tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-88882160460701846942024-01-05T14:35:56.731+01:00Hans TenDamconsultant / coach / teacher / authorHans TenDamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07290538883780657086noreply@blogger.comBlogger76125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8888216046070184694.post-55060942662263661382024-01-05T12:05:00.004+01:002024-01-05T12:05:58.809+01:00LIVING WITH THE SELF<p>We have a self. We not only have feelings and thoughts and impressions of others - also about ourselves. How do we live with ourselves?<br />I found twelve ways. Most of them come in opposite flavors. And there may be more.<br />Check with yourself. I am not sure if they should be considered in any particular order. Anyway, here they come. <br /><br /><i>Feeding ourselves.</i> This can be literally or metaphorical. During meetings we may be on the lookout for appreciating glances or remarks. We may be hungry for compliments, at least for acknowledgement. <br />The negative of this is <i>starving ourselves</i>. We do that when we feel that we don’t deserve positive feedback. Or when we feel it is safer to be unnoticed, invisible. Or we do that to discipline ourselves. It may make us feel special, not like most people, not like common people. Or we punish our body. It is disgusting to exist, to have a body.<br /><br />When this is about attention from others, it is about <i>presenting ourselves</i> or <i>hiding ourselves</i>. The most common reason to hide is shame. ‘Sorry for existing, sorry for taking up space.’<br /><br /><i>Wishing ourselves well</i>, hoping and dreaming. We are not only what we are, we are also what we want, desire, need, hope for. Or the reverse: what we fear, what we want to avoid, what we worry about. We are also what we expect: good or bad.<br /><br /><i>Defending ourselves</i>. Against silent and outspoken criticism, against our inner critic. Sometimes plural: inner critics. We may even rehearse our defense in our mind before we actually may need to do so. We may defend ourselves before we are attacked. We may even defend ourselves against possible compliments by excusing ourselves before others had the opportunity to react. We may defend ourselves aggressively, attacking those who possibly might criticize us. All this may cost much energy, so we are already tired before we really might need to defend ourselves.<br /><br /><i>Pitying ourselves.</i> Ever heard of self-pity? For the professionals reading this: the auto-psychodrama. We suffer from this especially when we are well-intended but misunderstood: an awful, but common combination. And when we act this out to receive our well-deserved pity from others, we are going to be disappointed. More reason for self-pity. There are many disappointments in life, so many reasons for self-pity. Don’t leave the train at this station! This is not the end of the line!<br /><br /><i>Doubting ourselves</i>. We never can be really sure of anything. Also not of ourselves. What to think about what we did? What we said? How we reacted? What we hoped for? What we were afraid of? What we decided? What we chose? "Maybe I am doubting myself too much. Maybe I should be more self-assured, like Jack, or like Minnie."<br /><br /><i>Being indifferent to ourselves.</i> Usually while we are indifferent to about everything and everyone else. Why bother? It’s all meaningless anyway. Who cares? Life is boring.<br /><br /><i>Destroying ourselves</i>. This is worse, much worse. It is the ultimate remedy against frustration without end. The ultimate remedy also against self-doubt, self-blame, and guilt. It is the road to suicide, sometimes the gradual one: terminal addiction.<br /><br /><i>Developing ourselves</i>. We can also invest in ourselves. Learn things, discover things. Exercise. Grow stronger, more knowledgeable, more able. We even might grow wings.<br /><br /><i>Enjoying ourselves</i>. Usually that is what simply happens. We may seek it and we may succeed in that. But it is often somewhat slippery. It may take quite some time before we learn what really is satisfying and making us happy.<br /><br /><i>Examining ourselves</i>. Looking in the mirror, listening to our own voice. Weird and difficult. Almost impossible without judging. And how to judge? Difficult to do without praise or criticism. Others can help, sometimes considerably. Others can also greatly hinder our self-appraisal. How are you appraising yourself? What for, actually?<br /><br /><i>Forgetting ourselves</i>. This is a paradoxical one. When we forget ourselves we also forget that we are forgetting ourselves. It may mean that we are in flow: forgetting the time, forgetting ourselves, absorbed in what we do in what we experience. It may also mean that we mentally died. Rebirth? How? Why?<br /><br /><i>Naked self-awareness.</i> Also a paradoxical one. May be an incredible fullness. Or may be an incredible emptiness. Essentially, first an incredible emptiness and, if you mentally survive that, an incredible fullness. Don’t expect this. Don’t prepare for this. <br /><br /></p>Hans TenDamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07290538883780657086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8888216046070184694.post-13515344055829690652023-12-23T11:18:00.001+01:002023-12-23T11:18:16.152+01:00SOME FALSE BELIEFS - OR MENTAL DISEASES<p>This title is a bit misleading. It should be called: Beliefs that I consider to be dead wrong. And that I have heard being said by - let’s call them: alternative - people<br /><br /><b>Nothing is real</b>.<br />This is a favorite with people who want to seem deep to themselves and to others. Look how courageous and open-minded I am! Are you courageous and open-minded enough to follow me into this wild and open country?<br />If nothing is real, the person who is saying this is also not real, so who cares?<br />The right take is that whatever we experience, is less than what is out there. Or, when we are introspective, whatever we experience about ourselves, is less than what is in there. Our perceptions and our thoughts are limited - and they may be twisted. As there is something like fantasy. There is often unreality in our assumptions, our expectations and even in our perceptions.<br />Real is what makes a difference. A nice saying, rather practical, but too glib. Canopus is a real star, but does it make any difference? Not to the stock market, not to my love life. Difference to whom? In what?<br />Anyway, you don’t want that a brain surgeon, operating on you, believes that nothing is real. Cutting at the wrong place may make a difference. Unless life and death aren’t real either. And what about pain? Some maintain that it is also an illusion.<br /><br /><b>Nothing really matters.</b><br />What matters or not depends on whom we are talking about. And matter or not matter for what? The weather in Siberia doesn’t matter. Not to me, as I am not there and I have no family or friends there, no business interests, no plans. <br />X is important to A in regard to Y. If you don’t specify who and what, the question of what matters is gloriously empty. Importance or lack of importance doesn’t exist. It doesn’t grow on trees. Something may or nor be important for someone, in some respect. For survival, for example. Or health. Or success. Or happiness. Everything is important. Also an empty slogan by empty minds.<br /><br /><b>Definite causes have definite effects.</b><br />A causes B. So if we encounter B, there must have been A. Speeding leads to more road accidents. Pretty true. But there are many factors involved here. The state of the roads, the state of the speeding vehicle, the mental and physical state of the driver, the weather, the time of day or night. The presence or absence of other traffic, of people, of animals even. According to some, the positions of the planets - and the natal horoscope of the driver.<br />A causes B, all other conditions identical. But conditions are never identical. A causes B may be a correct and useful statement, as long as we don’t forget that is dependent on conditions. And as our knowledge is limited, we are never 100% sure. To be 100% sure in general is a mental aberration. <br />Sometimes we may get close. Which is good enough. But never forget: there are conditions.<br /><br /><b>Scientific facts are more important than direct experience.</b><br />Especially in the social sciences this is a widespread idea. People are amateurs when it comes to evaluate human situations and human behavior. That is true. Unfortunately, what social scientists call facts are the conclusions of research that is always partial and always on limited samples that are never completely representative. Facts that are established by research should be taken seriously, but not as gospel.<br /><br /><b>Direct experience is more important than scientific facts.</b><br />Alas, the opposite is also flimsy. Our personal experiences are valuable, our personal conclusions may be right, but not necessarily. Chances for misreading the so-called facts of experience are legio. The more experience we have, the larger the chance that we read right. But experienced people may make grave mistakes also. Clear-mindedness and especially open-mindedness are essential to increase the chance that our perceptions and evaluations are right - and useful. Only people low on uncertainty avoidance can stay open-minded. <br /><br /><b>There are parallel worlds.</b><br />There aren’t, at least no worlds that don’t interact. The assumption seems that our mind can somehow enter parallel worlds. That may be true, but that implies an interaction. If there is a truly parallel world, its existence is meaningless for this universe. There is no way to know and there is no possible interest in this empty assumption.<br /><br /><b>Time doesn’t exist.</b><br />Or, only slightly less idiotic, time is circular. Well it isn’t. There is always before and after. And there is the idea that time is relative. Okay, relative to what? Time measurement of course is relative to place and speed (speed itself is relative to places). ‘Time is the fourth dimension.’ Well it isn’t, it is no dimension at all. It is a vector. In a dimension you can return to a place of departure, in time you can’t.<br />And there is of course the notion popular in stories, especially in movies, of time travel. The only time travel that exists is the kind all of us do, every moment of our life. We can’t travel to the past, we can’t travel to the future. Also not in the future. We can remember, we can visit recordings of the past. And we may visit plans and projections, scenarios, expectations. Mentally, we may both dwell in the past and in the future. <br />There may be some precognition. We can see the tree in the sapling. But not all saplings grow into trees. Leave time travel to SF and Ground Hog Day. Let’s not spend more time on this. <br /><br /></p>Hans TenDamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07290538883780657086noreply@blogger.com0Goa, India15.2993265 74.123995999999991-13.010907336178846 38.967745999999991 43.609560336178845 109.28024599999999tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8888216046070184694.post-13563063925851950372019-09-22T17:40:00.000+02:002019-09-22T17:42:47.784+02:00AN EXTRATERRESTRIAL TOUR GUIDE TO OUR PLANETWhat would an extraterrestrial travel guide say about our planet?<br />
<br />
Of course, the lists below are riddled by assumptions about what extraterrestrials visitors would be like. My main assumptions are that they are more or less human and that they have lived for many thousands of years in peace. I also assume that beings who can travel through space are technologically advanced and have known age-long stability and are rather mental and calm than emotional and impulsive. <br />
<br />
I am submitting a list of five main attractions, five experiences to avoid and five reasons for a a negative travel advice to visit this planet at all. All for the benefit of extraterrestrial visitors. Let us start with the last list.<br />
<br />
THE FIVE MAIN REASONS FOR A NEGATIVE TRAVEL ADVICE TO PLANET EARTH<br />
<ol>
<li>A nuclear world war</li>
<li>A pandemic</li>
<li>Worldwide famine</li>
<li>Mass killings; extermination and concentration camps</li>
<li>Worldwide exploitation and slaughter of animals</li>
</ol>
<br />
Only Number 5 is actual right now. For visitors it is probably not frightening (unless they seem like animals to us), but disgusting, horrifying. It could be the main reason not to visit us. Don't go there!<br />
<br />
THE FIVE MAIN CONDITIONS OR DESTINATIONS TO AVOID WHEN VISITING EARTH<br />
<ol>
<li>International wars </li>
<li>Civil wars and religious wars; widespread violence; torture chambers</li>
<li>Corrupt regimes (risky for tourists!)</li>
<li>Sexual exploitation of children </li>
<li>Sexual exploitation of adults</li>
</ol>
<br />
These first three are about risks, the last two mainly about disgust.<br />
<br />
<br />
THE TOP FIVE ATTRACTIONS<br />
<ol>
<li>Nature, esp. oceans and waterfalls; variety of climate, flora and fauna</li>
<li>Variety in peoples and cultures</li>
<li>Performance artists: dancers, acrobats, etc.</li>
<li>Musicians</li>
<li>Romance (??)</li>
</ol>
<br />
My guess is that this planet is more varied and richer than most. And wetter. And that vitality plays a much stronger role than in societies technologically so advanced that physical and emotional challenges probably are minimal. Our more vital bodies may have a particular attractiveness. (Or maybe considered gross.)And differences between male and female may be here more outspoken.<br />
<br />
