A genuine shortage of low-cost rentals has seen a spike in the [tag]rental market[/tag]. This is a phenomenon that is not just located here in Brisbane it is an Australia wide crisis. One only has to conduct a google search to see what kind of issues we are facing at the moment. I wonder though if this is a legitimate [tag]crisis[/tag] or weather we are making this up in our heads. This article explains some of the thinking I am getting at. So what are we to do?

In this case I would call this ‘the model’s broken’ type of [tag]problem[/tag] much like the broken record industry or the broken publishing industry… it’s just plain old broken. The core of the model relies on rent covering the investment but if what I earn goes nowhere how in the name of all things sacred can I afford it? It seems to me that people like Terry Burke are not really saying anything that’s radical at all. It’s common sense that [tag]economic[/tag] folk have simply skipped over. How can I pay more money for rent when I don’t earn anymore than I did one year ago… despite my landlord needing me to. I can’t. The model that rental markets are built on are simply broken… there is no easy solution to a broken model. Here’s where [tag]perspective shifting[/tag] comes into it.

This is the practice of changing of changing the model (the perspective) so that the problem can’t exist anymore. It’s also the process of [tag]dissolving problems[/tag] as introduced to me by way of Russell Ackoff. This process involves changing the systemic conditions that cause the problem to exist by re framing the cause. So what would be a better way of organising housing other than renting? I can’t actually think of any at this point!

What we really need is a brand new way of [tag]renting[/tag] that means people can live and investors make their money. What would actually work? We have created this mess where people can’t find a rental for a decent price and now investors are screaming because they are running out of money! Community housing could work but ultimately this creates other problems which are beyond this post. How about each bank takes 1% of it’s profit and build a random house for a random customer? Even if the National Australia Bank took 10% of it’s profit and gave it back into [tag]housing[/tag] projects it would ease the burden. Maybe the problem isn’t a lack of houses perhaps it’s materialistic concepts we use to determine what wealth is? Why do you need an investment property… to give renters a place to live? I think not… if you could put robots in there to make you money you would do it.

Consider how much money was poured into the Tsunami or Hurricane Katrina. What if a common housing fund could be established where people who can’t get housing finance got government supervised permission to have a house built out of this fund and then agreed to make payments according to a percentage until they paid back the principal… i.e. a no interest loan? They had something like that here in Australia for a while but now they don’t. There are housing commission places but in my area you have to wait 9 years to get in and it’s like ‘renting for life’ with no hope of getting a place of your own. Recently I saw that same department advertising in the paper for cheaper ways to accommodate the growing list of ‘at risk’ families. This is a serious matter indeed.

To finish this article I would like to point out that the real victims of the [tag]rental market[/tag] are not the investors … it’s the people who have no choice but to rent. You can whine on about putting money into specialized funds, community housing and the like but the bigger picture problem is there are families who are finding it harder and harder to survive. The investors are finding it harder to support the model and the people that make it work (renters) are struggling to pay the rent. If you are in the position to invest your money then the majority of financial advice (most of which is sheer crap) applies to you. For the rest of us we are stuck with the decisions you make and are forced to move from place to place waiting for something to change. Disagree with me? Then tell me why.

In the world filled with [tag]problems[/tag] there is a great divide between stuff that’s a [tag]problem[/tag] and stuff we think might be a problem. What do I mean? Well consider this: the problem of traffic in this fair city of Brisbane is a problem for me because I have to drive into it every morning when I go to work. To say it was a crisis would be a bit dramatic and probably amplify the thing way out of context. Yet in my experience, people do this all the time. So what I am going to do next is outline some ways you can know you really have a problem.

1. Is this problem an immediate concern

If the situation at hand is not solved immediately is there a chance that it can be solved later? If it can be solved later why are you so concerned about solving it right now. Why do you want to fix it and why on earth do you want to waste time and energy when other problems could be better solved now. Most people make something that’s an immediate concern where there is no need to do that. The reasons we do this could be because of: personal preference, political reasons, you think it has to be solved ‘right now’ and stuff like that. If the problem is not immediately a concern there is good chance that you are worried about something that may never occur.

