Built to Last: Structure & Conscience (Version 3)

Written by Frank Li

A big challenge in life is “built to last”, be it for your personal life (e.g. marriage), for your business (e.g. Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies), or for your country (A Country Must Be Run Like A Business).

In this post, I will present a theory that simplifies “built to last” to only two keys: (1) getting the structure right and (2) having conscience.

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0. Built to last: a theory

Life is complicated. But some people are just more successful than others, be it in their personal life or in business.

Why is that?

Well, aside from the DNA (the older I become, the more I believe in genes), I think it all comes down to these two keys:

1. Getting the structure right. By “structure”, I mean all the basics. For example, you can’t expect a lasting marriage if you marry someone radically different from you, or if you do not understand the fundamental differences between men and women (e.g. relatively speaking, men rarely change, but women change all the time).
2. Having conscience. It means you always try to do the right thing, which sometimes can be very difficult. For example, a successful marriage often means a lot of compromise and hard work on both sides for the sake of remaining together.

The same two keys apply to a business. Here the DNA means such things as a company’s culture. The best example of a company built to last is GE, because it has got both the structure and conscience right, for the most part, at least.

The same two keys apply to a country. Here the DNA means a country’s culture, the government, and, very importantly, the availability of natural resources. Two examples:

1. America: Is it built to last? Most likely not! Why not? America has been sleeping on the same political system for too long, resulting in an out-of-date structure and a total lack of conscience in our politicians! For more, read: America: Is the Experiment Over?
2. China: It is arguably the greatest country in human history, thanks to its adaptability, enduring structure and conscience. For more, read: China: Is the Experiment Over?

Next, let me use five examples to support my theory:

1. Swim teams.
2. The scale industry.
3. Competitive dancing.
4. America.
5. China.

1. Example 1: swim teams

I have two children (or two sons), born in 1987 and 1989, respectively. I had them try several sports until 1997, when I chose competitive swimming as their sport and enrolled them in a local team (called “NAPY” – Naperville YMCA). Both of them excelled and I was a happy father. Then a bad thing happened in May 1998: YMCA threw NAPY out! It turned out that NAPY was not a YMCA team per se. Rather, it was a team run by a parent board in conjunction with YMCA. YMCA had enough with the parent board and threw NAPY out!

The parent board struggled to form a new team, with pool times from various local facilities. It was the first time for me, a naturalized U.S. citizen from China, to experience American democracy up close. Man, it was ugly. In fact, it was so ugly that it was the first time I started having doubts about democracy. Specifically,

1. Most of the board members were in it for themselves (acceptable), but some acted without conscience (unacceptable): It was all about the best for “my kids”, and for as long as they benefited, with everything else (e.g. team’s longevity) being secondary.
2. Most board members played politics for control, using democracy selectively to their advantages, to such an extreme that even the team’s financials were not published to avoid “unnecessary controversies.”

The good news is that a team called NAPV (Naperville Swim Team) was formed and it excelled, including winning a few age-group Illinois state championships (with this Li family earning more points than any other family)!

The bad news is that NAPV existed only for about six years, because it was not built to last beyond one generation of swimmers, namely, the generation whose parents controlled the board at the beginning! If the ultimate criterion to judge the success of an organization is built to last, NAPV failed. What was wrong? A bad structure (e.g. team ownership) and lack of conscience on the parent board (e.g. too self-serving)!

In Chicagoland, there are only two swim teams that have proven to be built to last with sustainable glories (i.e. winning state championships for multiple generations of swimmers). What is so special about them?

1. Team 1 (in the west) is owned by an individual. It’s a dictatorship. Team management is simple and straightforward: my way or no way (e.g. “If you don’t like my way, leave”), with parents having absolutely nothing to say about the running of the team! The team succeeded. The best swimmers in the area joined it, and the team succeeded more.
2. Team 2 (in the north) is owned by a parent board. Like NAPV, it’s a democracy. Unlike NAPV, Team 2’s parent board has conscience: They built the team with a good structure and they act conscientiously, which means to do the right thing not only for the small (i.e. the current members of the team), but also for the large (i.e. team, community, and future), in both short and long-terms.

2. Example 2: the scale industry

The American scale industry is estimated to be a business of $1 billion a year. Like many other industries, it has been negatively impacted by globalization. However, we, the American scale industry, bear some serious responsibilities for losing the sales and manufacturing to China.

Let’s focus on one issue here: a national organization that brings the American scale industry together.

No, there is no such an organization! Currently, there are at least four “national” organizations in America for the scale industry as follows:

1. ISWM: International Society of Weighing & Measurement.
2. SMA: Scale Manufacturers Association.
3. NISA: National Industrial Scale Association.
4. NCWM: National Conference on Weights and Measures.

Each of them acts on its own. But together they undermine the American scale industry, including working against each other, especially on the fundamental issue of regulation vs. free-market. Two simple facts:

1. All three private organizations are dying, due to declining membership.
2. The most active one is NCWM, a pseudo-government organization, for regulation.

