How to bring about creative change

Perhaps the greatest problem in making imaginative and effective change of any kind is getting any two people to agree on a goal and a strategy for achieving it – and then seeing the plan through to success.  

Americans, with their deep-dyed romantic traditions of rugged individualism, always seem to be starting their own little solo things instead of working together on projects that could have more impact because of their larger size and numbers of participants. I’d be entertained to see, for instance, a comprehensive list of all the foundations my countrymen and -women have started over the last 50 years to help stamp out diseases, problems or moral wrongs that hurt their loved ones. I’d also like – maybe less – to see a list of all the redundant little businesses Americans have set up and seen fail. 

Being American myself, I think individualism matters for many reasons, one of which is that encourages every person to have confidence in the power of his or her own initiative. You don’t get anywhere if everyone waits around to be led.

But the truth is, you also don’t get far enough if everyone is charging off in 300 million different directions. We tend to do that here.

Maybe we should try something else – like identifying our most important creative goals, pooling resources and working together to get results instead of each one of us closeting himself with his ambition and reinventing the wheel by the light of his own ego? 

Europeans seem to be doing just that kind of collaborating. At a major conference of the European Year of Creativity and Innovation 2009 (a project of the European Commission) this month, thinkers and doers from all over the continent got together, determined what the three main focuses of their creative efforts should be – employment, well-being and education – and made a list of things to do. A lot of it involves reaching across barriers, sharing resources and being regional in attitude.

If they can make this plan work – with over a  thousand more years of tribal, national, ethnic and class strife to overcome than does the U.S. – we Americans won’t have any excuses left for our own fractious, short-sighted and self-involved approach to the future.

Divided we go bankrupt

The United States is big on individualism. In this country, we’re all raised with the idea that going our own way is our birthright, our mission – part of the iconic American dream in which we each create our own destiny, follow our own conscience and answer to no man. Or woman, especially the little kind. 

Hollywood movies have burned this into our brains as if our memories were DVDs: We aren’t supposed to follow. We’re all supposed to go out there, stake our own claim and start our own business, community, political movement, religion, band, micro-brewery, website.

Of course, you could well argue that all of us obeying this imperative is following, and major following of a particularly clueless, cowlike nature, too. But for the sake of a larger point, let’s say that we really are a nation of  god-damned independents.

So what happens when that irresistible, entrepreneurial spirit runs up against an immovable financial crisis like the one we’re in? The first thing to give out (besides our income …) has to be our vaunted go-it-aloneness.

That’s a hard fact the nonprofit world has been learning in recent years as subscriptions have fallen, along with corporate and private support. There just aren’t enough resources anymore to sustain the old way of operating solo, so nonprofits have started – suspiciously at first, but with increasing urgency – working together and sharing expenses.

The rest of us are going to have to do the same.

It’s not going to be enough just to pull together in spirit – though that would be helpful, too, and Barack Obama is good at engendering sentiments of unity, as he did again last night in his first official address to Congress. We Americans, who fancy ourselves as uncompromising hero-leaders along the lines of John Wayne and Iron Man Tony Stark, have got to start teaming up our efforts on all levels.

Look how much duplication exists in the marketplace and in government and in private life. The nearly obscene range of goods in our supermarkets ( 75 kinds of cereal?) makes immigrants from less indulgent lands cry. Our towns and cities pay enormous costs for separate services, from water and sewer to schools and security. About every third person – including me – wants to build his or her own little business empire or good-doing foundation.

How many individual film-production companies and clothing lines do we have in this country? How many people  separately collecting shoes for needy kids or money to cure particular diseases? How many software developers and yard-care companies and pizza parlors?

Doesn’t it seem like we could streamline some of  this bloat by joining forces with each other? Some efforts at efficiency have already begun – fusion marketing, (half-hearted) regionalism, shared office-supply purchasing - but we’re going have to get a lot more serious about it if we want to improve productivity, trim government waste, reduce our national debt and increase the success rate of small businesses.

I’m not talking about us surrendering our identities and becoming part of some unspeakably huge conglomerate. Just sharing and collaborating where that makes sense and strengthens us individually and collectively.  I don’t think we can afford not to anymore.

I mean, even John Wayne collaborated with other cowpokes once in a while – especially in a tight spot.