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Why Countries Should Measure Dreams and Ambitions (Just like GDP) | Lance Katigbak | TED
Why Countries Should Measure Dreams and Ambitions (Just like GDP) | Lance Katigbak | TED
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0:03
What do you want to be when you grow up?
0:06
At age four, I wanted to become a computer scientist.
0:10
At five, a vacuum cleaner salesman.
0:13
At six, a priest.
0:16
At 17, an award-winning filmmaker.
0:19
And at 22, when it was finally time to decide on my first job,
0:23
I became a management consultant.
0:26
(Laughter)
0:28
What do you want to be when you grow up?
0:30
I'm sure everyone here has been asked some version of that question,
0:33
but perhaps not recently.
0:35
Somehow, the questions have changed.
0:38
"What do you do for work?"
0:39
"How much money do you make?"
0:41
"Where are you going on your next vacation?"
0:44
We've become obsessed with asking these types of questions
0:47
to measure even our nation's productivity.
0:49
We track growth rates, remittances and exports
0:53
without really asking if these numbers reflect the lives
0:55
that people are trying to live.
0:57
I see the problems with this system at home in the Philippines.
1:00
Our GDP is soaring,
1:03
but we're doing it in a way that doesn't quite align
1:05
with the kind of lives that people want to live.
1:08
For one, we send millions of people abroad
1:10
to take care of other people's parents and children,
1:13
and we train millions more to stay awake while their families are asleep
1:16
so they can be up all night answering phone calls
1:19
from halfway across the world
1:20
about how much money is in their bank account.
1:22
And somehow, we're rewarded for it.
1:24
We’re told that we’re Southeast Asia’s second-fastest-growing economy,
1:27
and in a few years,
1:29
we'll be upgraded to an upper middle-income country.
1:32
As a nation,
1:34
we've become really good at hitting metrics
1:36
that were never ours to begin with
1:39
and climbing a ladder that was designed by those
1:41
who were already sitting on top of it.
1:44
But what would happen if you asked Filipinos what metrics mattered to them?
1:50
What would happen if you tried to measure dreams?
1:54
Last year, my colleagues and I at BCG ran a nationwide,
1:57
nationally representative survey to answer this very question.
2:02
Now look, no client had ever asked us about dreams,
2:05
but if you look at the websites and mission statements
2:07
of the country's largest businesses,
2:09
all of them are trying to connect their work
2:11
to national development in some way.
2:13
And so we knew that even if nobody was asking the question,
2:17
the answer was one that many people would be interested in.
2:20
We discovered three things.
2:22
First, we discovered what the Filipino dream was.
2:26
The number-one ranked dream across all socioeconomic segments
2:30
was to achieve financial security to absorb health scares.
2:34
But we learned more than that -- we also heard stories.
2:36
We heard stories like that of Tidri, [a] 26-year-old preschool teacher
2:40
who dreams of becoming a beauty queen, a host,
2:42
a politician, opening a hair salon just like her grandmother.
2:48
But right now, Tidri can't afford to do that
2:50
because she still has to help pay for her grandfather's healthcare bills
2:54
because he just had a stroke.
2:57
Second, we learned who those dreams are for.
3:01
Most Filipinos don't actually dream for themselves.
3:03
They dream for their extended family.
3:06
We met people like Joey,
3:07
[a] 56-year-old radio technician
3:09
who works from 2am to 11pm most nights.
3:13
He lives in a boarding house close to the station,
3:15
given the demands of his job,
3:17
but still wants to be a farmer,
3:19
a social worker and a high school teacher.
3:22
But he really wants to retire.
3:24
But every time he asks his company, they say, "Ah, not yet."
3:28
Right now, he doesn't really have a choice
3:30
because he still has to finish paying for his daughter's education.
3:35
And third, we learned how people perceived institutions
3:38
as helping them achieve those dreams.
3:41
We learned that most Filipinos
3:42
actually didn't feel like public and private institutions
3:45
were helping them achieve their dreams,
3:47
and so they could only rely on themselves.
3:49
We met people like Sweden,
3:51
[a] 35-year-old news reporter
3:53
who spent years moving from one field assignment to another.
3:56
But when she had her first child,
3:58
she decided to stay home
3:59
and start a children's clothing business from her garage,
4:01
believing that making and selling children's clothes online
4:04
would be a better way
4:05
of creating financial stability for her family.
4:08
Today, she dreams of opening up a flagship store in a mall
4:11
for her business,
4:12
and of buying a second home in the mountains for her family.
4:16
Tidri, Joey, Sweden
4:18
and 1,500 other Filipinos we've interviewed
4:21
all still want to be something when they grow up
4:24
and their dreams seem so achievable.
4:28
But somehow to them, they still feel out of reach.
4:32
We shared this report with clients, the business community, media,
4:35
even government officials.
