistic and practical.  In the United States, there are examples and models of everything I talk about and the issue is whether we can make more of those kinds of opportunities.  But they have to actually exist.  There are actually schools that run on new principles, there are wonderful community service programs, there is volunteerism, there are examples of other ways to engage with the world and contribute internationally.  There are examples of companies that do things well and workplaces. ...  You mentioned earlier "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." I called Chapter 2 PURSUING HAPPINESS, and it's about work and family, and there are examples of how we can fix these things.  They've got to become national priorities, and that is partly up to all of us.  That's why I'm thrilled to be talking to your particular audience because I heard you say that we've all got to get involved.  We have to demand that our leaders work on these priorities that will make it possible for us to live good lives here and now and insure prosperity in the future.

 

MAG: How else should citizens start to see with new eyes? So many people feel disempowered.

 

RMK: Yes, many people do feel disempowered.  That's the nature of this era we're living in.  An example of this is getting on an airplane.  It's humiliating --being strip-searched.  We're reminded all the time that we have to be told what to do and we have to live in fear.  Our liberties might be eroding.  But one of the things that will make our streets safer is if more people are out on the streets, more people communicating with each other.  It appears that part of the problem that led to 9/11 was that various levels of government -- various offices within the FBI -- were not communicating with each other. So if you don't have good communication at that level that's a real problem.  And we've got to have good communication within our communities.

 

One of the proposals for civilian national service that I mention in America the Principled is a civil defense corps in which people in neighborhoods learn what to do in a disaster and who to go to, and you have neighborhood captains and people are organized.  So all of those things would help us feel empowered and that there are things we can do to make a difference.  Friends of mine have been organizing new nonprofits and new things to do.  One friend organized a group of women who went to New Orleans and built a Habitat for Humanity house.  Everyone came back feeling tremendously empowered and that, even in that small way, they had made a difference.  There's nothing more empowering than giving to somebody else of yourself.

 

MAG: That's the lesson, I think, because if we are not getting what we need from the leaders of this country, then I think it's up to We the People.

 

RMK: That is always what we were founded on.  It was never the federal government. It was our own entrepreneurial spirit, not only in business, but also in community.

 

MAG: I love your play on commons, starting from the idea of the people meeting in the commons to discuss things, and moving that to today.  Could you discuss that?

 

RMK:  All New England towns have commons in the center, and that's where people went to graze their cattle.  It was public land and people talked to each other and what defined community was that you used these common lands.  So I was thinking about the winter of our discontent, and what came to mind was the spirit we want in America and the equivalent of the commons is summer and the public beach.  The public beach is one of the few places in the country where the people trust strangers.  People will leave their belongings on their beach blankets and go for a walk or in the water, and they're sitting in the middle of complete strangers.  There was even an experiment that showed that, if asked to guard belongings, strangers would guard them ferociously.  Ronald Reagan coasted to office when he said, "It's morning in America." People loved his optimism and his image of morning after the dark.  So I thought, after winter, when we feel closed, how do we become an open society? We recapture the spirit of summer and summer is not only when we trust, it's when we all wear the same kinds of clothes.  It's hard to tell who's rich and who's poor.  It's a magical time.  We think of family time.  I want to restore that spirit where family really matters, where people can be at leisure.  Americans don't take all their allotment of vacation time because people are so overworked and so overstressed.  I care about the economy and strength of the country, but I also say that the purpose of making a living is to make a life.  So that's part of the principle behind America the Principled.

 

MAG: You talk about America as an idea. We had Dr. Gordon Wood, the historian from Brown University, as a guest, and he said, "To be an American is not to be somebody but to believe in something." And it's those shared ideas that create the future, and that's what I think we're missing -- the shared ideas that broaden and meet that community.  And I think the threats today are interfering.  I'd like to turn to my favorite quote from you that I've used in more organizations and get your input: "Change itself is a process.  It is the ability to conceive, construct, and convert into behavior a new view of an organization or in this case American reality." I think that sums up, for me, what change is about.  Could you explain for our audience why change is a process?

 

RMK:  Change is a journey, not a destination.  It's a process of getting somewhere toward a dream, but you don't rest there, you keep on moving.  But you have to believe that it's possible.  I'm at a business school and I'm very pragmatic, so I understand all the financials about a business, but I also see how important it is for people to have faith, and even the best business plan is only a matter of faith.  It's the belief that you can get there that motivates the effort to do it.  So change begins at the moment you begin to see that something else is possible and move towards that goal.  And then you construct the new reality.  But sometimes, that new reality was there all along.  As I said earlier in the program, everything I talk about in America the Principled is not a dream, it's something that exists somewhere in America.  So the elements are often already there in your organization or community, and it's a question of seeing them, pulling them together, making more of them, investing in them, communicating them.  We often don't need to construct something that's totally new.  People don't like change because they think it means giving up everything they've got.  I think change means making more of what's already here.

 

MAG: This is definitely something we have to work on.  Another problem we have is that, in our society, we expect instant gratification.  If you're not right the first time, it's a mistake rather than learning.  Would you comment on a learning society?

