I am involved in Dr. Joe Capista’s blog tour… an innovative marketing concept.  Read below to learn more.

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I was bored last night so I wrote a short story about people who never accept responsibility for their actions… enjoy!

The Morning Light

The morning light shone off the window straight into my eyes. I wondered for a moment where I was until I remembered the shackles around my wrists. I was in jail. Not the kind of jail they put criminals in either, the kind of jail they put the nut-jobs in. Welcome to my nightmare. It all began several years ago when I learned off my wife’s death. She was a sweet soul. Incapable of any kind of harm. That’s why, so they tell me, I slashed her throat. I killed her they say. But for the love of God, I don’t remember doing it. I remember finding her and seeing her pale white face splashed with blood. Son of a bitch. How did I get here?

I remember it was an early morning in the bitter cold winter on 1989. I woke up around 7:30 with a slamming headache and a mouth full of sandpaper. You see the night before I had found out I was being ‘retrenched’ so I told my boss precisely what he could do with his job. After about nine hits of Scotch. I was in my prime. The leading marketing executive of Martin, Dunwich and Martin. The most successful ad company in the world. So they said. I never actually bought that kind of hype I just thought wow, that’s cool. You know what it’s like you work for a place long enough you begin to think it’s the best place to be. Especially when the throw money at you. It’s a shame what happened to him. I still don’t know how he got out of the window and fell thirteen stories to his death. You’d think he had it all. Maybe he was pushed?

As I stumbled out of bed I realised something was missing. No wife. Sure, there had been times when I deserved it but we both hit it pretty hard that night. I went to the can to relieve myself and walked downstairs to get my morning coffee. There she was. Naked, lying on the kitchen floor, head smashed open … brains everywhere. I can still see the open mouth and dangling eyeballs. Yuck. It still features in my nightmares even after twenty years.

The cops arrested me of course because I was the only one they could muster up. Don’t get me started about the show trial. You know the rest of the story don’t you? Do you read the papers? I know I do. Sure, they are full of crap but the one thing I can promise you is that I didn’t kill that guard. Or the one after that. It’s a frame up. Each one they put near my cell winds up dead. I swear there is someone following me, I didn’t do it! It’s not me. When they slapped me in here I thought that finally it would stop. No, that poor lady that feeds me is now missing a finger. I am telling you I am innocent.

When they found my lawyer impaled on a javelin they blamed me. I can’t help it if I am good at sports can I? I mean in reality, I may have been the only one to ever have hit the record at high school. But I didn’t do it. I am telling you I didn’t do it.

Ever been stuck in this? On a regular basis the motorway in Brisbane is a car park. As I am in process of building more content for this blog and in my travels I came across this video:

In this case De Bono has asked us to come up with some creative thinking to see how we can solve the traffic crisis. To show you the basics of perspective shifting, I am going to offer four ways to solve traffic problems. The four perspectives I am going to use are based on different assumptions. These are: Political, Economical, Social and Technical.

The Political perspective

The political view is one that says, ‘Traffic is the government’s problem’. To fix it we would require politicians to mandate to us an effective legislative solution. A political solution I think is a legislative one because we are creating a rule that stops traffic flow. This means, the government could tax us more to build new roads, more carparks and provide incentives for the use of public transport. These things (in Australia) are state supported and funded. This really means changing the law to restrict the flow of traffic in someway.

The Economic perspective

The economic view says, why not build bigger faster and better roads. In reality, you rephrase this view as ‘turn on the money hose’. I have been working in aid circles on and off for many years… I can assure you if more money was the answer we would be there by now. There are many circumstances where the economic view is substantial and correct but the majority of the time it’s wrong. To summarise this view the traffic crisis could be solved if we decided to build a bigger road system or spend more money on transport infrastructure.

The social view

Ex-leader of the Australian Labor Party Mark Latham once said that we need to go back to building grassroots movements for things to change. In short, in order for things to change we need to form together to become groups so that we can facilitate change in our social lives. This is community building and things like that. To change the traffic crisis from a human/social point of view you need to understand behaviour and ask what causes traffic jams to exist? Why do we all want to be on the road at the same time? This give rise to challenging solutions about the work weak, what jobs need to be done when and the ways in which we define work. A challenging task but not one that is entirely out of our reach. An example solution would be to create new work conditions that allow the burden on our roads to be shared more equally.

