Moving from ‘to be’ culture to ‘to do’ culture

Several years ago, I attended a residential peacebuilding training programme at the prestigious US Institute of Peace (USIP). One morning, we had an erudite professor from Harvard, sharing his wealth of experience and wisdom in one of the social and cultural interactive sessions. Simply, it was a breath of fresh air and I enjoyed the session thoroughly. His analysis on cultures and societies (geographic locations) got engraved in my mind! According to him, globally, there are two main cultures as he explained. They are as follows;

• 'To do’ culture: Essentially, this is all about leading life independently and gaining respect purely on individual merit. Those people talk only about themselves and what they are capable of doing. This culture is clearly visible in Europe and Northern America, he said.
• 'To be’ culture: This is the other end; it is about one’s connections more than the individual talent or capability! In other words, these people mainly try to earn respect and establish themselves on the connections they possess. According to the professor, this culture is much prevalent in Asia.

This is true in my opinion too and I do have a classic example in support of this claim. I have known an Indian lady who was a great social worker/activist. On a few occasions, I have heard her bio. In that she said that she was daughter-in-law of a former Indian President (deliberately I avoided the name here), but I have never heard anything about her spouse! This is the Asian ‘to be’ culture at its height, isn’t it? Most 

of us Sri Lankans are no exception. We love to show our connections and enjoy namedropping, rather than earning respect on our own merit, in order to get a competitive edge/mileage over others.

So far, my discussion has been on what I have learnt from the Harvard professor. Now, I would like to extend/expand the same notion to another important area of life and society. The diagram shows it in a more elaborative way.

I spent more than a decade in the UK. Also, I have attended a few UK universities/chartered institutes for my academic and professional qualifications and had the privilege to associate with some leading intellectuals who have contributed immensely to the academia, society and business. I hardly saw any arrogance in them. They were just humble, down-to-earth and simple enough people, who introduce themselves only by their first and family names, irrespective of their great academic achievements, innovative and creative contributions made to the world, and high calibre pre/post-nominals and decorations earned on their hard work.

In contrast, I have come across many Sri Lankans who are not so significant in terms of contribution but would consider an omission of such a nominal (if they happen to have received one) as disrespect or insult! An Army major got offended when I referred to him by his first name once! 

I strongly believe that our intelligence, wisdom, education (real education is totally different in my view), experience, training, connections and the like belong to the ‘to be’ side of life. The aforesaid elements are just ingredients needed to make a good product, but not so much of value, if no or inferior product is made. It is like making a curry using various ingredients – the value gets attached to the end product, not to the ingredients in raw form!

So, let’s go by our contribution to society rather than boasting about the marvellous ingredients we possess. For example, if one has got an MBA, what is more important is not the qualification, but the contribution that person makes on the strength of the qualification, isn’t it?

Very humbly, I became the first Asian global examiner of a UK Chartered Institute where I hold fellowship. What is more important here, my fellowship or the contribution I made by examining the budding professionals worldwide?

I believe our professionals should focus more on this aspect in their careers by not getting just restricted to the paper qualifications and merely doing some insignificant activity in life. This is just one area, there are a few other ways one could promote the ‘to do’ culture for better results. I invite you to ponder upon this aspect. 

Let’s get into the ‘to do’ mindset and march forward rather than getting bogged down in our shallow ‘to be’ thinking in 2017! 

(The writer is a borderless thinker and futurist. He can be contacted by email [email protected].)