Americans experienced a decade plus of very low inflation, low unemployment, cheap energy, abundant cheap food, and cheap products largely manufactured overseas.  Covid was a jolt, but even before the pandemic economists could tell you that the 2000’s were quite different than the 50-70 years before it.

Structurally, the forces which made the low inflation/cheap stuff world possible are all changing now:

• Policy decisions and reactions to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will keep energy costs high for years to come for the western world.  
• Labor costs continue to climb.  Generally, they don’t go down again. 
• Higher energy prices make everything more difficult and expensive.  Especially food production.  Transportation is a significant fraction of your food costs. Many people don’t realize the synthetic fertilizer is derived from fossil fuel sources.  Same for plastics.  
• Over and above geopolitical power concerns, China has structural demographic and economic problems which mean it can’t ‘forever be’ the low-cost manufacturing center of the world.  Other countries will pick up part of this load.

Governments printing money are adding to inflationary pressures (more money chasing fewer goods) but politicians are pressured to live up to promises made and ‘solve’ problems with money so they aren’t voted out of office.  This has been going on a long time; it’s not the realm of any one party or political leaning.  I’m hopeful that more people will realize modern monetary theory is a crock.  There is no “happy story” in history of countries paying off greater-than-GDP debt levels. The US federal debt-to-GDP ratio was 137% in December 2021.  The total debt picture with unfunded obligations is much higher.

It’s likely that we’ll return to thinking 4-5% inflation is a good number, 5% unemployment will be considered low, and many goods and services will be expensive enough that we have think hard before buying them.  That’s not all bad.  My concerns lie with anticipating a fearful route to getting there! 

Given these macro factors, coupled with unease, uncertainty, and lack of unity on much of anything, we’re going to have a rough adjustment to new realities.  The sense of “going backwards” will be palpable.  I have access to information about agriculture and food situations globally.  It’s a mixed story.  There will be more hungry people in the next few years than the past decade.  There is high correlation between a hungry population and uprisings against the standing government. Political leaders will be hard-pressed for ‘solutions.’  One of the lessons of system dynamics is that what looks like the easy way out always reinforces the status quo. 

We’re back to long-asked questions: “How should we then live?”  “What are we willing to sacrifice?”  “What should we do differently in the future?” “How do we raise children and future leaders and workers?” “What must the Church be and do?”

Critically important: We must succeed through inspiration and imagination coupled with grit, not anger, nor making others feel insecure.  

I woke up the other morning with this question in my mind: “What must you do now to become better prepared to lead in your sphere of influence going forward?”

I continue to ponder this intriguing description of men who came out to follow King David: “Of Issachar, men who had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do, 200 chiefs, and all their kinsmen under their command.”  (1 Chronicles 12:32)

Intuitively we think that we’ll be smarter and understand more with more data.  We’re awash in data and generating more every minute.  I love data.  The plural of anecdote is not data. There was a sign in the building where I did my Ph.D. work which said “In God we trust. All others need data.”

The challenge is interpreting data, understanding signal from noise.  Statistically, the bigger the pile of data you have, the more likely you’ll mistake noise for signal.  There are enough bits of data in the big pile that you can selectively pull some and create a story.  (Our species is tremendously good at creating complex stories from little threads of data.)  And others will generate a completely different story by extracting different bits from the same pile.  This is the modern version of the blind men touching the elephant story. 

Remember this when you hear anyone say, “The data clearly shows…” or “No one can disagree with this.”  An attribute of boldness and gentleness (strength under control) is treading cautiously and humbly. 

It’s also important to remember that information alone is not enough.  If all we needed was more information, every guy would be a multimillionaire with six-pack abs. 

I made some additions to my recommended book list based on reading in the past 3 years.

Reading good books and great books is an essential part of your learning plan. You’ll be strengthened through reading books which are a little difficult for you, just as pushing yourself past comfort in physical exercise builds muscle and endurance. You’ll find a handful of books which are truly significant for you. Study those repeatedly, make them your own.

I’ve grouped some books, but there is no particular order or weighting. Read for breadth and depth. Stretch yourself.

I have a Western/English bias. There are undoubtedly many great books in Eastern tradition and other languages that are less accessible to me.