2. Are you making something a problem because you want to see it solved

Consider your own life and the problems you have at the moment… are you creating new problems to [tag]solve[/tag] because you want to. The reasons why you are doing that might be avoidable. In high times of stress humans fall back into crisis mode and make sense of situations differently than they do under normal circumstances. The consequences of what we are doing when we are looking to solve a problem often forms the area of concern itself. We create the concern so we can solve it. Over a period of time we build up an issue in our [tag]minds[/tag] and then plan out ways to solve it as we create it. Why do we do this… it’s part of being human.

3. What is the evidence that has led you to think there is a problem

Evidence can be real (facts) or it can be the stuff in our brain that tells us something is real. Whenever you have come to a conclusion that there is a problem it’s because you have evidence that has lead you to this conclusion. What evidence do you have? Mental evidence… your thoughts? In your thinking process you have created a chain of evidence that links certain types of information together to form a logical conclusion. The conclusions you have reached are well thought out and logical based on rational (or in some cases irrational) thinking. To test this ask yourself what makes you think what you are thinking. The conclusion (problem) was reached through evidence (thoughts) what thoughts make you think there is a problem. Once you have isolated these… write them down and study them. Is it really that serious?

4. If there is a problem is there also a solution

Believing is intrinsic to human affairs. We find a problem it’s usually connected to certain kinds of solutions. When we look at a problem, in our mind is a subtle idea for a solution, that we have been mothering to the point where we are now finding a problem to birth our solutions. In the seventies they called this the garbage can of decision making. A problem can often be identified by overzealous people looking to test a ’solution’ that is a personal pet project. Don’t be one of these people. As I will discuss in a later post problems and solutions are inexplicably related.

One final question to ask yourself as you look for problems is the question of meaning. What meaning does the problem have? If it’s a problem with a certain degree of importance (i.e. marriage) then you will be blinded by the all too familiar problem of being human. That however, is another post for another day. For now, think… do I really have a problem? Happy [tag]problem solving[/tag]!

In a recent post I discussed making the right [tag]choices.[/tag] To continue this I would like to say that most choices we have to make are of the heart and of the head. Heart decisions are the effective choice most of the time where as efficient ones are of the head. Head choices are come to through a reasoning process like this one. Clearly there are some choices we make that are the right ones and others which are the optimal ones. Recently I had to move house and thanks to the ridiculous prices of houses in Brisbane I can’t buy. So I have to rent. My daughter started school about 18 months ago so I began this process by figuring that I could move to a cheaper suburb and save some money. I thought I had this all figured out.

Then one night I heard my daughter crying herself to sleep. So I asked her what the problem was. She told me that she didn’t want to leave her school. So here I am with a choice to make. Do I move to save a few bucks or stay where I am and stretch. What’s the trade off in a situation like that. What’s ironic is that I wrote about this not more than a month ago and here I am having to make this kind of choice. What kind of reasoning process will help me here? If I move to save money my daughter will be upset and uprooted. On the other hand if I stay my daughter will be happy but I may have to move in another year because I can’t afford it. One of these decisions is an effective choice and the other is efficient… what do I do?

The pro’s and con’s in the lifehacker post simply do not apply to me and I suspect that a great majority of people find such things innocuous. My family is not a business and I shouldn’t make decisions that are business like so far as my children are concerned. What I should do is do what I can to stay near her school and give her a stable environment. If I can’t then all I can do is make the most effective choice I can. That is the right thing to do.

