“We hire skilled, dedicated people to do the public’s work and then make it impossible for them to do that work well.”
3 Main Messages:
Leaders need to be bottleneck detectives
The building blocks of the future are housing, transportation, energy and health
We all ended to be proactive NOW in order to build a better future
It feels quite poignant that, as I type this, I am being disturbed and distracted by drilling, clanking and shouting outside my office window here in Singapore, while three of our neighbouring houses have solar panels installed. It is short term localised pain for long term global gain!
Construction noise is the soundtrack of Singapore. Buildings considered too old are constantly being ripped down and replaced. Travel the island and you will see renovation and construction work everywhere. The Government is stable and there are few party politics - while this is problematic in many ways, it does mean that things get done!
At the end of my road, a land reclamation project to build Long Island has begun “to protect the low-lying area from sea level rise and strengthen Singapore’s flood resilience, enhance our water resilience with a new reservoir, and create additional land to meet future development needs.” The project was announced in 2023 and will be completed over the next few decades.
Long Island solves many issues for Singaporeans and addresses all of the four building blocks of a successful future named in Abundance: housing, transportation, energy and health, as well as protecting the country from the effects of climate change.
The vision of a utopian future described in the introduction of Abundance, doesn’t seem too unrealistic from an Asian perspective. Clean energy, abundant housing (80% of Singaporeans live in high rise public housing), desalination plants, vertical greenhouses and efficient, cheap public transport are already a reality here.
In Europe and America , by comparison, much of the focus is on maintaining what is already there: ancient buildings and beautiful landscapes. While this is obviously honorable, Klein and Thompson argue that “To maintain the climate we have, or anything close to it, requires us to remake the world we have built
Much of the focus of Abundance is on what has gone wrong in America; why High Speed Rail has failed, why there is homelessness on such a huge scale, why it is so difficult to move from dirty energy to clean energy and why “we have a startling abundance of the goods that fill a house and a shortage of what’s needed to build a good life.”
The answer appears to be in an abundance of legislation, paperwork, and politics instead. Klein and Thompson provide multiple examples in science and technology when innovation has been stifled, either through lack of funding or prioritisation, or through complicated negotiations.
This is repeated throughout our society, in offices, hospitals, restaurants and schools. Over-checking is killing creativity and taking our attention away from what really matters. “We hire skilled, dedicated people to do the public’s work and then make it impossible for them to do that work well.” Just ask any UK Headteacher who is on countdown to their next OFSTED inspection! Ee are so busy jumping through hoops that we forget that the main role of an educator is to show their students that learning is fun. Let me tell you - inspections kill fun.
Abundance cites companies where progress, trust and fun thrive. One of these is Bell Labs, which is considered an icon of innovation. Jon Gertner said “If Bell Labs had a formula, it was to hire the smartest people, give them space and time to work, and make sure that they talk to each other.” Surely this is relevant and replicable in every industry, including education.
The lessons for leaders here are obvious: be clear on your purpose and determine your priorities, then clear everything else (including bureaucracy) out of the way so that the people you have employed to do the work can actually do the work. Klein and Thompson write that a good leader needs to find and fix bottlenecks. “Sometimes being a bottleneck detective is about removing restrictions that shouldn’t exist.” Global and office politics and paperwork frequently get in the way of the important work being done.
On top of this, the leadership needs to be predictable, consistent and stable, with a clear goal. Klein and Thompson point to crises leading to effective innovation: The Federal Reserve coming after a string of financial disasters; The New Deal evolving after the Great Depression; a World War leading to the production of Penicillin; a pandemic needed to fast track mRNA vaccines. In each of these cases, a clear and urgent purpose and strong, brave leadership led to progress.
Abundance is about “how we build a better future.” While the examples and suggestions are on a national or global scale, the lessons are replicable on a much smaller scale. This book is a reminder that we each, in our role, have one job to do and we need to do it well. In order to succeed we need to prioritise just that. Afterall “A government that tries to accomplish too much all at once often ends up accomplishing nothing at all.”
