====
“All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reason, passion, and desire.”
Aristotle===
I am both a complexity person and a “cause & effect” person. I believe all actions have a stimulus in some form or fashion. Yes. All actions. That said, I also know unwinding a usual complex interconnection of things to isolate a specific cause is often a fool’s errand. But the truth is that something always gets the ball rolling and it is often quite useful to spend some time thinking about causes of things. specifically, I rarely think “man, was that a stupid thing to do” when I see someone do something. Instead my first thought is almost always “gosh, I wonder what made them think that was the right thing to do.” To me that is a useful reflection of cause.
So. If I take that type of thinking and put Aristotle’s thought in place every time you see or hear someone say something, and rather than going ballistic or laughing or shaking your head or whatever,you place one of these into your head:
- Chance
- Nature
- Compulsion
- Habit
- Reason
- Passion
- Desire
Maybe, just maybe, you will generate a more reasonable response to the situation than doing or saying something silly.
I will tell you that I wish more managers (or people managing people) in the business world would try this thinking out when managing people.
Too often I have seen ill considered responses to people’s actions in business environments and it becomes more of a “slamdown” rather than a teaching moment. Or are just plain stupid with regard to this topic (although I like to err on the side of “not investing the energy to teach”).
Cause and effect is any easy thing to grasp and I wonder why managers forget it. Maybe it is because we seem to often get caught up in the “blame game” versus “teaching game” (probably because of the alliteration). Or maybe we get caught up in the complexity narrative and begin thinking there is no cause for any of the effects happening. Either of those two beliefs are less than useful if you want to foster an effective business.
Anyway. There is a Law of Cause & Effect which states that Every EFFECT has a specific and predictable CAUSE and every CAUSE or Action has a specific and predictable EFFECT. I do not buy into that ‘law’, but, as a concept it is useful in exploration. It can be useful because it means that everything that we currently have in our lives is an effect that is a result of a specific cause (or groupings of causes). Simplistically, in a business world, these causes are the decisions we make and the actions we take on a daily basis. Whether our decisions seem small and rather insignificant, or whether they are significant and transformational in nature, does not matter. Each and every decision we have made and action we have taken has set events into motion creating some predictable and specific effects, and some unpredictable and specific events, that we are now experiencing in our lives.
Which leads me to Chance.
The Law’s premise is that life (or any personal action) isn’t built upon accidents, chance or luck. It is rather built upon Cause & Effect. While I think that is a bullshit, absurd, less-than-realistic, thought, I will suggest that for business it has some usefulness. In business you have to believe you can shape your future and destiny in some way or let’s say “nudge chance in your favor” or why be in business at all.
Lastly.
While I simplify cause and effect down to a sound bite “stimulus-response” when teaching high school kids, this thought is really overlooked in personal relationships.
It may be that in long term relationships there becomes such a comfort & routine that you stop paying attention to details or maybe better said “cues” as to what is really going on. Let’s call this “the slippery slope of indifference to stimuli.” In other words, ignoring (or simply overlooking or even being simply oblivious to) the cause ‘cues’ to specific actions and effects. And once you begin to overlook things you run the risk of beginning down that infamous slippery slope.
In the end.
While I began with Aristotle I will end with Harry Potter.
“Humans have a knack for choosing precisely the things that are worst for them.”
Albus Dumbledore
We do have a knack for doing what is worst for us.
We should invest at least a bit of energy wondering why because we aren’t stupid.
I believe it is because we don’t invest enough energy asking “why did this happen?” when we do the ‘worst.’
Instead we choose “precisely the things that are worst for them” and shake our heads and move on.
Maybe if we seek to understand the cause for our actions a little better we could make good ole Dumbledore a little less insightful. Because, well, the answers to our actions are everywhere if you look around a bit. Ponder.
===
There is a direct relationship between the laws of physics and optimizing profits. I am not going to give a physics lesson today, 
business. Most media stories will focus on train brakes, hazardous material designations and general safety guidelines. And none of them are wrong, but they are also not right. All of those things are mitigations to the business management of physics. Business inherently seeks to optimize what is possible and when they get it wrong it is usually when they manage to the margin – the boundaries of what is ‘physics-possible.’ There is no margin of error, but profits get maximized when there is no margin of error. Of course, there is another department in almost all these businesses that are masters at ‘risk assessment.’ They sit side-by-side with the laws of physics people saying things like “oh, there is a 1 in 150 chance of something going wrong, and 1 in 3,000 chance of something catastrophic happens.” From which the business, seeking profits as they should, mitigates the risk with a slush fund to have on hand if something happens. It seems a fair trade, to the business, financially. Once again, the laws of physics, this time combined with the laws of risk, take precedent over the laws of humans.
