Evaluating Decisions in the longterm perspective

I want you to share this article from  Jim Brumm( july 28th , 2009)

Here are three major considerations that we must keep in mind when we evaluate a decision with a long term perspective.

1.The first is sustainability.

The best plans and ideas, no matter how profitable, or altruistic, or wonderful they may be, are doomed to eventual failure if the processes driving them are not sustainable over time.
Long-term thinking and sustainability inexorably go hand in hand; they are the two sides of the same coin, and it’s the coin we should be using to fund our future. In practice, however, the question of sustainability rarely comes up when making decisions. Governments and elected officials rush into new policies and pass laws that will temporarily please their constituents and earn them some votes, or will give momentary upper hand in some political situation. Often they find that what they put into motion comes back to bite them, as when we trained and armed the Taliban to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan, only to find them years later using their training and weapons on us. We typically only question the sustainability of a situation when we realize—too late—that’s it’s not in fact sustainable.

Because of the worldwide Green Movement, sustainability is a concept that has gotten more attention of late. It’s bandied about in all areas of the social and business spectrum, from corporate marketing to political activism. But what, exactly, does “sustainable” mean? My sister, Susan Brumm, a writer who has covered sustainable farming methods in the wine and food industry, provided the best definition I have heard for the word sustainable. It’s very simple and elegant: Able to continue without lessening. I don’t think we can improve on that. It’s something you may find yourself holding up against decisions in your own life. When the decisions we make and the things we do and take for granted are looked at through the filter of this simple phrase, it can be a real eye-opener. Using that definition, the disconcerting fact that much of what we’re doing in today’s world is not sustainable is obvious to anyone who pauses and asks themselves, can this last? Can we keep this up indefinitely? Usually the answer is a big, fat no.

2.The next consideration we need to have at the forefront when making decisions is this: How will what we’re planning affect everything else?

There is a desperate need for whole-system thinking in our world. Naturalist John Muir pointed out that “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.” Thinking beyond the boundaries of the immediate situation is vital. Like good chess players, we must do our best to think many moves ahead when altering any part of our environment, and try to create room for and ways to mitigate the inevitable cascade of collateral change which will occur. Often we behave like the man in the fable who climbs a tree and begins sawing off the limb on which he’s sitting. A passerby calls up, “If you keep sawing that limb you’re going to fall.” The man in the tree ignores this and continues to saw until he cuts through the limb and falls with a crash, thinking to himself, “That guy must have the gift of prophesy.” As you read this we are blithely sawing away at the limbs which support our entire culture and environment, and it doesn’t take a prophet to tell us that if we keep it up, we’re going to come crashing down. Many of our best ideas have turned out to be huge problems in the long run. A little foresight may have helped a lot to offset much of what we face today.

3.A third consideration is to be sure, when we’re problem solving, that we’re actually solving the problem, not just hiding the symptoms.

We often can see the problems and the bad results we’re getting but instead of trying to fix the root causes of the problems, which would often cost more, take longer, or require deeper thinking, we take the easier, short-term route and chase the symptoms instead. This sort of thinking permeates our society. Commercials on television show people suffering from terrible indigestion from eating poorly, then push antacids to relieve the symptoms, never for a moment suggesting that, I don’t know, maybe less pizza is in order? Insects are eating too many of our crops? Don’t promote biological diversity. Douse them with pesticides. Dissatisfied with your life? Don’t try to discover the underlying cause of your dissatisfaction, buy this new car or this new gadget instead. Can’t cope? Take this drug called COPE. It’ll fix the symptom, at least for a while. Nearly all over-the-counter drugs treat symptoms instead of causes. But, as my sister used to say, you don’t have a headache because of a lack of aspirin. When I was a kid there used to be commercials for a type of detergent that was supposed to be great at cleaning men’s shirt collars. These commercials showed distraught housewives upset and ashamed because their husband had “ring around the collar” and they were so happy to have this new detergent that would end their shame. When these commercials came on, my mother would yell at the TV (really), “Hey lady, try telling your husband to wash his neck!” Now that’s getting to the root of the problem.

Even if we honestly couldn’t have predicted the problems some of our decisions would create in the past, we can at least start now to honestly acknowledge that the problems do in fact exist and take measures to correct them. But too often we have in gotten so deep that fixing the problem seems worse than ignoring it; the cure scares us more than the disease. Many of the worst problems we face today are things that are so deeply intertwined in our economy that even the thought of changing them causes panic. We are so afraid of affecting the economy, of losing jobs, of changing the status quo or the balance of power that we will ignore something that is obviously going to blow up in our face down the road in order to continue to benefit in the short run. We pretend it isn’t happening and just pass it on to the next administration or the next generation. In therapy they call this denial.

Denial has become necessary for us to get up in the morning and go about our business as though everything is going to be okay. Because if we were to face reality, we would be forced to see that there are many, many things that demand our attention, things that are going to bite us badly when they reach the point where we can no longer deny them.
When it comes to facing the fact that we are rapidly approaching peak oil and a post-carbon world, that our environment is degrading faster than it can repair itself, that our obsession on growth and profit is unsustainable, for a long time we have been collectively sticking our fingers in our ears and singing, la, la, la…
In his excellent and funny book, Farewell, My Subaru, Doug Fine called this “the societal equivalent of not thinking about dying.” But our way of doing things is dying, and denying it won’t make it go away. The good news is that if we are willing to stand up together and tackle these problems head-on, we can solve them. We have the intelligence, the know-how, and the technology.

We just need to find the desire and the will.

Improved Learning Model

We know that our mental models or models of how we see the world , are formed by our values, convictions, life experiences and that they influence greatly our learning capabilitie's.
Our learning is still driven by our lineair thinking:
We just look at our personal results, like to be teached or trained by experts, don't share our knowledge, want to have control of our own competencie's, think that the sum of competencies of individuals will give the competencie of the team.....
In my career, and listening to others I know that in our complex world we live in today ,and in the future ,it is not the case .