There are few books here about technical subjects. You need to find and study these over time, as you have interests, but they tend to become outdated quickly. I know several good books on AI, for example, but by the time you read this they could be less helpful.

My biography list probably has too much weight on Americans and men.

I’ve listed a diverse set of religious texts not because I think they are all equally valid, but because I believe wise people must be aware of different religious ideas.

A key criteria: all these can be read, and re-read, and still yield insights and ideas. An excellent book continues to speak to a person at different stages of their life. The best book is the one that teaches you something important you either didn’t know, or something worth remembering again.

Modern Works with recognized value for many people:

The Great Ideas — Mortimer Adler

Principles – Ray Dalio

The E-Myth – Michael Gerber

Zero to One – Peter Thiel

The Lean Startup – Eric Ries

Tools of Titans – Tim Ferriss

Good to Great – Jim Collins

Built to Last — Jim Collins

Tribes – Seth Godin

This is Marketing — Seth Godin

Atomic Habits — James Clear

Mindset – Carol Dweck

Grit – Angel Duckworth

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion – Robert Cialdini

How to Win Friends and Influence People – Dale Carnegie

Bold – Peter Diamandis

The Fifth Discipline – Peter Senge

A Rulebook for Arguments – Anthony Weston

The Black Swan – Nicola Taleb

What Technology Wants – Kevin Kelly

On Writing Well – Zinnser

Evolution 2.0 – Perry Marshall

True Professionalism – David Maister

A History of Knowledge – Charles Van Doren

Basic Economics – Thomas Sowell

Switch — Chip and Dan Heath

Extreme Ownership and The Dichotomy of Leadership – Jocko Willink and Leif Babin

How to Read a Book – Mortimer Adler

Godel, Escher, Bach – Douglas Hofstadter

The Lessons of History – Will and Ariel Durant

The 48 Laws of Power and Mastery – Robert Greene

The Laws of Human Nature – Robert Greene

The Obstacle is the Way – Ryan Holliday

The Effective Executive – Peter Drucker

The Effective Manager – Mark Horstman

The Portable MBA – Josh Kaufmann

12 Rules – Jordan Peterson

The 80/20 Principle — Richard Koch

80/20 Sales and Marketing – Perry Marshall

Warfighting — US Marine Corps

Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin to Munger — Peter Bevelin

Strange New World – Carl Trueman

The War of Art — Steven Pressfield

Execution – Bossidy and Charan

Elements of Style – Strunk & White

Team of Teams and One Mission – Chris Fussell

Essentialism – Greg McKeown

Suicide of the West – Richard Koch

The Natural Laws of Business – Richard Koch

Exponential Organizations – Salim Ismail

Man’s Search for Meaning – Victor Frankl

The Art of War – Sun Tzu

Deep Work – Cal Newport

On Becoming a Leader – Warren Bennis

The Truth About Leadership – Kouzes and Posner

Start with Why – Simon Sinek

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team – Patrick Lencioni

Failure of Nerve – Edwin Friedman

War of the Worlds – Niall Ferguson

The Essential Wooden: A Lifetime of Lessons on Leaders and Leadership – Wooden and Jamison

Everyone Communicates, Few Connect – John Maxwell

Crucial Conversations – Patterson and Grenny

The Goal – Eliyahu Goodratt

Thinking, Fast and Slow – Daniel Kahneman

The Power of Full Engagement – Loehr and Schwartz

Getting Things Done – David Allen

Deep Survival – Laurence Gonzales

Made to Stick – Chip and Dan Heath

Presentation Zen – Garr Reynolds

How to Lie with Statistics – Darrell Huff

Work the System – Sam Carpenter

Making Things Happen – Scott Berkun

Competitive Strategy – Michael Porter

Blue Ocean Strategy – Kim and Mauborgne

Seeing What’s Next – Clayton Christensen

The Design of Everyday Things – Donald Norman

Six Easy Pieces – Richard Feynman

High Output Management – Andy Grove

Poor Charlie’s Almanack – Charlie Munger

Half-Time — Bob Buford

Walden– Henry Thoreau

Essays – Montaigne

Collected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Federalist – Hamilton, Madison, Jay