You might have alternative lists. Please share!Hans TenDamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07290538883780657086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8888216046070184694.post-68689967909247336172018-11-02T12:11:00.000+01:002018-11-02T12:11:12.324+01:00Good Government: A Perennial NeedA well-governed state is a country in which people are safe, prosperous and free. A country where people want to live.<br />An ill-governed state is a country where most people are poor, a country where many are at risk, a country in which people are stuck. It usually is an authoritarian state, where critical people refrain from expressing their opinions.<br />A failed state is a country where the economy is in shambles, a country without an effective government, a country in which people are subject to arbitrary authority and unforeseeable violence, a country where people flee from. There is lack of government, or rather many local and competing governments. Often a repressive or incompetent government has been overthrown by popular revolt. <br />Imprudent government and incompetent government in the end lead to rebellion and civil war. The worst evil is an endless civil war with no clear winner in sight. An evil that may be further compounded by racial or religious conflicts. Think of states like Somalia, Libya, Syria and Yemen. Think also of Venezuela, a state if not failed, at least imploding, decaying.<br /><br />So our fundamental political challenges are:<br />Maintain well-governed states in shape. That effort never stops and is less certain than it has long been the fashion to believe. Plurality easily leads to majority and majority may lead to repression.<br />Introduce plurality in monopolistic states: difficult and risky.<br />Restore failed states: almost impossible. It requires competent benevolent dictatorship. That is rare. And it ultimately digs its own grave as it dulls civic society. The only alternative is the suspension of national sovereignty. Since the disrepute of protectorates under the League of Nations that hasn't been tried anymore.<br /><br />Whatever the kind of government, leaders matter. Leaders of states are not just figureheads, even in democracies. After assassinations, important domestic and foreign policy changes do happen. Who is leading makes a difference.<br /><br />One of the most successful states ever was Rome. It was successful for many centuries. Even its downfall took centuries. How came? What where the secrets of its success? In modern parlance: what were its critical success factors? We have an extensive analysis of those in The Discourses of Machiavelli, an analysis still relevant today.<br /><br />Machiavelli writes that the two fundamental success factors in life, certainly in public life, are virtu and fortuna, quality and good-luck. <br />He sees as the critical competences for a well-ordered, a 'virtuous' republic, in order of importance, prudence, discipline and justice.<br /><br />Prudence, or sound judgment and practical wisdom, is the ultimate quality. The main source of prudence is education. People who are well-educated (not the same as having been to school) appreciate prudent leaders.<br />Discipline is practical morality, embodied in law enforcement. The main source of discipline is, according to Machiavelli, religion, a religious mindset. Discipline is needed to make the necessary tough decisions in the face of crime, corruption, unrest, famine or war. Discipline is needed when sacrifices must be made.<br />The main aspect of what Machiavelli considers justice is a culture of equality before the law—Roman citizenship.<br />Every society has many differences in interests and in views. The most fundamental difference is between the few—rich and influential— and the many—poor and menial. In Rome, those were called the patricians and the plebeians. Today we may talk about the elite and the ordinary people. Aristocracy gives power to the first group, democracy to the second. In Rome, the patricians made for a long time sure that no one among them could grasp permanent power. Halfway, they allowed the rest of the people to have its own representation and power base. Of course, slaves were excluded, though some became citizens.<br /><br />The opposite of 'virtue' is vice. What does Machiavelli see as the cardinal political sin? Corruption. Imprudence, indulgence and injustice are the three chief vices that corrupt a republic. Wide-spread greed ticks all three boxes. <br />The main breeding ground of injustice is inequality. Think of the many forms of discrimination, stereotyping, elitism. Without a common identity, differences easily become divisive. Pluralism is the hallmark of a well-ordered society. We may be all different, but we share being human. We are all people. The deepest political sin is to label and treat others as not fully human: as Jews, as blacks, as women, as backward, as scum, as alien. Or as profiteers on one side and loafers at the other side.<br /><br />A well-ordered republic accepts, but manages its differences in interests and views. It institutes countervailing powers. <br />Even majorities need a countervailing power. "The winner takes all", especially with short-term views, is an unwise solution. Majorities should never suppress minorities. Successful democracies are inclusive, not exclusive, plural not singular. Inclusive societies are more stable—and more prosperous.<br />Authoritarian majority rule is as vulnerable as minority rule. It grows into dictatorship and suppression and so in injustice.<br />Rome handled the main conflict, between the rich and the poor, the patriciate and the plebs, explicitly in the tension between the senate with its consuls, and the tribunes of the plebs. Democracy was neither unleashed nor suppressed. The rich and powerful had to be as much disciplined as the poor and powerless. They had to obey the laws as well. Machiavelli gives strong historical examples of Roman discipline.<br />The separation of powers by Montesquieu: legislation, administration and judiciary, is another classical example of countervailing powers. Independent judges are the last defense in a democracy in which the differences between legislation and the administration have become blurred—or where the differences between public service and private companies have become blurred.<br />Countervailing powers prune all-too powerful players, either business monopolies or political monopolies. Paul Collier: "At the core of all successful societies are procedures for blocking the advancement of bad men." And in our enlightened age, bad women as well.<br />Wherever plurality is curtailed, society is stifling itself. Without countervailing powers, corruption spreads. Corruption is always and everywhere the mortal enemy of good government.<br /><br />We need political competence: prudence, discipline and justice. If we have prudence and justice, we need law enforcement against corruption. But without prudence and without justice, law enforcement itself becomes the strong arm of corruption.<br />Good government doesn't bring heaven on earth, but is forever taking steps in the right direction. Lately, examples of the opposite direction abound.<br /><br />Hans TenDamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07290538883780657086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8888216046070184694.post-75513550067713941062018-02-07T09:50:00.001+01:002018-02-07T09:50:52.100+01:00Turning the tables: How revolutions do choke on themselvesWhat do the anti-smoke lobby, women’s lib, socialism and black emancipation have in common? That enlightenment largely is the new darkness. <br />They are all movements to righten glaring injustice by continuing the problem they want to solve. Turning the tables is just turning the tables. George Orwell ends Animal Farm with: <i>The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.</i><br /><br />What is the case for female emancipation? Thousands of years of oppression. What better case is there? What stronger case is there? Still, emancipation is largely more of the same, just turned inside out. <br />Oppression of women is based on the idea that women are a different kind, that to know that someone is a woman is telling a thing or two. Even when there are true statistical difference, you can’t judge individuals on that. ‘Women are more emotional than men.’ Let’s assume that we know what we mean by that and that the difference is statistically significant, still there will be millions and millions of women being more businesslike than millions and millions of men. If being or not being emotional would be a meaningful difference, let’s say for a particular job, the fact that a particular candidate is male or female is highly irrelevant. Or should be. Unless we pick blindly - what only people do who are grossly incompetent and grossly indifferent.<br /><br />The essence of discrimination is lack of discrimination, is to think in abstract generalities instead of concrete individuals. Likewise, many women really think that men are a different kind of people. <br />Does having different physical equipment mean different qualities and different preferences? Again: statistically yes - at least in many respects and not at all in many more. But individually not at all.<br />If being a muslim gives ten times more probability to be a suicide bomber (I am making this up), still 99,999% percent of Muslims aren’t. The evil is in generalizing in judging individuals.<br />The way many women talk about men is just turning the tables, historically understandable, to say the very least, but simply continuing thinking in stereotypes. Also, many black people think about white people as if they were a different kind. <br />There may be real differences in skin color, in gender, in money, in religion, in culture, in sexual preference, in age. But seeing individual people in such categories is not very helpful.<br />Black people who see white people as racist are racist. Women who see men as bigoted are bigoted. Non-smokers who see smokers as dumb and evil are dumb and evil. Poor people who see rich people as bastards, are bastards.<br />When revolutionaries win, they usually treat others like they have been treated. When tyranny is toppled, injustice trades places. Whoever runs Russia becomes a czar, whoever ends on top in Egypt becomes a pharaoh.<br /><br />And now we have modern, enlightened people who embrace diversity and celebrate gays, bisexuals and transgenders, celebrate everyone who used to be considered outlandish, exotic, handicapped or weird. They are inclusive of outsiders and they celebrate their own broad-mindedness and open-mindedness. <br />The only people they reject and even despise are the narrow-minded, the petty-minded, the bigoted, the nationalists, the populists, the racists, the backward. The people that voted for Trump. The despicables.<br /> White is the new black. The tables have been turned. And sometimes the compliment is returned again: the backlash.<br />Progressives despise conservatives; conservatives despise progressives. <br /><br />Any social or political movement that downgrades the unwanted, the despicables, that has contempt in its diet, is a social ill. <i>Contempt is the great poison, humiliation is the great evil.</i><br />So, if we would eradicate these tendencies in ourselves, we would solve the problem. Without these unwanted, primitive judgments we would be clear-headed, objective, neutral. Yes, but probably also tasteless, robot-like, autistic.<br />So, if there is a solution, there is only a partial one.<br /><br />In individual cases, we should be aware of our tendency to generalize and look through our own filters. When I was 19, I boarded a bus in Amsterdam-West with six or seven black man in it and felt somewhat threatened. I was shocked by my own discrimination. Why was this? Was I a bigot myself?<br />Coming back to it several times in the next month, I suddenly found the explanation: I couldn’t read their faces, they looked all the same to me. But once you are in Surinam, where black people are in the majority, this apparent sameness dissolves in a few days and you see and sense the individual differences like at home. <br />When I first landed in Tokyo, I saw a mass of Japanese that all looked the same - though I noticed the difference between young and old and between male and female. After a week or so, I saw them like I see Dutch people: in their individual differences. Some businesslike, some artistic; some expressive, some reserved.<br />My guess is that when you would be among a tribe or among a rather isolated rural area anywhere in the world, it may take you a few days or a few weeks extra to sense the individual differences.<br /><br />Prejudice is natural. When we hear that some stranger at a party has been just released from years in prison or in a mental institution, that strongly influences the way we see that person. That is unavoidable. Bur we should see our first impressions as a starting point, not an end point. <br />We look differently to obviously very poor people and to obviously very rich people. Especially when our own financial position is not too bad, but vulnerable. <br />We look differently to very famous people. And fame rubs off—a little. “Yesterday I bumped into Brad Pitt! And he smiled at me!”<br />We walk with prejudice and we meet prejudice. Some of us meet a lot of it.<br />There is painfully little we can do about that. But we can do something about our own prejudice: consider our first impressions simply as our first impressions. <br /><br />If we would like to improve society, naturally we dislike those who are opposed to these improvements. We want to overcome their objections, their resistance. We see our opponents as backwards—or as arrogant. We want change, if necessary: revolution. But revolutions most of the time end in chaos—or in more of the same: upturned tables that are indistinguishable from the old ones. Sometimes marginally better, sometimes clearly worse.<br />What remains is to study and understand how really successful improvements have come about, how some new countries really have taken off, how some revolutions really have been beneficial. There is reason for optimism, but at least as much reason for pessimism.<br /><i>“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.” </i><br />Beware of pigheaded do-gooders. Don’t be one yourself.<br /><br />(Disclaimer: This writer declares that he has nothing against doing good—and nothing against pigs. He even doesn’t eat them.)Hans TenDamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07290538883780657086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8888216046070184694.post-43630917101788637232017-03-29T14:27:00.002+02:002017-03-29T14:27:39.995+02:00The need for an enlightened populismWhere democracy ends, fascism begins. So we should stop forerunners in their tracks. Populism is the main forerunner.<br />There are always different interests and different views that need to be balanced. What makes democracy work is not the rule of the majority, but the the recognition and acceptance of plurality. Even economically, inclusive societies do better than exclusive ones. In a democracy it is never the winner takes all. <br /><br />Many people have been getting a more open-minded view of cultural and national and religious differences. We consider that modern, liberal, enlightened. We may even glorify differences and we overly respect those groups that have been treated or are treated disrespectfully. That makes us feel we belong to the right kind of people.<br /><br />But other people, tired of economic, political and religious tensions between different groups in a country long for a less diverse society. One dominant religion, one dominant culture, one dominant tribe. They may remember fondly the past. But the past has never been that nice. The French revolutionaries around 1790, who almost invented nationalism, were shocked to discover that more than 80% of the French didn't consider themselves French and even didn't speak French, at least not what the people in Paris considered to be French. Today, the Parisian people consider the small-town and the rural French as the true French, <i>la France profonde</i>, not yet urban and international. Assumptions, the world is full 0f them. And the more brittle our assumptions, the more we seem to believe in them.<br /><br />Obsession with the past is a recipe for stagnation and exasperation. Any type of obsession: both glorifying the past and blaming the past. If it wasn't for colonialism and slavery, black people would still live in peace in Africa, without artificial, 'unnatural' borders. But only the most uncrossable borders are natural. Borders are never simple and always are shifting and permeable. That is what border areas should be. <br /><br />The injustices of the past father the slippery monster of grievances. Rightful grievances should be met. But here is a snag. Two snags actually. Unfortunately, both are huge.<br />One snag is that grievances often are fostered. They feed indignation and so identity. Such grievances can never be met. It's never enough. People may have become addicted to the poison of grievance. Grievances start with facts, but they may grow into mental infections. We can bend over backwards and the grievances still may stay. How many excuses and compensations were needed to resolve old wrongs, like true Germans having to live outside Germany?<br />The other snag is even more pernicious. Modern, liberal people who are inclusive, open-minded, internationalist, look with disdain to more traditional, exclusive and nationalist people, consider them backward bigots—and so exclude them. Inclusive people exclude exclusive people.<br />That's the rub. A progressive, developing, modernizing democracy creates its own nemesis. <br /><br />We should accept and embrace differences; we should especially accept and embrace everyone who historically was excluded. And so we exclude the ones that are not modern, not international, not inclusive. They are the losers, the 'deplorables.' They hopefully will dissolve and die out while enlightenment advances.<br />So they despise, even hate, the people of goodwill, the know-it-alls, the yups, the expats, the graduated, the well-to-do, the well-employed, the modern: the … (expletives deleted) elite.