Effective Choices

[tag]Effective choices[/tag] are often those of the heart. Once I was stuck in the middle of bitter [tag]argument[/tag] between two colleagues which made me feel very uncomfortable. They just decided that (for whatever reason) they didn’t like each other anymore. The problem was, one was the boss and the other was an employee. Ultimately the employee lost because the boss had more power and eventually got rid of the other guy. I was caught in the middle of this and being a young academic at the time didn’t know as much about politics as I do right now. I had plenty of opportunity to warn the person being fired that this was their fate. However, I never did. A few years later the same thing happened to me (I got fired!) in a similar way. When it happened to me I realised I had been making ambitious choices to the detriment of those around me. Since then, I learned a valuable lesson: Always make the right choice. The choice that is most effective over the choice that is most efficient.

Effective choices are the right thing to do. In any given situation you will know what is right if you look into your heart. Ambition is good so long as it’s mixed with integrity. Why? Being the best should be your goal but if what you are doing is destroying other people to get there then you are not making effective choices. What do you want people to think about you after your gone? He was a mongrel… I am glad he is dead! No. I should think you want people to think about your integrity, your character and how no matter what you always made the choices that were the most effective.

Efficient Choices

We live in a business environment that is ‘process’ and ‘profit’ minded not ‘people’ minded. All you have to do is open up the latest copy of Business Review Weekly to see that most business people are trained as efficient thinkers. I have spent the best part of seven years working with people who can tell you every reason why the economy is failing yet not once mention how people are involved. We can hear of a lack of oil and then fear sets in. What happens next… people panic and the so-called ‘economy’ falls to bits. I recently watched Die Hard 4.0 (Live free or Die Hard) and they used this to great effect. People were in a panic and it caused huge problems for the economy. People are not part of the problem… people are the problem!

Efficient choices are those that are ‘optimally’ satisfying… given the known constraints. We have a whole swag of decision making practice built on the backbone of this kind of logic. The idea of [tag]satisficing[/tag]… making the best choices with the amount of information you have is one such idea. No I know we don’t always have all the information but that doesn’t mean we go on and make decisions that rely on us being ‘optimal’ so far as our heart is concerned. People use such ideas as an excuse to make efficient decisions. Just because you don’t know something does not mean that you can say, ‘well I did my best.’ Nonsense! According to what? You did you best so far as you are concerned but what did you exclude? ‘Well I just didn’t have the information.’ You didn’t have it or you just didn’t look for it?

I wish more business people would start making effective choices and buck the current trend in this nation. This current plague of materialism is informing the decision making process so much that corporate people are forgetting the simplicity of human relationships. It’s very easy to make optimal decisions but much harder to make decisions that are real tough choices. It’s easy (optimal) to remove people out of the way but it’s just not the right thing to do. When it’s time to let someone go do so with tact in such a way that the person is left with their dignity not via text message!

In closing this article I would like to point out that what dictates the right choice is not management theory, not your work environment and not your friends. It’s you. You are totally 100% responsible for you. You can make the right choices right now by always looking at each situation and asking yourself this question: what is the right thing to do in this situation. Don’t ask: what is most efficient or the most optimal but rather what is right? You know this answer already so go ahead and start making these kinds of choices.

Sometimes I wonder why people forget that human beings are the ones that work in a business. As these people say: it’s easy to maintain your heart and keep your business growing. Recent trends in emotional intelligence point us towards the need to pay more attention to these things. Have you ever noticed that in each place you have worked there seems to be an essence to it? There is a spirit to the workplace. There is a heart. Modern business focuses a lot on making money and profiteering but very few businesses focus on the heart. Now, a wise man once said to me you cannot have a business and have a heart at the same time. Not true.

Some people put profits before people and in their mind separate business from being human. Phrases like, ‘well this is business’ is your way of saying, ‘I value money over human relationships.’ Another one I hear is, ‘I am in business to make money.’ Of course you are but exactly who are you going to make money from? Who is going to help you make money? People. Behind every employee is a heart. Each time you mistreat people you shifting your heart away from business and onto things that are less important.

Heartless people… heartless practice

I am amazed at how people think they can succeed by bullying and coercing people into making them do things. Recently, a person who was working for me was told that they might not have any work. Instead of talking to me directly they went straight to my supervisor and told them I had to hire them because of their qualifications. When that didn’t work they went even higher. My reaction was one of shock… all I said was there might be no work. When I was asked about it I had no idea how to respond and felt as if my role as supervisor had been marginalised. Due to this I was later forced to remove two other people who were less qualified but had more heart. Qualifications are important but not more important than the human spirit.

