When I read articles like this one I am left scratching my head at the ability of people in power to tackle serious problems.    Here’s a quote from the RBA (Reserve Bank of Australia) leader man:

“I think it is a mistake to assume that a, you know, riskless easy, guaranteed way to Prosperity is just to be leveraged up into property,” he told the Seven Network. “You know, it isn’t going to be that easy.”

He added that he worries about whether future generations will be able to achieve home ownership.

“I’ve got kids that within not too many more years are going to want somewhere of their own to live and you wonder, you know, how is that going to be afforded because prices are getting quite high.”

Prices are continuing to rise on the back of demand from a growing population outstripping housing supply.

Is this guy on crack? He’s the leader of the reserve bank and he wonders if his children will be able to afford a house?  So the leaders of this nation are quite happy to let the rich get richer and increase housing in-affordability in Australia?

The place where I grew up is the third most expensive place to live in the world and it’s not that flash.  For me to buy a house in my suburb means that I need 6.5 going 7 times my current income, almost as bad as places like London or Sydney.   So what’s the answer from the man in charge.  Allow me to paraphrase for you:

“Oh who knows.  I mean my kids can’t afford it but instead of actually managing the issue you know what I am going to do?  I am going to treat this as if it has nothing to do with me.  It’s the market!   Oh by the way, if you are looking to get into the market, you can’t because we made it too expensive for the average young Australian wage earner.  Sorry about that.  So you young people, just sit around collecting degrees and um er… yeah as you were.”

This is not solving the problem, it’s absolving it.  Sitting there and wondering as it passes you buy.  No offense man, but seriously if you don’t know what to do, what the hell am I supposed to tell my kids?  Good luck kids, get a massive home loan and live in the middle of Uranus.

A lesson in Problem Absolving – Problem Solving is not doing nothing!

The late Russell Ackoff called problem absolution (doing nothing) the option most people take.  Nothing is being done to fix this issues so it cycles around the system creating no improvement.  When a situation is improved, we notice.  We say, ‘holy crap, I can afford a house.’  When it gets worse we say, ‘OMG, the problem isn’t getting any better.’  Simple?  Doing nothing is, ‘Oh that’s a problem, er… come back and see me in a year and you will be ok.’

I am at a complete loss to explain a lack of governmental response to the price of houses.  Even with a grant, the boost and any other kind of incentive, there is no way I can ever hope to live anywhere near I work and raise my family.  It just won’t happen.  It’s not just me either.  Data from the latest ABS survey indicates (it does go here to check it out) that housing debt carried by Australian families is approaching the 40% mark.  Putting aside my hobby horse for a moment, consider the ramifications of that.  What happens if that becomes too much in the future?  What happens to our economy?  Forget about home ownership: what about long term security?

Possible Solutions

I am not an economist, I am barely an academic so here goes.  A list of things we could do right now:

• Take away the financial imperative: Create a situation where home ownership is regulated by the government.  A years wage (on average) for a house.  Ok, so like I said, I am not an economist.  Economists: why won’t this work?
• Remodel work so it can be done from anywhere and support the mobile workforce:  Create hubs and campuses for city dwellers in places like Uranus, I mean Pluto, I mean the country.  Change the reason for living in a city to one of lifestyle and promote that.  Sure, that will drive prices higher and create weird developer towns like North Lakes.  It will give losers like me an entry point.
• Stop blaming the market and think about price ceilings: There is a natural level of supply for demand but here’s the kicker, Price. Supply and Demand is regulated by the price people are willing and able to pay. These stupid arguments about not enough land, blah blah blah.  What about price?  The argument goes: price drives up demand because of the lack of supply for a scarce resource.  I.e.  From the above quoted article: “Prices are continuing to rise on the back of demand from a growing population outstripping housing supply.”  If this were true why is there so much vacant land in the outer regions of Australia?  A better way of saying this would be: At the current price, which is rising due to the perceived lack of supply and a growing base of people wanting to buy in city areas, housing is become more expensive.  Therefore, demand for these city properties is surging and the price ceiling (the price people are willing and able to pay), has yet to be reached.   Oh but is there a price ceiling?  I thought house prices only ever went up… right?  WRONG!  Conventional economics says that price regulates supply and demand, yet I can’t find a single article that clearly explains this, why?  Well, I have no idea about economics that’s why!
• Change our desires: This is a tough one.  We want a house because we desire.  Give me some drugs so I don’t want me own place. Now I know why a lot of people smoke weed (I don’t).
• Make bigger caravan parks: Okay so now I am getting silly.  At least I have attempted to apply some ideas to the problem instead of turning on the money hose or sitting back, scratching my arse saying,’Oh yeah that is a problem eh!’.