<br /><br />This frustration becomes pot-boiling when from the outside a new proletariat comes in: hard-working people willing to do odd-jobs, work for a pittance—and usually bringing a few new loafers alongside. Insiders who are stagnant look badly at outsiders who are on the way up.<br /><br />And then come people who offer a way out. Populist politicians sell a double hamburger of a lie. They promise back to the good old days. Well, they weren't that good at all— and you can't go back to them. <br />As Carl Rogers once remarked, nobody is shouting out load to large crowds that the sun will rise again tomorrow. The more unfounded the message, the more the volume is turned up. Who needs arguments?<br /><br />Populism is the bastard child of progress and progressivism: an unrecognized offspring. But one: this bastard has a power, no matter how backward or even ugly you may think it is: numbers. And two: people susceptible to populism are real people with real lives under real conditions. Whatever we may think of their thoughts, they have them for a reason. For a couple of reasons, usually.<br /><br />Reactionary nationalism is dangerous, but people are nationalist for a reason. Understanding the reasons, even acknowledging those reasons is necessary. There is no other way to get your reasons for modernity and internationalism acknowledged with them. Why would people listen to people who don't listen to them?<br /><br />Populist voters deserve better leaders than the ones they have got. Or not? Anyway, we all would be better off by better populist leaders. Less unreliable, less egocentric, less crazy.<br />Where can we find a better alternative? Social-democrats would be the best bet, at least in Europe, but they seem to have forgotten their <i>raison d'être</i>. To take care of common people with simple interests and simple outlooks is not very sexy for politicians. And they have been bowing to the prevailing winds of neo-liberalists and neoconservatives who sincerely think they own the place. Well, they don't. At least not anywhere near to the extent they are assuming that.<br /><br />To cater to common people may seem not to be very sexy for politicians, but in the face of the inexorable dwindling of simple work, it is one of the deepest human and political challenges for the century that just began. The new proletariat is not necessarily poor and ill and dirty; it often has plenty of leisure and usually some money to spend on that. The options for wasting your life have grown considerably. Drugs have been diversifying from alcohol. The US is going the way of Russia: life expectancy is decreasing. Twenty years ago that would have been unthinkable.<br /><br />Don't leave an enormous segment of the population to the Pied Pipers of populism. From populism may come fascism. From fascism dictatorship. From dictatorship the degrading and fragmentation of society or the horrors of war and civil war.<br />After coming thus far we shouldn't stop progress. We have to eye populists coolly and their constituencies warmly, at least with understanding. We have to understand their views. We have to recognize their interests. And we have to communicate that understanding and that recognition in the most practical and down-to-earth way possible. If they don't listen to us, we should start listening to them.<br />Hans TenDamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07290538883780657086noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8888216046070184694.post-81339556567801737402017-03-02T12:42:00.000+01:002017-03-02T12:42:15.887+01:00The tragedy of populismTo understand the present rise of populism in Western democratic societies we need to understand five global trends, that have been slowly building up over two centuries and are accelerating:<br /><br />
<ol>
<li>The ever expanding role of technology diminishes the need for simple work.</li>
<li>More and more people concentrate in ever larger cities.</li>
<li>The international mobility of people is still increasing.</li>
<li>The international mobility of business and money is still increasing.</li>
<li>Developing countries are finally catching up, including the giants China and India.</li>
</ol>
<br />Urbanization and internationalization create a network of megacities with growing interaction between them, while the integration with the rest of the countries they are in lags behind. Metropolises like London, Frankfurt, New York, Shanghai and Tokyo are increasingly part of one international network. <br /><br />Less visible, but more fundamental: ever more people are unemployed. In the US only a quarter of all non-working adults are in the unemployment statistics. The others don’t try anymore. The dropouts from the workforce are an ever growing poor leisure class. With growing passivity goes growing drug abuse, including pain killers and antidepressants. Read for example 'Our miserable 21st century' by Nicholas N. Eberstadt in <i>Commentary</i>, Feb. 15, 2017 explaining why Trump shouldn't have been a surprise.<br /><br />These work force dropouts are no longer necessary. Above they are supplanted by technology, sideways their work is supplanted by laborers in the developing countries, and at the bottom of the labor market they are supplanted by immigrants, either legal or illegal who are willing to do the work they feel is below them. The only economic function of the work force dropouts is consuming. There will be always simple and honorable jobs, but not in sufficient numbers.<br /><br />UK farmers are worrying: who has to help with the harvest if Brexit becomes a reality? In Finland, the annual harvest of swamp berries is done by Vietnamese flown in. Till the Vietnamese can earn the same money in their own country. In the Netherlands the unemployed refuse to do menial jobs in horticulture, they stopped doing the heaviest work in factories already forty years ago. The difference between them and foreign people who are willing is simple: what for many immigrants is up, for them is down. And down is unpalatable when the general development is still up.<br /><br />Those left behind in the this international and technological dynamic are not conservative, they are reactionary: progress is threatening, they want the conditions of yesterday to be restored.<br />They are the ones who elect the populists: unreliable and sometimes unsavory characters that can’t solve their problems. They will rather worsen them. The disappointed people will be in for more disappointment.<br />They will not see the dynamics in society, they will see conspiracies by the rich and the smart. By the elite, a concept once more <i>en vogue</i>. (Excuse the elitist expression.)<br />Like with most problems, there is no solution without starting to acknowledge the problems and their underlying dynamics. Who should acknowledge and understand the problems? Primarily the well-employed and well-earning. Out of compassion; out of enlightened self-interest.<br /><br />One of the few ideas around that will, if not solve, at least lessen the problem is a simple basic income for everybody, no strings attached. The hard working will cry wolf, but populism and fascism are an immensely worse perspective. But what will that do to immigration?<br />The outflow of failed states is threatening the whole international system. This is already putting pressure on national sovereignty. That pressure will only increase. We are in for more multinational institutions, not less. But that is anathema to the populists. Catch 22?<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Hans TenDamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07290538883780657086noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8888216046070184694.post-19681994204663680322017-02-12T20:24:00.000+01:002017-02-12T20:24:03.842+01:00THE REMAINING RISK OF NUCLEAR WARFARESince the break-up of the USSR and the end of the Cold War, general anxiety about nuclear war has lessened, and rightly so. Though the risk of a nuclear wolrd war between yje Unites States and the Russian Federation is much less, other risks have grown.<br />Three 'nuclear wapen states' have not signed the non-proliferaion treaty and ome has not even acknowledged it has them. Those states are Pakistan, India, North Korea and Israel. Two of those are uneasy neighbors with a history of conflict: India and Pakistan. North Korea considers South Korea and the USA its enemies.<br /><br />According to Brecher & Wilkenfeld the moment that had the largest probability of unleashing a nuclear world war was the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. They estimated that probability as around 25%. They saw the primary conflict at the end of the 80s as the Israel-Arab tensions. By the way, SIPRI estimates that today Israel has around 80 nuclear weapons. In the whole world we are over 10,000.<br /><br />Reading a couple of recent analyses, it seems to me that the three major dangers are:<br />Use of nuclear weapons by North-Korea against South Korea and the USA.<br />A nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan<br />A nuclear exchange between the USA and the Russian Federation.<br /><br />The first seems the least unlikely, but will be by far the smallest. The second will be larger, but even less likely and the third is very unlikely, but may be incomparably larger.<br /><br />And what about terrorists getting their hands on a nuclear weapon? It will be horrible, but most milited and unlikely to set off a nuclear war, though it seems nort impossible in the second scenario. And if Islamists would set off a nuclear bomb in or near Israel, that would certainly set off a chain reaction. (Excuse the wording.)<br /><br />What is probably the most unmanageable factor in creating havoc? Psychopaths, like the pilot flying the passenger plane into a mountain. But nowhere can a bomb be launched by a single individual. Smuggling a device into a city requires fewer people, but seems still a far cry from a lone wolf set-up.<br /><br />The general consensus among the specialists is that the chance on a nuclear war today is definitively larger than during the Cold War, though most probably not as world-wide as it was envisaged then.<br /><br />But one large bomb on Israel will destroy so much, that no restraint can be expected in the response. Or one nuclear missile on Seoul or a large Indian city will not go unanswered, if only because you don't know if more are coming. <br /><br />The UK, France and China have also nuclear weapons, but the chances of them unleashing a nuclear war seem slim.<br /><br />How to manage this risk? The challenge boils down to: how to avoid the first nuclear explosion? <br />Read my chapter 10 in 'People Make the World' for a more general analysis.Hans TenDamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07290538883780657086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8888216046070184694.post-71100525827382840722016-12-13T16:09:00.000+01:002016-12-13T16:10:28.983+01:00Referendums, populism and deliberative pollingDemocracy is good. Churchill in the House of Commons, 11 November 1947: It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government — except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.<br />
And before that on 8 December 1944: The ordinary man who keeps a wife and family, who goes off to fight for his country when it is in trouble, goes to the poll at the appropriate time, and puts his cross on the ballot paper showing the candidate he wishes to be elected to Parliament— he is the foundation of democracy. This man or woman should do this without fear and without any intimidation or victimization. <br />
<br />
Democracy is good. The ultimate in democracy are referendums. So referendums are the ultimate good. <br />
Are they?<br />
In theory yes, in practice no. Everything under the sun has its conditions. Conditions to exist, and conditions to exist well. If I look at the Brexit-referendum and before that the Ukraine-referendum in the Netherlands, I see a fundamental weakness and a fundamental error.<br />
<br />
The fundamental weakness was the lack of a sturdy, disciplined public debate. When that is not in parliament, where is it? In the newspapers, on radio and television, on the internet. The problem is that very few media are geared to non-partisan debate. Most media are either partisan or commercial and so geared to sales and not to debate. And how to make a debate so lively and so interesting that it is followed and echoed in homes and public places? <br />
<br />
Somehow, politicians consider referendums not sexy, like elections or parliamentary debate. Also interesting how abstract and far were the arguments for against how lively and near were the arguments against.<br />
<br />
The only solution I know that directly addresses this problem is the 'deliberative polling' (google that!), in a sense the return of ancient Athenian democracy. Representatives are drawn by lot, like in a jury. They get full access to interest groups and to expert opinion. And the deliberations are public. Anyway, talk shows are not enough, especially when politicians are lukewarm for a fight outside parliament.<br />
<br />
The fundamental error is to submit foreign policy issues to a referendum. Imagine asking the workers in a factory to vote on sales strategy. They should vote on production matters, if anything. In referendums, people shouldn't vote on foreign issues but on domestic issues. <br />
No one in his right mind would ever suggest to have the Home Office absorb the Foreign Office. Though once I heard a human resources manger advocate that sales should be under human resources, because both were about people. <br />
Don't treat external matters as internal matters.<br />
<br />
Referendums try to involve citizens in politics, as citizens have distanced themselves form politics in recent years - or rather: recent decades. Confidence in politics, politicians and political parties has diminished. But going to the ballot box on referendum day is attracting smaller crowds, not larger crowds. We can't blame people for that. We let them vote on complex issues, without committed champions with a compelling story on both sides of the issues.<br />
<br />
When we want more direct democracy, we need not less, but better populism, as the Belgian David Van Reybrouck argues convincingly in, among others, Tegen Verkiezingen (against elections). It starts with preparing referendums better: stronger debate, about domestic issues.<br />
<br />
