Standing Room Only

There are many problems that we face today, like food and water supplies, combating disease, climate change, energy supplies, threats to wildlife survival, as well as many other environmental, economic and social problems.  A major cause of these problems is human population growth.  The world's human population has already passed the 7 billion mark, which is a seven-fold increase since 1800, and is currently increasing at the rate of 10,000 per hour.  No one likes to see human suffering and death, like the casualties of war and the victims of disease, such as Ebola.  Whilst disasters like these do reduce the population, relatively speaking it is by very small amounts and not in ways that can by any stretch of the imagination be regarded as humane.  But one thing's for sure, indefinite population growth is physically impossible on a finite planet.

So what's the solution?  Maurice Strong, secretary general of the 1992 Earth Summit, said: "Either we reduce our numbers voluntarily, or nature will do it for us brutally."  Harsh words, but in my opinion, he hit the nail on the head.  If we carry on with 'business as usual', the planet will eventually give up on us.  Food supply will not meet demand, climate change will lead to environmental disaster, disease will be rampant, etc, etc, etc........Armageddon.  We don't want that do we?  So let's consider some obvious actions.

Firstly, smaller families must be a priority and in my opinion, it would be better if this could be achieved voluntarily rather by government control, as in China.  We all have a choice about how many children we have and each additional child will have more impact on the environment and consume more resources than anything else we do over our lifetimes.  Having two or fewer children, rather than three or more is, in my view, a socially responsible choice.

Secondly, individuals in developed countries need to be environmentally aware and not consume excessively.  This includes consumption of food, energy, water and unnecessary manufactured goods and services.  Clearly the poor of the world are entitled to improve their living standards and consumption in the richer countries has to be reduced to allow those in poorer countries to attain a decent lifestyle.

Finally, our activities need to be sustainable.  What does this mean?  Well, the Ehrlich or IPAT equation is:

I = PAT, where I = impact on the environment or demand for resources, P = population size, A = affluence and T = technology.

This can be explained as follows.  Our Impact on the environment is dependent on how many of us are consuming resources and creating waste (Population), the average amount of goods and services we consume (Affluence) and how inefficiently/harmfully we produce these goods and services (Technology).  According to the World Wildlife Fund/Global Footprint Network Living Planet Report, we are currently collectively consuming resources of 1.5 Earths.  That's not sustainable!

So let's not continue until there is 'Standing Room Only' because nature will stop us painfully in our tracks way before that condition arrives.  If you want to change the world, start with yourself.

Weekend in London

I usually publish my weekly blog post on Mondays, but this week it's late because of a very enjoyable weekend in London.  The principal purpose of my visit was to meet my cousin's son, Alan, who is visiting the UK from Australia on a temporary work assignment.  I checked the correct terminology for the relationship between me and Alan and apparently he is my 'first cousin once removed'!  Well that really is a mouthful, isn't it?!  So as far as I'm concerned, my namesake is simply my cousin.  Now I've written about memes (copied behaviour) and genes (inherited characteristics) before -http://alansandal.blogspot.com.tr/2012_08_01_archive.html.  In particular, the rapid transmission of memetic behaviour, rather like a virus, compared with the generational and therefore slow transfer of genes.

My previous meeting with Alan was during a visit to Australia twenty years ago, when he was only 11 years old.  So any copied (memetic) behaviour between us is highly unlikely.  But what about the genetic relationship?  We both knew what each other looked like from a few Facebook discussions, so when we met at a Starbucks we instantly recognised each other.  From then on and I hope Alan will agree, the encounter was really very enjoyable.  We spent several hours together, having coffee, walking, dining, more walking, all with plenty of talking, and it was as though we were just continuing from where we were 'the other day', which of course we weren't but I can't think of another way of describing it.

Did it have anything to do with the genes or was it just the fact that we are two guys who both have engineering backgrounds and who seem to share similar views on a range of topics?  Obviously the extended family was included in the conversation but not very much.  The relationship had all the characteristics of being very mature, i.e. one that had been developed over a number of years and yet that clearly wasn't the case.  I didn't detect any pregnant pauses in the conversation and there was certainly no chatter just for the sake of it.

I still can't make my mind up as to whether the reason for the success of this truly memorable encounter was all in the genes but whatever, thank you Alan for a great time and I look forward to meeting you again, hopefully in the not too distant future, somewhere in the world!

Wise after the event.