As I write this I am pondering my future and looking with dismay as I save money, labour under yet another dragon of a landlord and work towards my first home purchase.  The question, that will no doubt go unanswered is this:  What are we going to do about it?  The answer I expect is nothing because all of the rhetoric I see coming out of the media is complete bullshit.  You know, stuff like: Save a deposit (can’t save that much – I have two kids), don’t want a massive house for your first home (I am looking for a small 3 Bedroom place for me and me kids bro), don’t complain, Entitlement mentality (I am not entitled but this is a desire you are profiting from mr. developer, take it away and I write about something else) and all the other shit the media says people in my generation are guilty of.  I say, cram it with walnuts jack! How’s this:  If I save for ten years I will have saved one-quarter of what I need in today’s prices.  What will the prices be in ten years?  A million dollars for a complete dog box with no windows in the middle of the ocean?  Jesus wept!

I will leave you with this link to remind you of what happens when we don’t take a proactive approach towards our problems.  I would also recommend that all Australians read the Subprime Solution by Robert Shiller.  Sure, that may not happen here but it may help us structure the problem in a way that leads to… OMG… a solution!

In this new era of jobs it’s not surprise that careers are based entirely on the internet.  This was emailed to me this week and I found it very interesting:

50 Life Coaches on Twitter.

This seems like a natural use of the service and it’s really interesting to see this field branching out in this way.  Leave a comment if you have seen others like these examples above.

The recent hyperbole about free business models has gotten me more than a little excited.  I have read a great deal about it, though I still haven’t found the time to listen or read Chris Anderson’s new(ish) book.  One of the things though I have noticed that’s absent from debates about ‘free business models’ is the cost that comes with running, developing and diffusing new ideas.  There is a cost.  And that cost is value.

If you want to be a leading writer, you have to write and keep at it until you get good enough.  That will take a lot of time.  If you want to sing and be the best you can, you need to practice.  Anything that’s easy or ‘at hand’ is usually simple to learn and master.   The cost versus the benefit in that equation is something like this:

Simple thing + Low Skill = Low Benefit.

However, if we raise the barrier it should look like this:

Hard thing + hard skill = High Benefit.

However, there is something missing from that equation and it’s this:

Value + Hard thing + Hard Skill = High Benefit.

You could say it this way, the more value increases the higher the cost to you and to your consumers, students, partners, chickens and whatever other relevant category you would to shove in here.

Now I have added another cost to the learning of a skill that has been overlooked.  The free business model idea hinges on value, as do most other ideas.  Without value you can work as hard as you like at giving things away and it won’t matter a damn.   If we take a poorly written book or a bad movie and say, ‘I don’t know how anyone can like that’, the answer is value.

So what is the cost associated with value?

A key insight I have gained from spending a long time studying problem solving is this: it’s not always about just one point of reference.  We have all heard the terms ad-nausem about “thinking outside the box”.  Instead of reiterating that here I want to present five ways to gain new insights in sticky situations.

Technique # 1: Go ask someone outside the situation

Russell Ackoff says that in messy problems most of the answers come from outside the situation.   The situation often limits our ability to perceive new information about where we are at and where we are going.   If you are really stuck I would recommend going to talk to someone else outside the situation who doesn’t have an emotional investment.  They will show you some key things you may have missed.

Technique #2: Deliberately argue with yourself and others

Okay, so this won’t exactly present you with a trophy on “how to win friends and influence people.”  But what it will do is give you the ability to see the issue from multiple angles.  You know, life is not a novel, movie or play.  There are no narratives in life so to speak.  When you are faced with a mess you need to synthesise the available perspectives you have and understand their viewpoints.  There is no better way to do this than to debate and argue about them.  It should be noted here that I do not mean fight or squabble.  Wasting time on that kind of thing is just plain stupid.  I mean by reasoning through the alternatives through common sense talking.

