You have voted in favour of your trusted candidate. Your trusted candidate may or may not have won. Regardless of who has won, our lives have to go on. We need to be accountable for our own successes.
No President can gift you a comfortable life. There is only one way to achieve progress as a country. It’s by uniting as one leaving all political differences aside. It’s the strength of the economy that will determine your future. Everything else is secondary.
Every nation should strive to have a positive emotional profile if a nation is to be progressive. Same goes for business organisations. You need employees to leave their emotions aside and work towards achieving set goals.
History will tell you that nations with positive emotional profiles grow stronger. Negative profiles destroy nations. This is true for business organizations. The emotional profile has more impact than a nation’s laws and regulations.
Emotional profiles drive a nation’s behaviour. For a great business or a nation, a positive emotional profile is a blessing. Good things just happen. There are high levels of trust. Economies function more efficiently. Productivity goes up, People are calm, happy, and take pride in what they do.
They cooperate with one another to achieve positive goals. Negative emotional profiles drag businesses and nations down. People are driven by fear, anger, anxiety, and envy. They become disillusioned. It’s hard to have hope if no one cares about you.
Chase KPIs
A positive emotional profile has the potential to eliminate much of this social distress. Yet we continue to spend billions and invest time in electing officials who attempt to solve these problems using the machinery of government. Nations expend a disproportionate amount of energy on solving problems using laws and regulations to achieve their goals. Shaping emotions has a bigger payoff.
Like in any business organisation. Our negative emotional profile as citizens is dragging down our great nation. Fear, anger, anxiety, guilt, shame, and envy dominate. Those emotions drive mistrust, polarisation, unhappiness, frustration, and conflict.
They undermine our ability to agree on common goals and to work together to achieve them. You have experienced this in business organizations. Business organisations spend a colossal amount of money to bring people together. Keep them motivated and focused on the goal and Key Performance Indicators ( KPIs).
Do nations do this? Certainly it does not happen in our country. We live in an angry country. Anger has been on the rise for the past four decades. When we scrutinise the sources of our anger, we should see clearly that our rage is often being stoked not for our benefit but for someone else’s.
Emotions don’t simply happen. They are activated by our senses — a loud unexpected noise sets off a fear response, a beautiful view of snow-capped mountains puts us in a state of awe, and news we take in with our eyes and ears about the Capitol Riots might trigger anger, disgust, pride, or fear.
Increasingly our emotions are being activated by individuals and institutions to serve their needs. The internet and the tools available in virtual space have driven down the cost and increased the efficiency of activating emotions. This has greatly expanded business and social opportunities. The news and targeted communication have become the dominant mechanisms for triggering emotions.
Businesses generate value
Its businesses that generate value for a country. For this to happen right, the workforce has to have a positive emotional profile. The challenge for our country is to build a more positive emotional profile. This is so fundamental to economic recovery – value creation through enhanced productivity.
The new President does have an important role to play. If the economy is failing, wrongdoing is running rampant, and hard-working people can’t make ends meet, it is virtually impossible for a country to have a positive emotional profile.
There are actions our Government needs to take to address the failures of the free market and income inequality to restore the Srilankans dream. Addressing the dream issues is not enough to create a positive emotional profile. We must take other actions. A good place to start is by addressing the economics of amusement, fear, anger, and anxiety. We must make it more expensive to activate and experience those emotions.
Come together for the next five years
Export driven economy is paramount to drive economic growth. Our local currency has to get strengthened for the people to alleviate their problems. Election is over now. Differences and divisions need to end with it for the businesses to prosper. It’s our next five years, not that of the politicians. Employees need to work together to make the country more competitive.
We are still far behind in terms of cost efficiency. So support the president elected by the majority. Accept and respect the decision by the majority. Let’s drive the businesses forward with greater loyalty and commitment to make the 22 million people happy.