I believe this is a microcosm of America: There are more and more takers than makers! Read: Government Employees and Manufacturing Jobs: Takers and Makers. Below is an excerpt.

In contrast, the Chinese scale industry is thriving. At the national level, it’s simple and straightforward, with one organization (CWIA) representing everybody (i.e. manufacturers, dealers, and end-users), while the government plays a minimal role in regulation.

How to change the American scale industry at the national level? We must have a right structure, which means having one organization representing all (just like the Chinese do), and we must act with conscience, which means doing the right thing for America, not just for your own organization (yes, it’s nice to be king). Specifically, the three private organizations must merge into one for one simple reason: there is room for only one! NCWM must realize that, at this time at least, the more it tries to regulate, the more it hurts the American scale industry, because it has been over-regulated already, especially when compared with China!

3. Example 3: competitive dancing

In January 2015, I started dancing socially (It’s never too late to dance!). Shortly after that, I started dancing competitively (It’s Never Too Late to Dance (II)) and have some insights into that world.

Like the scale industry, the competitive dancing “industry†has many “trade shows†(i.e. shows for competition). For example, in Chicagoland alone, there are at least three big ones as follows:

1. Windy City Open (https://thewindycityopen.com).
2. Crystal Ball Dancesport Competition (http://www.chicagocrystalball.com).
3. Harvest Moon Ball Dancesport Championship (http://chicagoharvestmoon.com).

As if there were still not enough, a big one named “North American Imperial Star Ball” (www.northamericandancesport.com) moved to Chicago (from the East Coast) in 2017.

Why so many of them? The market is big enough for them all to make money!

Here is a little problem for me: I often compete alone or against women, because there are simply not enough men dancing at my level (i.e. Silver). To compete with men, I have to go to a bigger “showâ€, out of town …

Unlike the scale industry, America’s competitive dancing “industry” is not in direct competition with any other country (e.g. China). So, the more diversity in America, the better for America – Let the free market pick the winners and losers!

4. Example 4: America

America has good DNA: our Founding Fathers left us with a reasonably good foundation, for which we must constantly improve over time though.

Very importantly, our land is replete with natural resources, which affords us the chance to mess up a lot more than many other countries (e.g. China and India) possibly can. But still, there is a limit to it and we are reaching that limit now!

I have already published a lot on this subject. Here is the bottom line:

1. Structure: We are failing in adaptation. For more, read: America: Is the Experiment Over?
2. Conscience: Most of our politicians are conscienceless, thanks to “getting re-elected ad nauseamâ€!

For more, read my last book: American Democracy.

5. Example 5: China

China is arguably the greatest country in human history. Two main reasons:

1. China has the longest continuous civilization in human history, leading the world mostly for the first 1,800 years of our 2-millennium-old calendar.
2. Throughout human history, great civilizations have come and gone, with one major exception: China – come, almost gone, and come again!

What is the secret behind China’s long-lasting success? A good structure in governance and good conscience in its people! The image below is worth more than 1,000 words.

For more, read: China vs. America: Uniformity vs. Diversity.

6. Discussion

What is the relationship among the five examples? Example 1 shows how democracy works in the small, with conscience being the key. Example 3 shows how the free market works. Examples 2 and 4 are much bigger in size – Neither the American scale industry nor America had a big problem until China showed up as a competitor. Now, both are deeply in trouble, because of an inferior structure and because of the lack of conscience in our leaders! Finally, example 5 highlights China’s long-lasting success.

6.1 What is structure?

Below is an excerpt from Wikipedia – Structure.

Structure is an arrangement and organization of interrelated elements in a material object or system, or the object or system so organized.[1] Material structures include man-made objects such as buildings and machines and natural objects such as biological organisms, minerals and chemicals. Abstract structures include data structures in computer science and musical form. Types of structure include a hierarchy (a cascade of one-to-many relationships), a network featuring many-to-many links, or a lattice featuring connections between components that are neighbors in space.

6.2 What is conscience?

Below is an excerpt from Wikipedia – Conscience.

Conscience is an aptitude, faculty, intuition or judgment that assists in distinguishing right from wrong.

Apparently, it’s inherent to most of us as human beings. Any doubt? Read these two stories:

(1) Elderly Man Returns Cash Stolen from Sears in ’40s. Below is an excerpt.

The man’s conscience has been bothering him for the past 60 years.

(2) Fatal hit-and-run suspect in custody. Below is an excerpt.

Nearly four years after a 20-year-old Joliet woman was killed in a hit-and-run accident, a Naperville man knocked on the woman’s sister’s door and admitted he was the driver.

6.3 What is relationship between structure and conscience?

They are equally important!

At a very high level, structure is more important than conscience for one reason: it is the structure that makes us different beyond individually.

A further examination may find conscience more important than structure for two main reasons:

1. Conscience is invisible.
2. The world is a human world. Every “structure†is up to the “conscience†of human beings, from the construction, to the interpretation, and to the maintenance.

7. Closing

Nothing is built to last, if we can’t get the structure right first and if we don’t always act conscientiously for the betterment of the whole!

Now, please sit back and enjoy the short video below.