Referendums are no escape for lazy politicians. They heat up politics. They should. Hans TenDamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07290538883780657086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8888216046070184694.post-84382425220822602582016-11-25T12:32:00.000+01:002016-11-25T12:32:05.528+01:00PrudenceMachiavelli, wondering about the difference between successful and failing republics, tried to find out what were the key success factors. He found two: <i>Virtú</i> and <i>Fortuna</i>, virtue and fortune. Virtue we might call today merits and fortune we would call luck or good-luck.<br />Whatever our qualities, our merits, our competence, we also need good-luck to be successful. At the very least we need not to have bad-luck. Some people maintain that good-luck can be fostered, even managed. I agree, up to a point. Robert Heinlein said: <i>One man’s magic is another man’s engineering.</i> So what others call luck, may be the result of effort.<br />We never have everything in hand, though our mental attitude and mental capacity may diminish the influence of randomness and improve our chances to get lucky. All this means that the more qualities we have, the less the role of luck. What qualities do we need?<br /><br />In his <i>Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livius</i>, Machiavelli analyses virtue. The main ingredient is <i>prudence</i>, also called practical wisdom, the power of common sense, practical and sound judgment.The second is <i>discipline</i> and the third is <i>justice</i>. Prudence, discipline and justice explain the phenomenal rise of Rome during several centuries. And growing imprudence, indulgence and injustice have brought its slow downfall. Interestingly, Machiavelli considers religion to be the most important determinant of discipline.<br /><br />Discipline is out of fashion, self-indulgence is the fashion and so indignation with the indulgence of others: undisciplined indignation. Justice is still a powerful concept, though difficult to implement when discipline is weak and self-discipline seems almost a lost art. My guess is that indulgence is directly proportional to drug and alcohol consumption. This is not to mean that discipline and self-discipline can be increased by forcing down drugs and alcohol consumption. It is rather the other way round: more discipline and self-discipline will lead to less consumption.<br /><br />But what about that key concept of Machiavelli - and for that matter Aristotle: <i>prudence</i>? According to the thesaurus, prudence is a quality that allows people to choose the sensible course. Prudent belongs to the same family as careful, meticulous, scrupulous, circumspect, cautious, discreet, and wary. <i>Prudent implies the exercise of both caution and circumspection, suggesting careful management in economic and practical matters. </i>We may subsume economic matters under practical matters. Therefore, prudence is also called practical wisdom.<br /><br />Chaim Herzog, one of the pioneers of Israel, wrote about the wisdom of his father, the chief rabbi of Israel. Everybody sought him for his advice. Elsewhere he tells that his mother had to run the house and the family, because his father was no good in practical matters. What other matters are there? <br /><br />
A practical orientation does not conflict with an interest in the world of the mind. William James, who was more open-minded than any modern psychologist about religious, spiritual and parapsychological matters, was also the father of pragmatism. <i>Nothing is as practical as a good theory,</i> said Kurt Lewin, also one of my favorite authors. Which means, by the way, that impractical theories are bad theories.<br /><br />
Even in a supposedly practical field like management impracticality abounds. I remember reading the report of a well-known management consultancy firm. They found that the communication between the directors and between the directors and their underlings was unsatisfactory. So they proposed a 'communication development program,' that - surprise, surprise - they could offer. It seems practical, but it isn't. Communication is unsatisfactory for a reason. Or for many reasons. Maybe people were afraid of a coming merger; maybe people were afraid of each other; maybe the market or the technology had changed and they were lagging behind; maybe one of the directors was sleeping with the secretary of one of the other directors; maybe the directors were too old, too inexperienced, too stubborn or not smart enough. Maybe people belonged too different lodges or service clubs. Whatever the case, improving bad communication without finding out the reasons is as sensible as widening the doors of a shop that attracts not enough customers from the passers-by.<br /><br />I think prudence always start with facing the facts, checking if these are the facts that need to be faced, if they are all the relevant facts. What are the practicalities? What is desirable, what is possible? What is the objective, what are the criteria, what are the options?<br /><br />Can we teach prudence? Probably, but it won't be easy. Because imprudence is rooted in personal characteristics and limitations. People are surprisingly fact-resistant and not always solution-oriented. They even may prefer awful conditions they are used too; disasters that may strike others more than themselves; they may indulge in apocalyptic perspectives, they may be set on self-destruct. <br />The main condition is reality-orientation: seeing fantasies for what they are. A second condition is the ability to face uncertainty. A third condition is simply pride in good work, in right decisions, in solving problems - or better: avoid problems.<br /><br />Politically, imprudence seems on the rise. It is often called populism. Poor people, they don't know what is in stock for them.Hans TenDamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07290538883780657086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8888216046070184694.post-62733600728026775842016-11-02T12:17:00.000+01:002016-11-02T12:22:11.506+01:00Self-defeating processes and sentimentalityAbout ten years ago I was in Porto, an old, historic city at the Douro, in the North of Portugal. It was evening and I was enjoying an excellent port at the riverside, with excellent bread and excellent cheese. Everything was calm and I enjoyed the evening.<br />
A month ago I was back for a congress. Again I was at the riverside, now at lunchtime, before an open window on the first floor. <br />
I hardly recognized the place. Between huge masts tourist passed in funiculars, about twice a minute. Each five or ten minutes a helicopter passed over the river, first East and a few minutes later West. This is going on from earling morning to evening. At the quay an endless stream of visitors strolled between restaurants offering Indian food, American food, Italian food. And yes, also Portuguese food. Street vendors everywhere and small shops selling the same souvenirs in gaudy colors.<br />
Tourism had come to Porto.<br />
<br />
So we take a plane to an other country to walk between other tourists in a place that has become a backdrop to tourists. At a beautiful coast so many hotels are built that the coast becomes a backdrop to high-rise hotels and the silence is ripped by motor yachts and other tourist pleasures. <br />
<br />
in Porto, a local doctor told me that all European funds for regional development in Portugal were to stimulate tourism. Portugal has been earmarked a tourist destination for North-Europeans.<br />
I had seen the results also almost ten years ago already at the Algarve, where the beach was parceled out to huge restaurants with large terraces, so you could enjoy the beach without touching the sand. Local people were waiters and waitresses and everybody spoke English and German.<br />
<br />
Is that bad? There is certainly a good side to it. Porto is certainly more wealthy than ten years ago. Many Mercedeses, many good restaurants, more people living the good life, enjoying the new dynamism. Life has become so good than they can make tourist trips themselves.<br />
<br />
Amsterdam is groaning under the ever-increasing loads of tourists. The almost proverbial Japanese tourists of thirty years ago are today swamped by the Chinese. And a reputation for freely available soft drugs has attracted hordes of youngsters. It is going the way of Venice where locals are leaving, children can play on the streets only after night fall and the Italian restaurants are run by Chinese owners. One Venetian lady told that a tourist asked her at what hour the city closed. Venice as Disneyland. Paris as Disneyland. Amsterdam as Disneyland. And now Porto as Disneyland.<br />
<br />
I can’t see this is going to stop. Unless for awful reasons like a pandemic or slightly less awful: a serious and persistent global economic crisis. <br />
In all of history, almost all people have subsisted, pretty much tied to the place where they lived. No wonder that such an experience in the collective unconsciousness of mankind leads to over-eating and over-traveling today. <br />
The only solution on the short term may be to make attractive destinations less attractive by making them more expensive: fewer cheap hotels, fewer cheap eateries. The owners of such establishments, and the owners of mass tourism services will cry wolf. And mass tourism will simply change its destinations. There are places enough in the world that will welcome them.<br />
<br />
Today, plans are underway to deregulate the Dutch coast so that hotels and apartment flats can be built at nice spots - making them much less nice.<br />
<br />
All these process have been described and analyzed at a global level. The article that started it all, The Tragedy of the Commons by Garrett Hardin is already 50 years old. Limits to Growth has become a household word. Still, system dynamics is a largely underrated and underfunded discipline.<br />
<br />
By the way, the food and the drink and the company in that restaurant in Porto last month were excellent. For the locals all the buzz was a sign of social and economic progress. But I miss that simple food and drink of a decade ago. Lost worlds live only on in sentiment. Hans TenDamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07290538883780657086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8888216046070184694.post-24087333796621660942016-10-18T21:17:00.001+02:002016-10-18T21:17:16.066+02:00DON’T SWITCH OFF THE LOUDSPEAKER IN YOUR HOTEL ROOM!A tourist in Myanmar has been sentenced to three months hard labor because he had switched off the loudspeaker in his room which prevented him from sleeping. It was a Buddhist prayer and he was sentenced because he had offended the Buddhist religion. How stupid and how outrageous can institutions be? Avoid Myanmar.<br /><br />Fanaticism to the point of idiocy seems to be on the rise everywhere in the world, including religions that seemed broad-minded before, like Hinduism and Buddhism.<br />A few years ago, in India a very scholarly book on Hinduism has been taken out of the bookshops because it offended Hinduism. The writer, by he way, was more critical of other scholars than of Hinduism. My guess is that she didn’t take some Hindu scholars too seriously. <br /><br />About Islamic sensitivities nobody needs to be reminded. Remember the cartoon where freshly-dead jihadists ate informed that heaven has run out of virgins. Till a few years ago the going rate was 40 virgins, meanwhile it has gone up till 72 virgins. What is the rate for girls who blew themselves up?<br />Scholars have argued that the original text most probably read: ‘plenty of green grapes.’ A transcription error of just one dot the wrong place, intentionally or not, could have shifted the meaning. The text about grapes would also fit, because grapes are mentioned just before too, while the virgins (‘green’ girls) fall out of the blue. Sorry for mixing up my color metaphors.<br /><br />David Greer, writing about the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution once called fanatics <i>the disease germs in the body politic</i>. Religious fanatics are often worse than political fanatics, because common sense is even more repugnant to them.<br /><br />What could explain this rising fanaticism? <br /><br />Increasing exposure everywhere to an international world of finance, economics and technology diminishes local identities and local culture and that international world is clearly “Western”. Television does that, the internet and social media even more. If that is true, we are witnessing a backlash of threatened local cultures that cling to religion as an antidote to what might be an inferiority complex.<br /><br />
At the same time there is a backlash against liberalism, democracy, rationality and the acceptance of pluralism, even in Western countries. Part of this may be due to a cycle of about 55 years in which progressivism and conservatism, right-wing and left-wing ideas change places. But only a part, I guess.<br /><br />Unbridled capitalism bred socialism in its different forms. Narrow-minded socialism bred a return to neoliberalism and neoconservatism that spawned a world-wide financial system that is leaving behind so many disaffected that we get Occupy movements and worldwide blackening of multinationals.<br /><br />The heydays of neoliberalists (read: neocapitalists) are over, though they still may assume they have the run of things. <br /><br />Alternating waves are healthy - if they grow less and less extreme. But they also may grow more and more extreme.<br /><br />Meanwhile, be careful in you holiday planning. Especially if you look like a Westerner.<br /><br />Hans TenDamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07290538883780657086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8888216046070184694.post-72737768656726402662016-09-22T16:43:00.000+02:002016-09-22T16:43:54.855+02:00Core issue analysisWe have many things to do and to think of. So we invented to-do lists. Most lists are too long and have the habit of growing at least as quickly as we shorten them. So we invented something else: priorities. The scary thing about setting priorities is setting posteriorities: postponing or rather deleting things from our to-do list. When we don’t dare to let go of anything, we get a firm grasp on nothing. We have to choose, to commit ourselves to one line of action instead of another, to deal with one problem and leave another alone. We know in our private lives people who are afraid to commit (usually men who are not yet ready for … eh … commitment). They all have something they do not wish or dare to let go, like freedom (e.g. to engage in noncommittal relationships and activities). Even if we have the courage to choose, we need the wisdom to choose well. And even good choices can turn out wrong. As Harry Truman said: “<i>A schoolboy’s hindsight is better than a president’s foresight.</i>” We need good-luck as well. <br />
<br />
But how do we acquire the necessary wisdom? The biggest danger of many priority lists is that the most important items may have been forgotten or overlooked. We overestimate acute and urgent issues, and we underestimate gradual developments that may eventually be decisive. <br />
Of course we want to find out which issues should get the highest priority. Let’s take this one step further. <i>What is the most critical issue in your life and work right now? </i>Imagine to focus on one issue and one issue only, rather than diluting your attention over multiple issues, however important each may be. The assumption that every organization, community, group, and perhaps every individual as well, faces at any time one single overriding challenge – the core issue - is attractive and probably also true. <br />
<br />
Arnold Toynbee, the historian, has developed this proposition about the evolution of civilizations, following the ideas of Henri Bergson. Toynbee says that civilizations advance when they respond successfully to their dominant current challenge. Then a new, more or less stable situation comes about that will gradually present a new challenge. Civilizations stagnate when they have spent so much energy on solving their challenge, the <i>tour de force</i>, that they lack the stamina to deal with or even recognize new challenges arriving at its doorstep. Civilizations collapse when they fail to respond effectively to their greatest challenges. <br />
<br />
<i>Core issue analysis</i> is the methodical identification of the prime actual challenge facing an organization, community or individual. <i>Core issue transformation</i> means to tackle and solve this problem and so to advance fundamentally as a person, a group or an organization. When we solve our key problem, we transform ourselves. The opposite occurs as well. When we leave the essential problem unattended because it is too difficult or we refuse to acknowledge it, we fill our days with matters of secondary or even tertiary importance. When we don’t solve our key problem, our energy level goes down. Sooner or later this leads to demoralization and lethargy of the organization – for example to rampant sick-leave that has nothing to do with the objective work conditions and everything to do with a bad work climate and lack of spirit. Even though it is not written down or formally admitted, everyone knows or feels that they are just fumbling around what is really relevant. <br />