The Abolition of Man — C.S. Lewis

The Gulag Archipelago – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin to Munger – Peter Bevelin

Pre-Gutenberg Classics and Religious Texts

Beowulf

The Epic of Gilgamesh

The Iliad and The Odyssey – Homer

The Aeneid — Virgil

The Republic – Plato

Rhetoric — Aristotle

The History — Herodotus

On the Brevity of Life – Seneca

Lives — Plutarch

The Divine Comedy – Dante

The Canterbury Tales — Chaucer

The Emperor’s Handbook – Marcus Aurelius

Treatises of Friendship and Growing Old – Cicero

The Strategemata – Sextus Julius Frontinus

The Prince – Machiavelli

The Bible

The Bhagavad Gita

The Koran

The Tao

The Analects of Confucius

The Divine Conspiracy – Dallas Willard

In Introduction to the Devout Life – Francis de Sales

Confessions – St. Augustine

The Imitation of Christ – Thomas a Kempis

The Pilgrim’s Progress – John Bunyan

Mere Christianity – C.S. Lewis

Run with Horses – Eugene Peterson

The Cost of Discipleship – Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Biographies

Titan (biography of John D. Rockefeller) — Ron Chernow

Benjamin Franklin – Walter Isaacson

Leonardo da Vinci – Walter Isaacson

The Last Lion (biography of Winston Churchill in 3 volumes) – William Manchester

Eisenhower in War and Peace – Jean Edward Smith

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt – Edmund Morris

Theodore Rex — Edmund Morris

Team of Rivals – Doris Kearns Goodwin

Truman – David McCullough

John Adams – David McCullough

Alexander Hamilton – Ron Chernow

Robert E. Lee – Emory Thomas

Lew Kwan Yew: The Man and His Ideas – Kwang and Fernandez

Washington: A Life – Ron Chernow

Einstein: His Life and Universe – Walter Isaacson

The House of Morgan – Ron Chernow

Margaret Thatcher (authorized biography) – Charles Moore

Indira Ghandi – Inder Malhotra

Victoria: The Queen – Julia Baird

A Chance to Die: The Life and Legacy of Amy Carmichael – Elisabeth Elliot

George Marshall: Defender of the Republic – David Roll

Coolidge – Amity Shlaes

Fiction and Literature

The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare

Dune – Frank Herbert

Ender’s Game – Orson Scott Card

Best Poems of the English Language (anthology) – Harold Bloom

The Wasteland – T.S. Eliot

The Chronicles of Narnia – C.S. Lewis

The Brothers Karamazov – Leo Tolstoy

Paradise Lost – John Milton

Moby Dick – Herman Melville

Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain

Brave New World – Aldous Huxley

1984 – George Orwell

Animal Farm – George Orwell

Complete Robert Frost collection

Mary Oliver’s poems

Becoming all-consumed and completely focused on the inside operations of your organization is a recipe for decline and failure.  Jack Welch famously said, “If change is happening on the outside faster than the inside the end is in sight.”

An organizational insight from biology:  As organisms grow in size their volume goes up by the cube yet their surface area increases only by the square.  A single cell bacterium is completely in touch with the external environment.  A single cell in the heart of a blue whale is yards from the ocean. 

You need to proactively work to be aware of what’s going on outside your organization.  Smart C-suite leaders spend considerable time and effort to connect with customers, industry peers, and a diverse world. 

Specific suggestions to be informed and thoughtful:

• Consistently read newspapers of record and journals for your industry
• Get news alerts for your industry, competitors, key customers, and technologies
• Talk with customers who pay for your products and services (even if you’re not in sales)
• Share what you’re reading and learning with your direct reports and peers
• Participate in conferences and society groups relevant to your role or your industry
• Cultivate a network of external people who can give you ground-truth insights about trends and changes
• Follow influencers in your industry on LinkedIn

This takes energy and time.  Worth it. 

One more suggestion:  Find ways to follow a seemingly independent industry which shares some similarities to yours.  There are many lessons to be learned which will help you, too.  For example, I found that the Pharma world was very similar to the Ag Biotech space.  We could have deep conversations about our same struggles because we weren’t competitors.

