"The world has become indifferent to tradition and past reputations, unforgiving to frailty and ignorant to custom or practice. Success will go to those individuals and nations that are swift to adapt, slow to complain, and open to change."
- Andreas Schleicher, OECD Advisor on Education
Whether or not it is a good thing, I think Schleicher is right about where we are. Resting on laurels is even less of an option than ever. "We were leaders once" no longer gets us a free pass to anything, including respect. That something worked for 50 years is no longer a reason to think it still works (and never was). I particularly like his point about success going to those "slow to complain" because lamenting our lost supremacy, lost trust, or declining results gets us nowhere. Neither does blaming somebody else for our shortcomings.
Know and learn from history, but don't live in it. Understand problems and solve them, but don't waste energy and time complaining about them. Build on past success, but don't rely on it.
For better or worse the job at hand for all of us - as well as for our institutions and systems - is this: catch up, keep up and, if we don't have anything to say but excuses, shut up.
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