I suspect that each core issue involves a dilemma, a paradox that needs to be resolved. Whenever we pursue a simplistic, one-dimensional goal, we are either rambling on a path to nowhere or marching into a dead-end street. If we solely focus on one criterion, we lose sight of everything else. When analyzing management positions, I discovered that each time the primary responsibility of a position was to reconcile a conflicting set of demands and criteria. With the project leaders of an engineering firm, it was about resolving the tension between satisfying the customer and all what that meant, and controlling the costs and all what that entailed. Satisfying clients is easy at high cost. Saving costs is even easier. It just leads to dissatisfied customers – and discontented personnel. In such a position, core issue analysis is about finding a way to make customers happier while reducing costs.<br />
Hypes arise from one-sided, ‘self-evident’ truths. They are proclaimed by the-sun-is-always-shining philosophers and like-minded managers: quality awareness, customer orientation, motivation, cost-effectiveness, shareholder value.<br />
<ul>
<li><i>"It is about saving costs." </i></li>
<li><i>"Our people must become more flexible." </i></li>
<li><i>“Customer-friendliness, that’s what it all amounts to." </i></li>
</ul>
All these goals are ‘motherhood statements’: nobody objects to hem. Such hypes are third-rate imitations of core issues. On a personal level such motherhood statements are: it’s all about love, understanding, awareness, peace, or what have you.<br />
<br />
A core issue is probably always emotive. We tend to avoid it, we ridicule it, we passively worry about it, we are paralyzed by it, we suppress it. Many people have a gut feeling about what really matters. A gut feeling or an intuition often is an awareness displacement. Whatever is really important while we are not aware of it, seeps into our consciousness through feelings and hunches. That is all right, yet hunches are hard to communicate and go awry when we become entangled in emotional or energetic problems. <br />
<b>If you want to find out the core issue, start with looking in the dark - if you can.</b> To what is the least attention given? About what people avoid speaking? If an organization is continually busy with internal matters, chances are that the core issue is an external one. If an organization solely occupies itself with the market and with clients, chances are that the core issue is an internal one. Where is your attention going? To your children, to money, to your next diploma, to your reputation, to your health? Chances are that’s not where your core issue is.<br />
More roundabout ways to find the core issue are:<br />
<ul>
<li>Look for problems that are really persistent or recurrent.</li>
<li>Look for flip-flops in your life, going from one extreme to another. </li>
<li>Look for gradual developments that may be not too serious right now, but seem unstoppable.</li>
</ul>
A good issue-analysis leads to an ‘eureka!’, when the half felt, vaguely suspected becomes focused, transparent and analyzable. When we get to the root of the matter, rational thinking and intuition come together. When you find out what your core issue is, the world stops for a moment. It’s like being hit on the head.<br />
When your survival is at stake, the strategic core issue is the decisive factor for your survival – or demise. In a crisis, core issues are often dual: one on the short term and one on the long term. When your survival is not immediately threatened, when you stay outside the danger zone, the core issues are invariably linked to our <i>raison d’être</i>, to our mission in life, to our ability to be successful in that and to the external changes that affect both. <br />
Is a core issue found or chosen? To what extent is it objective? The more the core issue is a matter of survival, the more objective it is. The farther we are from the danger zone, the more our perception of what your life means and where it is heading to, will determine the core issue. A core issue is essential as well as existential: what you are here for, what your mission is, where, how, for whom. Theoretically, the core issue is difficult to define, yet in practice, finding it, releases a particularly certainty. Finding the core-issue and dealing with it are not mere intellectual processes. They electrify.<br />
Find your real priority and dare to concentrate on the most essential point of it. Success in that is much more than solving a problem, defusing a threat or grasping an opportunity. Solving a core issue transforms people and situations. You become more energetic, skilled, effective or efficient. Usually all of those. A popular idea is that personal transformation is the consequence of a shift in awareness. That is self-evident. However, not every increase in awareness will transform you. Transformation does not result from growing more conscious, perceptive in general, but rather from a growing awareness of your factual situation as you really stand in your actual environment. That includes real other people and their real motives. <br />
The relief of ‘Eureka!’ doesn’t mean that everything is or will be easy. Crucial decisions have to surmount excruciating doubts. An action that intends to solve all your problems at the same time, meet all criteria, is a proposal by the incompetent to the weak. Solutions with only advantages do exist – in never-never land. "There is no such thing as a free lunch."<br />
Hitting the nail on the head: it separates the men from the boys, the women from the girls. The deepest analysis leads to the most powerful conclusion. The deepest decision has the widest consequences. A pithy conclusion is no absolute, eternal truth, but <i>the strongest answer to the most daunting challenge you can find right here and now</i>. The core issue is in a classic sense the crux, the essence, the focus. In biblical terms: the narrow gate. Not the wide one that leads astray.<br />
<br />
When we solve a problem we prepare the ground for the next problem. First you are poor. That create problems. Then you grow rich. That creates other problems. First you can’t give money to your children. Then you can. Different problems. First you are alone: problem. Then you are together: other problem. Every response to a challenge leads to a new challenge. To what does that ultimately lead: to the ultimate challenge: dying gloriously. The first personal challenge is to be born well. That is now water under the bridge.<br />
<br />
By the way, when I introduced core issue analysis to a group of Dutch management consultants ten years ago we spent two evenings to find the political core issue of the Netherlands as a society. We found it: <i>Immigrants and Immigration.</i> Ten years later, it seems to have been a pretty powerful diagnosis. Hans TenDamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07290538883780657086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8888216046070184694.post-27297860416997538132016-08-22T11:50:00.000+02:002016-08-22T12:05:32.373+02:00Religion, politics and psychopaths-2Psychopaths, people without empathy and without conscience, gravitate towards positions of power: the military, the police, top management, top finance, top legal people. If they are smart enough, they go for careers. Of course not all CEOs or military are psychopaths, only a few. But more than among gardeners or shopkeepers.<br />
At the lower end we find them among petty bureaucrats, among soldiers, among criminals. How many soldiers in wars act like psychopaths? Estimates vary between 2% and 5%. But the longer a war lasts, the higher the percentage becomes. <br />
<br />
OK. As I wrote in my previous blog, the only fundamental approach is to discourage the making of new psychopaths. But how?<br />
<br />
Psychopath parents are the surest way to produce new psychopaths. The golden rule is to consistently humiliate children. Quite openly, by being harsh and cruel, treating them like little monsters that have to be broken. Or more insidiously, by mocking them as an inferior breed. Or mechanically, like dumb robots that still have to be programmed.<br />
In the second half of the 19th century, belief in the “survival of the fittest” saw rapidly diminishing standards in taking care of the mentally ill and the mentally handicapped. Discipline and harshness in education became almost the norm. It may be that the horrors of totalitarian regimes have been unleashed because some critical mass in psychopaths in positions of power was reached. In cultures already tending to hardness, the psychopaths took over: Russia, Japan, Germany. Small differences can produce large consequences.<br />
In the biographies of many leading Nazis, we find a harsh education, especially a cruel or harsh and indifferent father. The Nazis emptied the prisons to recruit the guards for the concentration camps. SS-officers were trained very harshly. The trainees got each a dog to train. For many months that was their only companion and many got a sentimental bond with their dog. At the graduation ceremony, they got their officer’s pistol and the first thing they had to do was to shoot their dog. “To become hard.”<br />
<br />
How can we prevent psychopaths from taking over powerful institutions? Grossman, in his book On Killing, says that the only protection sheep can find against wolves is from what he calls ‘sheep dogs.’ Those who can be firm, even hard and violent, but still remain humane and conscientious.<br />
The main development of civilization is in eliminating humiliation. The antidote to humiliation is not love, but respect. Against psychopaths we can’t come with love or flowers or peace. We need to establish clear boundaries and containment procedures. <br />
Even in love and tenderness there may be easily belittling. Overprotection is also disrespectful. Eliminating humiliation in education, in work organization, in public offices, even in police and justice. Even in war. Wherever possible.<br />
Can humiliation be avoided in boot camps? Maybe it can’t, but maybe it can. Anyway, it is not just a tool for discipline. It may foster indiscipline in the end.<br />
<br />
Society is people living together. Culture is how people live together. Civilization is how humanely people live together. Our society is full of rituals, though our behavior is less prescribed than in more traditional societies. Humanization rituals make people more decent, taking one another more into consideration, into account.<br />
An example remaining dehumanization are the rituals in what Ervin Goffman called total institutions: hospitals, asylums, prisons. Many rituals practiced in these institutions are defacement rituals that strip people of their personality. The strongest examples of such defacement rituals have been in concentration camps, where all personal distinctions were removed and people were treated as animals or things. Inmates were regarded as useless or reprehensible, as objects of contempt, derision or experiment. The essence of many camp rituals lay in declaring inmates to be non-people, non-humans, reducing them to naked, frightened, trembling rabbits. As Goffman showed, benevolent institutions such as hospitals and mental wards also employ defacement rituals.<br />
By contrast, rituals that stress people’s humanity and personal dignity enhance self-respect and self-confidence. All rituals that stress acceptance and inclusion of the participants and recipients in society are humanization rituals. Rituals that treat people as nonhumans, barbarians, animals, robots or things, or just not there, are dehumanization rituals, apart from the intention or awareness of the people who engage in such rituals. <br />
Boss-subordinate relationships in a factory are prone to dehumanization. Production schedules have to be met. Breakdowns occur, waste problems and quality problems arise, as does friction between groups and within groups. Competition, irritation, jealousy, distrust, and disappointment are present in the work environment. Rituals may reinforce such problems, contain them or counteract them. Work rituals define the culture of a company. Companies with the most positive corporate culture are often the most successful. <br />
Dehumanization rituals are common between organizations and their clients when organizations don’t depend directly on their clients for their survival, like most public agencies. The treatment given to clients at many counters is almost the prototypical defacement ritual. We all know how it feels to be treated as a number. And many of us know the bureaucratic crucifixion when someone happens to have a request or suffer circumstances that do not fit standard operating procedures and threatens the convenience of bureaucrats. <br />
What is the easiest way to humiliate people? To make them wait. Many bureaucratic rituals are to keep people waiting. Clerks make civilians wait, bosses make subordinates wait and subordinates avenge themselves by making bosses wait. The anonymous sphinx of modern bureaucracies is indeed a dehumanizing machine. <br />
It may console us to learn that firms that define their business as service are the most successful. Just as horses respond favorably to a treatment geared to horses, and car engines respond favorably to maintenance schemes that are geared to car engines, so also people respond favorably to treatment geared to people.<br />
Morality is about treating people as human beings. Humanization rituals are the preventive maintenance of society.<br />
Much of what goes under the name of alienation is a response to dehumanization. <br />
<br />
The first step toward a more civilized world is to fight dehumanizing rituals and foster humanizing rituals. Thanking someone for a service rendered is a humanizing ritual, as is the custom of replying promptly to requests. Barring someone from expressing an opinion in a meeting is dehumanizing, as is withholding of information about the purpose of our work.<br />
The most sensitive areas in society as to human and inhuman rituals are total institutions; the least sensitive areas are market institutions where people can always go somewhere else. Employment functions more as a total institution when unemployment is high, more as a market institution when employment is high.<br />
The first defenses against the arrogance of powerful institutions are more freedom and more humane procedures: liberalization and humanization respectively. Under liberal conditions, humane policies pay off, when applied with some intelligence and some patience.<br />
<br />
Unrestrained psychopaths like to make people suffer, to destroy their homes, their families, their lives. Why are people cruel? Why do they abuse, rape and kill and maim others? <br />
Engaging in cruelty, torture and terror overcompensates feelings of worthlessness - a stronger form of the inferiority complex - by means of an all-powerful, sadistic manipulation of other people, by threat of prolonged suffering and ultimately destruction.<br />
Brutes laugh when something comical happens with the body of a victim, when the head or neck snaps weirdly, or when a man stumbles over his own entrails. These marionettes are cute: they are droll and they squeak. Brutes make fun of them. They can do as they please. They are out of bounds. They are the boys with the boots and the whip. But an unconscious feeling of worthlessness remains and is drowned by a further descent into inhumanity.<br />
Brutes see their descent into barbarism and sadism as courageous, hard, superior, only for the strong. Others are sleepers, dreamers, sentimental squeakers; they are timid, afraid, soft and vulnerable.<br />
When Himmler visited an extermination camp, he told his SS-men how proud he was of them. This was a great moment in German history. People could say about them that they had become hard. They did not falter because of revulsion and abhorrence; they had hardened.<br />
