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.

Religion, politics and psychopaths-2

Psychopaths, 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.
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.

OK. As I wrote in my previous blog, the only fundamental approach is to discourage the making of new psychopaths. But how?

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.
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.
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.”

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.
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.
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.
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.

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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Morality is about treating people as human beings. Humanization rituals are the preventive maintenance of society.
Much of what goes under the name of alienation is a response to dehumanization. 

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.
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.
    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.

    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?       
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.
    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.
    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.
    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.
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.
    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.
Religious fanaticism is even more dangerous than political fanaticism.

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.
    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.
    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.

(See for a more extensive analysis chapters 2 and 3 of my Humanity, Civilization, Politics; http://www.onlineoriginals.com/)