The technical view

The technical view always resolves things down to a scientific or engineering solution. So every problem has a simple/linear cause and effect view that will resolve the problem at hand. So for the traffic problem is viewed as a technical issue. The roads aren’t wide enough or there isn’t enough people taking public transport. Every problem is viewed as being a technical one and hence cannot be solved through any other method. A solution to the traffic crisis that’s technical involves making the roads better, or wider or some other technical view.

Combining different views in one setting

So what would a technical, social, political and economic solution look like? It might be a solution that saw the encouragement of staggering work hours (economic and social) or created wider roads that were toll based (social/economic/technical). Say for a moment we redefine the traffic problem as something else. It could be the problem is: too many people needing to go to different places at the same time. How could we stop that from happening?

Redefining the traffic problem

The first thing to do is ask the question: why do people need to be at different places at the same time? The most obvious answer is work. Secondly, school times are structured around work times. Thirdly, people tend to group activities around the same things at the same time. So they drop the kids off at school and go to work in one action and then conduct other activities. Stuff like playing bills, going to the shops. So say school starts at 8:30, work at 9:00 which finishes at 5:00 (when the kids are picked up from day care or after school care or not depending on your personal situation) and oh by the way honey can you get a carton of milk on the way home?

Now lets add more to it. Fourthly, the roads are too thin to handle everybody going everywhere at once. So when Jenny drops little Xavier off at school … everybody is using the road at the same time because they have to go to work or the shops or wherever at the same time. Fifthly, we have no control over which roads to use or when to use them. In Adelaide for example they have roads that are only available at peak times and are bi-directional. Not so in Brisbane. We have a bunch of one-way streets and narrow bridges! That said Brisbane is the greatest city in the world! Alas, I digress.

So we have work times (social and economical), school times (political), the grouping of activities around similar times (social), thin roads (technical/political), ability to access to roads that are only crowded part of the day (political/technical) and so on I go. See how just by combining different views I am able to uncover more perspectives of the problem. I even redefined it. Now, I am not that smart (handsome surely but smart?) anybody can do this. Yet, we fall hook line and sinker for simple answers from a singular point of reference. And, I have only picked four perspectives. Imagine if I had ten?

Some off the top of the head ideas for solving the traffic crisis

So what we really need is a solution that stops the constant flow of traffic being caused. We could use a variety of at hand ideas to do this. We could implement flexible work schedules for working parents and school parents. An example of this worked well on the Sunshine Coast. A staggered set of hours were offered for school times for older children. This meant they could walk to school later and traffic around the school reduced.

Remember the problem is why do we need to have everyone on the road at the same time? If we change that we change our problem. Technically we could build bigger roads that are only open in peak hour. That didn’t work well here in Brisbane… it actually made things worse some would argue. We could redesign work so that people could work from established targets (bi annual) and didn’t have to come the office as often. We could also offer incentives for people to work at night. Politically we could have a road toll that was twice as much as the bus and offer financial incentives to car poolers. For the biggest employers we could have incentive based payment systems for people willing to work flexible hours. So now we are starting to touch on the centralised work system that is really at the heart of the traffic crisis. I could go on and on … so could you.

This is just a handful of quick ideas that might work. All I did was begin to look at the problem from a different set of values. As you learn to perspective shift you begin to see more of the problem. At times I have found this process so useful it has gotten me out of some sticky situations. I have also found that sometimes I have also noticed that I can’t see beyond the problem. Like Australia’s housing affordability crisis. Hmm… maybe I will make that my next problem solving post?

The creative project of the week has been on haitus while I have been busy with work. But now it has returned with something I did a long time ago… yes! This is a song called nature of the beast which I made using stock sounds and a program called Fruity loops (now called FL Studio). You can download it by clicking the link below.

The Nature of the Beast

and yet another song… somewhat more electronica or ecclectic if you will:

Punctuated Equilibrium

There is another one I made around here somewhere.  I just can’t remember where I put them.  Ok now to plan the next creative project.

I was about to leave work so I was reading the news (not blogging) and I noticed this article on the Nintendo Wii.  I don’t own one but I can’t say I am all that surprised.  I played my six year old at tennis on a friends Wii.  I would say it’s which is a really good example of marketing strategy.  On the one hand gamers love it but it’s also managed to capture the attention of my kids who aren’t that old.  The reason I felt compelled to blog about it was because it struck me as a good example of synthetic thinking.  That is, thinking across multiple domains at once.  It’s simple enough for kids to enjoy yet complex enough for gamers to get a great amount of joy out of it as well.  No, this isn’t a sponsored review… just a brief thought about why it’s so popular!  At heart it makes use of the principles of multi-perspective thinking which is essential in today’s business world.

