What’s so great about America?
by Margaret Heffernan

What’s so great about America? At this particular moment in history, mired in Iraq and with faces firmly turned against global warming, it doesn’t look like much. But when entrepreneurs ask that question, it carries a different meaning. What is it, they want to know, that makes entrepreneurship so much easier, sexier, more fun than here? What’s so different between the US and UK that, every 18 months or so, Gordon Brown hires yet another American academic to try to figure out how to pump entrepreneurial oxygen into the British climate?

I asked myself the same question as I returned from a trip to New York lately. I’d gone across for two days to give a speech and have a few meetings. Nothing novel or earth-shattering. But I came back pumped. Why?

Americans love work. It’s just as well, since they do a lot of it – but they do a lot of it, one feels, because they love it. They look upon it as a mode of self-expression; it’s who they are. In the diner around the corner from my hotel, the waitress talked about “our” specials today as if she’s made them herself. When I enjoyed it, she grinned as though she’d invented it too. Visitors might see a poor woman in a crummy restaurant but what I saw was someone who, being there, decided to believe in it. She had hope.

In a swankier part of town, I lunched with executives whose zest for work was the same. They talked openly about how much they loved what they did, the bosses they admired, the good luck they’d experienced. This wasn’t brown-nosing (there was no one there to impress.) And it wasn’t about money. Trying to live in Manhattan on their salaries is almost a physical impossibility. But, like my waitress, they had determined their own destiny and they weren’t cynical.

Later on, I addressed about 100 executives from the aviation industry. With their biggest cost – jet fuel – going through the roof, you might have expected a depressed gathering. But no; they shared notes on fuel hedging, discussed how to create dazzling customer service and debated how to explain that airlines don’t control airports. They were a lively audience, eager to learn – from speakers, from each other. These executives and their companies devote a great deal of time and money to ongoing personal and professional development. This is a very American phenomenon.

My meetings went on that day until 9pm. But it wasn’t a grind because the attitude that work is a wonderful thing, that business is how you change the world, and that the work you do is a form of passionate self-expression – this is exhilirating, not tiring. But how often do I encounter them in the UK? Rarely. I recently attended a networking event for those running their own business, and those hoping to start one. All I heard was fear, danger, loneliness. Young entrepreneurs there wouldn’t have been inspired enough to join the post office, never mind start their own company. And every time I talk to a business owner here, I hear more whingeing about government regulation, the EU and how hard it is to fire staff, than I hear about the joys of entrepreneurial autonomy. Here, it’s cool to be cynical.

This misery exacts a real cost. The negative is just as contagious as the positive; complain a lot and your employees will follow your example. Gloomy expectations pretty much guarantee gloomy outcomes. There’s nothing quite so sad as watching a downbeat Brit trying to sell to an American who wants to buy – but isn’t being given great reasons to do so. You don’t have to be giddy to be bold in articulating why you, and your company, are fantastic. And you don’t have to be crass to revel in your success. You just need to remember that if you can enjoy yourself and your business and your success, you give others permission to do so too. It’s how an entrepreneurial culture takes hold.

I’m not a mindless fan of America – I choose, after all, to live and work here. But I love doing business there and every time I come home, I return armed with resolutions: love your work, keep learning, think positive and (as Flann O’Brien said) "Take a risk and f*** the begrudgers."

This article was originally published in Real Business magazine.

© Margaret Heffernan, 2005

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