Before the British celebrate their bonus national holiday next week in honour of the King’s Coronation, the Netherlands is celebrating its own Kings Day (It annual national holiday) today. An apropos occasion to showcase another country’s positive attitude to failure (in this case, the ultimate failure of fatality). This one I stumbled upon in the NBC article “Malaysia Flight 17: The Unique Way the Dutch Mourn”
- “In the main the reaction to the sudden loss of a cross-section of Dutch society – the proportionate loss of life for a country the size of the United States would be about 6,000 people – has been muted…The Dutch are strikingly different from Americans in their gut reactions to things…The Dutch have an innate distrust of ideology…It has something to do with being a small country surrounded by larger countries that have had long histories of asserting themselves. It also stems from the fact that Dutch society grew not out of war against a human foe but out of the struggle against nature. Living in low lands on a vast river delta, the Dutch came together to battle water. Building dams and dikes and canals was more practical than ideological. For better or worse, the Dutch are more comfortable with meetings and remembrances than with calls to arms.”
Leadership and Management / Turning Adversity to Advantage 