How many times have you looked at some administrative process and thought, “This is incredibly inefficient.  We can do this so much better!  Why hasn’t someone already fixed this?”

Often, the status quo is the status quo, however inefficient and wasteful, because someone benefits from the status quo.  

If you’re going to exert any effort to improve a status quo process, first figure out who benefits.  Benefits can include:

·         Retaining control, or at least veto rights on decisions

·         I don’t have to work harder

·         It’s half my job, and if this goes away what would I do?

·         Bureaucratic contentment with “we’ve always done it this way

·         Forced alignment of conflicting agendas (and usually nobody is completely happy)

·         No need to create a better data management system

·         No need to involve someone I’d rather not work with

Once you’ve identified who benefits and how, you’ll need to showcase why your preferred process would yield better results and not trigger “inconvenience” excuses.  There will be a switching cost.  This took me a l-o-o-n-n-g-g-g time to figure out.  

I was in the last group of high school students who were taught to use slide rules because the TI 30 calculator became affordable and wildly popular about 1979.  My calculator battery died once while taking a physics exam in college. When I asked if I could leave to get a battery the proctor wordlessly handed me a log table. I used it successfully, but just barely.

I have two of my dad’s slide rules.  I treasure them in part because I can hold what he held.  My thumbs and fingers fit perfectly in the patina worn by his thumbs and fingers. The battered leather case with the belt loop speaks about his work as a chemist.  It’s a tangible connection to an important past. 

A side note about log tables and slide rules (which are based on logs): The tool gave you the digits, but you had to determine where to put the decimal place by estimating the answer.  Was the answer 0.54, 54, or 54,000?  One had to be mindful about the problem even as one trusted the tool.  We lost something there with the advent of calculators, and it carries over into non-mathematical decision-making, too.

Back to the slide rules.  I handle them regularly.  It’s a ritual to remind me to value what my dad valued.  It refreshes memories. I, too, will experience ups and downs and be just fine.  It’s a reminder that tools are an extension of the mind but I’m still responsible for the result.

I hope you have some tangible items like this in your collection. 

I’ve written about my frustration with the typical political conversation about electrifying transportation and getting off fossil fuels.  People generally imagine this will be done easily or quickly.  It’s truly a massive engineering problem, with deep social and political considerations.  I wrote a friend that I would love to see someone lay out a 30-year transition plan, with some details, so we could dialogue about solving these challenges. 

He wrote back, “Why don’t you do it?  What would a 30-year plan need to include?  You’re smart, so figure it out.” 

Challenge accepted.  I’ve read dozens of articles, looked up details where I can find them, and tried to map out the factors that would go into a good plan. 

Though I don’t have a finished plan, I thought it would be worth sharing what I’ve learned so far, and illustrate how you can approach a multidimensional challenge like this. 

…

I decided to put boundaries on the project:

• US focus.  Meet needs of a sophisticated and 20% larger population.
• Plan for economic success through creating an abundance of cheap energy.
• Focus on private transportation and trucking
• Reduce air and water pollution.
• Reduce carbon emissions as a side benefit, not primary target
• Recognize that we will still use some fossil fuels for particular needs in 2052
• Plan is not a one-time solution but a new vector for continuing improvement
• Exclude use of fossil fuels for plastics, graphite, manufacturing (e.g., metalworking)
• Exclude plane fuel, railroads, ships
• Remain economically competitive in world commerce

Based on some preliminary estimates of energy requirements I created an ambitious list of objectives – all measurable:

• Create 30x more electricity than 2020 levels while reducing environmental impact (air, water, soil, landscape)
• Reduce fossil fuel use in private transportation to 5% of 2020 level
• Reduce fossil fuel use in heating, cooling, and all residential electrical demand to 15% of 20220 level
• Install a gen-5 electrical grid with resilience to solar flares and EMP weapons

To guide my thinking and research efforts I created a high-level mind map of issues, obstacles & limiting factors, and areas where I needed more facts.  I find this exercise helps me stay balanced across the effort.