Technique #3: Find the idea and present it’s enemy

C. West Churchman spoke about the “systems” approach and it’s enemies in the 1970′s.  Now, I don’t wish to give you an academic treatise on that, but consider what an enemy of a theory would be?  It’s the opposite idea.  Every idea you have is only as good as it is defended.  That is, evolutions’ enemy is creationism for example.  What’s your idea?  Create it’s enemy and that will soon show you new perspectives that will help you gain insights.

Technique #4: Make an intuitive leap

Horst Rittell said that a plan is only as good as the variables around it.  As soon as you try something, you change the environment and you change the variables.  So why not make an intuitive leap and try something.  You’re stuck on a problem?  Act!  Don’t get stuck in the paralysis of analysis.  It will create a platform for failure.  Try something and see what happens.  Only failure awaits and given where you are now… surely it can’t be all that bad?

Technique #5: Lateral Thinking

A well established method for seeing new patterns in messy situations is to invoke lateral thinking.  This is moving sideways within established thought patterns by introducing new ideas.  You can learn the basics of it by attempting it.  In my way of thinking Lateral thinking takes a core idea and adds another idea to that core idea creating a synthesis.   I have seen things like people making a new chocolate bar and thinking about how a tyre might relate to it.  From that we think black, chocolate… licorice… chocolate covered licorice!  De Bono himself says that lateral thinking in “systems” terms requires a sideways shift in our thinking.  So we stop picking the problem apart, we start using different ideas in conjunction with the problem to give ourselves a new insights.  At first it seems illogical.  However, after a while of doing it you will find your mind will automatically create the bridge between the core idea and the lateral idea.

Bonus Technique: Synthesis (concept shifting) – the act of creating new ideas

Okay, so I have sort of made the bonus point here swallow all the others.  It is the most powerful of all of them and for this reason I would recommend it.   I refer to synthesis as concept shifting.  It’s differs from lateral thinking in that causes us to create a series of new ideas to engage into the problem situation.  It abandons the idea that anything other than facts about a perception can be gained from analysis and instead creates new ideas out of the inherent tension in the situation and routinely shifts between them.  Sounds very academic doesn’t it?  It isn’t.  It’s simply the decision to follow ideas as they flow out of tension and shed light on new situations.  Don’t worry I am writing a book on it .

If I was to say that blogging was the best way to communicate deep information then I would be a liar on two counts.  Firstly, the count that blogging communicates shallow layers of information and secondly it does so in small parts.  What I want you to take out of this post is the idea that there are more than what I have said above… these however have served me well.  Try them out!

This massive image above is the model phone I have recently purchased through eBay.   When it arrived  I unwrapped the box and got really REALLY excited when I saw it.  It was shiny.  Alas, my excitement was followed by bewilderment when I couldn’t turn the bloody thing on.  I tried everything… except pushing the little button on the side (see above picture).  Turns out the graceful person I sent the phone back to tested it and it worked for him… just fine.  OOPS.   Me being used to pressing the red button to end a call (i.e. the button you ALWAYS USE NOKIA ENGINEERS) thought that the phone would have turned on that way.  It didn’t.

My definition of the problem was wrong

When you start something from the wrong basis or the wrong starting point it doesn’t matter how well you analyse it… you will never find a cause because the cause ain’t there!  You defined the problem wrong in the first place.  Like me and my hapless phone skills you are labouring under the wrong assumption.  If you walked to the bus stop and caught the 533 bus into town when you wanted to go to the Gold Coast, you are going to the wrong place.

Same thing applies when we tunnel down to our favourite perception rather than testing our known definitions of a problem.  This is not easy but it might save you six weeks waiting for you phone to return!

A key idea that emerged in recent years for as meaning something to me… is this strange idea of ‘pragmatism’.  In a very dirty definition this has to do with a description of events and things that involve practical elements or what kind of knowledge we think is useful.  So a pragmatic question might be what is useful as opposed to what isn’t useful to say or do.