4:37
And every single time they asked us the question,
4:40
why hasn't this been done before?
4:42
Why haven't we tried to measure dreams?
4:44
Look, there are many reasons,
4:46
but I think it's because those who have the power to ask the question
4:49
think they already know the answer.
4:51
In every single forum where I've asked the question,
4:54
“What do you think is the number-one Filipino dream,”
4:56
I've never seen the most senior person in the room answer it correctly.
5:00
They usually guess something safe, like to buy a house
5:02
or something generic, like to have a happy family.
5:05
Less than about five percent of people guess it
5:08
and it's usually somebody more junior,
5:10
somebody who grew up in a lower-income family
5:12
and worked their way up the ladder.
5:14
And I wonder, in how many other countries in the world
5:17
is this actually happening?
5:18
Where what we call “development”
5:19
is really just watching some numbers somewhere going up and to the right,
5:23
but people on the ground feel nowhere closer
5:25
to where they're actually trying to go than they were yesterday.
5:28
Where the only way up is out.
5:32
But wait, we already have something better than GDP, right?
5:35
Doesn't Gross National Happiness measure the same thing?
5:38
Look, Bhutan's GNH, I think, has really redefined development for them.
5:41
It's asked whether people are happy,
5:43
whether their culture is thriving
5:45
and whether they feel spiritually fulfilled.
5:47
But being happy today
5:49
is very different from feeling like you're coming closer to your dreams.
5:53
Bhutan might be one of the most obsessed countries in the world
5:56
with measuring happiness,
5:58
but about 10 percent of their skilled and educated population
6:00
emigrated in 2022.
6:03
Maybe that's the problem with measuring happiness.
6:05
I could be happy today because I've got everything I need
6:08
and things are going well,
6:10
but I might not actually be closer to where I'm trying to go.
6:12
And I think that's what measuring dreams can do for us.
6:15
Look not only at how we feel today,
6:17
but at the vector of that progress over time.
6:21
And I don't think what I'm suggesting is too far off.
6:23
After all, most of us here already work for companies that have HR departments
6:27
that measure the progression of our employees.
6:30
So why couldn't our countries have HR departments
6:32
that measure the personal ambition and fulfillment of its citizens?
6:36
If every country has the Department of Defense,
6:39
why couldn't we have a Department of Dreams?
6:42
Imagine this.
6:43
The annual Aspiration of the Nation report
6:46
presented by the Secretary of Dreams.
6:48
It looks at what people dream of by age, by income group, by geography.
6:52
It looks at how people came up with their dreams,
6:54
how they graduate to bigger ones,
6:56
and when they decide to give up on old dreams.
6:59
Imagine National Dream centers where you could attend trainings
7:02
on making personal progress,
7:04
or social workers trained as life coaches
7:06
who can help keep you on track.
7:08
Imagine the Department of Dreams could work with the Department of Health
7:12
to measure how healthcare emergencies affect ambition.
7:14
Could we not improve healthcare outcomes
7:17
if we took a lens on how these emergencies affect ambition and motivation?
7:22
The Department of Dreams could work with the Department of Trade and Industry
7:25
to ensure that when people say they have these dream businesses,
7:28
they actually get the tools to create them.
7:30
Or with the Department of Labor,
7:32
to ensure that the jobs that people say they want
7:34
are the same jobs that are being created.
7:37
Or with the Department of Education to train future students
7:39
for those dream jobs.
7:41
Look, I understand that there are free markets,
7:43
but could we not imagine a world where people said,
7:46
I want to become a writer or a historian or an astronaut or a psychiatrist,
7:50
and government said,
7:51
"Sure, we'll find a way to make that happen."
7:54
Imagine how much better the world would be
7:57
if everyone was obsessed
7:59
with helping each other achieve their dreams,
8:02
and somehow there was a government official somewhere
8:05
accountable for making that happen.
8:09
There's so much more we still want to do in our work in measuring dreams.
8:12
And we're really just getting started.
8:15
For one, we hope to run this survey every few years
8:17
to see how these dreams change over time.
8:20
We also want to run the survey in other markets
8:22
to see how the Filipino dream might be different from the Malaysian
8:25
or the Emirati dream,
8:27
and encourage governments and companies around the world
8:29
to begin taking dreams more seriously.
8:33
So let's measure dreams.
8:35
Let's measure what people dream of
8:37
and how the content of those dreams changes over time.
8:41
Let’s measure how much progress people feel like they’ve made versus last year,
8:45
and how much more progress they think they'll make looking into next year.
8:49
And then let's measure whether people perceive institutions as helping them
8:54
or holding them back from achieving those dreams.
8:57
Then let's create the conditions
8:59
that allow people to truly live their dreams.
9:04
After all,
9:05
we all still want to be something when we grow up.
9:09
Thank you.
9:11
(Applause)