As I get older, I think I get wiser and one of the ways I check my increased wisdom is to think back to major events involving decision-making in my life and consider how I would tackle those issues now.  These are interesting thought experiments but in most cases inconclusive because I can never be sure what the outcomes of hypothetical courses of action would be.  As an example, I love the story of the man who was explaining to his friend why walking under a ladder was unlucky.  He tells the tale of when he walked under a ladder and shortly afterwards found a £10 note on the pavement.  His friend wanted to know why he considered that to be unlucky, to which he responded that if he hadn't walked under the ladder he might have found two £10 notes!  We never know the outcomes of alternative actions that we haven't taken.

I am not driven by the day-to-day pressures of corporate activities these days, which gives me time to think.  When I experiment and try to apply today's knowledge and experience to yesterday's problems, as well as tackling the here-and-now issues, there are certain principles that guide me.  These are, in no particular order:

Alternative Options

Cause and Effect

Cost vs Benefits

Beware of the Anecdotal

Alternative Options

We all have mind sets, personal ways of doing things, which might might take us down a particular path when evaluating situations.  But sometimes we need to evaluate evidence in dispassionate and objective ways.  One way of doing this is to list alternative hypotheses, then consider alternatives without being too quick to rule out options because of personal prejudices.  Try not to be too certain about anything!

Cause and Effect

Here's a statement that I always think sounds a bit highfalutin - Correlation does not imply Causation.  When the cockerel crows at daybreak, is it the crowing that causes the sun to rise or the rising sun that stimulates the cockerel to crow?  That's quite an obvious example of what is the cause and what is the effect, although don't be too quick to eliminate alternative hypotheses!  In general, there is a danger of assuming causations without sufficient evidence.

Contingency Plans

Expect the best.  Prepare for the worst.  Capitalise on what comes.  We can all have plans but our objectives don't always come to fruition, so it's worth having contingency plans and even if the contingencies don't materialise, make the best of whatever happens.

Cost vs Benefits

Cost vs Benefit analyses are useful and don't have to be about money.  It is helpful to weigh-up the pros and cons of any situation to assist decision-making.

Beware of the Anecdotal

My friend's mother had a terrible pain in her neck but she rubbed Mumbo Jumbo Cream onto the affected area and within three days the pain had gone.  A lovely story but what does that say about Mumbo Jumbo Cream?  It might have helped cure one person's neck ache but that's not really sufficient data to to establish the cream's credentials.  Even the plural of anecdote is not data!  You need properly conducted medical trials to support or disprove anecdotal evidence.

These principles help me to assess my past decisions but what about the future?  Am I wiser now than I was in the past?  Epicharmus was right - "The wise man must be wise before, not after, the event."

It's not that simple.

Take a look at the photo.  It's better than a thousand words.  What do you see?  A moving tunnel of water, beautifully formed but given all the constituents of that combine to produce that simplistic beauty - wind, water, tidal forces, etc - could anyone have predicted what it would be, where it would happen and when?  No!

It's not that simple.

We grapple with complexity every day of our lives, knowingly and unknowingly.  But out of complexity sometimes there are emergent properties, like waves, which in general form are predictable.  There will always be waves.  However, the specifics - what, where and when - are almost impossible to predict.  Complexity occurs whenever there is a plethora of interdependent relationships.  That situation exists, of course, in any organisation.  Directors of organisations will experience, as I have done, the myth of management control.  You can have strategies, policies, procedures, work breakdown structures, etc, but you still don't have absolute control.

It's not that simple.

Any organisation, regardless of size, is a highly complex system.  It has a multitude of relationships and interdependencies.  These are within the organisation - person to person, person to technology, technology to technology.  There are relationships between the organisation and the external environment - company to customers, company to suppliers, customers to suppliers.  The company also sits in a Political, Economic, Social and Technological (PEST) environment.  So how can directors and managers control factors that affect their businesses but over which they have no influence, let alone control?  Maybe their fancy strategic plans, scenario planning, risk analyses and the latest management fads, provide them with the tools they need to inject certainty into an uncertain environment.  I don't think so.

It's not that simple.

But can't organisations be so nimble and agile that, even if they are not in control of factors that affect their businesses, they can react swiftly to changes in events in order to out-perform their competitors? Yes and no, we are now getting into the thorny issue of culture - "that's the way we do things around here."  I strongly believe that a company's culture is an emergent behaviour of a highly complex organisation.  Directors and managers come and go, introduce new change programmes, but the culture usually survives any 'interference'.  It's impossible to calm the oceans!

It's not that simple.

What does all this mean?  Is it worth getting out of bed each morning if we can't really change anything?  Of course it is, but we do have to have a sense of realism of what we understand versus what we don't understand and what we can influence or control versus what we can't influence or control.  I've banged on in previous posts about systems thinking, recognising that the whole is not just the sum of the parts and only when we achieve that level of thinking can we begin to understand and maybe anticipate the outcomes of complex living.  Is that really the panacea?  No........

It's not that simple!!