national cynicism

recently, the prime minister launched this so called "national conversation" initiative. this initiative was meant to discuss what people would view the country to be like 20 years down so that policies can be shaped and move towards this vision. in theoretical team building lingo, this is what we would term visioning process. and to be successful, it must involve all stakeholders. in the lingo of 7 habits of effective leaders, this is part of habit number 2 "begin with the end in mind". it is about collaborative visioning. such practice is often cited as ideal but very difficult to put into practice because of the enormous amounts of efforts to get the process going.

many academics and researchers have also proved that the value of such a process lie not only in the clarity of the end-state (which is seldom fully realized due to many assumptions made with regards environmental factors) but also, the process itself helps to bring out issues that matters and allow different stakeholders to appreciate and understand the magnitude and complexities of the issues involved. and through this process, some alignment of thoughts and bonds can arise, regardless of individual's stand. in short, the process of the conversation itself is almost as important, if not more important, as the end-state. but the catch is this, in any conversation, there is a need for open mindedness. and i am not sure if all stakeholders can be so. also, there will be people who focus on the everything else other than the issues. these are often the cynics. they are the detractors. they make a lot of noise and always miss the point.

anyway, i was pleasantly surprised when the "national conversation" was announced. it takes balls of steel to do so given that the views of 5 million people would be highly complex. to launch this process, the first engagement was televised. lots of topics was surfaced and noted. and these topics were rather diverse and interesting. it provides the tone of the many conversations that would occur across the nation. it would involve a diverse range of groups that could be politically affiliated or otherwise, sector-centric, at the community-level, grassroot-level, etc. 

and as expected, i see people focusing things like the composition of the first engagement rather than the issues. i see online web-communities bitching about this, about whether the first engagement is a ruling party engagement or a national engagement, etc. initially, i was rather taken aback too. but on reflecting, i realized that it is people that makes the country. and people would have different focus. and some of these focus might miss the issue altogether. and some of these views might distract people from the crux of the matter itself - the issues and the conversation, and most importantly, the process. it is very sad and very disappointing to see my fellow citizens spiral into such state of mind. 

but well, i supposed this is part of the engagement process. we only need to note their presence and then carry on with the engagement.

ps: in the last general election, the government's engagement (or the perceived lack of it) was a huge issue. and now, when there is an effort on the government's part to do so, we get cynics making all sorts of remarks... sighs...

picture from http://sparrowflights.blogspot.sg/2011/07/cynic-ism.html