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07/02/2009
When the waves of global
financial meltdown are over, people will soon
discover the somewhat unsurprising culprit: a crisis
of value. Back in the late 1990s, when a severe
financial crisis hit Indonesia, many later found
that moral hazard was one of the underlying causes.
Even by casual observation,
the serious trouble of the US economy was primarily
caused by the massively irresponsible practices.
Consumers borrowed and spent beyond their means, while
producers created hype and offered false hope. Put
simply, values were abandoned.
Business and economics are
about creating and trading values. Ford Motor creates
value from steel, while a banker brings value to the
market by offering financial service. And, so on. Yet,
in the process, far too often people ignore another
important kind of value: virtue.
Today, people wish Wysiwyg—What
you see is what you get—for almost everything.
Ironically, they forget the other kind of it—What you
seed is what you get. The prevailing principle of
life seems to be "reap, but don’t seed."
No wonder people trade honesty
and integrity for artificial gains. Virtue is
deteriorating. Moral and personal values are in decay.
People are so absorbed by what
they see that they forget to seed. Unfortunately, seeing
is often deceiving—and gambling.
We see many politicians risk
their reputation by committing sex or money scandals.
Young people risk their lives by addicting to drugs.
Parents risk their children’s future by paying very
little attention to their children’s moral education.
Firms gamble their capital by conducting excessively
imprudent business practices. Households risk their
wealth by spending irresponsibly. And a nation could
risk its future by abandoning values.
Values are guiding principles
of life that shape who we are, how we live, and how we
treat other people. They are what motivate us, both
individually and collectively, from within. Currently,
we are still struggling to become a nation ruled by
laws, let alone inspired by values.
Admittedly, today’s world
tends to justify moral and personal value relativism.
Yet, values such as honesty, diligence, integrity,
courage, altruism, and responsibility are all absolute
and independent of time and social change. They are
indispensable to human beings. The society which
abandons those virtuous values will not be able to
sustain itself, let alone to advance.
Sadly, none of the
presidential candidates really emphasizes the importance
of those values in building a competitive Indonesia.
Instead, we are bombarded with the promises of practical
economic policies as if the economy is living in a
vacuum society.
Herb Kellerher, the former CEO
of the most profitable airline in the US, Southwest
Airlines saw culture as the source of its company's
competitive advantage. While acknowledging that
Southwest did a lot the right things such as using
point-to-point routes and flying relatively new planes,
he did not consider those things as the sources for
competitive advantage. Instead, when asked what the
reason really is, Kelleher's said passionately, "All
those things could be copied by a competitor tomorrow.
The only thing they can't copy is our culture."
Translation: embrace and
practice a value-based business.
As of January this year,
Southwest Airlines is one of the
world’s most profitable airlines, posting a profit for
the 36th consecutive year.
Our problem as a nation is not
so much as the lack of wealth and poor economic planning
as the lack of a value-based society. Corruption,
mediocrity and poor discipline are flourished mainly
because of the inability to inculcate virtuous values
into the life of our society. Loyalty to groups rather
than the nation, which has created religious divisions
and nepotism, ultimately can be linked to the deficit of
values in our society.
What we also need is a
value-based leadership. That is a leadership that would
not only identify and apply virtuous values to
governance, but also instill those values to the
society. It is a leadership that would have the courage,
integrity and ability to address factors that have
allowed corruption, mediocrity, and poor discpline. Such
a leader must also have the courage to resolve
unambigiously and resolutely the peaceful and mutually
respectful co-existence among all Indonesians from all
racial, ethnic, and religious background.
A president is more than an
executive decision maker. He or she is a leader. And
being visionary, proactive, and able to adapt are all
necessary qualifications for a good leader. To be a
great leader, however, he or she must be able to get
things done and excites people to exceptional
performance. Such a leader must inspire others to follow
his or her example.
But how can you inspire others
if you lack of those virtuous values or if you are not
really concerned of them?
Once Martin Luther King, Jr.
said, “If we are to go forward, we must go back and
rediscover those precious values—that all reality hinges
on moral foundations.”
Mr. King spoke this long
before one of the biggest moral hazard crises hits his
country. Perhaps, it is not an overstatement that King’s
remarks apply to our nation as well.
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