Core issue analysis

We 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: “A schoolboy’s hindsight is better than a president’s foresight.” We need good-luck as well.

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.
Of course we want to find out which issues should get the highest priority.  Let’s take this one step further. What is the most critical issue in your life and work right now? 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.

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 tour de force, 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.

Core issue analysis is the methodical identification of the prime actual challenge facing an organization, community or individual. Core issue transformation 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. 
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.
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.

• "It is about saving costs." 
• "Our people must become more flexible." 
• “Customer-friendliness, that’s what it all amounts to." 

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.

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.
If you want to find out the core issue, start with looking in the dark - if you can. 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.
More roundabout ways to find the core issue are:

• Look for problems that are really persistent or recurrent.
• Look for flip-flops in your life, going from one extreme to another.
• Look for gradual developments that may be not too serious right now, but seem unstoppable.

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.
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 raison d’être, to our mission in life, to our ability to be successful in that and to the external changes that affect both.
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.
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.
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."
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 the strongest answer to the most daunting challenge you can find right here and now. 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.

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.

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: Immigrants and Immigration. Ten years later, it seems to have been a pretty powerful diagnosis.

Moods in Societal Development; Politics and Alternatives

Since the 18th century, the basic mood of Western society has been the optimism of Enlightenment, modulated by Romantic overtones of jubilant confidence and undertones of despair. Empathy can have as its object both positive and negative feelings, both vital and morbid tendencies. Much literature is preoccupied with the problematic side of life. After all, literature comes from drama, from the classical tragedy, and tragedy portrays human struggle against odds. Tragedy is not to indulge in defeat, nor to indulge in triumph, but to induce catharsis, an intense and meaningful release from human limitation.
Jean Paul Sartre, in a monograph about emotions, pointed out that emotions form an older, more primitive response to our experience than our ratio. Emotions are more related to our hormonal system and less to our nervous system. Emotions tend to be general; they influence our overall state. According to Sartre, our basic emotion is the one that reduces everything most, resolving all details, making us drift in a sea of feeling, with everything blurred, even ourselves. It is melancholy. Melancholy at least deepens the otherwise shallow optimism of the Enlightenment.
    Universal suffrage has institutionalized the view that people can influence society, and that as responsible citizens we should do so. Anyone can begin a political career. We cannot righteously complain about the state of affairs in society, or merely blame others, while staying inactive ourselves. So the Atlas syndrome afflicts more people today than in the past.
    Pessimism pervaded after the Great War of 1914-1918, and especially after the Great Depression. The coming of fascism offered optimism, but at a terrible price, and led to more pessimism in the remaining democracies. When the tide turned, and the democracies won the war, optimism returned. This was clear in my country, the Netherlands. The aftermath of the war brought a new spirit. Everyone worked hard to undo the damage done by war. The period up to about 1965 brought one of the most spectacular advances ever in the standard of living. This was the time of technocratic optimism. Pessimism was still present, but it loomed in the background. Great hopes for a postwar society, based on solidarity experienced under German occupation, did not materialize. Instead, people experienced the shock of learning of the inhumanities that had occurred in concentration camps, the distant terror of the atomic bomb, the growing influence of existentialist philosophy.
    The second period, from about 1965 to about 1975, showed a strong reaction to technocracy. This was the age of hippies, of flower power, of student demonstrations, of the rise of alternative communities, alternative life styles, a comeback of mysticism and of eschatology - back to the simple life, a clean environment, small is beautiful, great bureaucracies are ugly, dangerous, inhuman. Don’t follow leaders! The New Age is dawning!
    From about 1975 a new period set in, a time of cultural pessimism which we are now leaving. A sense of defeat is spreading. Apparently we cannot solve our problems. Whatever we do appears to have serious unintended consequences. Unemployment is rising markedly, as are government deficits. Public policies are poorly devised and poorly carried out. Any redress of ineffective but institutionalized practice proves difficult, almost impossible. Employee morale problems appear insoluble. Administrative organizations are growing more inefficient, more remote, more rigid. Crime is rising and the police feel demoralized. Once we have established standards to fight one environmental problem, another looms at our doorstep. Dissatisfaction has increased. Drug addiction has grown explosively. Development aid appears largely to have been wasted money.
    The main reaction to this new pessimism has been the rise of neoconservatism, which today is also neopositivism. In terms of cultural determinants the pendulum seems to swing back to more power distance, more avoidance of uncertainty, more individualism and probably more masculinity.
    In management literature, pessimism about the effectiveness of the proposed cures against bureaucracy, rigidity and demoralization is being countered by analyses of well-established success stories, first of Japanese, and later of U.S. companies. In Search of Excellence has been one of the greatest management bestsellers ever. The book you are reading now is also a child of its time.
    The Atlas syndrome is the price we have to pay for trying to make society more civilized, or even to prevent it from lapsing back into barbarism. In Western society the Atlas syndrome has spread under the influences of Utopias, Enlightenment, Romanticism and the scientific, technological and economical explosion, and has widened under universal suffrage.


