 The Idea: Failure to learn and understand the often complex reasons for the status quo usually leads to simplistic, naive and unworkable solutions to problems..
Advocates of change, be they
conservative war-mongers or progressives trying to redress atrocities
at home or abroad, are usually quick to jump to conclusions about why
the 'needed' change hasn't occurred. And because they assume wrongly,
about the cause of the problem, the appropriate solution, and the best
process to implement it, such changes usually fail to get implemented,
fail to stick, or get undone by the next well-intentioned change agent
to come along.
Things are the way they are for a reason, and failure to understand what this reason is, is perilous. Our world is a complex adaptive system, and the reasons for the status quo are usually more subtle and multifarious than we expect.
Take the recent US elections for example. The fact that Bush, one of
the least popular presidents in history, was ahead in the polls for a
year before the election, and won the election despite a magnificent
effort from his opponents to get the vote out, seems impossible for
progressives to believe. How could so many people vote for such an
incompetent, arrogant puppet of the corporatist elite? Progressives
were so busy trying to build up their own candidates that they failed
to understand why Bush appealed to a broad cross-section of Americans.
Their incredulity, their inability to believe he would win, or
understand how he could win, was their undoing.
After the election, progressives tried to find any excuse for this
inability. It was Kerry's fault, or his campaigns, he had 'lost' the
election. Or the election was 'stolen' by fraudulent voting machines.
They failed to understand Bush's broad and consistent appeal despite
his buffoonery, his nauseating smirk and preachy style, his inability
to articulate even the most basic concept coherently, and his overt
pandering to unpopular moneyed interests and unpopular religious
extremists. And because they couldn't understand, they didn't believe
the result -- that their candidate lost.
The turnout in the progressive areas of the country was phenomenal, and
the willingness of progressives to line up for hours to vote is a
testament to their enduring passion for change. Part of the reason for
the long line-ups was undoubtedly the lack of adequate polling
facilities in poorer areas (infrastructure in poorer areas is always
inadequate). But imagine what would have happened if conservatives had
been as worked up as progressives in this election, and had stormed the
polls the way progressives did. If Kucinich or some other truly
progressive candidate was on the ballot, we would have seen a debacle
of McGovernesque proportions instead of a squeaker. Understand,
progressives, that there are tens of millions more conservatives who
stayed home, because they preferred Bush but didn't mind Kerry either. Understand why.
Things are the way they are for a reason. You have nearly four years to
do your homework, but if you don't do it you're going to lose again in
2008. And so far all I've seen, just like after the 2000 loss, is
finger-pointing and excuses.
A Lakoffian analysis and reframing will help, but what is needed is a deep, honest assessment of why a majority of Americans begrudgingly support what Bush is doing to America. It's not because
Americans are dumb, ignorant, bamboozled, terrified or suckers for good
framing, as convenient and easy as these reasons are for failing to
understand the hearts and minds of suburban and rural Americans.
Let's look at a second example, this one aimed at conservatives'
inability to understand that things are the way they are for a reason
-- suicide bombers. The trillions spent to secure America from the next
attack, and the absurd black-and-white depiction of suicide bombers --
pure evil, insane, brainwashed by ruthless fanatics, motivated by
financial reward, and part of an organized conspiracy to 'destroy
America' -- shows that conservatives are, if that's possible, even worse than progressives
at understanding why things are the way they are. Many of the bombers
are women, mothers. Their organization is so non-existent that the
leaders of states who supposedly sanction suicide bombers' actions are
completely incapable of stopping them.
Do I know the reason why Bush remains so popular in America, and why
suicide bombers do what they do, and are seen so sympathetically in
many parts of the world? I wish. But I do
know that the simplistic reasons put forward by their opposition, and
parroted by the media, are just too pat, too easy, to be the right
ones. They just don't hold water. And nothing will change until those
who want the change understand the real, complex, reasons for the
status quo.
The same applies in business. Kotter is right in that successful
business change efforts require a sense of urgency and executive
sponsorship, but I've seen many change efforts that had both of these
and still failed -- for the same reason, that the proponents of the
change failed to understand that things are the way they are for a reason,
and what that reason was. Most business process re-engineering programs
failed for that reason, and their failure led to the demise of BPR as a
credible business tool. Most people in the business world, another complex adaptive system,
want to do the right thing for their company, for selfish, for
collegial and for altruistic reasons. When the systems and structures
and processes of the organization are inadequate or dysfunctional, they
find ways to 'work around' these problems, and keep trying until they
find ways that work well. Consultants who design simplistic solutions
like BPR, outsourcing and offshoring, usually overlook these reasons,
and the consequence is that their naive solutions end up being less
efficient and costlier than what they replaced.
So the simple question I challenge consultants, and entrepreneurs who
are convinced they have a blockbuster solution that will take the world
by storm with is: Why, in this business world with millions of intelligent and motivated people in it, has someone not already
proposed and implemented this solution? The usual answer I get is
another overly simplistic one: It may have been, but the execution was
wrong -- we're going to do it right. And sometimes, maybe 10% of the
time, that's right. But the other 90% of the time they have failed to
consider important information that would be evident only if they really understood why the status quo was what it was. And those 90% of change programs and new enterprises are doomed to fail.
There is a way of reducing this massive 'cost of not knowing'. It's called 'cultural anthropology',
and it's a form of primary (face-to-face) research. Anthropologists try
to understand why different human cultures do what they do. The
cultural anthropology approach is one of suspending judgement and
observing what is happening objectively and factually until the
observer has a deep understanding of the behaviours and the reasons for
them. This approach could be used by progressives to learn why so many
in the suburbs and countryside support Bush and his ideas, by those who
seek to make the world more secure to learn why the poor and oppressed
and destitute resort to desperate and violent and suicidal means to
express their discontent, and by advocates of business change to learn
why the apparently unsatisfactory, dysfunctional or 'inefficient'
process works the way it does.
Before we can bring about any meaningful and enduring change, in
society, in a business, in a smaller community or even in our own
personal behaviour, we need to take the time and make the effort to
learn and understand thoroughly and objectively how and why things got
to the present state, and have a profound appreciation of the validity
of those reasons. If the answer is simple and obvious, it's probably
wrong.
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