As an American who came here as a post-graduate student many years ago, and a British citizen of a dozen years, I am proud of my adopted country. I am proud when we punch above our weight, that we go after the big international prizes, such as the Commonwealth Games, the Olympic Games and high profile international conferences. In a relatively short space of time, UK plc has moved from being an industrial relations disaster zone in the 1970s to the fourth leading economy in the world. Our businesses, big and small, are now more flexible, robust, energetic, better led and better trained than for decades.

Yet we do have one fatal flaw: we whinge. Take our winning bid of the London Olympics in 2012, a marvellous achievement, which will not only project our great capital city onto the consciousness of the international community, but will deliver regeneration to a part of London that desperately needs it. 

We celebrated this achievement for a month or two, and then the whinging started: in the press, on TV, among the politicians. For starters, the complaints came in about it being over budget. Did you ever hear of a project of this scale, in a city the size of London, which has not been over budget? Perhaps the Olympic committee should have been more realistic in projecting the costs of construction at the outset, but in winning contracts and competing globally the tendency is to underestimate—we are not the only country that has done this. Remember the Montreal Olympics, or any modern day Olympics, for that matter?

I acknowledge that we aren't particularly good at budgeting for our major building projects (eg the Dome et al), and that we should be better at doing this by ensuring we have better partnership arrangements between contractors and their sub contractors, that we don't over-underestimate the costs because we are desperate to win a particular bid and that we set up a better after-bid process to manage "the big project". Nevertheless, did you hear the Australians or Greeks complain when there were cost overruns? Not from within. It was the foreign press that savaged them, particularly from countries that lost out in the bidding.

I sometimes wonder if one of the problems in these scenarios is partly down to poor PR with the public (and not just with the international selection committees) to show the potential for regeneration, creating greener environments, for employment, and yes, for our image as a nation as well, which has an enormous intangible benefit in terms of international trade and strategic business alliances. 

What we need to do in the UK is to think through, with each big event we are considering bidding for, whether we really want it or not. And that process should involve as many different stakeholders as possible, so that we get real ownership by all parties, and the public. We need to have as realistic expectations about costs as possible, to be clear about what we can deliver and the potential legacy, and to avoid doing it as a blood sport, just for the metaphorical kill or win, without thinking about the "after bid".
We need to bid only for those projects we really want, and then back them to the hilt. We are a big economy, with big ambitions but we need to support those who, on our behalf, are trying to make it work. Yes, we could improve on the costings, the unrealistic expectations, and the hype, but we need to stop looking for trouble every time we win something; undermining those who are genuinely working on our behalf to make it happen. We might try letting them get on with it.

I am reminded in this context of what Machiavelli wrote in The Prince: "It should be borne in mind that there is nothing more difficult to arrange, more doubtful of success, and more dangerous to carry through than initiating changes... The innovator makes enemies of all those who prospered under the old order, and only lukewarm support is forthcoming from those who would prosper under the new".

If Seb Coe's team had only our lukewarm support—that would be something.