We tend to overestimate what could be done in a few years and wildly underestimate what could be accomplished in 30 years.  A few critical points based on my work to date:

Fundamentally we would need to increase electricity production 30x over today, and replace 95-98% of our vehicles, while establishing a comprehensive battery and transmission grid. This is a massive engineering challenge.  Our digital capabilities help but only a little.  This is very much a physical engineering challenge.

I’m assuming that solar, wind, hydro, tidal contribute about 10% of overall electrical need.  That’s significant (though there are environmental tradeoffs).  I’m also assuming that biofuels only offset gas and diesel, so reduce dependence on gas and diesel fuel, but they don’t contribute to electrification. 

We can phase out existing coal and natural gas-powered plants as we replace their capacity with nuclear power. We can build the nuclear power plants (both big central plants and many self-contained mini reactors) to create the 30x electricity required.  There are reasonable engineering solutions, and the basic materials like thorium, uranium, and steel are available.  We primarily need the political will sustained for decades. 

However, there simply isn’t enough of the raw materials, with the way that we build batteries, transmission lines, generators, and electrical devices today, to electrify all US ground transportation by 2052.  My estimates: We need 12-18x more copper, 48-65x more lithium, 90x more cobalt, at least 40x more nickel, and multiples of rare earths than are mined each year globally today, all going into the US market.  This mining & refining is an ugly business that no one wants to live near.  We could get a fraction of the metals (copper, steel, aluminum) needed via recycling from motors and wires that we’re making obsolete. The US has abundant natural resources, but insufficient known supplies to build all this infrastructure. 

I’m mindful that technological breakthroughs can happen.  There were serious papers analyzing the unsolvable problem of accumulated horse poop in New York city in the years leading up to affordable automobiles and electric trolleys.  Perhaps we’ll see commercial fusion reactor capability within 30 years (like we confidently said in the 1970’s).  We need transformational technology in batteries and transmission systems which lose less electricity over distances. 

Engineers already know how to improve the electrical grid.  They know what would be required to minimize damage from solar flares to the transmission lines and electrical motors.  Multiple studies have been done on creating a more resilient grid (fail-overs from one sector to another).  We can employ algorithms to optimize electricity production and flow.  In this area, we only need funding and will.

My focus is on the US, but global factors are considerable. One of the biggest technology transformations is simply to address the fundamental issue that 1-2 billion people are still dependent on burning wood, dung, and grasses to fuel their life.  India and China are still building 4 to 7 coal-powered electrical plants every month, with plans to continue for many years.  (Fortunately, many of those are designed so that an alternative fuel source could be swapped in.)  All the major nations will be competing for raw materials. 

The US does not currently have the workforce required for this transition.  We would need many more people working in construction and manufacturing to build the required infrastructure and vehicles.  We’ll need a bottom-up solution to educate and skill these workers.  I’m optimistic that a combination of public/private investments can fund the necessary efforts.  I’m also optimistic that we can recruit and develop the necessary workforce if we recapture the American spirit of building things.

Skilled, trusted, and sustained political leadership will be required to engage the diverse people interests to achieve this kind of goal.  There were fewer political and social constraints in the era of building thousands of gas stations, early pipelines for fuel distribution, the interstate highway and state road systems, spread over about 80-100 years.  This 30-year plan will require political and social leadership unlike anything the US has experienced since 1941-1945.  Or maybe the “space race” in the 1960’s-70’s. Kennedy’s speech at Rice University exemplifies the kind of leadership which will be required: 

“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things not because they are easy, but because they are hard. Because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we’re willing to accept. One we are unwilling to postpone. And therefore, as we set sail, we ask God’s blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure that man has ever gone.”

Project results are rarely linear with effort.  This electrification engineering challenge is the kind of project where the big payoffs happen later in the overall effort.  This reality will complicate the leadership challenge because there will be relatively few early wins – and those will go to certain people, not everyone.