Such people view themselves as superhuman, and ordinary folks as subhuman, children of a lesser God. In the world of a brute, humanity is no more; only strong supermen and weak subhuman rabbits. This mind-set is evident in many butchers, but even more in their bosses: the Hitlers, the Himmlers and the Eichmanns.<br />
Distant bosses may have the same dynamic as acting brutes, but more intellectual. They are more fanatical or more cynical, indulging in the cold and dry satisfaction of unleashing a man-destroying machine. Fanatics make themselves hard, unyielding servants of their higher purpose. Preaching fanatics are hot and acting fanatics are cold, but their henchmen are hot again.<br />
Religious fanaticism is even more dangerous than political fanaticism.<br />
<br />
What conditions turn people into brutes? Ultimately, none. Some people remain decent when everyone around them indulges in cruelty. The mind is its own place, and there is no condition that triggers inhuman behavior in the absence of a corrupted mind. Still, many influences may ease a corruption of the mind.<br />
A brute is someone whose feelings of self-esteem and dignity, of being loved, accepted or respected, have been destroyed, and whose feelings of rage have been bottled up. Self-pity and aggression are universal responses to frustration. Deeply frustrated souls tend to become either aggressors or victims.<br />
Usually, such frustrations begin to bottle up early in childhood. The main breeding ground for brutes is deep and constant humiliation and intimidation from an early day on. Continuous inhuman treatment sows the seeds of inhuman response. Whenever people in authority (parents, teachers, bosses or priests) treat people as small and insignificant or as despicable, they create losers. Or brutes.<br />
<br />
(See for a more extensive analysis chapters 2 and 3 of my Humanity, Civilization, Politics; http://www.onlineoriginals.com/)<br />
<br />
<br />Hans TenDamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07290538883780657086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8888216046070184694.post-90436845351897644852016-07-25T20:01:00.007+02:002024-01-05T12:15:51.979+01:00Religion, Politics and Psychopaths - 1Are suicide attacks to end in the foreseeable future?<br />
More than a century ago, we also had decades of assassinations and bomb explosions. People doing that were not called terrorists, but anarchists. They were more politically inspired than religiously. How did this this spate of anarchist bombings and shootings end? <br />
<br />
By the First World War. A new World War may do the same. Not a perspective to look forward to. A remedy far worse than the present ill - and nobody can guarantee that this remedy will work.<br />
<br />
The Second World War had its own unimaginable terrorism in the wanton killing, enslaving and raping of civilians, in the industrial scale of forced prostitution, in large-scale torture and cannibalism - and in persecuting and eradicating whole categories of people and whole peoples like the Jews.<br />
<br />
And now we have religious terrorism, largely Islamic. Pitirim Sorokin already pointed out that civil wars are more cruel than regular wars and that religious wars are the most cruel of all. Why?<br />
<br />
Religion is about the more-than-human, transcending our ordinary day-to-day existence. <i>Religion is a booster. It makes broad-minded people more broad-minded, it makes narrow-minded people more narrow-minded.</i> It attracts people of good-will, noble, spiritual.<br />
<br />
It also attracts psychopaths.<br />
<br />
The inhuman finds a natural hiding place in the superhuman.<br />
<br />
In Europe, Christianity was at its zenith when the only place for smart and decent people was the monastery. Because the crude people had taken over. When slowly cities started to develop and competent people could flourish in commerce and administration, the average level of entrants in the religious life diminished. Till slowly the petty-minded again became dominant there.<br />
The Islamic culture at its heyday was much more civilized than the Christian culture. The Crusades were mainly an invasion of barbarians into a reasonably developed society. And those barbarians were incredibly cruel. One priest wrote home that God rejoiced in heaven, because the blood of men, women and children flowed till the ankles of the victorious knights.<br />
<br />
When an enlightened society is religious, the religion is enlightened and adds to its enlightenment. When a dark, crude society is religious, the religion adds to its cruelty and darkness.<br />
<br />
Should Islamic people and Islamic institutions distance themselves explicitly from Islamic terrorism? I think they should. Maybe they should do even more: seek the terrorists out. Because it is their religion that is poisoned. Also: Islamic terrorists kill more Muslims than non-Muslims. <br />
It is like communists who had the deepest revulsion not for the capitalists, but for the socialists who got it wrong. False friends and supposedly false friends are more dangerous than enemies. especially when outsiders hardly see the difference. That is why Erdogan is more bent on destroying the Gülenists than the secularists. Or the Kurds. History is boringly repetitious, almost anywhere, almost anytime. <br />
<br />
Blowing yourself up and kill as many people as possible is the ultimate manifestation of making a difference, of overpowering others. It is a reaction to impotence, deep frustration, personal insignificance. Religion gives an extra glow. And it over-shouts the fear of death even psychopaths still have lurking somewhere.<br />
<br />
There is one thing unrelated to religion, that facilitates people to go on a killing spree: recent well-publicized killing sprees. Unfortunately, me-too and religion are not mutually exclusive.<br />
<br />
Expect more of all this for quite some time to come. Unless some nuclear blasts destroy millions of lives. This time most probably in Asia. <br />
<br />
The dark mind poison that manifests itself in suicide bomb attacks and other mass killings, and spread itself through them, won't go away because we desperately want it. And certainly it won't go away by sending good vibes of love and noble spirituality. Pumping up hope is just delaying despair. That may even grow in the meantime.<br />
<br />
<i>Cui bono?</i> Who benefits? As always: the psychopaths. Fortunately, they all die. Unfortunately, few of them by suicide. We have to defuse them, starve them or kill them. without becoming psychopaths ourselves. There is no way to do that outside political and military machinery. Two worlds that contain their own psychopaths. So it takes a generous supply of prudence - and good-luck - to apply that machinery effectively. Machiavelli hs wrestled with this problem extensively. I will come back to that in a next blog.<br />
The only fundamental approach is to discourage the making of new psychopaths. That long-time perspective may be food for one more blog.Hans TenDamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07290538883780657086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8888216046070184694.post-86684874739312685372015-08-09T21:19:00.000+02:002015-08-09T21:19:46.770+02:00The root of the matter<br />What would you do in the next situations?<br /><br />
<ol>
<li>You have solved this problem already two times, but it comes back a third time.</li>
<li>Doing one thing doesn't help, doing the opposite doesn't help. Doing something in-between doesn't help either,</li>
<li>You have done something and it didn't work. The next time it doesn't. What now?</li>
<li>You don't know what to do. Everybody has different suggestions.</li>
<li>You are tired and disappointed with your success.</li>
<li>You have read it two times. You read it a third time. And you still don't get it.</li>
<li>You can't choose between two attractive options.</li>
<li>You can't choose between two unattractive options.</li>
<li>You are about to solve a problem, but somehow the last step escapes you.</li>
<li>You seem to run around in circles.</li>
</ol>
In all these cases minus one, you have to take one step behind and find the essence of the situation, the core, the key, the marrow, the basis, the center. Don't you find it? Take one step more behind. To find the core you have to raise your point of view. Didn't you know you are your own drone?<br /><br />How do you know you found the essence? Because everything becomes suddenly clear. Because you see the whole field from a different perspective. Gestalt psychologists call this field restructuring. In system dynamics the golden rule when you are stuck is: <i>Widen the system</i>.<br />The essence of every situation opens the story of the situation. Discovering the essence is understanding the system, understanding the story, the story of the system, the system of the story.<br />System dynamics is the discipline to understand the story of a system. And what is the understanding of the system of a story: getting the plot right. <br />The central art of communication is communicating the plot. What leads to what? And why and how? And we don't find linear cause-and-effect relationships. Several causes usually lead to several effects. And effects may feed back in the causes. There is no simple cause-and-effect, there is something called <i>causal texture</i>.<br /><br />This brings me to the one exception: situation 6. In this case, don't find the core, don't go for understanding; find a better text. And if the text is a manual? The only manual? Find a knowledgeable person.<br />Many texts are difficult or impossible to understand. Why?<br />
<ul>
<li>Some people write about things they themselves don't understand properly.</li>
<li>Or they don't care about their writing, because they don't care about their readers.</li>
<li>Or they want to hide that they don't want you to understand.</li>
</ul>
During the Second World War, Churchill had a discussion with Roosevelt and his aide, Harry Hopkins. Suddenly, Churchill turned to Hopkins and told him they were going to offer him a fine British title and they knew already which title he would get. Hopkins was embarrassed. The title Churchill had in mind, he told Hopkins, was Lord Root-of-the Matter. Now that is a compliment for you.<br />Anyway, go for it. The Root of the Matter. Everything else is a waste of time, a waste of energy, a waste of brain space.<br />Hans TenDamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07290538883780657086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8888216046070184694.post-56888143031909556342015-07-19T11:10:00.002+02:002015-07-19T11:12:21.916+02:00Again: practical wisdomAnother list I came across about sound judgment had five items:<br />
<ol>
<li>Be open-minded. Deal with uncertainty. Welcome new evidence. Notice the limits of your knowledge. Probe your assumptions. What additional information could give you a more balanced viewpoint? Make your convictions explicit and take the opposite standpoint. Or put yourself in someone else’s shoes. </li>
<li>Admit when you have been in the wrong. </li>
<li>Imagine what if… Re-imagine key events. Consider eventualities and form hypotheses. It broadens your mind when grappling with the unexpected. </li>
<li>Use checklists in complex situations.</li>
<li>Recognize your bias.</li>
</ol>
A good list. But how to recognize your bias? Wikipedia has a list of 100 bias. And they missed a few. Even downsizing that list, I couldn't come under 50. I grouped them for better grasp.<br />
<br />
<b>Egoism and emotionalism</b><br />
<ul>
<li><i>Narcissism</i>: rosy self-image; overrate your abilities; overrate your personal importance; take credit for desirable but not for undesirable outcomes. </li>
<li><i>False pride</i>: claim more responsibility for successes than for failures. </li>
<li><i>False modesty</i>: blame failures on yourself while attributing successes to circumstances or others. </li>
<li><i><i>Narrow-mindedness</i>: </i>familiar is better.</li>
<li><i>Puberty</i>: doubt or ridicule the judgment of others; overrate your own judgment.</li>
<li><i>Selective perception</i>: focus on what you like - or on what you dislike.</li>
<li>Avoidance of embarrassing questions and aspects.</li>
<li>Overrate the control you have over events and conditions.</li>
<li><i>Framing</i>: overvalue presentation over facts.</li>
<li><i>Sensationalism</i>: focus on the most salient and emotionally-charged aspects.</li>
<li><i>Embellishing</i>: inflate recall and description.</li>
<li>Justify actions already taken, like rationalize your purchases.</li>
<li>Avoidance of extremes; prefer intermediate options.</li>
</ul>
<b>Disregarding evidence</b><br />
<ul>
<li>Professional <i>conventionalism</i>.</li>
<li><i>Unwarranted assumptions</i>: assume without evidence.</li>
<li><i>Credulity</i>: believe in something without reason or evidence.</li>
<li><i>Dogmatism</i>: protect your beliefs against evidence.</li>
<li><i>Prejudice</i>: assume qualities, attitudes and behavior from appearance.</li>
<li><i>Joining the bandwagon</i>: believe things because most other people believe the same; adopt opinions and follow behavior.</li>
<li><i>Data-doctoring</i>: manipulate an experiment or misinterpret data to confirm expectations.</li>
<li><i>Group thinking</i>: go for the comfort of commonality instead of the discomfort of the unknown, the ill-understood or the search for new evidence.</li>
<li><i>Negative hallucination:</i> not see what is. 'It didn't happen.'</li>
<li><i>Nitpicking</i>: focusing on insignificant details.</li>
</ul>
<b>False evidence</b><br />
<ul>
<li><i>Myopia</i>: only see the immediate facts.</li>
<li><i>Tunnel vision</i>: interpret everything in line with earlier assumptions, earlier analysis or earlier conclusions; ignore alternative explanations; protect current investment. Often the result of group thinking.</li>
<li><i>Pseudo-recall</i>: imaginary recall or imprinted recall. </li>
<li><i>Illusion</i>: imagine patterns and cause-effect relationships where none exist.</li>
<li>Believe that the world is just and that people get what they deserve.</li>
<li>See deeper meaning in random events. </li>
<li><i>Positive hallucination</i>: see what isn't there. 'It really happened.'</li>
<li>See everywhere what you have just learned or noticed. (Like the 'medical disease.)</li>
<li><i>Halo effect</i>: generalize from one positive or negative trait.</li>
<li><i>Barnum effect</i>: mistake confection for individual profile.</li>
</ul>
<b>Unwarranted expectations</b><br />
<ul>
<li><i>Wishful thinking</i>: be over-optimistic.</li>
<li><i>Worrying</i>: be over-pessimistic.</li>
<li><i>Planning optimism</i>: underestimate task-completion times. (usually about 3x)</li>
</ul>
<b>Space and time distortions</b><br />
<ul>
<li>Project present attitudes and behavior into the past.</li>
<li><i>Hindsight</i>: see the past through present knowledge: 'I-knew-it-all-along.' Harry S. Truman: ' A schoolboy's hindsight is better than a president's foresight.'</li>
<li>Overrate the recent, the immediate, the remarkable.</li>
<li><i>Conservatism</i>: old is better.</li>
<li><i>Progressiveness</i>: new is better.</li>
</ul>
<br />
<b>Lack of statistical thinking</b><br />
<ul>
<li><i>Generalization</i>: underestimate the variety in people.</li>
<li>Disregard probabilities, especially unknown and unwelcome probabilities.</li>
<li>Assume that specific conditions are more probable than general ones; judge the probability of the whole to be less than the probability of a part.</li>
<li>Accept risk to avoid negative outcomes, but avoid risks if expecting positive outcomes.</li>
<li>Preference to reduce a small risk to zero over greatly reducing a large risk.</li>
<li><i>Action bias</i>: overrate the harms of action compared to the harms of inaction; overrate the benefits of action compared to the benefits of inaction.</li>
