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For the last four years Center member CA, Inc. has sponsored CA Together in Action (CTA), a month-long program to support non-profit organizations around the world. Launched in 2006 as a two-week event, the program expanded to a month to allow as many employees as possible to participate. 
Are we approaching the unthinkable?
By Brad Googins
You don’t have to be a half-empty type of guy to feel that clouds of doubt and uncertainty and the fear of the future are starting to descend all around us like a dense fog. There doesn’t seem to be any safe harbor for either our investments or our frayed nerves.
This is starting to feel a little bit like my visit to Argentina in the spring of 2002, right after the unthinkable happened. One of the most prosperous countries on the globe – a can’t-miss poster child for the glories of globalization that at one time fed much of the world – suddenly imploded. The basic securities and infrastructure of Argentine society, things we take for granted as they did, suddenly collapsed. Banks and banking went under, middle class folks in droves lost their homes, and security at every level disintegrated. Sound familiar? Now, I don’t bring this up to frighten or prophesize Armageddon in the United States. I only seek to provide some perspective on the tenuous times that we currently find ourselves in.
In April of 2002 the U.S. Department of State had asked me to spend a week in Argentina at the request of a number of business, government and university groups that wanted to talk about corporate citizenship. I was somewhat stunned that they wanted to talk about this of all things, given the wide spread chaos erupting across the country that I had read about and seen on the nightly news. But as it turned out, it was an amazing time to look at some of our basic assumptions of society and a great time to talk about the roles of business, government and civil society. But more about that in a bit.
In late 2001 and the early part of 2002, the economic situation in Argentina had deteriorated at an unprecedented speed. By the time I arrived, the peso had gone from 3-to-1 to the dollar in January to 1-to-1 in April. The government had frozen bank deposits triggering the collapse of the baking systems. On the streets long lines of very angry people formed each day hoping to get their money out of the bank. “If I see a banker walking down the street,” one particularly upset man told me, “I will punch him in the mouth.” At night you would see middle-class families, who only a few months before had mortgages, rolling out their beds on the street because they had lost their homes. Mobs from the poorer sections of Buenos Aires were looting the supermarkets. Short of war or natural disaster, you really could not imagine a more chaotic scene.
So what I found in my weeklong series of talks and discussions across the country was a fundamental breakdown of the existing social contract. Government officials were blaming the incompetence and greed of bankers and the narrow self interests of the business community. Businesses were pointing their finger at the chronic corruption that defined government, and the civil society was fed up with both sectors who they felt had no commitment to civil and public life.
Since then I have I returned to Argentina a few times, most recently this past December. Not much has really improved. More than five years later, society remains seriously damaged from the unthinkable eruption and it continues to wander, looking for a return to happier days.
As I reflect on this today while we are in the midst of unprecedented and unscripted times, I can’t help but think: Could the unthinkable happen to us. Could our banking system implode and could the Dow go below 1,000, or even lower? Could the housing crisis turn even darker and the so-called toxic assets really pollute the pond we live in?
The truth is we don’t know. We have great faith that our more sophisticated systems would not allow that, but I have to think that not too deep in the recesses of our minds we ponder the unthinkable from time to time. It is just one of those times when it seems anything is possible.
One positive thing I did walk away with from Argentina is a deep appreciation for the tenuousness of the social contract and a much greater appreciation of leadership at all levels. Just as in Argentina, we are in the midst of redefining the role of business and at the same time redefining the role of government. Despite the strong ideological camps that have defined both Wall Street capitalists and Washington politicians, the roles and responsibilities of government and business are being renegotiated. If this dissolves into protracted finger pointing and years of fruitless ideological battles, we may well descend a lot lower and start to resemble the Argentine environment.
Which brings me to my final and perhaps most important insight from my experience in Argentina. At the end of the day it all comes down to leadership. The ability to create a shared vision – and establish a loud voice for that vision – is at the heart of leadership. And it was abundantly clear that this was in short supply and continues to be to this day in Argentina.
In the midst of rancor we will need exceptional leadership that does more than lean across the aisle. True leadership will require crossing the rigid boundaries of the sectors to cobble together a shared vision. As citizens we have a set of shared values that might have to be dusted off so we can gain the perspective of what lies ahead and what it will take for the courageous leadership essential to rebuilding from the ruins of the current crisis.
I am ultimately a half-full type of guy and will bet on us pulling through. What do you think of our odds?