I have had close personal friends do me this way as well, people who favoured the business end and the money in preference to friendship or collegiality. I have heard it said that we should never go into business with our friends because the heart decisions we will have to make will obscure our judgement. On the other hand I have also heard that if I can’t trust the people I am in business with then my business is unlikely to succeed. I would say it this way, trust people you are in business with and treat them with the heart first. Never allow your desire for money overrule your heart in business. This is a great mistake and one that you will live to regret for years.

Keeping the balance

There is however a chance that you will look for heart issues where there are none. You can always put people first and make those kinds of choices but there comes a time when decisions need to be made for the sake of the business. What happens when you can’t pay someone? Wave goodbye and say ‘good luck’. No. There is still a way to deal with this in the heart way. Help the person find alternative employment. Exhaust all avenues, go the extra mile. People love to do the wrong thing and then make excuses for it. ‘Well I just had to let him go.’ Of course … but how did you set them on their way… what did you do to help them? After all, didn’t they work for you for years? How about showing some respect for the time they gave to you outside of regular hours? Sadly, we keep expecting more for less.

In closing this post I would like to remind you that you are a human being first and whatever comes next second. Your identity is born through the fact that you are a human. When you say things like: business is business. You are separating the heart from business. Business is heartless because we have placed the heart on the outside when we make decisions. Even in contemporary so-called spiritual practices we do this by focusing on what we can accumulate for ourself instead of focusing on what we can do for and with others. I would ask you to rethink how you handle your customers and your co-workers. Do you treat them with heart or as a resource to be exploited. People will always have heart no matter how tough their exterior may be. Why not bring the heart back to your business and do what’s right.

Much is made of modern [tag]management[/tag] training in [tag]academic[/tag] circles to which I respond with ha! A lot of the stuff you come across is life cycles this, supply chain that blah blah blah. What troubles me to my guts is that there is not a real lot of quality teaching around [tag]thinking strategically[/tag]. Now, when we hear that term almost always makes you think… oh no not another chess metaphor. Chess is the worst possible metaphor for [tag]strategic thinking[/tag] that I can think of. You know why… because it sucks. Chess is a game with predictable outcomes where if you know all the moves possible you can win. This takes me back to Herbert Simon’s stupid idea that all we need is more information. What? Now, he’s dead we have all the information we could possibly get our hands on and the world is no better off! In fact, the more information we get the worse things become.

So how can we move to strategic thinking? Here are five ways to think strategically:

1. Look at something from more than one point of view

When you confronted with a [tag]problem[/tag] you can’t solve find another point of view and use it. Go and ask someone who thinks the exact opposite way to the way you do and ask them what they think. This opposite point of view will tease out what’s wrong with your ideas and will help you to think strategically. Alternatively, deliberately think the opposite way to the way you do right now and notice what happens. When I do this it breaks bad thinking habits and usually good answers come.

2. Look for generative mechanisms.

According to [tag]Roy Bhaskar[/tag]’s view on reality there are things in our social world that generate the events we see. What is generating what you see? Now before you start think about this: what generates the social world is people and their thoughts. Thinking and acting on those thoughts creates the world around us. What thinking generates your thinking? What underlies things? To help you get along here I would suggest thinking about it like this: what are the conditions that created this?

3. How are things related.

Remember a rule of [tag]systems thinking[/tag] is to understand the whole in favour of the parts. So look at the situation and ask your self how are the different smaller level wholes related to make the bigger level whole. This means not breaking things down to the level of cause and effect… instead it means looking for the big picture and how the various parts of the picture relate to form it. Consider this picture:

Looks like a bunch of columns eh? Have a closer look… do you see people hiding in the shadows. The whole was obscured by the parts. So it is when you try to think systemically. Don’t study the parts … study the wholes. Look at this picture above and ask yourself what connects together to make it look like that.