<li><i>Texas sharpshooter fallacy</i>: select or adjust a hypothesis after the data are collected.</li>
<li><i>Endowment effect</i>: demand much more to give up an object than you would be willing to pay to acquire it.</li>
<li><i>Anchoring</i>: interpret new information by comparing it to accidental previous information.</li>
</ul>
<br />
The best system for vetting and limiting the consequences of bias is the scientific method: develop ideas from evidence and test them to new evidence. And in daily life? Return to the first advice: be open-minded. Hans TenDamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07290538883780657086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8888216046070184694.post-90759349998698066552015-06-11T12:28:00.001+02:002015-06-11T12:28:37.844+02:00SOUND JUDGMENT; PRACTICAL WISDOM. Ten suggestions to the wary<br />
<ol>
<li>Avoid narrow-mindedness. Don't get stuck in one viewpoint. Look at issues from different sides, different perspectives. Take a helicopter-view.</li>
<li>Identify the possible risks and find early warnings for them.</li>
<li>Don't stare at large problems metaphysically. Don't indulge in principles, ideologies or philosophies. Know your preferences, but remain pragmatical.</li>
<li>Keep your judgments open. Postpone irreversible decisions when you can, take them when you must.</li>
<li>Suspect proposals that are too easy, too attractive. Especially by trustworthy strangers.</li>
<li>Have a fall-back position. Don't gamble everything on one horse.</li>
<li>Distinguish what is slow or difficult to change from what changes relatively fast or relatively easy.</li>
<li>Roll with the punches if you have to.</li>
<li>Nudge people, but don't try to change them. Adult education is a rare bird. Adult self-education is all we can hope for. </li>
<li>Life is short. Do what you can, but take things easy. If you can't, explode or implode as beautifully as you can. Then take things easy again.</li>
</ol>
Use this list to find your weak points and do something about them. Like changing. Nudge yourself into adult self-education.<br />
Hans TenDamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07290538883780657086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8888216046070184694.post-32691347040790663592015-05-20T20:33:00.000+02:002015-05-20T20:33:24.564+02:00The Latest Management Technique<i>An audience listens enchanted to a wise and brilliant speaker. They leave in a daze, no idea what to do next. </i>(Management by fads)<br /><i>Nails are hammered in a huge wooden plate. Threads are stretched and wound between them. It doesn’t result in a recognizable picture. Grown-ups play children’s games without pleasure. </i>(Unthinking application of management techniques)<br /><br />
These two belong together, though the first one is the province of empty-headed top people and the second one is the province of lightweights one or two levels lower.<br /><br />
Of course, most of these techniques are useful, few are useless. But usually they have a much more limited application than their champions advertise, especially those about leadership and motivation. There are as few recipes for keeping employees happy and productive as there are recipes for marital felicity. Even sensible approaches can be misapplied and become nonsensical. I have seen overhead ratios brought back and the percentage of productive functions increased to the detriment of over-all productivity. The once famous 7-S model of McKinsey was nothing more than a checklist with a gimmick. Again, even simple checklist can be useful if they draw attention to underestimated aspects of organizational health, but applying techniques without real knowledge of the work processes involved leads astray. With knowledge, interest and judgment in place, most new techniques perform. Without knowledge, interest and judgment even proven techniques lead to sham success. <br /><br />
Management literature is replete with reinventing the wheel, but now with a fashionable twist. Even one of the most worthwhile endeavors - applied system dynamics - can lead nowhere when the analysis is too broad or too limited. I saw a system dynamics analysis of the American intervention in Afghanistan that convinced me that the intervention was bound to fail. And what about strategic planning that doesn't show even an inkling of what a stable desirable situation could look like? I have heard brilliant negotiation experts rattling away their precious (at least expensive) teachings without any notion of the factual conditions of the negotiations the audience was involved in.<br /><br />
Enthusiastic proponents of new management techniques are most successful when they interface with critical and seasoned practitioners. That interaction is key to success. But often the prophets are into a conversion game, not a practical improvement game. When a company trading in building materials took over supermarkets for do-it-yourself stuff, they applied rigidly their proven success formula: to go for margin. They eliminated all articles that to them had ridiculous low margins. Within a year they had to sell their acquisition with great loss. They didn't understand that in such shops turn-over speed is a much more important indicator than margin. And they didn't understand that buyers leave when they have to visit several shops to get what they want. One-stop shopping is important for people involved in maintenance and repair and in home improvement.<br /><br />
See new management techniques for what they usually are: a new methodical viewpoint that gives a new and possibly useful view. But without knowledge and judgment of the products, services and activities involved it is just icing without a cake.<br /><br />
And why do I consider this a systemic problem? Because underlying is the decoupling of management from effort and responsibility, from the real world. There is no methodical solution to that problem, only a gross cleansing of all management layers, especially the higher ones. That only happens in Neverland. What happens in reality is bankruptcy in the private sector and what is euphemistically called restructuring in the public sector.Hans TenDamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07290538883780657086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8888216046070184694.post-38988369826401772232015-04-22T11:03:00.000+02:002015-04-22T11:03:19.156+02:00Managing by abstract numbers: the eighth systemic disease of organizations<i>A Japanese house with many paper walls and paper ceilings with many layers. It seems designed by a paper-obsessed architect. </i><br /><br />Numbers are necessary to keep track of where we are and where we are going. Necessary, but not sufficient. Another simple ingredient is required: the competence to interpret the numbers. Unfortunately, this means direct experience with whatever it is that is measured or counted or registered. It means also to realize which facts are not in these nice numbers. <br />It is easy to calculate how much money you save when firing workers, but not what the cost may be of lost experience, know-how, of hiring and training and induction of new workers. It is easy to calculate what your turnover has been, but not the value of client satisfaction and dissatisfaction. It is easy to calculate what money you save by automating the response to income phone calls, but not what you lose by losing client <br />Saving money on execution is often used to increase staff and managerial positions. Boards rather discuss new building projects than upkeep or upgrading of existing facilities. The euro value of stock is based on assumptions, the value of goodwill is a fantasy coming out of accounting conventions. Writing off on property is based in tax and other financial considerations. But the value of any property is zero, unless you have a buyer. And what the buyer will be willing to pay is the umpteenth assumption.<br />Figures only seem precise. Accountancy is the most esthetic variety of quasi-precision: balances are by definition balanced. Administrators of bankruptcy proceedings are among the most realistic managers.<br /><br />
Many managers strive to a company in which nothing has to be done anymore: the hollow corporation. Everything is contracted out, if possible even the contracting out. What remains is supervision. Supervising things you don’t know and don’t want to know. Production is the first thing that should be eliminated. It produces noise and smell, it takes up space, it needs maintenance and repair, warehouses, transport. Its main drawback is that you need personnel to work there and people are always creating problems. If you can’t avoid having them, you prefer temps, so you can get rid of them the moment they start to have comments, criticisms and, worst of all, suggestions. But the most horrible thing of production is that things may go wrong. Imagine being responsible for that!<br />Sales is much more difficult to get rid of. But even that can be contracted out. You can limit yourself to creating the condition for sales: marketing. The main drawback of sales compared to marketing is that failure is much more visible and direct.<br /><br />
The only things you can’t get rid of, are finance and legal. Even in the most abstract of worlds, wriggling with money and contracts remains important. Anyway, it is a clean world of board rooms and hotels with only civilized and clean and well-dressed people.<br />And if you still want something tangible? Build a new headquarters. Of course, it will be much too grand for what you really need. So you rent it out to prestigious firms and events. And you sell shares in it. In the end, everybody invests in everybody else. Till reality kicks in. Preferably as far away as possible.<br /><br />
All this is in government administration as rampant as in business administration.<br />Hans TenDamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07290538883780657086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8888216046070184694.post-34251444783429042792015-03-18T13:36:00.001+01:002015-03-18T13:36:45.004+01:00Bureaucratic politics: the seventh systemic disease in organizations<i>A lot of buzz in an auction room. Small groups watch each other furtively. Bidding is about to start. Who will go home with what? </i><br /><br />
Maybe we should have started with this dynamic. It is so prevalent, that it often seems to be the natural condition: the way things are. Especially larger organizations are often like this: everyt issue, every plan, every decision, every action is turned into internal politics. People defend their turf, want to enlarge their turf or are eying for a next, bigger and better-paid turf. Is there an outside world? Yes, but mainly insofar it helps to define the turf, and influences who gets what money, prestige or power. Customers or clients, unless they represent big money, big prestige or big influence, are a necessary evil. They may have complaints and problems to solve, they have unrealistic expectations; basically they are a nuisance.<br /><br />
Is it possible to avoid or eliminate internal politics? No, it isn’t. But unattended it is a cancerous growth that will supplant all healthy tissue. It becomes especially evil when it is infected with fraud or corruption of any kind and when egotists at the top only allow other egotists to join their ranks.<br />What is the ideal counter-poison? Someone at the very top who has backing from external directors, with a direct interest in the services or products, in the end-users of these services and products, in the development and production of these services or products and the people who make that practically happen. Usually, but not necessarily, that person has come from the ranks.<br />Why is the top person so important? Isn’t that idolizing the strong man or the strong woman? No. The point is that such a person is essential to prevent people not really interested in these aspects to fill the positions below the top. The top person is not only a role model, but the only guarantee against empty careerists.<br /><br />
And not even that works always. Especially when the top executive is an entrepreneur who started his own company and the company becomes so big that he or she can’t handle everything anymore, such a person may be enamored by candidates for the number 2 position who come from bigger firms, often have very general backgrounds like financial and legal types. Marketing people are suspect, unless they have been in sales before. usually, marketing is for people who are too sensitive to engage in the rawer edges of the commercial world, like sales. Sales have the nasty habit that they often fail. Not all tenders are won, not every sales pitch hits home. And if you are too sensitive even for marketing? Then you can go into public relations. PR, darling, PR!<br /><br />
Of course both marketing and PR are legitimate functions, just like financial and legal work are. But they are more easily taken over by people with more form than substance. I have learned to watch for those managers who want to distance themselves as far as possible from the coal face, the place where real work is done. In public institutions it is often worse than in companies.<br />Now many companies are so big that you can’t expect top people to stay near to the primary process of developing, providing and selling products and services. There are simply too many products and services. So there the heroes are at the level of business unit managers. But size is less important than diversification. In huge companies of Shell or Apple the main products will still be known in the board room. There will be people there who actually held the new prototypes of the iPhone or know how an oil well and a refinery look like and smell.<br />But in a city it is possible that the manager of the sewage department has never seen or smelled a sewer and doesn’t plan to come near one.<br /><br />
In any organization internal politics is natural. But where reality is held at bay, internal politics take over. And good people leave, if they can. If left unstopped, the organization becomes a hollow organization, an empty legal and financial envelop. Everything is outplaced. The ideal of financial and legal types. Marketing types then preside over a collection of brands. They exploit trademarks. <br />When in a still large organization degeneration continues, this may change into the forth dynamic: executive psychopaths.Hans TenDamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07290538883780657086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8888216046070184694.post-77772944571065086462015-03-04T17:47:00.000+01:002015-03-04T17:47:24.826+01:00Perfectionism: the sixth systemic disease in organizations<i>A cylinder is pulled through a half-open gutter, again and again and again and again. To minimize friction, they say. It is never good enough.</i><br /><br />