A problem I have noticed in my line of work is that students that come to university lack [tag]life skills[/tag].  In an earlier post I laid out what I thought I felt were [tag]core skills[/tag] people need to make it in life.   As part of my creative projects this week I thought I would reinvent your standard business degree with a core life skills component.  Why?  Here is the crux of the problem:

Students need an education 

There’s a oxymoron for you!  Students need to be educated.  The majority of students that I see come through [tag]university[/tag] preparing and writing papers for lecturers that I think are not that familiar with the outside world (myself included).  We give them theory or practice (like work integrated [tag]learning[/tag]).   So either way they become indoctrinated either to a business practice or a theory.  Which is worse?  Both in my opinion.  A real education should involve training that teaches a person how to think creatively. I will be as blunt as I can when I say: at the very best university will help you think creatively.   At worse, you will turn into a memex machine.  A real education should impart life skills such as [tag]problem solving[/tag].  Life [tag]skills[/tag] like ‘managing relationships’ and so on.

The conflict

At the heart of this conflict is the problem where life skills education is somehow seen to be seperate to the training the next generation of managers.  Here is a layout for your typical Business degree: Business Stats, Accounting, Marketing, Information Systems/Informatics, Business Communications, Policy and Governance, Economics.  These form the core ideals we think a graduate ought to have.   We assess core life skills like problem solving BUT we don’t not formally train them in how to actually do it.  We might expose them to problems but rarely do we impart the necessary life skills to make a difference.   So the conflict expressed is how do we get life skills into tertiary education to the extent where it’s training and not just mindless paperwork?

Synthesis of Life Skills and Tertiary Education 

My proposed solution involves a heavy implication and what I am about to say may at first seem simple but I have thought about this for a very long time.   Each subject should really form part of an overall structure where these skills are tested in each subject area.  That and there should be practical ways students can do this work as well as learn the ideas they need to.    So the synthesis I am suggesting involves:

1. Building a life skills based curricula: finding out what core skills are required to be involved in real world affairs and how we can help impart these at a university level.

2. Taking those skills and assessing them: using assessment that will require students to develop these skills in real world settings.  By this I mean, to get your degree you have to have been able to demonstrate a key level of the development of life skills.  Not just knowing them but being able to demonstrate the way in which you expressed them through assessment exercises.

3.Reflecting on 1 and 2 and developing a set of skills for [tag]lifelong learning[/tag]: I am talking about creating the knowledge you need as a manager and also having the skills needed to develop as a manager.  It’s one thing to say I know something because I scored a good grade but it’s another story to say you can think creatively and offer new solutions when you are under pressure to do so.

The bottom line here is teaching people about management and then equipping them to do it.  So what does this mean for educators?  It means we have to get serious.  No longer is higher education just about critical thinking… it’s about creative thinking.  One of my students challenged me the other day and said, ‘University teaches people how to think critically but rarely teaches us how to think creativity.’  He caught me out and I really couldn’t agree more … after almost ten years in the system.  So for my first synthetic redesign I have created a rough design for merging practical skills with tertiary skills throughout the life of the degree.  Sure it’s muddy… but it’s a lot better than we have at the moment.

This week [tag]creative[/tag] project is short, sharp and to the point. Why not reinvent something through [tag]synthesis[/tag]? To do this you must take two opposing points of view and subsume them into a new design. Gandhi called this satyagraha. Synthesis is the art of creating a new design that subsumes the previous ones by  making them agree on a similar point OR you take something previously incompatible and through a redesign (changing the basic assumptions) make the [tag]conflict[/tag] dissolve.  Let’s use the music industry as a case in point. . Have you heard of magnatune… that’s a good example of synthetic redesign.

The question to provoke synthesis is: how can we combine bit torrent technology and the music industry in a new design that’s legal, cost effective and fair to emerging artists? The answer: Myspace. I am joking. To create a new design you must change the conditions that cause the problem to exist. So, my challenge to you is to reinvent something through synthesis. Send me a comment and I will post it over the weekend! I am going to post a series of posts over the next couple of days (lots I want to crack the ton).

If you have an idea for redesign through synthesis send me a message or a comment and I will post a link to your blog and idea. Enjoy.