Connecting these two worlds is not actually that hard (more on that in
a moment), but these worlds require such different skills and thinking
that often people are good at inhabiting one but not the other. In
fact, people usually think their preferred world is better. Most
visionary leaders, masters of the aspirational realm, can’t think about
a profit-and-loss statement. Scientists, engineers, and
accountants-people who live in the world of reality-think most visions,
values, and mission statements are a complete waste of time.
Before I explain how you create this kind of bridge, it’s important
to grasp the difference between the aspirational world and the ‘real’
one. ” In the aspirational world, the more you give things away, the
more you have. The lingua franca of this world are ideas and
emotions–hope, pride, esteem. Candidate Obama has masterfully dealt in
the aspirational world, creating and growing the aspirations of hope and
change.
The other world is “reality,” and it is composed of finite resources
that cannot be manufactured, like oil, gold, money and time. Give away
some of your time, or money, and you have less time or money. Perhaps
someday, technology will be able to make these things, but for now,
there’s only so much of them. When they’re gone, they’re gone.
...
Getting back to Obama, he can follow these three steps by first
rebooting his hope and change engine. It’ll be harder this time,
because people feel let down. But even with a small glimmer of
optimism, he can then focus us all on real-world accomplishments that
are measureable. The truth is that jobs, money, innovation, and wealth
sit on the border between aspirations and reality, not unlike microchips
and buildings at USC. Focus purely on reality, and they look
unmovable. Look just at aspirations and people get excited and then
crushed. The aspirations-reality-aspirations cycle described in this
blog post can produce jobs, income, and wealth on a level our country
has never seen.
