Last year I reviewed Thomas Friedman’s best seller The World Is Flat to add to our ever-growing list of book reviews on our web site.
Friedman does a great job of explaining globalization and how it will impact all of us in one way or another in the very near future—if it hasn’t already.
In my travels I’ve come across a large number of people who fail to see themselves impacted in any way because they simply don’t understand globalization and have yet to recognize an example of it.
I see more and more instances everyday on TV, the Internet and via print media. Consider recent news reports on the many recalls we’ve witnessed in the past few months, the growing trade imbalance, healthcare comparisons around the world,
immigration concerns, jobs being exported to every corner of the globe, etc. It’s all around us.
In re-reading Lee Iacocca’s best seller Where Have All The Leaders Gone (also reviewed on our website), I discovered a very revealing explanation of globalization. Lee explains it this way:
“My friend, former astronaut Buzz Aldrin, who knows something about globalization because he’s one of the few people who has seen the whole globe from the moon, sent me this piece that he said was making the rounds of the Internet. It makes the point—vividly:
Question: What is the truest definition of Globalization?
Answer: Princess Diana’s death.Question: How come?
Answer: An English princess with an Egyptian boyfriend crashes in a French tunnel, driving a German car with a Dutch engine driven by a Belgian who was drunk on Scotch whiskey, followed closely by Italian Paparazzi, on Japanese motorcycles, treated by an American doctor, using Brazilian medicines. This is posted by an American, using Bill Gates’ technology, and you’re probably reading this on a computer that uses Taiwanese chips and a Korean monitor, assembled by Bangladeshi workers in a Singapore plant, transported by Indian lorry-drivers, hijacked by Indonesians, unloaded by Sicilian longshoremen, and trucked to you by Mexican illegals. That, my friend, is globalization!”
Iacocca goes on to point out that he certainly isn’t making light of Princess Diana’s death. However, he emphasizes the fact that it makes your head spin to consider how interconnected the world has become. Some people are nervous about globalization while others are simply in denial. But it’s impossible to escape it—the way the world seeps in. You can no longer fence the world out, and you can’t fence yourself in. Technology knows no borders.
To fear globalization is to fear change, but like it or not, change is a constant in our lives. Acknowledge it, accept it, and strive to deal with it. The alternative can be disastrous!
About Harry K. Jones
Harry K. Jones is a motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of professional speakers who provide custom-designed seminars, keynote presentations, and consulting services. Harry's top requested topics include change management, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork, and time management. For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2629 or fill out our contact form.
Thomas Friedman’s New York Times bestseller, The World is Flat, asserts that the international economic playing field is now more level than it has ever been. As popular as it may be, some reviewers assert that by what it leaves out, Friedman’s book is dangerous . I just finished a great little book that challenges Friedman’s idea of a ‘flat’ world. Here’s a snippet from an interview with the authors:
“The world isn’t flat as a result of globalization,” say Ronald Aronica and Mtetwa Ramdoo, business analysts and authors of a critical analysis of Friedman’s book. “Globalization is the greatest reorganization of the world since the Industrial Revolution,” says Aronica. But by what Friedman’s book ignores or glosses over, it misinforms people and policy makers alike.
Aronica and Ramdoo’s concise monograph, The World is Flat?: A Critical Analysis of Thomas L. Friedman’s New York Times Bestseller, brings clarity to many of Friedman’s stories and explores nine key issues Friedman largely disregards or treats too lightly. To create a fair and balanced exploration of globalization, the authors cite the work of experts that Friedman fails to incorporate, including Nobel laureate and former Chief Economist at the World Bank, Dr. Joseph Stiglitz.
Refreshingly, you can now gain new insights into globalization without weeding through Friedman’s almost 600 pages of tedious tome. “If you read Friedman’s book, and were awed, you really should read more rigorous treatments of this vital subject,” says Ramdoo.
I read Aronica and Ramdoo’s 143 page book in one sitting!
Aronica and Ramdoo conclude by listing over twenty action items that point the way forward, and they provide a comprehensive, yet concise, framework for understanding the critical issues of globalization. They paint a clear and sometimes alarming picture of the early twenty-first century landscape, and present timely information needed by governments, businesses, and individuals everywhere.
And what I also like is that the authors provide a wealth of interesting information at the book’s Web site:
http://www.mkpress.com/Flat
Also a thought-provoking 13 minute Overview on the Web:
http://www.mkpress.com/FlatOverview.html
And the recent interview: “Aronica and Ramdoo pummel Friedman’s flat world back into a sphere,”
http://www.mkpress.com/AronicaRamdooInterview.html
Also a really interesting 6 min wake-up call: Shift Happens! http://www.mkpress.com/ShiftExtreme.html
There is also a companion book listed: Extreme Competition: Innovation and the Great 21st Century Business Reformation
http://www.mkpress.com/extreme
http://www.mkpress.com/Extreme11minWMV.html
So, if you want to know much more about globalization than what Friedman provides you, check out
http://www.mkpress.com/flat for concise and very interesting information.