He is heavy, … , he ain’t my brother …

As I observe the early days of a new era in governance, one that increases the role and authority of government regulation and central planning, I am saddened. I am saddened by the foreseeable consequences of constraining innovation and reinvention that are necessary to succeed, even survive, in this complex multi-polar world. I am saddened because most regulation is earned. It is earned by the guilty and implemented onto the innocent as a general rule. Leadership and stewardship gave way to greed, discarded integrity, illusionary value creation, and the uncontrolled behemoths that emerged in this interconnected virtual business landscape. Algorithms replaced decisions and the perversion of the foundations based on earning and affording what you own turned the American dream that I have lived as a naturalized American into a nightmare that has not yet ended.

There is no question that regulation will always follow abuses that do real harm to the public welfare, as it should, … , but it typically comes not when we are sick, but after we are dead. This subject will become a thread across many of our discussions to come. Today, let us explore how regulation emerges.

1. Entities engage in behaviors that utilize unfair advantage to the extent that members of the disadvantaged party are harmed.
2. The harmed party makes noise at the perpetrator and the perpetrator does little to change behavior.
3. The number of harmed parties grows over time and the noise grows louder.
4. A group, think tank, advocacy entity hears the noise and synthesizes it into an issue that has sufficient clarity to interest others.
5. The issue is now alive and historically, the media adopts the orphan issue and begins to create broad based awareness. Multiply that by a big number today, a really big number across the web.
6. It becomes irresistible to politicians and media pundits and now moves from the media world to a legislative floor
7. The rest you know. There are hearings, speeches, lots of work and testimonies, and then we end up with a rule, a law, an agency, and a myriad of costs and constraints to productivity and competitiveness.

Ask yourself, how much effort and cost must be expended by the offending perpetrator of harm if they wanted to resolve the issue while it is at step 1? How many degrees of freedom and flexibility exist at step 1? How much damage has come to the entity’s name, reputation and public goodwill at step 1? Who has complete control over the decisions to change and execute the changes necessary at step 1? What are the signals that alert a decision maker that they are in step 1?

What happens to all the above as we move from step 1 to step 7? What kind of leadership and management allows, enables, ignores or perpetuates the movement from 1 to 7? Why?

As we enter this very challenging era with the weight of compliance as a collar, I believe that without integrity, without noble purpose, without personally embraced accountability and without courage to do what is the greater good, regulation will only mask the fundamental problem.  Yet, it becomes an opportunity for change to come from within and choices to be made rather than taken and replaced with collars.

“There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads to fortune,
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a sea we are now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.”

William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar