Why countries should measure dreams and ambitions (just like GDP) | Lance Katigbak

0:03You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. What do you want to be when you grow up is a universal question. And yet, at some point, we stop being asked. Instead, it becomes, what do you do? Or how much do you make? Where are you going on vacation? We've become really good at hitting metrics that were never ours to begin with. And climbing a ladder that was designed by those who were already sitting on top of it. Consumer researcher Lance Kottigbach decided to ask a different kind of question. Not how fast is your economy growing, but what do people actually dream of or aspire to?

0:44In this talk, he shares what he found and makes the case for something that doesn't exist yet. We all still want to be something when we grow up. If every country has a Department of Defense, why couldn't we have a Department of Dreams? It's coming up right after a short break.

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3:19And now, our TED Talk of the day. What do you want to be when you grow up? At age four, I wanted to become a computer scientist. At five, a vacuum cleaner salesman. At six, a priest. At 17, an award-winning filmmaker. And at 22, when it was finally time to decide on my first job, I became a management consultant. What do you want to be when you grow up? I'm sure everyone here has been asked some version of that question, but perhaps not recently. Somehow, the questions have changed. What do you do for work? How much money do you make? Where are you going on your next vacation? We've become obsessed with asking these types of questions to measure even our nation's productivity.

4:07We track growth rates, remittances, and exports without really asking if these numbers reflect the lives that people are trying to live. I see the problems with this system at home in the Philippines. Our GDP is soaring. But we're doing it in a way that doesn't quite align with the kind of lives that people want to live. For one, we send millions of people abroad to take care of other people's parents and children, and we train millions more to stay awake while their families are asleep so they can be up all night answering phone calls from halfway across the world about how much money is in their bank account.

4:40And somehow we're rewarded for it. We're told that we're Southeast Asia's second fastest-growing economy, and in a few years, we'll be upgraded to an upper-middle-income country. As a nation, we've become really good at hitting metrics that were never ours to begin with, and climbing a ladder that was designed by those who were already sitting on top of it. But what would happen if you asked Filipinos what metrics mattered to them? What would happen if you tried to measure dreams? Last year, my colleagues and I at BCG ran a nationwide nationally representative survey to answer this very question.

5:19Now, look, no client had ever asked us about dreams, But if you look at the websites and mission statements of the country's largest businesses, all of them are trying to connect their work to national development in some way. And so we knew that even if nobody was asking the question, the answer was one that many people would be interested in. We discovered three things. First, we discovered what the Filipino dream was. The number one ranked dream across all socioeconomic segments was to achieve financial security to absorb health scares. But we learned more than that. We also heard stories. We heard stories like that of Tidri, a 26-year-old preschool teacher who dreams of becoming a beauty queen, a host, a politician, and opening a hair salon, just like her grandmother.

6:06But right now, Tidri can't afford to do that because she still has to help pay for her grandfather's health care bills because he just had a stroke. Second, we learned who those dreams are for. Most Filipinos don't actually dream for themselves. They dream for their extended family. We met people like Joey, 56-year-old radio technician who works from 2 a.m. to 11 p.m. most nights. He lives in a boarding house close to the station, given the demands of his job, but still wants to be a farmer, a social worker, and a high school teacher. But he really wants to retire. But every time he asks his company, they say, eh, not yet.

6:46Right now, he doesn't really have a choice because he still has to finish paying for his daughter's education. And third, we learned how people perceived institutions as helping them achieve those dreams. We learned that most Filipinos actually didn't feel like public and private institutions were helping them achieve their dreams, and so they could only rely on themselves. We met people like Sweden, a 35-year-old news reporter who spent years moving from one field assignment to another. But when she had her first child, she decided to stay home and start a children's clothing business from her garage, believing that making and selling children's clothes online would be a better way of creating financial stability for her family.

7:26Today, she dreams of opening up a flagship store in a mall for her business and of buying a second home in the mountains for her family. Tidri, Joey, Sweden, and 1 ,500 other Filipinos who interviewed all still want to be something when they grow up. and their dreams seem so achievable. But somehow to them, they still feel out of reach. We shared this report with clients, the business community, media, even government officials. And every single time they ask us the question, why hasn't this been done before? Why haven't we tried to measure dreams? Look, there are many reasons, but I think it's because those who have the power to ask the question think they already know the answer.

8:09In every single forum where I've asked the question, what do you think is the number one Filipino dream? I've never seen the most senior person in the room answer it correctly. They usually guess something safe, like to buy a house, or something generic, like to have a happy family. Less than about 5 % of people guess it, and it's usually somebody more junior, somebody who grew up in a lower-income family and worked their way up the ladder. And I wonder, in how many other countries in the world is this actually happening, where what we call development is really just watching some number somewhere going up and to the right, but people on the ground feel nowhere closer to where they're actually trying to go than they were yesterday, where the only way up is out.

8:50But wait, we already have something better than GDP, right? Doesn't gross national happiness measure the same thing? Look, Witton's GNH, I think, has really redefined development for them. It's asked whether people are happy, whether their culture is thriving, and whether they feel spiritually fulfilled. But being happy today is very different from feeling like you're coming closer to your dreams. Bhutan might be one of the most obsessed countries in the world with measuring happiness, but about 10 % of the skilled and educated population emigrated in 2022. Maybe that's the problem with measuring happiness.

9:23I could be happy today because I've got everything I need and things are going well, but I might not actually be closer to where I'm trying to go. And I think that's what measuring dreams can do for us. look not only at how we feel today, but at the vector of that progress over time. And I don't think what I'm suggesting is too far off. After all, most of us here already work for companies that have HR departments that measure the progression of our employees. So why couldn't our countries have HR departments that measure the personal ambition and fulfillment of its citizens? If every country has a Department of Defense, why couldn't we have a Department of Dreams?

10:00Imagine this, the annual aspiration of the nation report presented by the Secretary of Dreams. It looks at what people dream of by age, by income group, by geography. It looks at how people came up with their dreams, how they graduate to bigger ones, and when they decide to give up on old dreams. Imagine national dream centers where you could attend trainings on making personal progress, or social workers trained as life coaches who can help keep you on track. Imagine the Department of Dreams could work with the Department of Health to measure how healthcare emergencies affect ambition. Could we not improve healthcare outcomes if you took a lens at how these emergencies affect ambition and motivation?

10:40The Department of Dreams could work with the Department of Trade and Industry to ensure that when people say they have these dream businesses, they actually get the tools to create them. Or with the Department of Labor, to ensure that the jobs that people say they want are the same jobs that are being created. or with the Department of Education to train future students for those dream jobs. Look, I understand that there are free markets, but could we not imagine a world where people said, I want to become a writer or a historian or an astronaut or a psychiatrist, and government said, sure, we'll find a way to make that happen.

11:13Imagine how much better the world would be if everyone was obsessed with helping each other achieve their dreams, and somehow there was a government official somewhere accountable for making that happen. There's so much more we still want to do in our work in measuring dreams, and we're really just getting started. For one, we hope to run this survey every few years to see how these dreams change over time. We also want to run the survey in other markets to see how the Filipino dream might be different from the Malaysian dream or the Emirati dream, and encourage governments and companies around the world to begin taking dreams more seriously.

11:50And so let's measure dreams. Let's measure what people dream of and how the content of those dreams changes over time. Let's measure how much progress people feel like they made versus last year and how much more progress they think they'll make looking into next year. And then let's measure whether people perceive institutions as helping them or holding them back from achieving those dreams. Then let's create the conditions that allow people to truly live their dreams. After all, we all still want to be something when we grow up. Thank you.

12:34That was Lance Kottigbach at TED at BCG in 2025. If you're curious about Ted's curation, visit ted.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today. TED Talks Daily is a podcast from Ted. This episode was fact-checked by the Ted Research Team and produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Lucy Little, Emma Taubner, and Tansika Sunglarnival. Additional support from Daniela Ballarezzo, Christopher Faze-Bogan, Valentina Bohanini, Ban Ban Chang, Brian Green, and Lainey Lott. Learn more at podcasts.ted.com. I am Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed.

13:17Thanks for listening.

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14:36On the TED Radio Hour, legendary soccer player Abby Wambach remembers exactly what was going on in her mind at a crucial moment during the 2011 World Cup. As soon as the ball came off of her foot, I knew that that ball was coming to my head. The only thing in my mind was don't screw this up. The psychology of winning. That's next time on the TED Radio Hour from NPR. Subscribe or listen to the TED Radio Hour wherever you get your podcasts.