America in decline: the cycle of growth and survival of a culture

By Daria Blackwell

written May 2016

Much has been written about corporate life cycles and survival of the mature corporation.  In my view, a country goes through the various life cycle stages much like a corporation does, from start-up to maturity and decline. My contention is that America is in its late stages of decline.

An article in Harvard Business Review suggests that there are four stages in corporate development:

Stage 1: Youth and Enthusiasm

Stage 2: Adolescence and Ambition

Stage 3: Maturity and Best Practice

Stage 4: Change and Struggle for Survival

Having gone through several merges and acquisitions, I became quite familiar with the differences in corporate culture at the various stages. Start-ups are led by entrepreneurs with stars and dollars in their eyes. They often make it through the initial stages with exuberance; when they reach adolescence they get frustrated because they don't have the critical mass to play with the big boys. They need assistance to grow. They are ambitious and no longer satisfied with their status quo whether it’s highly successful or not. 

At this stage, they look for partnerships with bigger more established firms to increase their credibility to an ever larger customer base. They may merge with another entity their own size or be acquired by a larger entity, often with disastrous consequences. The larger entity is a mature company that has reached the point where it can no longer deliver 15% margins on an ever increasing base. To deliver, they acquire. But the cultures are at different stages and often don’t fit.

It’s even worse with a Stage 4 company that has passed maturity and is now on the decline gets involved. Their decline has the potential to take down the adolescent with them, and so they start to spin-off the most viable of their acquisitions to generate more revenue and sustain profitability rather than growth.

I’ve personally lived through each of these scenarios from both perspectives having worked in start-ups and giant behemoths. What my perspective has given me is a new perspective on not a company but a country, the country of my birth, the United States of America.

Let’s look at the USA from a historical perspective under the concept of corporate lifecycles. 

In the beginning, the British colonists were sent over to a new world to supply a mature country with fresh resources. The colonists were young, enthusiastic and entrepreneurial. Pretty soon, the home country demanded more in ways the entrepreneurs didn’t want to deliver. So they split from the parent and went off on their own to start a new venture.

For the first fifty years, they struggled but grew with enthusiasm. Pretty soon, they reached the stage of adolescence and their ambition to grow caused the original colonies to expand westward and acquire territories along the way. The French territories, Texas, and California  all joined in on the M&A stage. About 100 years into it, they reached maturity and world leadership. Now they were setting the standard for the world, inventing power sources, building skyscrapers and railroads, building navies and armies and air forces, and dominating the world with ‘best practices.’

About 150 years into the lifecycle, something started to change. World Wars had changed the world dynamic and brought the countries into alliances that at first the US still dominated. But a slippery slope was changing the face of the nation.

Wars in Korea, Vietnam, and the Gulf were no longer won. Best practices no longer proved effective as the melting pot became a mosaic, and the chosen leaders struggled to maintain control. The white majority was losing control and they were panicking.

In corporations, managers typically resist change for fear of losing power, reputation, influence, or even their jobs. Stagnation results. Look at the Congress, totally ineffective locked in the grip of the GOP. Typically, the incumbent function head is part of the problem. Yes, Obama has been unable to lead through the blockades effectively or at all. The US is no longer as highly respected among the nations of the world.

To shore up the mature company in decline, installing a new leader not only communicates that change is needed but that it’s on the way. And here we are with Trump on the doorstep of a declining nation, not unlike Hitler was with Germany, offering change. It doesn’t matter that the change is not in the nation’s best interests, it is nevertheless different from the status quo.

Trump will seize this moment to capture power. He will attack Hillary Clinton, with direct connections to the same old, with every bit of ammunition he can muster. He will do whatever it takes to win. He will cast out all the undesirables. He will build walls. He will push buttons, figurative and literal. Once he has that taste of power, will he back down because his ego tells him to become a great leader?  No, he will grow his power to eclipse the ego of his every other adversary.

Will that help America become great again?  I think not. I think it will cause America to decline even further, perhaps never to be trustworthy on the world stage again. Trump will go down in history alongside the ranks of Lenin or Stalin, Castro or Peron, Franco or Putin. The integrity of the nation will be shot and recovery may never happen. The American culture will suffer irreparable damage, which is already under way. 

Unless of course Texas and California secede and a new leader emerges who can pull together a nation divided, or a new threat causes a truly intelligent world leader to emerge who happens to be American… and then all bets will be off.