Coming down out of the academic ‘stratosphere’ for a moment I realised when I was reading something for a piece of work I wrote on strategic thinking (unpublished paper … so far anyway) that for the best part the desire to focus on the pragmatic means a desire to focus on that which is observable as ‘evidence’.  Or in my own words… stuff that works well and is seen to be ‘of use’.  Here is my key problem:

How will you know what works unless you try it…

I am in no way a philosopher of any sort.  Neither would I consider myself a bare bones pragmatist… it’s just a bunch of books and words.  However, this struck me about problems and how we approach them when I was writing and reading with my colleague had written.  How can something work and you not know it?  I give you the Campbell “Old Spice” Paradox:

You need to have experience in order to know what works.  However, what works doesn’t always (if ever) work the same way as things do in other contexts.  So, as I found Roy Bhaskar to explain in a round about way… philosophy fails to explain a lot to me.  This could be my remarkable denseness or the fact that I have come to find it a tiresome bore to interpret and try and decode the dense philosophy territory of philosophical works.  The exclusiveness of the language is my main concern… secondly the oversimplification of things to the point of sheer ignorance is the other.  But I digress… back to the main point.

Being too pragmatic, means I am not willing to try something because I don’t know if it’s going to work because I can’t establish it’s usefulness!  It reminds of what Horst Rittell said of wicked problems… you only have one shot to get it right.  We often don’t know what’s going to work so we model, test and fail… often.  The key thing to pull out of this is that often in life, love and the imagination there is a place beyond analysis.  A place where the most obscure of ideas has a home.  Call it irony, confusion or plain stupidity… my experience tells me that things in life often are confusing.

In closing this note on the key problem of being too pragmatic I want to deliberately confuse you by saying that it’s also one of the greatest strengths to recognise what works well, even if you don’t know it’s useful to do so.  What works well, often isn’t what works well.  This makes you hated.  But if you manage to convince people that it works well and they believe you… when you are dead they will say “nice” things about you, name halls after you and create bronze (well puter) statues in your honour.   Remember, if you have one shot to get it right be prepared to fail and succeed at the same time… it’s what I do!

*Image Courtesy: http://www.ultimatestreetcar.co.uk/wallpapers.php

I have heard it said that there is more to life than work… sadly not for most people.   In Western society I have noticed an emerging desire for work that goes beyond common sense.  I could blame organisational psychology or whatever but in my opinion we have developed a “job=life” attitude.  This has to stop… it’s not healthy.

You are not your job

When you ask most people what they do for a living, the answer most offer is that, “oh I am a lawyer” or “oh I am [inserted job here]“.   The often cited unbalanced measuring stick called, “work-life balance” consists of working too much and then burning out.  You may like your job and enjoy doing it… but it’s just a job.  I don’t think we should make the mistake of selling our souls to a world that largely is run by people who have so much money that people have stopped meaning anything to them.  When you say that you are your job and your identity is wrapped up in what you do… then you are saying that you are that job.  Your priority in life is your ambition.

I know most people have nothing wrong with ambition… I have a big problem with it.  The ambition you have will often cause you to push people aside, make irrational judgments and enter into a reality of self-promotion which even the most deluded narcissist can see is wrong.  There is nothing wrong with goals neither as there anything wrong with trying to make a living… there is something very wrong when work becomes the centre of your life.

Working too hard is poison for you and your life

It’s sad to say but 4 billion people in this planet live on a dollar a day or much, much less.  The main assumption we have that these people need jobs.  I bet they already have one in most cases.  Perhaps they are working already for a big multinational?  Where did that get them?  Selling organs?  This point can’t be overstated … those who are working poor know exactly what I am talking about.  We work and work and work and work.  Where does it get us.? Sick, burned out… dead or dying.  It’s a sad state of affairs.

What have we got wrong about work?

From the day we hit pre-school (prep now) until the day we retire… we are working towards some kind of invisible goal.  As a matter of fact we become so used to it that when we reach our old age all we have to show for it is a house… if we are lucky.  Somewhere along the way we have bought the lie that work is what life is all about.  Work is what we do because we have to. If there was an alternative to work… I’d be doing it… sadly there isn’t.  I understand that some people love their work and there is a path where you can take that thinking.   Still, that “job” should never be given the status symbol of “identity” in your life.  Doing that only ever makes you realise that you are a slave to some invisible form of ambition.