I don’t have answers today. I am simply pointing out the laws of physics and profiteering. I, personally, wish – and believe – businesses should avoid “wandering the lines of constraints decision making,” but that is tough to do for any individual business in any industry in which any given competitor, seeking an advantage, is willing to skate on the thin ice. And maybe that is my point today. Business is trapped in the tragedy of commons and East Palestine is simply a tragic consequence of a failure of business in totality – not Norfolk Southern. That seems like an important distinction. Ponder.
your own book and live it, live by it, and add chapters as life goes on. The problem is people do not live their lives in silo-like ways. Our physical and mental self doesn’t exist in the absence of the interaction with other people and society. The brain and the body and the external world all shape one another in fluid dynamic ways. To truly understand ourselves, or people in general I imagine, we must not focus on what’s happening with one of part, but on the interactions between the parts. In fact, I would suggest there is a partnership between the brain and society and it is somewhere within this alliance (or battle) between the body (experience), the mind and society as a mutually informing and codependent entity that society changes as well as the individual. That said. Our brain has limits and existing thought systems can accommodate change up to a point. Of course, overstimulation (overload), causes us to ‘shut down’ if not retreat into our most comfortable beliefs. But more when enough new insights and changes in our thinking accumulate, the resulting strain almost demands our brain to consider a paradigm shift. It is conceptual thinking in action. New assumptions create new expectations and even some new choicemaking rules emerge like a phoenix from the fire. The reality is knowing yourself is kind of like the gradual twisting of a kaleidoscope wherein a large number of small modifications eventually yields a substantially different picture.
Many of our constructs reside in the subconscious. What this means is that the brain does a lot of talking amongst itself. In fact, most of the brain spends its time communicating with itself and only infrequently do we consciously get to take part in these conversations. What I mean by that is that the neurons, and groups of neurons, are having conversations among themselves with regard to what we are seeing, hearing, feeling in our interactions and creating ‘constructs’. Occasionally the results of their conversations bubble up into our consciousness and we become aware of them as ‘constructed thoughts’ which appear as a form of reasoning (making sense of the world). Here is an unfortunate truth. Much of the time what the neurons tell us are constructed stories. What I mean by that is some of those stories, just from a sanity standpoint because we just do not have time to know or experience everything, add things to create it and subtract other things to be able to create the story. What I mean by that is that oftentimes we get an incomplete data input and our brain completes the data and then gives us back the story; constructed.
By the way, this is true also of knowledge. Knowing more knowledge does not automatically lead us to being wiser in our decision making. The reality is knowledge can create what is called “accepted theory” (I believe this to be true), but the rubber hits the road on ‘applied theory’ (as in what is actually done). To be clear, I am not suggesting ‘applied theory’ is hypocritical because, as I noted in the opening, even accepted theories are contingent to interactions, i.e., reality. Excessively following accepted theory actually lacks rationality in that it ignores context. There is nothing we do that doesn’t exist in the absence of the interaction with other people and society. So you can know better but that knowledge is constantly placed at the intersection of a shitload of things and, yes, sometimes your ‘know better’ just gets run over by reality. But you know what? You get back up, dust yourself off, maybe know a bit better, and try to do better.
I actually believe seeking knowledge can make some wishes come true. But even knowledge seeking is a bit tricky.
ability to be a revolutionary given the interest to engage. Sometimes you join a revolution or sometimes the revolution is within oneself. From a personal perspective you must ask whether school, community, work, life, etc. produces what we wish humanity to be made of and, if it is not, what we wish and what do we need to change – AND what your place is within that. The reality is many things can change society, but I would argue it always begins in one place – the world as it is and you. You can wish it was different, but “the world as it is” is kinda stubborn.
It was Alvin Toffler who said “the illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” In other words, literacy is an ability to absorb learning, and understanding, and adapt. So maybe you don’t do it at ‘speed’ , but you are an evolving understander. And then this is where speed comes into play. I do not believe the world is actually moving any faster than it has ever, even in business, but I will say that the faster you understand something; the faster you can do something. So the only reason the world may appear to be moving faster is that with the ubiquity of most information, the ones who ‘speed understand’ just move faster. Circling back to my opening question, the reality is that their intelligence is contingent to the environment.