No one likes to feel dragged down by problems. If we cannot solve a problem we may substitute something else for it, or we may avoid or ignore the problem altogether. Some things are simply too big for us. I could not make my two-year-old son see an elephant in the zoo. He just saw the sparrows around the elephant’s legs. Our first defense to a budding Atlas syndrome is to ignore the challenge. Perhaps we do not see a problem, or we do not accept that it is there, or we see it as something that will be solved some other day. Perhaps we feel that a problem is not for us to solve, but for the politicians and the authorities. We can go to sleep, be optimistic or simply not bother about it. ‘They have always found a solution, so there is no reason they will not find one now.’
    A related response is not to worry about the course of the ship we are all on, but to use our talents to be on the upper deck, with the trend-setters, the in-crowd. Being at the front of things, we assume that we can adapt ourselves with grace and wit to whatever comes. Usually this attitude does not help when the ship is going down, although we may have more chance of getting on a lifeboat.
    A more useful response is to turn to politics. We accept the challenge, assuming that it can be handled within the existing political framework. By that approach we run the considerable risk either of not getting enough influence or of having to forget what we wanted to use our influence for in the first place. Politics functions with the uncanny habit of turning every issue into a political game issue, and thus often transforming issues beyond recognition. Going political is often ineffective, but it has few alternatives. To be effective, we have to win the game without becoming absorbed by it.
    The third response to major social problems is to go political without trusting the present political framework. We may engage in political activism, protesting and seeking public attention. By meetings, discussions and publicity events we try to create grass-roots or special interest support and to exert political pressure. So we mobilize influence outside of the established political framework. Much of this activity goes by the name of awareness raising.
    The main effect of becoming aware is usually the irrepressible urge to make others aware. Often the same happens with religious conversion. Apart from feeling better, the main consequence for many converts seems to be persistence in attempting to convert others. Starting a religious revival compares to starting a chain letter, although the chain letter is much more ephemeral.
    In democratic politics this game of awareness raising is assumed to be infectious. We escape from the Atlas syndrome by passing it on to others, assuming that in the end so many people will be converted that the world’s problems will be solved. The underlying assumption is that the main reason problems are not solved is obstruction by selfish, indifferent, devious or mistaken people in power positions. We trust that such mistaken people just will be swept away by the tide.
    We also can go ‘political-plus’, trying to change the political system itself. We need much power if we are to do that. Usually we cannot muster institutional power, because the people involved are likely to prefer the status quo, unless they are frightened and may gamble on us, as some German industrialists gambled on Adolf Hitler. We need to muster grass-roots support, for which we have to be rather demagogic, and we need to be clever enough to outwit the existing political influences that oppose us. We may even have to deal with such factors as arrest, mob violence or assassination. Or we may turn to violence ourselves and go revolutionary. All those means, however, are incompatible with the end of a more civilized, more humane society. The idea that the end justifies the means, is dangerous. Usually the reverse is true: the means desecrate the end, and by that desecration destroy it.
    We may, however, have to use means that are not compatible with the end. Tolerance toward intolerance should be limited, just as nonviolence toward violence needs to be limited. Tyrannicide, the killing of tyrants, is the subject that originated political philosophy, because the killing of tyrants lies at the heart of the paradox of creating and maintaining a civilized society that contains uncivilized people. But beware of choosing the option of changing the political system, unless you go easy on self-justification.
    The fourth response to major social problems is that of people who do not trust pragmatic Machiavellian politics at all, whether inside or outside of the present system. The key success factors in improving society are those of having pure altruist intentions and of being upright and inspired. Only a really humane, idealistic approach will do. Such an approach can avert pending hostilities, break deadlocks, bypass bureaucratic and diplomatic rigidity and reach out immediately to other people of good will.