This is the sixth image of a systemic disease.<br />Perfectionism is the exorcism of friction, the exorcism of frustration. <br />Imagine, still something that is not perfect! That could produce irritation. Or criticism. Or disappointment. Or failure. Imagine, being guilty of such things! Worse, shame may be involved. Perfection is the only way to avoid all these horrors.<br /><br />The search for the perfect diagnosis makes therapy obsolete. The search for perfect justice creates intolerable delays and byzantine refinements. The search for the perfect job leads to eternal dissatisfaction and job-hopping. The search for the perfect words aborts the manuscript. The search for the perfect partner leads to insupportable singles. The search for the perfect jet fighter leads to wasted billions - which is why the receivers of the billions are all crazy about perfectionism. <br /><br />Perfectionism is for people who are too refined for reality. It is also a marvellous way to denounce people, their ideas, their proposals, their efforts and their results.<br /><br />Beware of perfectionists! Flee them, avoid them like the plague. They are like man-eating robots: superior and unrelenting.<br /><br />Perfectionism in organizations is another systemic disease. It kills humanity, consideration and what is worse: common sense. Organizations delivering top-service or top-products easily become arrogant. Nothing succeeds like success. In the short run, that is. In the long run nothing fails like success. Especially grand, momentous failure make come out of too much success. <br /><br />Perfectionists have a death wish. They hate life, they hate reality. The real world is messy, people are grubby. Cleanliness may be close to godliness. But too much cleanliness is killing. Perfect plastic surgery creates dolls without character and so without attractiveness.<br /><br />We can always improve quality, we can always improve productivity, we can always improve profit. Till the clients are satisfied and the makers are satisfied, the banks are satisfied and the neighbors are satisfied. And then we go one step further. And then we stop.<br /><br />The only perfection that is recommendable is the perfection of being in flow. Robert Pirsig wrote about his fascination with Quality: <i>Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance</i>. Quality, that is what it is all about. Quality, not perfection.Hans TenDamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07290538883780657086noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8888216046070184694.post-54398938154272654172015-01-19T17:14:00.000+01:002015-01-19T17:14:25.684+01:00Fighting terrorismHow do we deal with terrorists? After the fact, we find them and disarm or, if necessary, eliminate them. Before the fact, we try to find them and then we do the same. That is, with real terrorists: people who kill, maim and rape unsuspecting, usually unarmed others.<br />Then we try to contain potential terrorists. We find them among the psychopaths: people without conscience, without remorse, without compassion, without empathy. Most psychopaths are made: by humiliation and torture, that is, by other people who are already psychopaths. And sometimes by extremists: people with lofty goals who consider everything acceptable that will lead to their goals. Extremism is fanaticism turned into action. More often than not, fanaticism is religious. What is wrong with religion?<br />There is not necessarily anything wrong with religion. We could state, more fundamentally, that out there is no such thing as religion, only religious people, people with certain convictions.<br />The most practical way is to look at religion as a <i>booster</i>. It makes broad-minded people more broad-minded, even incredibly so. And it makes narrow-minded people more narrow-minded, even incredibly so. It makes humane people more humane, and inhumane people more inhumane. It makes the wise wiser and the fools more foolish.<br />The problem of the superhuman is that it has so much to offer to the inhuman. The inhuman feels at home in the superhuman. And so the strongest light attracts also the strongest darkness. The most peaceful religions, like Buddhism, are more mental hygiene than religion. Confucianism is even more so. Though it can be stifling, it is rarely violent. <br />Religions that touch our soul the deepest, evoke the most enthusiasm, have the darkest fringes. Christianity and Islam come to mind. Fortunately, Christianity seems on the whole to have passed its psychopathic excrescences, Islam still has it. But when Christianity was as old as Islam is today, the religious wars were still in the future. An the first centuries of Christianity after it came into the open, where more violent and mad and cruel than Islam was in its first centuries. During the Crusades, the Europeans were much more primitive and cruel butchers and the Saracens were relatively enlightened, cultured and mild-mannered.<br />It is not religion that is decisive, but the mind-set of the believers. <br />Suppression of women in many non-Christian cultures is unbelievable to modern Europeans. When did we start to appreciate and value women? Around 1200 the Church began to teach that women should not be forced to be married against their will. That enlightened view started in the South of France and became part of chivalry, later of the cult of the gentilhomme, the gentleman. And where did the troubadours get it? From the highly cultured Moors in Spain. The people that were later, together withe Jews, wholesale murdered and subjugated by the barbaric Spanish Christians. The Spanish Inquisition and its auto-de-fés made even Rome look tame.<br /><br />How many psychopaths are there? A reasonable estimate is around 2% of the population. Some may be born that way, others become psychopaths by growing up with psychopaths, or mixing with psychopaths in war, guerrilla, revolution or organized crime. The nazis emptied the prisons and offered the inmates work in the concentration camps. A few psychopaths in positions of power may unleash the others on the population at large.<br /><br />Terrorists as we know them the last decades are small fry. The big thing is when regimes are run by psychopaths. Usually they remain at the intermediate level: warlords and crime bosses in failed states. Sometimes they come to the top and unleash a reign of terror. Not all dictators are psychopaths, but many fill the description, most, I suspect. <br /><br />When, around 1980, I tried to identify the main international challenges, the first was cruelty, torture and terror, especially terrorist regimes. If you are interested in the history, the psychology and the sociology of terror, you may read the third chapter of How People Make the World.* It includes what we should do about it.<br /><br />The debate if Islam is a violent or a peaceful religion, is besides the point. It is both, of course. It is a source of inspiration for peaceful people. And also for violent people. For a full appreciation of women. And for a rampant suppression of women. As is true for all religions. Also the Bible is full of texts supporting one point of view as well as the other. <br /><br />By the way, what is the easiest and the fastest way to grow and promote psychopaths? Consistent, mean, immense humiliation. We may have to confront terrorists and to isolate potential terrorists, but on the long run we have to eradicate humiliation - of any kind, in any shape.<br />To solve terrorism, fear doesn’t help, anger doesn’t help, prayer doesn’t help. A modicum of respect does. Also for the unwashed, the unkempt, the backward, the angry. If necessary, we should even kill respectfully. <br /><br />Weird? Read Big Six Henderson by Jules Loh.* This feature ends: He was a legend in his time, all right, and not just because of his uncanny skill and his zealotry. He also had e reputation for fair play and decent treatment of the moonshiners he caught. ‘I never regarded them as doing something evil, just illegal,’ Big Six Henderson said, ‘and I never abused them.’ The big man thumbed through a sheaf of his faded daily reports, looking wistfully at the names. ‘Killed a few, but never abused them.’<br />
<br />
<br />
*Hans TenDam - How People Make the World: The Ten Global Challenges, an Essay on Politics, Civilization and Humanity. http://www.lulu.com http://www.onlineoriginals.com <br />
* Rene J. Cappon - The Associated Press Guide to News WritingHans TenDamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07290538883780657086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8888216046070184694.post-34218614683380270442014-12-23T13:20:00.000+01:002014-12-23T13:20:16.065+01:00When priorities are lacking<i>A chess player in a simultaneous display. His real competitor is not among his opponents. His attention drops. What is he doing here? </i><br /><br />
Busy, busy, busy. With what? And why?<br />This is the condition of people, groups and whole organizations without clear priorities. Why don’t people have clear priorities? There are so many causes that it is a wonder that some people do have them.<br />
<ol>
<li>There is no time to think through priorities. This is a recursive one, a vicious circle in itself.</li>
<li>Having no time is an excuse not to think through priorities. Whenever it seems frightening to face the facts. </li>
<li>Incompetent bosses give all the time conflicting demands or come with ever new priorities. Often they suffer under bosses like themselves. As competent people don’t stay under such circumstances, only the incompetent, the indifferent and the anxious people stay.</li>
<li>Lack of delegation means that bosses run from one incident to the next one. When extinguishing one fire, another flames up already. Some people wait almost ion purpose for crises to develop, because they don’t have an inkling what to do if there is no crisis. Crises may give people the idea they are important, needed. And they may give them the probably mistaken belief they are alive.</li>
<li>Some people have a body that is not suitable for a sitting life. They need to move, even physically, so they arrange for working conditions that make it necessary to move around.</li>
<li>Many people have a time-span that is too short for their job. They are busy pulling plants up to make them grow faster.</li>
<li>If you are very busy, people are discouraged from asking disturbing questions like what the effectiveness or the efficiency is of what you are doing. Or even worse: what the purpose is what you are doing.</li>
<li>Increasing performance with present capability is more difficult, less tangible and slower than cutting costs. That can be calculated easily, if you don’t think too much ahead. Decreasing capability gives a lot of stress: fear to be the next to become redundant, more work to do, getting less support, anger about arbitrariness, blindness and injustice.</li>
<li>When everybody is running around, the few people who are calm and concentrated are envied and should be entrusted with extra work. It is unfair. They should be snowed under as soon as possible.</li>
<li>Priorities don’t help without posteriorities: not doing the nonessential. That requires courage - and judgment. Bureaucracies don’t like those. Not making mistakes is safer than trying to accomplish the worthwhile.</li>
</ol>
So what can we do about all this? How can we establish priorities in the middle of a priorities graveyard?<br />
<ol>
<li>By establishing priorities group-wise, not individually, by the people responsible and directly involved.</li>
<li>By concentrating on the one or two priorities that dwarf all others: core issue analysis.</li>
<li>By giving the core priorities evocative labels that stick.</li>
</ol>
<br />In my experience this rarely takes more than three days. One day to make the longlist, one day to boil the longlist down to the core issues, and one day for the strategy of dealing with those issues and farming them out to the right people. The first and the third day can be done by a sample of the people involved. The second day has to involve as many key people involved in the area under consideration as possible, including the ones that are actually going to execute the work involved.<br />This is an investment in collective mind power that will increase effective mind power amply, often incredibly.<br />One or two outsiders, like consultants, are usually needed to ensure a fresh perspective on worn-out issues.Hans TenDamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07290538883780657086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8888216046070184694.post-9841525055509110082014-12-08T16:46:00.000+01:002014-12-08T16:51:56.130+01:00Planning and policy are handmaidens, execution is the king.I read something that made me pause my series about systemic organization problems. I was reading Churchill's History of the Second World War, when I came across a passage that was right out of my own heart. (My managerial heart, that is.)<br />
<br />
From Volume 4, Chapter XXXI: Suspense and Strain:<br />
<i>(Sir Stafford Cripps, the Lord Privy Seal, proposed) … that as Minister of Defence I should have associated with me, as advisers, three persons of the calibre of the Chiefs of Staff who would supervise the Joint Planning Staffs and would be free to devote the whole of their time to military planning in its broadest sense. These three were to form an independent War Planning Directorate, which would keep under review the whole strategy of the war and consider all future operations; and for these purposes they were to supersede the Chiefs of Staff Committee. In each theatre of war there would be a single Commander with full power over all the naval, land, and air forces. These Commanders, advised by a small joint staff, would be responsible directly to the War Planning Directorate. …<br /><br />This was in truth a planner's dream. <br /><br />The new Directorate, concerned solely with planning and armed with full powers of direction and control, would be free to go its way without distraction by the daily cares which beset the Chiefs of Staff in controlling the forces over which they exercised command. These manifold cares would continue to be left to the Chiefs of Staff and the staffs which served them in their individual and collective capacities, while the supreme command elaborated its strategy and plans in splendid isolation.<br /><br />I judged (the proposals) to be misconceived in theory and unworkable in practice. The guiding principle of war direction is, in my opinion, that war plans should be formulated by those who have the power and the responsibility for executing them. Under the system which we had evolved in the hard school of experience the need for inter-Service planning was fully met by the Chiefs of Staff committee and its subordinate bodies, in which those carrying the responsibility for execution came together to make jointly the plans which they were to carry out. The establishment of a War Planning Directorate divorced from the Service staffs responsible for action would have been vicious in principle, for it would have created two rival bodies, one responsible and one irresponsible, yet both nominally of equal status. It would have confronted Ministers with the constant need to disregard the advice of one or other of these bodies. It would have led at once to immediate and violent friction. Was an admiral to be appointed to the Planning Directorate with power to tell the First Lord how to move the Fleet, or an air marshal "of equal calibre" to criticise by implication the Chief of the Air Staff? It was easy to see the dangers and antagonism inherent in such a system. Any clever person can make plans for winning a war if he has no responsibility for carrying them out. Such ingenuity and resource is to be encouraged in the members of planning staffs, so long as they are definitely and effectively subordinated in status to the Service chiefs who carry the executive responsibility. </i><br />
<br />
Of course, planning needs some distance from execution, but not divorced from it. In our government departments we have whole hordes of civil servants responsible for 'policy,' without experience with practical execution and not under, but above those responsible for real work and real results under real conditions. It is difficult to imagine something more diseased than policy makers and planners removed from immediate reality and immediate responsibility. Are you too sensitive to be a salesperson? Go into marketing. And if you are too sensitive for marketing, go into public relations. <i></i><br />
The old saying is: Those who can, do, those who cannot, teach. We could say as well: Those who can, do, those who cannot, formulate policies.<i></i><br />
<br />
My favorite sentence in the quote above:<i> Any clever person can make plans for winning a war if he has no responsibility for carrying them out. </i>Hans TenDamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07290538883780657086noreply@blogger.com0