===
Assumptions as they change are often like tectonic shifts (without the earthquakes). Unseen, and unfelt, a paradigmatic shift creating a fundamental shift in the way that something is understood or approached. It is not simply an incremental change, but rather a change in the underlying assumptions or theories that form the basis of how we see, and believe, about things. These shifts have far-reaching implications to society and how we thrive, or struggle, within that society. Circling back to a prior point, if duration expectations are affected, the general sense to an individual is lack of control and chaos. That said. The majority of assumptions are found below water, not above, and 99% of the time what is above water gives very little indication of what is truly below the water. The majority of people will scan what is floating around and assess that way. The more thoughtful want to know at least something about the parts they cannot obviously see. And the most thoughtful are interested in everything they cannot see even if it takes a lot of time and it is less than simple. I could argue that in Life or in business what we actually do is spend a shitload of time focused solely on the assumptions we can see so we are often late to see the assumptions below changing.
I don’t care if you read this as thinking shifts, belief shifts, attitude shifts or even mindset shifts, there is always a cost involved in reclassifying assumptions-to-experiences. Some people will lead the way and some will lag along the way in this reclassification design. New systems will be created for the ‘new’ even while the old systems remain in place for the ‘laggards.’ And while we talk a lot about the limits, or unlimits, of people’s ability to re-educate themselves, maybe we should talk a bit more about what limits systems have. I say that because if laggards lag too far and builders build too far, the systems gets split in an ugly tug of war in which no one wins and the system becomes to fail on its most basic duties. Emotionally, and experientially, we begin to feel the repercussions of the fact fundamental assumptions have shifted – and we haven’t.
That said. Both situations are versions of the infamous credibility question.
But new products are really important to existing businesses in that profits from new products tend to account for a substantial amount of the bottom line of businesses (note: there is a point to be made here about efficiencies and squeezing out profit from existing products in the market but that is for another day). We have all seen the simplistic surveys online showing “reasons why new products fail” as if CPG companies haven’t studied new products in depth. It’s a bit crazy. So, having pulled out an old folder with a bunch of notes scribbled in it about new products from my experience with P&G and other companies, let me say some things about innovations and new products. To be clear. I will share some dated information that I am too lazy to update mostly because I am 90% confident, in principle, the conclusions are the same today as they were then.
Technology is actually learning a lesson that the Consumer Packaged Goods industry learned a long time ago. More products can mean more sales, but you have to be smarter about your new product that you offer to the public. In 1964 there were about 1,300 new product introductions in supermarket/drug stores. In the early 1980s the packaged goods industries were introducing around 3000 to 5000 new products a year. By the 1990’s, we saw this number jump to about 18,000 to 20,000 and now we were over 25,000 a year. To be clear. Maybe only about 10% of new product introductions are truly new; for the most part they are extensions or additions to existing products/product lines (see opening image). The incredible thing about this phenomenal growth during that period (1960 to 2000ish) is that failure rates, while high, did not increase. It seems like consumers were finding space in their lives for five to 10 times more products per year than they were in maybe 1980. This suggests that the market likes to experience experiments as well as have been convinced specialty or ‘niche use’ has efficacy value. It’s like the culture has grasped the nature of change and finds value through experimenting with new products. But every business needs to remember with as much as 40%+ of new product ideas hitting the trash can, it’s just tough to swallow the failure rates and invest real money. In fact, I remember a number that there was an estimated 46% of all the resources allocated to product development and commercialization by US firms are spent on products that are cancelled or fail to yield an adequate financial return. There was an old study with some rough splits of innovation costs across stages in the new product process but basically it suggested for every $1million spent on product innovation, roughly only $150,000 is spent on exploration and screening research or even idea generation, i.e., the initial attempts to qualify the idea. This is kind of nuts. This also suggests ideas searching for a market rather than a market defining an idea. This whole section is something technology folk should ponder long and hard.
In the early stages of any new product project, we make many assumptions in order to justify the project.
I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that for older folk the desire to scream is … well … shit … almost the same as a younger person <go figure>.
It is about yourself, but it is more about going on the offensive rather than defensively protecting yourself against the squeaking issues.
less than important squeaking. I believe it encourages noise just for noise sake. I believe it encourages morons to be more loudly moronic.
maturing into adulthood. Life, left to its own devices, will more than likely try and smother ‘hope’ with ‘harsh reality.’ what this does is make things just a bit darker, a little less brighter and sparkly. which leads me back to the movie. Mr. Magorium suggests to Mahoney: “you have a sparkle”, i.e., something reflective of something bigger trying to get out despite Life suggesting otherwise.
“Your life is an occasion. Rise to it.”