    Such do-gooders are often naive. They may trust unreliable information and may even be dangerous, as the preludes and beginning of both World Wars illustrate. Usually such people mistake good intentions for good results, and never question the factual effects. They mistake good input for good output, and although the two are undoubtedly related, the relationship is not a simple one. Financial people know this: good money does not save bad money. The abolition of alcohol consumption in the U.S. is an example of well-meant measures having disastrous effects. Self-righteous virtue is often very good soil to the weed of effective vice. Good intentions are an easy way out of poor results.
    The fifth response is that of substituting one challenge for another. Such a response reasons that we should improve the world by improving ourselves: ‘Forget politics, it only winks us away from our real task. Instead, turn inward, discover the inner realms, meditate, contemplate’. This may be a constructive road to take, if we do not use it as a substitute for social action.
    People engaging in Transcendental Meditation believe that even if only some people in an area practice this form of meditation, crime rates there will drop. Alternative spiritual communities may appear aloof from the wheelings and dealings of ordinary society. They may seem insignificant, but in reality they are situated on important etheric centers or crossroads of this planet. Though nobody notices, they are great forces for the betterment of humankind.
    I happen to believe that in the age-old question of the precedence between contemplation and action, we should prefer action. Of course, preferably the two do go together: action without contemplation is rush; contemplation without action is sterile. Rush, however, still leads to experience, and experience will eventually lead to contemplation. However, contemplation that does not lead to action is essentially spiritual masturbation, a higher but not necessarily more attractive form of narcissism.
    Arnold Toynbee concludes that mystics and hermits are our true guides to the future. St. Francis of Assisi is his favorite. St. Francis apparently was a very active sort of mystic. It is worth noting that the alleged function of hermits becomes useless without people who are inspired by them but who do not necessarily follow their example. Besides, I don’t happen to see the intrinsic value in becoming poor and going begging. Of course it can be a tremendous educational experience to free yourself from stifling wealth, from financial cares and from fetishist attachment to objects. But once the lesson has been learned, please return to an active and responsible life.
    Being a beggar, as a person or as a church institution, without a social function (of course many church institutions have social functions) is merely being parasitic. The only useful function of such a role is to relieve other people’s guilt feelings, giving them beautiful feelings instead. But society provides more than enough sensible not-parasitic occasions for that.
    Aristotle gives contemplation the highest marks because it sets the mind to things that do not change and therefore are the highest, a philosophy fitting world-weary people. One good thing about action is that it requires contemplation, and the experience of contemplation within action is, in terms of Abram Maslov, a top experience.
    The sixth response is to redefine the challenge until it is no longer a challenge. This approach can be combined perfectly with the fifth response, but still it is a response in its own right. What we are really witnessing nowadays is a cosmic transition. What we are seeing are not the signs of an overburdening challenge, but rather the birth pangs of the new age that will come about anyway. The New Age is dawning, the Age of Aquarius is upon us. We need only to prepare ourselves for that new time. We need only to set our sails to the new wind that is blowing. In the words of Bob Dylan, the minstrel of the sixties: ‘This is the hour that the ship comes in’, and ‘the times are a-changing’.
    The more stubborn reality seems, the more we see everywhere the signs of what really is changing. Such a time of change provides fruitful soil for conspiracy theories, for a change of the positive kind. In the minds of some people there is, for example an Aquarian conspiracy, or there is a hidden revolution going on in science toward a holistic vision.
    The more apocalyptic versions will have it that there first has to be a global purge, a deluge, an Armageddon. After a huge crisis, there will come a new beginning. This view is a typically pre-Enlightenment religious version. It could become true, pending a now improbable outbreak of a nuclear world war. Possibly there would be Noahs, but they would not find a cleansed earth after 40 days. Although they might see in the sky more fantastic phenomena than rainbows, they will derive no comfort or inspiration from such sights. A post-nuclear sunset will not be a covenant with the Lord, but a covenant with their past, doubling the crushing weight of their unattractive present. Then, an Atlas syndrome may be worse than a disease - it may prove fatal.

From 'The Atlas-syndrome,' the first chapter of Humanity, Civilization and Politics, also available as e-book at http://www.onlineoriginals.com