For days, three women and what they represent have been swirling together relentlessly in my mind. The first woman (Beth Ford) has my admiration as a trailblazing and career-charting individual. The second (Joan Williams) is a work-life lawyer with an interesting perspective regarding class, capitalism, and the role of government in our current ways of working. Finally, an unlikely ingredient is the new Netflix series about a young woman (Emily) discovering life and work in Paris.
What do these three women and I have in common? Foundationally we all started in very different places…Emily in someone’s imagination. Our childhood, education, life experiences, and fantasies sculpt viewpoints that mold our own perceptions of reality. Yet we are women who believe and are shaped by our country’s Declaration of Independence: three unalienable rights given to all by their creator and protected by our government. These rights are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Beth Ford
When Beth Ford was selected to be the CEO of Land O’ Lakes, she became one of only 25 female CEOs to shepherd a Fortune 500 company. In a recent webinar she shared her life path, which began in Iowa as one of 8 children in a working class family. She became a ladder climber, from detasseling corn and cleaning bathrooms to Mobile Oil; various CEO roles; and Land O’ Lakes remits.
During the webinar she told many community-focused and future-minded stories. One focuses on the lack of access to broadband for approximately 18-20 million Americans. As a major infrastructure issue (negatively impacting education and business), Beth Ford equates lack of broadband to absence of access to electricity. This belief has led her to establish partnerships with Microsoft, JP Morgan Chase, and others to accomplish this task…which requires government as an active partner as well.
Her other stories emphasized the importance of wealth creation for minorities; using incentives to prepare farmers for the transition from biofuel to electric vehicles; and the need for strong leaders and role models. This leads me to my second swirl.
Joan Williams
Professor and work-law advocate Joan Williams declares her thoughts about capitalism in the October 2020 HBR article “It’s Time to End Slash-and-Burn Capitalism.”
She starts off by finding a bloom in a morass and writes:
The conversation about stakeholder capitalism is heartening evidence that the business community recognizes that capitalism has gone seriously off track. The obvious criticism is that, while CEOs are well-placed to pursue profits, they are ill-suited to weigh and balance the needs of the environment and many different stakeholders…
The remainder of her article builds the case for the strong policy partnership between the market and government:
Slash-and-burn capitalism’s obsession with controlling labor costs has led to a sharp diminution in the sharing of productivity gains with the workforce that created them…
… let’s stop letting ideology distort our discussions of government and the market. The right is starry eyed about the market but coldly realistic about the limitations of government. The left is starry eyed about government but coldly realistic about the limitations of the market. As Churchill once said about democracy, it’s the worst possible system except for all the others. Both the market and the government are deeply flawed tools. But they are all we have. Let’s start a conversation about how to use them to restore the American dream of a stable government, a thriving economy, and a healthy middle class.
Prior to this article, she published another great one in November 2016 which is an important read if you want to understand her thoughts on the relationship of economic class to capitalism and democracy in this country.
Emily in Paris
And the last swirl is the unlikely ingredient Emily in Paris. This Netflix series is about an English speaking American working in a French marketing agency. I began watching this show as an escape from life and a way to travel. I find the clichés humorous and with grains of truth. Reading about the show online, I found an abundance of negative reviews (with one exception by Shirley Li).
It isn’t the quality of the show that makes this swirl important. It is why this show is a hit to begin with. For the American generations in power, this series can be a gentle mirror to the complex and expensive mess we generated. While Shirley Li uses words and phrases like “bliss,” “peace of mind,” and “treat” to describe the show, she also notes that:
American Millennials, in reality, have been saddled with an uncertain future of economic turmoil and climate change.
The current generations in power are like the hoarding parent who dies after living a long life (75-90 years) and passes to their children the tasks of disposing of the hoarding, dividing the salvageable contents, selling the house (storage facility), and figuring how to pay the creditors and the health care and funeral expenses. Anyone who has completed the above knows the lingering feeling of dread until it is all complete (which is often measured in years…not months) and the fatigue that follows. During this period we may struggle to maintain and grow in our own lives and careers, and we tell ourselves we won’t do this to our own children.
Our Similarities
So we have an openly gay female CEO, an academician and work-law attorney, a fictional representation of a young American woman working in Paris, and me, a mom and work-psychologist (I/O psychologist). What do we have in common? It is the desire to act on what is implicitly stated (life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness), through crafted messages that are digestible; through conversations and partnerships that set direction; and through actions that induce change.
This simple strategy can work well when time is abundant and physical and emotional pain are not too incapacitating. Medical marijuana has taken years to become legal. For the patients that needed the drug, its legalization hasn’t come soon enough. For the masses, time was abundant and the physical and emotional pains were standard.
And yet, we are also driven by an abundance of urgency, as the young call out our mistakes via protest. When change needs to be embraced to occur more quickly, it becomes more urgent that we are self-aware, honest with ourselves and others, and open to ideas that build a community of doers. Labeling who/what we are currently and who/what we want to be in the future is also a necessity.
American Individualism: A potential cure?
For over 240 years, individualism has been core to our American values. While it served us well, it has cost us time, money, and lives, and has gotten in the way of our success. Winston Churchill astutely observed some of our actions in WWII, “Americans will always do the right thing, only after they have tried everything else.” To move ahead with the changes we need to make, it will be important to tame our individualistic mindset and adopt two new and similar mindsets: systems thinking (structural) and being interdependent (relational).
Briefly, systems thinking is a way around our myopic individualism. If we see things as interconnected, we can recognize that a change in a part of the interconnected system will directly or indirectly change how the other items relate. For example, removing the spleen or gallbladder from the digestive system will impact the functioning of other organs.
Interdependence is about seeing ourselves as connected and part of a larger community. A single move by one individual can have consequences for others. When we have historically embraced an interdependent mindset as a community, it has been because our government and the context of events have demanded it (e.g., the government demanding lights out during WWII air raids).
Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness
Adopting these mindsets is a crucial first step to building a more stable and healthy middle class. I believe that every child deserves an equal shot at becoming a world-class, productive adult. When you reach adulthood, it is up to you to unearth and commercialize your talents to meet your personal and professional dreams and aspirations (purpose, autonomy, mastery, belonging, food on the table, kids/no kids, single/married, corporate role, non-corporate role, etc.). Instability as a child, coupled with weak structural and relationship connections, makes it more onerous to be a productive adult.
Beth Ford might define her “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” in terms of broadband for all; wealth generation for minorities; farmer’s livelihood matters; food security; and healthy families and environment. Joan Williams’ “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”is restoring the American dream of a stable government, a thriving economy, and a healthy middle class. Emily might define her “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” as finding inspiration through new experiences and her interpretation of meaningful work; remaining self-confident, optimistic, and unfazed while noticing her colleagues criticisms and her own missteps; and helping to collaborate and build others up.
As the generations in power, the reality is that we blew it. Beth Ford and Joan Williams both acknowledge the major changes that need to be made and the hit show Emily in Paris is a fleeting antidote to the world we have created. I am left asking three questions that desperately need answers. First, are we going to continue to tether our children to the mess we created without assisting in the cleanup? Next, what are the policies and shifts in mindset that we need to consciously and deliberately make? Finally, what does an “equal shot” mean for how we support our country’s most prized asset, the children?