The Current Crisis - A Blessing Or Wound?

One of my favorite authors is Patrick Lencioni. We have used his Five Dysfunctions Of A Team as a text to improve our MHBT Construction and Bond Team. His new thing is The Simple Wisdom Project - a source of perspective and common sense found through rediscovering simpletruths.
Here's his latest email on our financial crisis.

For your own free subscription go to: www.simplewisdomproject.com.

Enjoy!


"Simple Wisdom Project POV: March 2009

A Blessing or a Wound?

Okay. This financial mess we’re in is definitely a crisis. The full extent of the problem is unclear, but a few things are likely. It is global. It will be long. And for those of us under the age of seventy five, it will probably be unprecedented and, thus, will change our lives.

The big question we need to be asking ourselves is “how will it change our lives?” And there are only two possible answers to that question: for better, or for worse. That’s right. Sometime in the future we will look back at this time and see it largely as a blessing or as a wound. The key to determining which of these will occur—in our families as well as our nation—lies in how we view suffering and the decisions we make as a result.

Ironically, I’m not as worried about our collective ability to survive this crisis—people are always more resilient than they think they are—but rather about what we might do before we feel its full impact. That’s because the anticipation of pain and suffering is often worse than the suffering itself.
I remember when I was a boy waiting for my dad to come down the hall and give me one of his rare but much-deserved spankings. It was misery. But I also remember that the spanking itself was never all that bad, and that when it was over I felt no resentment for my usually gentle dad. In fact, I quickly came to feel a sense of gratitude and relief because I had endured the punishment and pain, and could move forward stronger and better for it.

However, if you would have asked me before the spanking what I would have done to get out of it, I would have said ‘anything.’ Lied. Begged. Faked remorse. Sold my baseball cards. And that’s what worries me. Will we be so desperate to avoid or delay or even anesthesize ourselves from pain and suffering that we will make dangerous decisions which will only prolong and exacerbate our problems? Or will we take our medicine and allow it to make us stronger?

For families, desperation and danger can manifest itself in small and large ways, from over-investment in the time and energy we give to our work or the adoption of an unhealthy diet, to more serious vices like substance abuse, infidelity and gambling. These are particularly tempting during a crisis because they seem to provide a sense of distraction and relief, albeit a false one.

On the other hand, a crisis can be an opportunity to recommit to what is most important in life. It is a chance to cut back on unnecessary or non-critical activities and pursuits, and work to appreciate the real joy and blessing of being a family, which has much less to do with money than we seem to believe during times of prosperity. I realize that this might seem like a meaningless cliché to people who are already struggling to pay bills in their families, but in the end, proving that we can endure a crisis without sacrificing our principles really is its own reward. The fact is, even if we have to move to a smaller home or take a job that we had thought to be beneath us, we can emerge from all of this with what is far more valuable than any financial asset.

Now, when it comes to a nation, these ideas apply as well. Before and during times of difficulty, countries are often tempted to abandon principles that have always served them well but which are temporarily inconvenient. National leaders often justify policy decisions that they know to be wrong because they hope that they will somehow reduce or delay pain and suffering. But just like a family, these decisions usually prolong or exacerbate the pain, and sometimes in ways that are irreversible.

One of the examples that come to mind in the United States right now is a readiness to spend money that we don’t have to prevent some companies, agencies and other institutions from facing their mistakes. Another is the well-intentioned but misguided willingness to “forgive” unwise homeowners or others who have lived outside of their means, thereby rewarding them for bad behavior. In the end, we will find ourselves moving closer and closer to socialism, something that is dangerous but worthy of another POV of its own.

All too often, what looks like a life preserver in a storm often turns out to be an anchor for the individuals and society who swim toward it. This has proven to be the case again and again throughout the past century, and yet, when the going gets tough, we often forget history.

It is my hope and prayer that we, as families and as a nation, will have the courage and strength and wisdom to endure whatever pain and suffering comes our way, and to emerge on the other side with our principles and confidence and future intact. And that we will look back at this crisis not as a wound that scars us, but as a blessing that will rain down on our children for years to come.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day.

Yours,

Patrick Lencioni"

Great perspective.

TPE3

Understanding Our Current Financial Mess - The End Of Wall Street's Boom

Michael Lewis, author of Panic, has written an article that clearly gives the complex details of how we got into our current financial mess. The article has many quotes of some of the players with language that is pretty rough. Here's how the article starts:

The era that defined Wall Street is finally, officially over. Michael Lewis, who chronicled its excess in Liar’s Poker, returns to his old haunt to figure out what went wrong.

To this day, the willingness of a Wall Street investment bank to pay me hundreds of thousands of dollars to dispense investment advice to grownups remains a mystery to me. I was 24 years old, with no experience of, or particular interest in, guessing which stocks and bonds would rise and which would fall. The essential function of Wall Street is to allocate capital—to decide who should get it and who should not. Believe me when I tell you that I hadn’t the first clue.

I’d never taken an accounting course, never run a business, never even had savings of my own to manage. I stumbled into a job at Salomon Brothers in 1985 and stumbled out much richer three years later, and even though I wrote a book about the experience, the whole thing still strikes me as preposterous—which is one of the reasons the money was so easy to walk away from. I figured the situation was unsustainable. Sooner rather than later, someone was going to identify me, along with a lot of people more or less like me, as a fraud. Sooner rather than later, there would come a Great Reckoning when Wall Street would wake up and hundreds if not thousands of young people like me, who had no business making huge bets with other people’s money, would be expelled from finance . . .

To read the entire article go to: http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/national-news/portfolio/2008/11/11/The-End-of-Wall-Streets-Boom