So we work.  Like a stream of ants lining up to serve society.  Why do we do this?  Because we have to.  I was told that the university where I work runs off the good will of people who work there.  Indeed, it does… good will that is bought with a price.  That price is very high.  If I were to ask you to exchange your life for work at the age of ten or ask you to sacrifice your teenage dreams to do the right thing by your wife and family would you do it?  I bet you wouldn’t.  Why then do we act as though our jobs, cars, houses and the life give our lives meaning… when they don’t.  Clearly, if life was meant to be about work so society could advance… I am not seeing the advancement.  We still have all the same problems they did thousands of years ago… when evil landlords invented this work business.

Where is the greater good?

I have heard it said that to work is its own reward.  What is that reward?  Money?  Money that is gone before it hits my bank account.  Money that evaporates fast these days.  I am constantly reminded that my wife and I’s choice to have a parent at home is costing me dearly.  Yet, these are values I choose to live by.  A tough call?  Not really, if living purposefully and intentionally means I have to suffer to maintain my values than so be it.  I would rather live one day by what I believe and pay for it, than a thousand working to reach some invisible goal. That doesn’t mean however that it’s all smooth sailing or happy days.

So, what’s wrong with work?  Nothing.  If your work is fulfilling to you and meaningful and supporting of your values… then you have found a rare treasure.  What I think we have wrong about work is that it’s all life is supposed to be about.  Your life is your life.  You are here for a reason.  Yet, in finding that reason you do not have to sell your soul to make another person rich.  What I want you to take away from this post today is this: don’t let “work” become the end all and be all in your life.  The end result is just not worth it.

This all time classic “rap” song was a hit back in the day.  I was listening to this song again and reflecting on it’s ability to infuse it’s way into my brain when suddenly the lyrics didn’t quite add up.   Here are three things that I thought you should NEVER do when attempting to solve difficult problems.

If you have a problem yo I’ll solve it…

Most shrinks that a worth a dam will tell you that you can’t solve problems for other people if you want them to grow.  As a lecturer I can tell you the answer… but what’s going to happen when you need to actually know it?  You may remember me but I doubt you will remember the answer.  So I would disagree with Ice on this point… you should never take on problems for other people soley.  Don’t get me wrong I am not saying… bail out of the deal.  I am saying… work with people collaboratively to solve problems.  Facilitate!

I’m on a roll time to go solo…

In the opposite manner a difficult problem is best solve by a group of people.  We have this sick notion in western society of the hero.  The early pragmatists believed that you could best solve problems by working with people in a team situation.  Collaborative endeavours and multiple views were the order of the day.  Fast forward a hundred or so years and now we are trying to be our very best without thinking of how we can make use of many minds.  It’s a sad state of affairs.

In WWII the war effort saw the greatest bringing together of disciplines.  Social scientists working alongside mathematicians and so on.  The concept of the mastermind group is amongst these great ideas.  If I had actual friends I think I would like to have a group of problem solvers with different ideas.  Sure, we would fight… but imagine the problems we would solve.  It would be great!  And yes, I think that economics rules the day at the moment… we need more perspectives!

Proof of concept lies in what works not what is said

Words words words!  I hear this and that about running dope and a “borrowed” hook from Under Pressure by Queen… what Vanilla doesn’t do is show me.   What we say in our problem solving efforts are largely just words… what actually works… now that’s where the money is.   The problem with ideas is that they can be thought of as being in two forms… passive (not used) and active (used).  When you take an idea and put it to work in an open environment there a many more variables than in the closed one of your mind.  That’s why the results are always different that you thought… you didn’t know the variables!

In other words, ideas are only as good as their proof of concept.  How well do they work?  This is gutsy because when you put them to work you may have an idea, data, intuition, knowledge, facts and so on.  You know that when you let them go… they are tested… much like how we stress test metal.   Imagine if that expensive car you have was not tested.   They just bolted bits and pieces on it and let it roll.  What if they went for the cheapest materials?   Stuff that works and improves things, proves the concept.  That doesn’t mean however, that we have reached the end.  We may not know the flaws for a couple of years yet!