One area I can’t reasonably address with this assessment:  What’s the cost?  We can’t rely solely on private enterprise because many components of the plan simply won’t be profitable for a very long time. There are massive build/transition/maintain costs to individuals, family, communities, businesses, and local/state/federal government.  Gasoline taxes are a primary means governments use to raise funds for road maintenance and more.  Other countries will be competing for the same raw materials – which will drive up prices. There are disposal costs for exiting fossil fuel production (won’t need as much), distribution infrastructure, and vehicles.  Even making electricity “too cheap to measure” doesn’t reduce build and transition costs very much, also it’s possible that once achieved the ongoing costs of electric would be lower than gasoline and diesel.  There are trillions of dollars associated with fuel and transportation infrastructure today — converting this will likely require trillions of dollars, too. 

Another area which will require more thought:  What constraints on political and economic liberty might shift as this transition goes forward?  Gasoline-powered transportation has a different autonomy profile than a massively electrified infrastructure.  There are unknowns here.  

…

I haven’t created a workable 30-year plan.  I have a far better picture of the scope of the challenges.  Generating 30x more electricity is feasible.  We can create electricity abundance so that it’s incredibly cheap and thereby incentivize more electrification.  I don’t know where the get the raw materials in the quantities needed using existing technology for batteries and wires.  Transitions will be uneven and difficult to manage.  The overall program is deeply susceptible to sabotage, corruption, and failing political will. 

Hopefully sharing this much helps sharpen your thinking on this topic and gives you a model for how to tackle research on complex problems.

And…I would still like to hear political leaders outlining substantive, ambitious 30-year plans rather than implying instant solutions.

At Boy Scout camp in the 1970’s we would send naïve younger boys off to other troops in the area to ask for things like a left-handed smoke shifter or a cup of propane.  So many people were in on this kind of prank that some boys would visit two or three other troops before returning to say, “Nope, they don’t have one.”  (Yes, this happened to me my first year at camp.  I fell for the “disposable tree root extractor” errand.)  But once a victim of this prank you weren’t a victim again.  You were ‘in’ somehow through this rite of passage.   

Human beings are exquisitely sensitive to love.  Even young children can spot fakery.  We’re attracted to love, desperate for it.  If we can’t get love we seek substitutes.  

Harold Berry provided this functional definition of love: “Seeking another person’s highest good.”

Most people accurately sense if someone loves them this way – the deep sense that they are seeking my highest good.  We despise “corporate speak” and “political speech” partly because we sense a massive gap between the words and the amount of love there.  This gap fuels cynicism and resignation that “it’s just how it is.”

Mark Horstman correctly says that good people management is fundamentally about love – acting in ways that are congruent with wanting the best for them in the process of delivering results for the organization. 

We respect people who tell us the difficult truth if we also sense they are seeking our highest good.   Good parents, good sports coaches, and school teachers & administrators demonstrate love in this way.  Good neighbors demonstrate love in this way.

I’ve spoken to multiple atheists who argue that you can create a moral framework apart from the transcendent.  I’m not convinced.  Seeking another person’s highest good will not consistently happen in a world entirely driven by the material and selfish interest. Where you see it happening it’s a carryover effect of social and moral frameworks established by others. It truly matters where the source energy comes from for seeking another person’s highest good. The apostle Paul wrote to his protégé Timothy, “The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.” (1 Timothy 1:5)

A related observation:  Political collectivists and some corporate leaders focus not on the individual’s highest good, but the good of the state, or the good of the corporation, or the good of the class.  It’s true that collective good can emerge from seeking the good of individuals.  It’s true to say, “It’s not about you; It’s not about me, either.”  Yet our experience is that optimizing for the good of an abstract collective at the expense of seeking an individual’s highest good always leads to corruption and evil.  Therefore, we should focus our energies on seeking the highest good for actual individual people, not faceless abstractions. 

…

It’s perfectly rational to do whatever gives you the most of what you want, by whatever means you can, if your worldview is that nothing of consequence matters beyond the years you’re alive.  Lie, cheat, flip-flop when convenient for immediate gain, always act in your self-interest. 

If your worldview extends beyond your physical lifespan, if your moral framework is based on righteousness to an external standard and judge, then you will sometimes choose not to operate in your immediate self-interest.

Jesus summed up all the commands with these two: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.” (Luke 10:27) 

…

The Beatles sang “All we need is love.”  Pay attention this week to how much of the behaviors of the people around you are oriented to love, and how “is this genuine love for me?” is the measuring stick for whom we believe, whom we follow, whom we sacrifice for.

