It might seem odd to think of Kings and Queens on a site dedicated to business culture, but imagining no limitations is an excellent technique for brainstorming breakthroughs. I give people magic wands to change their lives, but when it comes to running a nation, imagining being a King or Queen gives people the feeling of absolute power over courts, legislators, and bureaucracies. If you could run your country, with absolute, and hopefully benign, power, what would you do?

I’m finding myself thinking about national and international issues on weekends. Why? I read the paper more leisurely and thoughtfully on the weekends, I suppose.

Today, I’m imagining being King of the USA.

Here are the king’s wishes.

Broadband Bonanza

Over the last five years, the US has slipped from 5^th to 20^th in the world ranking of broadband usage per capita. Instead of giving tax cuts during a time of oversupply of internet capability (see Three Trillion Added to Debt), I would subsidized consumption of broadband to stimulate demand. As everyone know about demand curves, lower the price the higher the consumption. If you have plenty of dark fiber, why not light it up? Any dummy knows the Internet and ubiquitous access to fast-connectivity is the world’s future, so why not make the future now? Besides, cutting the price of broadband in half costs the US treasury only tens-of-billions per year, perhaps costs 100-billion over five years, not trillions like tax cuts do.

As king, I would not let telecom companies bring injunctions against local governments for giving away free high-speed wireless service. Some people have a misguided philosophy about government spending. “Let the marketplace determine investment”, they say. This is true for wristwatches, but not for infrastructure. There’s a big difference between simple ideas and simplistic ones. Having one rule, for all types of investment, is for simpletons. (When you are king, you can point out simplistic ideas for what they are, because you are wise and powerful.)

Past Investments that Made us Great.

Great leaps forward happen when government invests in infrastructure. The US was one of the first nations on the planet to invest in free education for its people. As literacy jumped, so did the nations productivity. Investing in people helped the US become the economic and technological leader of the world for the last century. What a disaster it would have been if we left it to private investment and choice to educate ourselves.

In the 1930’s during the depression, people where put to work on public works, building roads into national parks, blasting and sculpturing access to nature’s beauty and riches. Many say that was folly. I live five miles from Red Rocks Amphitheater. Come sit in those seats during an Easter Morning Service or a live concert and on a cool summer evening and seriously try to convince people this structure was a stupid idea and a bad investment in our future.

In the 1950’s, the US built a modern highway system with bands of high-speed transportation links connecting East and West, North and South. From that point forward, food and goods flowed quickly and inexpensively throughout the country, then to ports for distribution throughout the world. Families, jobs, wealth became mobile too. Damn that was a stupid idea! We should have let the private sector determine when and where to build our highways. Right?

We Missed a Great Opportunity in 2001

As king, you can see simplistic thinking for what it is. Great infrastructure promotes great wealth and great societies. The investment in ubiquitous, high-speed internet access would create critical mass conditions for new ways of delivering education, collaboration, information, services, and innovation.

If we started the project in 2001, fewer people, especially well trained and educated people, would have been unemployed, saving human suffering, the need to write those unemployment checks, and the emptying of 401K accounts. More importantly, by investing in connectivity, we could have actually done something practical at a reasonable cost to strengthen the economy in the years 2001 through 2005 instead of mortgaging our future with wasteful tax breaks and adding trillions to our national debt (see Three Trillion Added to Debt). The runaway debt is an insidious tax in the form of interest rate hikes and a weak dollar that lowers demand for US products and services abroad. This king never would have let us loose our technical leadership, our control of the treasury and currency, or darkened our future with clouds of stagflation.

Where do You Want to Live?

As you have noticed, people don’t move often, and they spend money where they live. Having a great infrastructure, not only improves productivity of those already here, it attracts productive people to choose to live here. As king, I would make our educational system the best in the world. Young people travel to attend University, and often settle near their schools. This king would attract the best minds to come here to live and raise families. I would invest in safety, freedom of expression, tolerance, beauty, and choice, so that creativity blooms in every valley and on every hillside in America.

Yes, off-shoring/outsourcing is shifting jobs and wealth to developing nations with educated work forces. Connectivity has promoted that shift. What is also true is that this is a one-time restructuring process. The question is what happens next? If you think big US business cares about the relative future of the US worker, you are mistaken. Business today is international; customers, suppliers, and workers have no boundaries. If the middle class of China or India makes and buys “US” products and services, that’s the same as US citizens making and buying their products and services. Sales are sales, profits are profits. As your king, I care.

In the future, companies from all over the world will employ workers from all over the world. It matters less where companies are located; it matters more where desirable workers live. This king would ensure all American workers can communicate with anyone from anywhere, and desirable workers desire to live in this kingdom.

. . . . . .

Your Turn

Playing the “If I were King or Queen” game is fun and opens possibilities. Although you can use it for creating new business futures, I enjoy the “If I were King” game to spark lively conversations at dinner parties. You will be amazed at the depth and breathe of good ideas for a better world that spring from imaginary royalty.

Have you any brilliance to share, your highness?

Keywords: organization culture, engaging changeTM, telecommunications, future-friendly cultures, change leadership

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Michael Cushman, The Engaging Guru, wants you to master enrolling others in your truth, get the goodies of life, and change the world.  www.engagingchange.com