This July 4th, Celebrate Continual Improvement
“Make America great again” baffles me because I think it’s pretty clear that we have not yet achieved what we set out to do. We have yet to live up to the words and ideas of our founding documents. It’s not that America has fallen from grace. America is not what it could have been. It is not what it should be. It never has been.
This year, I’ve enjoyed immersing myself in manufacturing media and the manufacturing industry for client projects (I am a PR consultant). The manufacturing industry is often at the center of “make America great again” promises. “I’m going to reopen the steel mills!” we hear, without any explanation of how that will be accomplished. Rather than pandering to the idea that we can “bring back” the manufacturing jobs of 30+ years ago, why don’t we look to a powerful idea that is pervasive among successful American manufacturers: continual improvement.
Continual improvement generally does not involve bringing anything “back.” It involves rethinking the way things have been done. It involves holding on to tradition without being afraid to discover what you are capable of. It involves challenging yourself to play different roles that seem unfamiliar or difficult at first. It involves collecting data and using it to make sound decisions. It involves looking at ideas that work elsewhere and asking, “Could that work here?”
Nostalgia is a powerful and deceptive emotion. Times when we felt happy become better in our memories and we forget the bad parts. It can be pleasant to indulge in nostalgia, but there’s no room for it in a continual improvement environment. This philosophy recognizes that time marches ahead with or without you. You can choose to better yourself, or you can choose nostalgia. You can choose to believe that you’re right, or you can be open to new ideas. You can choose to believe that your best days are ahead of you or behind you. You can’t choose both.
Independence Day is my favorite holiday. It has acquired a nationalist context over time, but the reason I like it is in the name: independence. On this day 240 years ago, a group of leaders looked history in the face and said, “We will now be doing things differently.” They did their best to create a country and a system that allows for continual improvement.
The “make America great again” mentality is so beautifully twisted because it combines the dangerous idea that we’ve already lived up to the promise of America — forgetting the “continual” part of continual improvement — with the idea that the greatest possibility available to us is to “take back” something that always belonged to all of us and that we have been creating together this whole time.
So today, and every day, we must declare independence from the weight of the past. We do not forget the lessons the past has taught us, rather, we honor them by applying them as we move forward. We are not bound by what has been done before. We are bound only to move in the direction of our potential, and to watch that potential expand before us as we approach it.
Jason Simms is a public relations strategist in Deep River, Connecticut. He can be reached via his company website, simmspr.com, or @simmantics on twitter.
