Civics Lesson
Civics Lesson
Meet Your Host, Alan Weiss
Alan Weiss is one of those rare people who can say he is a consultant, speaker, and author and mean it.
His consulting firm, Summit Consulting Group, Inc., has attracted clients such as Merck, Hewlett-Packard, GE, Mercedes-Benz, State Street Corporation, Times Mirror Group, The Federal Reserve, The New York Times Corporation, Toyota, and over 500 other leading organizations. He has served on several boards of directors in various capacities.
His prolific publishing includes over 500 articles and 60 books, including his best-seller, Million Dollar Consulting (from McGraw-Hill) now in its 30th year and sixth edition. His newest is Your Legacy is Now: Life is not about a search for meaning but the creation of meaning (Routledge, 2021). His books have been on the curricula at Villanova, Temple University, and the Wharton School of Business, and have been translated into 15 languages.
Get to know AlanShow Notes
There are 330 million people in the US that we know of. There are 12,500 school districts, 18,000 police departments, 17,000 libraries, 400 different languages spoken, 45,000 flights per day, 5 million privately and commercially owned vehicles, 200,000 dentists, and 641 amusement parks.
There are nation-states (Japan, Korea), multi-state nations (Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait), and multi-nation states (US, UK). The US is probably the most pluralistic and diverse nation on the planet, especially in these numbers. Comparing us to Denmark, Thailand, or New Zealand is plain silly. I’m not disparaging those nations; I’ve been to them and another 60 besides, and like almost all of them (apparently, I’m alone in finding Iceland totally boring and Brazil scary).
It’s like saying if a hybrid Kia can get 60 miles to the gallon, why can’t a Ford pickup? Well, because they’re entirely different vehicles with different appeals and purposes.
I pointed out to a client in Denmark while arguing these points that there are no lines of people at Denmark’s borders seeking entry and citizenship. “Well, you’re right about that,” he said, “and if there were, we wouldn’t let them in.”
There’s a lot of room for improvement in the US, and, in all fairness, there’s been a lot of improvement, and people are better off than they think they are because they haven’t been to 60 other countries (and, in many cases, even one) and they’re drowned in bad news by media that reports calamity where none exists and refrains from reporting good news as if that’s the calamity.
By the way, there are 2,700 commercial news channels in the US, and I’m not sure that’s a good category to be leading (we’re 4th, after Russia, China, and the EU).
Alan Weiss’s The Uncomfortable Truth® is a weekly broadcast from “The Rock Star of Consulting,” Alan Weiss, who holds forth with his best (and often most contrarian) ideas about society, culture, business, and personal growth. His 60+ books in 12 languages, and his travels to, and work in, 50 countries contribute to a fascinating and often belief-challenging 20 minutes that might just change your next 20 years.
Introduction to the show recorded by Connie Dieken
