Solving unsolvable problems

Most news is about problems. Managers are dealing mostly with problems. Work is tiring. The world is tiring.
I found three viewpoints enriching. The first is to look at recurrent problems. The solution usually can be found in a system dynamics framework, Identifying the delays and the overreactions in the system.
The second is to look for persistent problems that continue whatever money, time and effort is spent. The Romans already knew what to look for: cui bono? Who benefits from the problem not been resolved?
The third is to look for historic success stories when whole societies took off and stayed successful for quite some time. The Roman republic is itself an interesting case, especially the time between 220 and 167 BC. The period to look for with the Netherlands is the decade 1588-1598. The creations of the early consulate in France, 1799-1803, survived the end of the Napoleonic era; many are still in place.

Here I want to discuss the issue of persistent, apparently unsolvable problems. So, who benefits? The most easy explanation, that pretty often hits the nail on the head, is that an unsolvable problem draws attention away from an other undesirable condition that has a whole group profiting. When attention and emotions are diverted, other muddy waters remain unexposed. It is the essence of stage magic: directing the attention of the audience away from what is really happening.

The obsessive attention of the McCarthy-area in the United States directed a lot of FBI-attention to suspected communists. The Maffia had a field day.
The obsessive - but quite natural - attention of the public with kidnappings and murders takes attention away from white-collar crime.
Government departments may knowingly include one very controversial item in their annual budgets, absorbing a lot of parliamentary attention, to have the rest of the budget more easily accepted.

We can also look into the internal dynamics of persistent problems. The first who benefit from such problems, are the groups whose raison d’être is that problem. Groups who point out environmental problems have a vested interest in not really solving the problems - or to find ever new ones.
Many individuals are married to their personal problems: they are getting a steady stream of attention and they have an excuse not to face their life and do something about it.

And think of the international problems of drug-use and drug related crime. Of course the producers of drugs have their vested interests. The War on Drugs ensures very large profits and many crime fighters earn a living from it. It makes drugs use risky and so interesting. Most people lead dull lives. Most of them do not actively engage in mayhem, but movies and games depicting sex and violence and horror have a captive market. So drug use may have the lure of the dangerous and the forbidden. Drugs are sexy.

So always ask when a problem remains in the spotlight: what remains in the (relative) shadow? The Greeks need to learn to behave more responsibly with public money. They sure do need that. But the banks also need that. And they, like the Greeks, learn only when it hurts long enough and bad enough. The financial problems are unsolvable because many people are doing whatever they can to avoid the solution. Shifting the burden: a well-known systems disease.

Politics and negotiation

What are the essential skills politicians need? I think there are three:

•  Expectation engineering
•  Commitment engineering
•  Negotiation

Expectation engineering means to shape people’s expectations: about what will happen if things continue the way they are, what happens when other parties have their way, what happens when your party will have its way, what happens if you get your way. Expectation engineering easily degenerates into general statements that play to hopes and fears of people, unhampered by pertinent knowledge and practical wisdom.
Commitment engineering means to build alliances, to build support, to build a reputation for honesty, fairness and reliability, to stand your ground to the extent it is practically possible.
Negotiation depends on the personal qualities and personal reputation of the negotiators and of the knowledge that they truly represent the views and the interests of their constituencies. And on their ability to judge the position of their opponents, their views, their interests, the pressures they are under. The best negotiators are reasonable and humane, but skeptical and perceptive, with sound judgment. The worst negotiators are missionaries, fanatics and advocates, especially if they are unsure of their own constituencies. This makes new, inexperienced amateurs unreliable. They want to score too badly. The most common vice of negotiators, both experienced and inexperienced is vanity. Vanity breeds indiscretion and tactlessness.
The ideal negotiator is truthful, precise, composed, patient, modest and loyal.

In the Netherlands, we just had an election that forces the two big winners, centre-right and centre-left, to form a coalition government. From day one, the press is lamenting back-room politics, meaning they don’t know exactly what’s going on. But negotiation is essentially a back-room activity. All publicity during the negotiation phase is to influence what is happening in the back-room. Usually, it’s more to satisfy their own constituencies, then to influence the other party, even if it seems that the public utterances are directed to the other party.

The best possible outcome of a negotiation is when each party get gains that don’t cost too much to the other party. And where that is impossible, that compromises are fair - and workable. A lot of expectation engineering is necessary to make the commitment engineering work, both inside and outside the negotiation ‘back-room.’

The essential difficulty is that expectations are necessarily shaky in fields like economics as  the dynamics are so complex and turbulent that the relationship between causes and effects is never clear-cut. Political decisions are a boulevard of broken dreams.
This seems one of the major reasons that politics becomes personalized. The more the destination is controversial, the more all routes to all destinations are insecure, the more trust in the captain is what counts. The media enlarge this, they don’t create this.

Politicians are no supermen and supergirls. Those that present themselves as such, should not be trusted. We should not imagine them to be that. I remember the lead caption of a Brazilian newspaper, right after the end of the military rule, when the country was suffering all the turmoils of a return to democracy: A COUNTRY THAT NEEDS A MESSIAH, DOESN’T DESERVE ONE. Amen to that.