May 12, 2020
We have discussed a few conceptual blocks in very large groups—short term thinking, desire for power and order, selfishness and competitiveness, and our desire for other people to think like we do. The result of this results in tribalism and resistance to change, two powerful forces acting against creativity. Successful leaders of large profit making businesses, governments , religions, armies, etc .realize the need for actively combating these, and focus on getting the tribes to join their creative thinking. But they cannot always seem to do that, often because of their own mind set. Leaders must be decisive, but they must also draw on the thinking of a large number of people at all levels.
Look at the handling of medical care in the U.S. We seem to have many people in the country who cannot afford modern diagnosis and cures, yet we spend more money on the problem than many other countries. If you look at comparisons on the internet, we are definitely ranked #1 in per patient expenses, but vary between #11 and # 18 in quality of health care, which is of course more difficult to measure. We recognize this, and it has been the case for some time, but we but seem to be blocked from a solution that pleases most of our population . Certainly action has been taken relatively recently through the willingness of former President Obama to seek many inputs and push through a result, but this was certainly not eagerly backed by all members of Congress. Now we have a leader (Trump) whose stated goal is to dismember the Affordable Care Act (even though I have not heard about him having a better solution ).
Medical care in the U.S. is a very complex problem, and in the case of complexity, a large amount of thinking is necessary from representatives of all the areas involved, willingness to compromise, and time to make the necessary changes to improve the product. We consider Britain to be full of bright people, and their National Health Service is highly regarded, but it was begun in 1948 and has been continuously fine tuned ever since. But the U.S. seems to be tied up in tribes with different ideas of what should happen, an unwillingness to compromise, and resistance to experiment with fresh approaches—call them the “conservatives”, the “liberals” , and what we will call the “Trumps”.
Our government seems to be increasingly unable to act in such situations. Think of our present problems handling the Covid 19 pandemic. We have a congress consisting of people representing red states and blue states, change and tradition, science and skepticism, and torn between continuing to battle the problem at large cost of money, or “re-start the economy” at increased cost of life. We have a large population of people who want the pandemic to go away. and have ideas, but have neither the background or knowledge to know how to make that happen. I have a technical back ground and guess I qualify as a scientist, but find it difficult to believe the low level of scientific and technical background in most government offices and our present leadership. When large successful companies have problems, which they do, they seem to have more ability to “solve” complicated problems, probably through the combined thinking of a knowledgeable subset of people with an experienced leader. They certainly don’t subdivide themselves into “conservatives” and “liberals” and spend their time criticizing and letting the courts make their decisions.
I will talk more about this, using very large profit making organizations, the military and religions as examples of tribalization and resistance to change, in my next post. I hope you are enjoying the good sides of staying home because of the virus. As I have said, my wife and I live on a university campus and had forgotten the joy of quiet and the ability to catch up on what seem like hundreds of unfinished projects. And we all should be happy we have the internet out there. Yesterday was the birthday of Naushad Forbes, an ex student of mine from India who has quite a bit of international visibility, a wonderful family, and many friends I have gotten to know. They are spread all over the world. We were privileged to attend a Zoom birthday celebration including many of them. It might have been more of a peak experience for us had we been there in person, but it would never have happened due to the fact that India is also locked down.
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