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| PROBLEMATIS SOLVENDIS
Saturday, November 12, 2022
Recognizing a problem, assessing its importance relative to all other problems, and developing a strategy to solve issues – essential steps in making purposeful progress – not by accident, good fortune or the actions of others. That is superb, of course, and potentially useful.
But the last piece of this puzzle-maze, action, is where we fall down, when public figures do pratfalls, and governments fall from grace. That falling, the failing, is about failure to act.
Everything constitutes some element of data gathering without decisions; drawing conclusions is a half-measure decision because it means we’ve figured out with some rigour what the action could be, but lacking decisiveness; it lacks action.
I’ve been wrestling lately with a pitch, my pitch, to a potential client/collaborator – they don’t know me, they don’t know my skill set, and they don’t know what I can do for them. If I approach them poorly, I’ll be dismissed as another annoyance, interruption or self-serving seller of snake oil who is wasting their time.
How, then, do I provide information factual, relevant, and convincing information which tells them they have a problem (they likely know already) and proposes a solution which is likely an opposite-end-of-spectrum one than those they consider?
The problem is not that they don’t have a problem or fail to see it; the problem is they see it as they’ve always seen it, have been schooled and trained to see it and work in a culture that says the future will look like the past.
No future view seems nor looks like the past, but many organizations and professions resist change because they trust the tried-and-true. They want evidence in advance that a radical on its face, one which undermines their career of thinking/practice, is worth risking money, reputation, their job, and their organization’s credibility – if they choose to make a change.
It could be argued that it is perilously dangerous for them to not change, but they see radical change as perilously dangerous.
What is perilously dangerous, more than all the risks, is the missing component. All organizations and businesses – from one-person entrepreneurship to a massive conglomerate – the constant focus on ‘what are we doing’; is it working; what do we change; what do we not change; what must we change; will stakeholders benefit and cheer? – and, this is paralyzing.
Regardless of the turnover of staff in most organizations, the job at the top (CEO, Chairman, Founder) is so demanding/rewarding/punishing that owners/shareholders value vision, productivity, success, and risk-taking as ‘one measurement,’ the loss or failure of which is cause for instant dismissal. It’s callous, unwise almost every time, and completely understandable.
Reader feedback:
This was a great read Mark. But maybe we just think we are better than that. In my imagination, something that created a feeling of “we” would help us achieve some semblance of peace and respect. But if global threats of, for example pandemics and climate change, only create more anger and division, we will likely see one more destructive war. The bumper sticker? The war to end all, HM, Calgary, AB
You’ve told this story before, but it bears repeating, RH, Calgary, AB
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