Problem solving - advanced course

David Baldacci in one of his novels envisages an American intelligence initiative where every item of gathered information from around the world is projected on a giant screen, his WALL. A super intelligent human is then found with the ability to analyse all of this intel on real time and come up with correct responses. The Wall idea is a possibility but to find a super human is less likely. Human frailty.

An interesting phenomenon in human evolution is that we take and apply inventions to our daily lives but do not seem to pay attention to history. So the “me generation“ are happy to use mobile phones and all the goodies prepared from them but as they age are not prepared to learn from what has gone before nor do they really want to listen or use the experience of the people who have “been there and done that”.

At an extreme end of examples we see the ISIS problem and can see what happened with Hitler. The ISIS difficulty started by a minority being picked on by a majority just as Germany felt it was picked on following the first World War or Japan felt they were blockaded and had to respond. Everyone wanted to appease Hitler and see how that went. We are doing the same with empty rhetoric.

It might not be possible to have an exact Baldacci “Wall” where every component of every problem is put up for analysis at the same time but it is possible to isolate exactly what any one problem is, to identify all of the component of the problem at different levels of relevance. From this it is possible to come up with a way to address the problem. The one major component in the analysis is historical interface, which is, putting all these possible elements of the puzzle into line with what has gone on in the past.  A great deal of this experience will never have been documented but rests in the minds of those who have experienced these problems.

The difficulty currently is that this historic element is not fully tapped and so in problem solving you have history repeating itself. The current generation have to show they are better than the last. Take a very basic example. “Irish Auditing” was the basic auditing text book. The principals have not changed over the years but to sell new books the next author around has to invent new fancy words for the old ones and try and make it more complicated. The basics never the less remain the same. Similarly with the people. “Too qualified “must ring in the ears of many.

Having said that it is not a question of anyone having to do what the people who have come before suggest they do but the postulate would be that these people with the experience should be listened to.

Which then moves full circle back to the question of problem solving and who is best at it? Our company does not have a WALL on which to log every eventuality but registered first in 1964 it has years of experience solving both simple and complex problems around the globe. Multi-cultural experience is hard to list in the text books and has to be experienced and this is what we bring to any issue we address.