The best thing I have heard (well one of the best) is that most people are rational.  When you see somebody doing something… there’s a reason for it most of the time.  Instead of judging you need to find out what works and why they did it.  Then you will find the concepts at work in the situation.  So in Vanilla’s case I have found a genuine concern in his ability to solve problems.  He wants to do it on his own and he wants to solve your problems.  Not only that but he talks too much and acts too little.  In short, I hope you are not the same.  I can’t say beyond conjecture why he thinks he can solve your problems… maybe he has access to metareality.  For the rest of us I would against his problem solving advice.

The ability to choose or a chosen ability?  Is it destiny, fate or what we make of it?  When you make choices is it you making the choice or some offensive simulacra?

The answer to this question of course is not answerable in this blog post.  Now I did promise to write about rhetoric and use of it in the question form.  So why not deal with a very basic rhetorical question?  A rhetorical question is one that demonstrates something in the hearer that provokes them to look for the answer in the question.  Here is an example:

If a man asks for bread from God he won’t get a snake will he?

That’s what I like about the New American Standard Bible.  It has questions in it that I never noticed before.   Here’s a better example:

Why do we keep on fighting?

The causal explanation of that question gives rise to more than one possible answer.   What about this one:

If I didn’t have a free will I couldn’t type this sentence could I?

You may argue:

How do you know the sentence was pre-determined?

Both statements are designed for maximum rhetorical effect.  The really don’t have a one-minute answer do they?  Sorry.  Somebody once said that problem solving isn’t so much about finding the right answers as it is about asking the right questions.  Questions that give rise to solutions that in turn give rise to more questions is what real problem solving is about.

Scholar Daniel Isenberg did a study of some managers in 1986 to see how they made their decisions. He found that most people solved a lot of their problems not by gathering more information but by talking to themselves. These managers would speak out aloud to themselves and reason through courses of action in order to better understand the decisions they made.

When solving problems talk to yourself

When I was growing up my parents said to me that talking to yourself is the first sign of madness. Can I say that talking to myself has not made me any more mad that I am right now… it has however helped me work through some options and solve problems better. I have driven from my house to other places hours away talking to myself about things the whole time. I have had people stare at me as they pass by … but I really don’t give a damn! It’s probably one of the most useful things I have learned about solving problems. It can get you out of a wrong thinking pattern and make you see things in a much clearer way.

The concept of ‘bible’ meditation is based on talking to yourself

The Hebrew word for meditation in the old testament is often thought about as contemplation. However, when I have looked it up it always says to mutter. How odd is the thought of Moses walking around chatting to himself about the people he had to deal with. Consider the Psalms. What are they if not an externalisation of a internal picture? Can I say that talking to you is a helpful activity? God said to Joshua to meditate on the law day and night. What does that mean? Talk about it, say it out of your mouth over and over… contemplate it… think about it from different angles.

Talking to yourself moves you into creativity

Try this. Say you are facing a money crisis. Start saying to yourself what you think the problem is… what can I do about? They begin to cycle through the options and reflect on them. You will find as you cycle through the ideas you will begin to get the bigger picture issues and a solution may just present itself. It may not! The thing is you have begun to ‘meditate’ or contemplate the problem from different angles.

Talking to yourself helps to structure your thoughts

When you begin to look at the way you think you might find that overtime you are stuck in the same patterns. In my next post I am going to talk about how rhetoric can work to help you structure your thoughts in such a way that new ways of seeing will emerge. Most people freeze up when it comes to rhetoric but if you follow it through and make good use of clever rhetorical questions you will find that it helps you to develop better ways of thinking. New patterns… new ideas… new solutions. Will they be any better? That’s the real question isn’t it?  So stay tuned!

By doing this I have found ways around problems that I couldn’t see before and I have found answers where my linear thinking patterns weren’t helping.  I think they key thing that’s not said here but is implied is this: what is the mechanism through which you believe?  If you could change what you believe by thinking and mastering new beliefs through using this mechanism then what would that be like?  See, I got that by talking to myself .

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