It is, I believe, and dangerous mind set.

To be the best, we need a clear set of rules and boundaries. We can identify the best footballer, the best plumber, the best accountant. There are clear and objective measures by which we can judge. However, we are at a point where the most effective people and businesses are, as Seth Godin points out, artists. It’s very difficult to identify the best artists – it lies in the eye and experience of the client. Picasso was not “better” than van Gogh – he was different (and ended up rather richer). Hendrix is not “better” than Bach.

Richard Sennett describes craft as a marriage of head, heart and hand. I think the head and the heart – the knowledge and the passion are clear and consistent over time. In the 21st Century, the “hand” can be more widely interpreted. In pre digital times, it was a relationship between hand and tool that determined outcomes; in a digital age the tool is increasingly a keyboard (or a Kinect), and the flexibility of the tool is huge.. A Japanese master cleaver could create exquisite works of art, or dismantle carcasses with a the same large and heavy implement. Today, perhaps, a craftsman uses a keyboard to similar effect.

The enduring identifier of a craftsperson is that they satisfied only for a moment, if at all. They have a constant pursuit of what’s next, what might be possible, “what if?”

“Best” is a goal. “Better” is an attitude.

I want to work with those who want to be better, not best..

Our brains are geared to prioritise “defensive” reaction to threat over “approach” reactions to reward, so in the current climate of uncertainty (which our brains classify as fear) we can see all the symptoms of fear – avoidance, procrastination, prevarication and caution. In this light, the very title of the talk emphasised threat, and was a powerful priming tool. In his entertaining talk businesses were portrayed as heroic victims, and a variety of culprits were wheeled out, from “professional” politicians and remote civic administration through to the education system, and the predictable bankers.

All in part are true, but the damage lies I think in that “partially”. Having someone to blame triggers the reward systems in our brain, in the same way a schadenfreude triggers pleasure circuits. Having someone to blame means it’s not our fault, and likely to reinforces a tendency towards learned helplessness in a battered region. Given our disposition to fear, the “partially” is dangerous – it clouds alternative views of the situation. I suggest we can choose to see things differently, and far more optimistically.

Firstly, the points made in the talk:

• Yes, our politicians are a motley bunch, but we elected them. Furthermore, as LDJ pointed out, they were upstanding, regarded people before being elected, and I find it difficult to believe that there is some magic ray that converts them to collective evil (with the possible exception of workloads and Whips – but they should be up to this). Also, we have no realistic, short term alternative. Like children, they will react in reflection to the way that they are treated, so it’s down to us; they work for us, not the other way round. We can choose how we enable them.

• Our remote civic administration probably has much to answer for, not least for an astonishing capacity to lose money and be unaccountable for error and chronic maladministration, (as in the MOD). At the same time, I have lived outside the UK, and “bad” is relative.

• Our education system is flawed, but as much by over interference, and imposition of a “mill owner” mentality preparing economic units of production for an obsolesecent workplace. We have the best educated, most connected generations we have ever produced and we choose a system that bores them half to death, and wonder why they are disengaged.

• I struggle more to defend bankers, as much as for their staggering lack of social engagement and responsibility as for an ability to create complex systems and instruments that defy control – but we lauded them, borrowed the money they offered and spent the tax money they generated. In reality, we have been willing and culpable victims.

• Business is not a heroic victim. Business has always been about turning markets to advantage, and dealing with the environment we find ourselves in part of that. At the same time we take justifiable pride in being able to increase efficiencies through quality systems and processes, we can lock our thinking into focusing of efficiency above all else. We can reduce quality defects to a few parts per million, but in doing so pay a penalty. Any job that can be reduced to a specification and description can be sourced just about anywhere n the planet. Great (for a time) if you’re a cost reducing business, less so if you’re a UK based employee with replicable skills. But efficiency is a game of diminishing marginal returns. LDJ mentioned that we are in danger of knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing, and again he’s right – but in this context, I suggest the value we need to consider is the latent talents, skills and insights of our own people – employed, unemployed, retired – whatever. Just as we have created an education system designed to bore children into compliant adults, we create large company structures that leave a quarter of our workforce actively disengaged, less than that actively engaged, and presumably around half as passengers (link to McLeod report). That is a waste of talent, ideas and latent capability of staggering proportions.

Business is about risk. We have created conditions for risk averse compliance in the illusory pursuit of steady predicable returns, and it’s nobody else’s fault. So instead of worrying about Asia’s predatory gastronomic pursuits, we could turn our attention to creating platforms for a different, but equally vibrant form of growth.

The UK has always made it’s living from innovation, idea generation and risk taking so instead of worrying that somebody has taken our toys, we need to build new ones. Instead of worrying about other people educating their populations to produce current products at cheaper prices, we should worry about releasing the latent potential of ours to create conditions for an economy that has less asymmetric rewards, and creatively addresses the zeitgeist – population growth, resources, and disease. These are every much business opportunities as the previous framework of exploiting resources – it’s all a matter of perspective. Along the way, perhaps we can create conditions for new economic and profit opportunities that increases people’s potential for autonomy, meaning and purpose, and overall happiness.