4. How are things not related

One of the misnomers of strategic thinking is that the world is linear. The problem is that you can never predict the way in which the world we respond to things. Consider the outpouring of aid for the Tsunami or the levels of anxiety after September 11. Warranted though they were the depth to which people reacted was overwhelming. Looking for wholes sometimes can make you create relationships where none really exist. Always seek to explore how things are also unrelated. [tag]Lateral thinking[/tag] is a good example of this. Looking towards something that is unrelated or lateral shifting in systems terms means looking for a new sideways ideas to how things are related.

5 .Think over dimensions

If you consider each part of something as dimensional or as containing the element of another element which contains that element then you may understand what I am talking about here. Interdisciplinary in academic terms is a fantastic example of this. In this case I am working with people from various points of view who are experts in something that I know little or nothing about. Each domain of knowledge is a new dimension that helps me to view a situation through a much bigger multidimensional view. This is the plural version of number one (listed above) and a major requirement for strategic thinking. Knowing the dimensions of what you are dealing with is impossible from just one view because systemically things are related differently on different strategic levels. You can’t know how a car works by driving it … yet if we assembled a team. A driver, the engineer, the factory people, the marketing team, the distributors and so on we could see the dimensions we were dealing with. Learning over dimensions is much more of a challenge because it creates knowledge that’s more complex, more general and heaps more useful than boring old analytical knowledge.

This is only five ways to think strategically there are lots more things you can do. I think it’s best summed up this way. What are the conditions (dimensions) that cause this to exist? It’s real so it exists…putatively! Take a strategic view of your job as an example. What is your job? What does your boss think about your job? Is your job related to other people? What is your job not related to? How many dimensions of your organisation does your job effect? Now you are thinking strategically!

Once I was working with a secretary whose husband died suddenly. They were very much in love and it was heart breaking to see a person who was so happy fall apart in a great time of stress and difficulty. She would often come up to me and begin to talk about how she was feeling. In the beginning I thought I could console her and help her understand what she was going through… of course I couldn’t. So after a while I learned that I should just listen and not say anything. [tag]Words[/tag] are your greatest enemy in situations like these.

Let’s bring it back home to business for a moment. Say you have just made a terrible mistake and a customer is upset. What can you say to make them feel better? If the person is gracious then they will hopefully take it in their stride. More often than not however, they will give you an almighty blast! So what do you say? Whatever comes to mind that won’t get you into more trouble? I prefer in times like that to get agitated people to repeat whatever it is they are mad about and make a list of solutions. Here it is in list form:

1. Ask the customer to repeat everything so you can take it down
2. Apologise in the first instance and at the end of the transaction
3. Move towards a solution - don’t say a word… give them answers!
4. In appropriate circumstances (like the opening paragraph) just listen.

As you do this you are taking the heat of the customer and making it look like you are creating a solution. Don’t argue! Just agree. So what do we say when there is nothing to say? We say nothing!

People have often made fun of me because I use pictures so much. However, I think that using pictures to say something is a much better way to communicate. Consider this picture below (courtesy of morgue file and Jusben):

This picture is called time warp. Now I can give you scientific information about time warps but why bother when I can show you a picture. This is not necessarily a description of how it works. It’s just a [tag]representation.[/tag] It’s up to you to fill in the details . Now for another example consider for a moment the power of this picture:

This is New York city. Need I say anymore? I have shown this picture to heaps of people and some people say, ‘Yuck what a horrible place,’ and others will say, ‘cool look at all those buildings!’ We can also use pictures to represent ourselves… this is simpsons me:

It represents me in [tag]cartoon[/tag] form. It also says a few other things about me… I wear glasses and judging by the photo I am happy. There are many things you could read into this… probably best not to. So in a short space I have communicated ideas in a much richer way that I normally would have if I had not used [tag]pictures.[/tag] Do you get the [tag]picture?[/tag]