How we have to go to a "new learning style"?


1. Systems thinking:

It start in our minds and we have to  realize that our world is systemic and that there is a causal relationship in all elements of the chosen system . We have to see , that the reality of events are driven by systems that are composed of elements (subsystems) in interdependence of each other and that the whole will give a emergent property that will be different as the sum of property's of his elements.
So will also the new learning system consist of interdependent elements which will form a reinforcement loop:
- Systems thinking skills
- Adapting mental models
- Communication
- Learning from others
- Personal development skills

2. Adapting mental models

All starts in our brains: by selecting elements of the environment we form our mental models.By seeing the whole instead of his elements, we can ask our self reflecting questions where the answers can open or reshape our mental models and seeing the reality more objective.

3.Communication

It's very important to communicate , what we have learned  and share it with others.We have to learn as a team and to give as much possible feedback. What we have received as answer to our communication will again be filterd and change our mental model .

4. Learning inspired by others

It is important to remember that no one solution is unique. Learning from others is asking for taken a step back and free your ego . It give elements to refine your approach in new elements to enrich or change the mental model.

5. Development skills

By this type of learning you will improve your personal mastery, so can start to see the patterns in behavior which will explain the event , situation of problem. those generic patterns are called in systemsthinking  archetypes, that are used to solve mny types of problems, and also interesting to use as a communication tool with others.

If interested to obtain that skill workshops and trainingmodules are published on
http://academy.ubeon.com/systemsthinking

De mindset van een ondernemer

Onlangs las ik een artikel over ondernemersschap( gepubliceerd door Alison Mars)die de belangrijkste denkpatronen van ondernemers beschrijft en hoe we dit innovatief denken kunnen aanleren .
Feitelijk is dit "ondernemend denken" volledig gesteund op de principes van systeemdenken , en graag geef ik hier mijn zienswijze over:

1.Creativiteit

Ondernemers hebben de kwalieit om de wereld anders te zien .Ze richten zich op de ganse markt en gaan na welke gaten in producten en diensten er bestaan , en zullen die gaten trachten op te vullen met de meest creatieve oplossingen .Door "what if" vragen te stellen richten ze zich meer naar de toekomst met nieuwigheden  dan oude oplossingen te gebruiken .Ze kijken meer naar de interactie's en relaties van dingen , dan naar de dingen zelf.

2.Wantrouwen  in data


Ondernemers zijn zich bewust , dat de waarheid niet enkel in data ligt. Zeker in nieuwe markten en met nieuwe producten bestaat er een zodanige interpretatie van data, dat voorspelbaarheid zeer moeilijk is.
Ondernemers beseffen dat het creeren van iets nieuw ,evolutionair is zonder zekerheid van de uitkomst.
Ze werken dan ook in een complexe context waar beslissingen genomen worden in de volgende orde:

Maken-testen-verfijnen !
3. Comfortabel met onzekerheid

Door het wantrouwen in voorspelbaarheid en analyses gesteund op data ( lineair denken ), is de werkcontext een van onzekerheid.Ondernemers voelen zich goed in die atmosfeer , omdat hun werkmethode  er een is van experimenten, revisies en testen .
Door het bekijken van het gehele en de relatie's tussen dingen , kunnen ze door experimenteren de juiste hefbomen bepalen om een optimaal resultaat  te bekomen .
Experimenteren is niet enkel een "trial and error", maar er is een openheid om met de resultaten volledig nieuwe banen te ontdekken .

4. Functionele nederigheid.

Ego's kunnen de beste ideeen vernietigen !Ondernemers begrijpen  hun mentale modellen (persoonlijk meesterschap)en staan open aan de mentale modellen van anderen.Ze begrijpen dat groepswerk de oplossing brengt


Kan iedereen dan een ondernemer worden ? misschien niet ! maar met tijd en oefening kunnen we zeker een shift doen van het lineaire denken naar het systeemdenken , dat ons zeker zal helpen in complexe situatie's waar onzekerheid een zekerheid is .

Starting 2012

Dear Friends,


The year 2011 has fayed away and 2012 will start with a lot of commotion.


Don't be overwhelmed by the chaos , but look at the bride and colourful site of the  world .

Happy, Healthy and Prosperous  New Year 2012!!

Greetings
Ides

 

Projectmanagement and systemsthinking

Everyone has the experience , that managing projects is not so easy. A lot of projects, as well in our professional live as in our family lives are not finished in time , cost more than budget, gives frustration because deadlines are missed by unexpected events and problems .
Sounds familiar hé!
When we closely look at these projects, the managing of it  can be compared with complex systems and the systems theory.
So , we will have a look:

-  Complex systems are structured by the interrelationships of his parts.The way the parts are connected and related , and how they interact will define the behavior of the system . It's not the parts on their own , but the relationships between them , that will define the behavior .
Also projects has a project manager, sponsor, people , processes, customers, vendors, communication , time .... but the unique and  the specific dynamics of the project will come from the way all these parts are interconnected and work together

-  A system is composed of elements , subsystems but belong also to a bigger system . The behavior of the system cannot be seen in isolation but is influenced by forces of his own elements , but also from the bigger system.
A project will also be part of a bigger strategic plan , with his strategic objectives and so changes in the plan , will change the project in objectives , shedule , time lines etc.



- the system has emergent properties , which are different from the parts. the emergent property comes from the relationships.
When something happens to a project for exp don't achieve deadlines , the fault is given to the project manager. Which is wrong : we have to look after the connections , and the more the connections are complex , the more unpredictable are the outcomes of the project.