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Democracy in the modern world

From the open lecture from Democracy Reporting International: free interpretation.

Democracy is a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives.

This means that we operate here with a big number of people who make the decision. For the current reality, this is the only scenario and development direction for the open world and Central Asia/ Southern Europe.

People participate in the process of decision making.

Why is it good?

People are diverse and to have great decisions it’s important to take into consideration many aspects and diverse conditions of life.

No one who comes to rule even a tiny piece of the world can’t represent all the roles and all the conditions. Every person has a story.

The more people stand for a certain opinion the more urgency and importance this question has to be solved right here and right now.

But…

What is bad about democracy?

Well, in the beginning, it was great to be short, because it came to substitute hard times and a different regime.

But in the end when people forget about the hard times or when hard times don’t touch them, they tend to care about what they represent.

The mechanism is simple — you vote FOR something and then you have to see people who create a system of rules and policies to implement something you voted FOR.

There are several issues:

People sometimes vote AGAINST

Sometimes people don’t look for solutions or think about what they want. Sometimes they are driven by fear or anger. Fear of the lost job, fear of different people, fear of their safety.

And the level of their worldview and education doesn’t let them look wider and dig into the real source of their fear or anger, because it’s too complicated.

So they don’t represent any need, opinion or conditions but they want someone’s rights to be limited instead of their rights to be fulfilled.

2. People represent someone else’s opinion

There are many complicated questions, where people are not involved. So, in general, to show that they have the opinion they need to make their research and go deeper and then make a decision. But in our busy lives, this is almost impossible.

3. Things are getting too complex

Let’s say, you support the decision A, but it can be achieved with the path A1 and A2, and even more controversial path A3. How to know which one is good? If you have no idea how these things can be done at all?

This is the reason for populism. People promise simple solutions for complicated problems. And other people believe this. But it doesn’t exist. And then we wonder — why we choose populists and then things are not done?

Information is a source of a decision made

Information influences all 3 issues above.

It is easy to spread fear and anger. Easier than kindness, calmness, and consciousness. This is easy to blame people. It is easy to make people angry. Anonymousness of the internet lets people be as bully as never before. For any reason and any occasion.

People show up. It is easy to say about what you think. And when you scroll through a huge number of webpages and posts per day it’s easy to believe this is a correct opinion. But even more, if it’s popular — people don’t want to have an opposite or unpopular opinion. So they stick to the public one.

The simpler you are the more readable and trustable you are. People don’t consume complex things because of the amount. So populism gets this position easily.

The world is changing and so do people

We live in a changing information environment

The difference is in the scale with which people produce and consume information. We consume more things with less depth and don’t check what is there.

3 aspects to consider:

Scale

Speed

Depth

So to move democracy we need to capture with the message as many people as possible and let them understand what is going on pretty fast with the real interest in their own opinion.

Challenge, uh?

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Why do we talk that much about leadership?

Let’s talk about new standards of the job, not only new standards of leadership.

Taking several leadership positions before my 22, I’ve read and experienced many requirements for me as a team leader.

Anywhere you look, anywhere you go people talk about which type of leaders we want to see, who is CEO, what are the golden rules for the Project Manager.

What do these rules and standards include?

Give people their experience

Let people make their own mistakes

Create an atmosphere of happiness

Build the reward and recognition system

Develop your people, only then they will perform

Create great working conditions

Zoomers are not the same as Millenials and are definitely different from Boomers

Know their motivation/personality type and find an approach to any person

Place the goal of the team as a priority, don’t put your goal first

You need to trust your employees

I agree with some of them. We all strive for decent work and economic growth.

I gave some of these pieces of advice to people.

But.

After I quit the biggest leadership position I was down.

Because these pieces of advice are inconsistent. We talk about standards to our leaders, but why don’t we really talk about the transformation of the employees. Why don’t we reconsider the quality of employees?

Some after points:

Give people their experience — my favorite one.

Let people make their own mistakes — and this one is amazing as well.

Well, guys. if you want to have your own experience — prove you can. Prove you know what to do, show a detailed plan before everything is on fire.

And prove you can really follow your plan, everything will be on the deadline and in the end just show that you are responsible. Bring reports from time to time to prove that you at least work.

Nothing is granted for free. Especially trust. Even if you are a volunteer and you come to realize your ideas and potential you still enter the organization or company with a system or internal rules you need to fit or to offer how to change.

It’s amazing to learn from your experience, but this is crazy to strive to do them without listening to other people’s opinion. Do you really want to win and learn how to do it? Or are you committed to saying “I failed, but I stood up”?

Noone needs sacrifices, we need a job to be done, not struggling employees.

Develop your people, only then they will perform

Sure, you give space or even fund this education or development. But it comes to something big when you create the department or a position that is really new. So then you find a person who is smart and then teach.

But when it comes to small and simple tasks — people have to find out how to do it, how to reach these goals and how to perform their work at their best. This is why they are there. And this is where they can unleash their potential, this is where they can take the initiative and be as creative as they want.

Know their motivation/personality type and find an approach to any person

Well, you really need to find the communication and approach to any person. But this is a two side journey. One step from the side of the manager, one step form the side of the employee. Both people move towards each other. And well, you don’t need to guess how to treat the person — normal thing is to explain during the basic expectation setting. And again, that’s not 100 rules — just 3–5 things you feel most comfortable with. And then — adapt to the environment or look for another one.

Place the goal of the team as a priority, don’t put your goal first

ONLY for a very mature and experienced team. When people are true experts in what they do. Then it is definitely a win.

You need to trust your employees

Trust is not granted, it’s earned. So, earn the trust and prove you can: fit deadlines, think, cooperate, behave, commit.

Team leader is very important for the team. But team building is a composition of efforts of every single person inside the team.

Why do we talk that much about leadership then?

The answer is simple — we have no idea what is going on with the world right now. And we as humans try to put the responsibility to “leaders”. Basically people who will decide to become them.

And this way humanity wants to avoid responsibility.

Talking only about managers or CEOs gives people the message that they will be valued in the working place. And this is right, it should happen. But not talking about the rising standards to employees gives them no push for transformation.

Why do we fight to recruit people? Because there are not many of them who are capable to do the job. There are so many unemployed people, but we headhunt from other companies. We always try to retain people not only because we invested in them but also because it’s hard to substitute them.

It’s good to empower entrepreneurship — it gives many areas a second breath. But a CEO should have at least some people who will be executors, another way he will not survive.

It’s cool to leave everything and leave in the tent in mountains, but if everyone does it we will go back in development, and not everyone will agree for that, especially bright minds who are driving this progress.

Let’s talk about new standards of the job, not only new standards of leadership.