Gregory Berns, a neuroscientist, said that we cannot see what we do not know how to look for. It was Napoleon who said that above all, leaders are merchants of hope. I didn’t see that yesterday, and wished I had. The grounds for it exist – it’s all a matter of perspective.

But here’s what made me think. How many of our interactions with people – customers, suppliers, partners, are similar. Unless we are “ready to go” th minute we have their attention, were sending a huge signal as to where they stand with us. Status is one of th five principal neural drivers of engagement – give me status (like ringing me on purpose, to talk to me, rather than as a potential candidate) and I’ll listen to you. Treat me like a commodity, and you’re history.

Having said that, I am very conscious that I am part of a generation that was educated, trained and rewarded on being able to produce answers. We moved from curious pre-schoolers to graduates to people whose success and progress was based on being able to provide, at the drop of a hat, a research based, case study proven benchmark example of how to address a management problem.

Management Consultants have made good livings at it, and it has given us “gurus” such as Tom Peters and Jack Welch (and this is not a criticism of either – they are great examples, and in Peter’s case, he is the first to acknowledge the failure of many of those businesses he cited in “In Search of Excellence”).

In the last twenty years the business world has changed beyond recognition. The connectivity and communication enabled by the internet has meant that we are in a world close to that traditional state economists dreamed of – we have something close to “perfect information”. We can, pretty much, be aware of everything known by everybody. We have information, case studies and opinions by the digital truckload.

And therein lays the challenge. When all the “answers”, the “solutions” are instantly, and cheaply available, the most important filter becomes the quality of the question. We are bombarded, daily, with answers to problems we are exhorted to accept – from the crass proposals on concepts of beauty and acceptability (from the clothes we wear, to the car we drive) to the job we have (where brawn and money outweigh care and compassion).

I would like, in my own small way, to suggest that it’s time to understand that our individual value – genius if you will – lies in our ability and confidence to question these frameworks. We each see the world differently, and each view is valid.

We face some major challenges, from environmental stewardship to sustainable (i.e. not debt driven) economies, to the uncomfortable fact that any job that can be reduced to a specification and process can be allocated anywhere in the world where the “cost of production” is most efficient.

We also have huge opportunities. Originality, insight and innovation are valuable as never before. I am writing this sat opposite one of the “pilot projects” of Richard Arkwright who was one of the main drivers of the industrial revolution, and on the day Steve Jobs resigned as CEO of Apple. Jobs has little time for focus groups and market research, relying rather on passion and insight to develop a business that had, last week, more cash than the US Treasury.

Perhaps our power lies in our ability to ask ourselves and others powerful questions; those that cannot be answered glibly with an instant “solution” answer; questions that engage our curiosity and enthusiasm, and rely on our insight and confidence to generate authentic options, not “answers”, and in the knowledge that we can find even better questions, and through them,  opportunities.

1. Greatness starts with superb people
2. Great groups and great leaders create each other.
3. Every great group has a strong leader
4. The leaders of great groups love talent and know where to find it.
5. Great groups are full of talented people who can work together.
6. Great groups think they are on a mission from God.
7. Every great group is an island – but with a bridge to the mainland.
8. Great groups see themselves as winning underdogs.
9. Great groups always have an enemy.
10. People in great groups have blinkers on.
11. Great groups are optimistic, not realistic.
12. In great groups, the right person has the right job
13. Leaders of great groups give them what they need, and free the rest.
14. Great groups ship.
15. Great work is its own reward.

We could all do worse than to print this and stick it on our wall.

His point was simple. it was 1997, and he argued that we were spending easy credit to fuel growth through the manufacture of products and services with little inherent value. We were trading efficiency for value.

Fourteen years, a financial crisis with another brewing later, it’s easy to see the power of his foresight. Not only do we now have Chindogu products, we have Chindogu services and Chindogu social media. People entering markets because they can, and because the “transaction costs” that underpinned the original “theory of the firm” have disappeared, anybody can sell anything, regardless of their interest or expertise in it. It’s “efficient” use of their database.

We now have “Chindogu Thinking”. Our education and training programmes have become so prescriptive, many are driven by a “case study” mentality – cutiing and pasting techniques and approaches from one successful case study to a myriad of other situations where the linkage is, at best, tenuous. It’s “efficient”.

But it has little value. Value comes from listening, understanding, thinking, originating and experimenting with a love for what we do. The intent is to delight not just the client, but ourselves. It’s hard work, it involves failure and risk – but in the end it provides delight, joy and value – even abundance – but it surely is not efficient.

Anything that can be reduced to a specification and job profile can and will be copied, and lowest cost wins. Originals have integrity, authenticity and always a chance to speak to the author. Famous artists (Painters, Musicians, Engineeers, Chefs even)  have always had disciples, but they never outsourced.

As our self induced economic woes hit home. Chindogu will be an expensive luxury. However, autonomy, meaning and purpose is not only open to all of us , it is a route to a greater source of value – self respect and joy- but not if we choose to sell our individual genius, our unique views, ideas and talent, to an employer who acts like a commodities broker.

We are all here for a reason. We have something to deliver. We have our individual unique art. It would be a sin to waste it.

Find your purpose, and link to those who share your passion. There has never been a better time to get off the debt fuelled, Chindogu driven roundabout.