Max De Pree has the Answer to Ferguson
By Star Parker
TownHall.com
This is my third consecutive
column about the shooting of Michael Brown, an
unarmed 18-year-old black youth, by a police officer
in Ferguson, Missouri.
I have focused on this because the circumstances
that led to this tragedy point to more than narrow,
parochial concerns of low-income minority
communities. They point to things fundamentally
wrong in America that are dragging us all down.
Hopefully, remedial measures will be adopted that
will lower the likelihood that a police officer will
reduce a black youth to a racial stereotype and kill
him.
But even with such measures, we cannot continue to
ignore circumstances that practically guarantee
ongoing intergenerational poverty and the
dysfunctional behavior that accompanies it. The
costs of not addressing and changing what has failed
in low-income communities and the whole country are
enormous.
The economic costs consist of the hundreds of
billions of dollars in inefficient poverty programs,
at a time of huge budget deficits and growing
national debt and the huge opportunity costs of lost
human potential. A McKinsey & Co study in 2009
estimated that the potential annual gain to our GDP
of black and Latino education test scores reaching
the average of white students exceed $500 billion
dollars.
The moral costs speak to our willingness to tolerate
hundreds of thousands of babies born in our country
each year whose chances of a decent life are
miniscule and yet continuing, year after year, the
same failed policies that assure no future for these
children.
I’ve written recently about the importance of
Congressman Paul Ryan’s proposal to change the way
the billions of dollars of poverty program funds are
delivered which would allow more local control and
creativity. And I have written about school reform
advocate Howard Fuller and the importance of giving
black parents power to choose where they send their
children to school.
Another leader with ideas that could change current
realities is Max De Pree, former CEO of the Herman
Miller office furniture company and author of the
best-selling book “Leadership is an Art.”
Although the focus of De Pree’s discussions on
leadership is primarily corporate leadership, his
important ideas are relevant in any arena, including
political leadership.
De Pree says the art of leadership is about
“liberating people to do what is required of them in
the most effective way.”
There are two novel things here.
First, leadership is not about telling others what
to do, running their lives and defining their world.
It is about creating circumstances that allow
individuals to assume responsibility and giving them
the freedom to work in the best possible way,
fitting to who they are.
Second, the focus is on personal responsibility.
This is particularly novel given our national
culture today is all about rights and entitlements.
Leaders, according to De Pree, “endorse a concept of
persons.” The appreciation of the fundamental
uniqueness of each individual flies in the face of
putting people in income and racial categories and
based on these, producing government programs that
will supposedly address their problems.
Also different and important is De Pree’s idea of
diversity. Rather than being about ethnic and gender
head counting, it should be about recognizing
“diversity of people’s gifts, talents, and skills.”
Bottom line is big government control of lives,
particularly its dominance in low-income
communities, is the opposite of Max De Pree’s idea
of leadership. It diminishes rather empowers.
Leadership amounts to getting out of the way, paving
a path to freedom, and embracing values that enhance
each individual’s ability to take control of and
responsibility for their own lives.
Max De Pree’s principles of leadership tell us it is
time to move away from what has failed. The
bureaucratized welfare state has only perpetuated
poverty, crime, and deepened racial tensions in our
nation.
Max De Pree has the answer to Ferguson.