Want to see improvements in the world?  Seek another person’s highest good. 

This will encompass justice, peace, reconciliation, and all the other things the world clambers for.  Seeking those things in any way other than seeking another person’s highest good is like sending a kid out to get a cup of propane.

Get insights into complex issues by asking:

“What is the foundation?”

“Who/what is driving formation?”

Human beings are complex adaptive creatures, meaning we are both shaped by our experiences and shape our existence. We have agency, we make choices.  Even the most powerful dynamic forces cannot dictate every bit of the outcomes. 

Our foundations and what formed us in the past is what brought us to the present, and creates the worldview/assumptions/lenses we use to assess the present and the past.  We’re steeped in this, even when we don’t understand or appreciate it.  This is true (to different degrees) for individuals and communities alike.

Formation is ongoing.  You’ve probably heard the pithy observation that you become the average of the five people you spend the most time with – that’s formation at work.  Formation is not only experiences, but how you reflect upon and un/consciously learn from those experiences. 

…

Foundations give you frameworks for understanding, and predictive power.  Your foundation was established from formation by your parents, your teachers, practical experiences where you needed to make decisions, the books/TV/music/movies you consumed, friends and enemies.  Your foundation may not be correct, or consistent, but it is strong.  Your foundation drives your default interpretations of the world and your default behaviors.

…

If you listen to the talking heads, technocrats, and the people who write the ad copy, you’re likely to believer that scientists, medical doctors, and psychiatrists know EVERYTHING about biology, ecosystem dynamics, cancer, human development, evolution, and how the brain works.   

We don’t.  Frankly, what we know has little predictive power, and we don’t know fully what we don’t know.   

Physics and engineering have a foundation of math.  There’s no such foundation for any aspect of biology.  Our predictive ability is miniscule.  We’re faced with questions like “What does a cell know about itself?” because individual cells operate with agency.  Despite the “certainty” language some use about intelligence and cognition, we don’t know how to define these things.  

There is variation in the physical, non-biological world.  We’ve become quite good at reducing that variation (e.g., purifying metals from ores, creating standard sizes for boards and screws).  Manageable variation is key to our success with materials, construction, and use of tools.   

Variation is enormously larger in the biological space.  This variation compounds all our experimental approaches to finding cures and treatments for diseases.  There are billion-dollar-a-year drugs which only work in 35% of patients.  The variations are even greater in the mental health space – now you’re working with the biological, the experiential, and vagaries of self-perception and social interactions.   

The problem is not that we have failed to reduce biology to a predictable machine that we can control.  The problem is that people behave as if smart people have already done that.  We desperately want solutions to biological challenges, so we’re primed to believe their arrogance. 

I believe we’re meant to explore biology. The scientific method is a primary tool to keep us humbly oriented as we explore the factual, experimental world.  Biology is fundamentally different – life has agency, right down to the cellular level. Not long ago I was in a planning workshop to create a 10-year plant breeding program.  Everyone in the room was delighted with the plan.  Then a savvy scientist brought us back to realism by saying, “Of course, the plants will have to cooperate with our perfect plan.”

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”  — Hamlet

…

Philosophers and social commentators write long books on the ideas of foundation and formation.  I’ve only scratched them here.

Use the concepts of foundation and formation to assess complex situations.  The surface presentation is a small part of the deeper story.  Ask questions, and then ask more questions.  Be wary of people who would discourage you from exploring foundations and formation. In my experience, these people are generally untrustworthy and would prefer you stay in lock-step with their narratives about the world.  

Post-mortem.  After Action Review.  Hot Wash.  Debrief.

These are all terms for an intentional look-back to evaluate a past event with an eye towards lessons to apply to make a future event more successful.  Not a blame game.  Not punitive.  We can’t change the past, but we can work smarter and prepare better for next time – and there will be a next time.

People can be held accountable without acceding to the wishes of the mob and the insecure immature.  The key here is to manage emotions, use factual assessments, and grace-fully agree on how to move forward.  Aim to find answers to “What will we do so it’s better next time?”

This applies to something as small as a 5-minute presentation to the boss, and as large as global response to a pandemic.