 

RMK: A learning society is one that takes information and tries to improve on the last time you did it.  I once changed that slogan from "Do it right the first time" to "Do it better the second time." I've been hearing about instant gratification for decades.  We've always had this tendency in our country because we're a country that keeps moving, so I don't think that's particularly new today.  But I do think that new technology gives us a shorter attention span; we want to multitask, but that isn't so terrible because if you can't communicate what you're trying to say in a succinct way, you often don't really understand it well.  I find that the more I know about something, and the more experience I've had with it, the shorter I can be.  So, actually, America the Principled is the shortest book I've ever written because I really knew what I wanted to say and didn't have to ramble around a long time.  As long as instant gratification is leading you to something longer-term at the same time, ...  I think we have lost a little bit of the long view, but I'm not sure there was ever a time in this country where the majority of the population sat around and reflected.  Now my grandfather, who was a rabbi from the old country, and who everybody said was not very practical, he probably did that.  But today, people who earn a living do need to think a little faster, be a little faster, I don't know whether we'll be able to change that.  But we need to keep repeating core principles.  This is why we need core principles and values even more, because as the world speeds by us, we need things to hang onto.

 

MAG: We need that in Congress, too.  We need those overarching principles to be that framework from which all other things derive.  I know that one of the companies I worked with put in their statement that once they set their vision for the future, they would examine every action, every rule they had, to see whether it supported or inhibited progress towards that overarching vision.

 

RMK: You need to have the vision out there.  Then you need to test everything against it.  But first, you need a consensus.  One of the reasons I actually wrote America the Principled was because I wanted to put forth a progressive open society view, and I felt that a lot of politics is not giving us a coherent vision so this then gives us a standard that we can put in front of the people running for office and ask, "Are the things you're doing consistent with this or not?" I know that on a two-year election cycle, it's very difficult.  Now that elections are so expensive and everybody starts running the moment they get elected, that is a problem, and I don't know how quickly we're going to be able to do anything about the problem of money and politics.  But where voters, citizens can play a role is trying to have a set of principles and ask those questions of the candidates all the time.  This book is being put in front of many candidates for many different things, even though it's just come out.  Some advance copies have been floating around.  I'm one voice, although Harvard Business School is a pretty good pulpit, and I'm pretty well known, but I think there are many voices and we have to sing the same song.  And I thought I could at least model trying to put a set of ideas out there and hope that they'd make a difference, and hope that other people adopt them.  It's great that you're taking this on, and that you're attempting to put these ideas out in front of people.  I hope your listeners are taking good notes.

 

MAG: Many of them are in the voting community trying to safeguard our vote.  You had a great comment in your book where you mentioned about a young man asking why voting is a better mark of citizenship even than volunteerism.

 

RMK: Yes, you have to do both.  But if you don't elect the right people, all your volunteer work isn't going to matter as much.  One of the criteria for graduation from Americorps, in addition to the tutoring in schools and doing lots of good work, is that they need to register to vote.  That's really a precious right, and we don't want to lose that right.  Unfortunately, there is a sense that votes don't matter.  In Florida in 2000, and in Ohio in 2004, a few votes mattered a lot.  And it's also one of those rituals of citizenship.  Voting and volunteerism are things we should be bringing around the world.  We didn't do it in Iraq.  Although we had elections in Iraq and Afghanistan, we had no way of creating community service or other things that citizens do, so I think we need both.

 

MAG: You had mentioned that voting shapes the commons, and after that, community service enhances it.  Before we go, could you please comment on the importance of packaging those small successes as being critical to change?

 

RMK: We've been talking about the big vision, but I also think change occurs because of lots of small wins, the daily acts, the things that add up.  The big vision consists of a lot of small steps and we do have to acknowledge them.  We have to empower people to take any kind of initiative.  There was a theory about crime in New York that said that if we only fixed all the broken windows, the crime rate would go down because the people would see that the community had respect for the physical environment and so that would change people's view of what their responsibilities were.  I was recently in Egypt, and I was struck by the amount of garbage in the street.  And I thought, "How can a society develop unless people feel pride enough not to throw it in the street, but also to have a public sector that collects the garbage?  Sometimes, it's those small things that matter to people -- the things they see every day.  I mention a person in New York City who planted flowers around a tree stuck in a concrete sidewalk.  This simple act of planting flowers got the neighbors talking with each other.  For example, they took turns watering the flowers when she went away.  Suddenly, there was a neighborhood in a whole bunch of highrises where people didn't even talk to each other before that.  That could lead to a whole community garden program.  It just enhances the quality of life.  I spend a lot of time with big corporations on big deals -- mergers, acquisitions, big strategic moves, but I also know how much those simple acts in every community make a difference and I want to see more Americans do those things.  I think many do already, but I'd like that added to our national sense of purpose and I'd like us to take that to other countries.  Instead of exporting war, I would like us to export the generosity, the kindness, the philanthropy of so many Americans.  That's some of what America the Principled is all about.