In the American movie Interstellar, when earth begins to become uninhabitable, 10 astronauts are sent through a wormhole to a group of planets orbiting a supermassive black hole. These astronauts are supposed to explore the planets to see if they are inhabitable or not.
However, when communicating their findings back to earth, they don’t transmit long lists of data. Instead, if the area they’ve explored could sustain human life, they simply activate the “thumbs up beacon.”
Breaking down complexity into its component parts, a common theme in American thinking, is also at play in American decision making. Individual decisions are always a part of larger decisions. They can be either grouped or isolated. Because Americans value focus and execution, they tend towards isolating decisions.
The more clearly defined the decision to be made, the more limited its scope, the greater the chances that it will be made intelligently and implemented effectively. Limited scope decisions are also a form of risk management. Their results can be evaluated quickly. They allow for flexibility and rapid reaction to changing parameters.
And if human action influences the very context in which one is operating, there is a point beyond which grouping decisions increases risk. From the American perspective systems are inherently risky. For if just a few key elements of a system are wrong, the entire system is wrong.
“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough. If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.” Albert Einstein
“Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.” Steve Jobs
“The greatest ideas are the simplest.” William Golding, Lord of the Flies
“A little simplification would be the first step toward rational living.” Eleanor Roosevelt
About the dignity of work and the rights of workers the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops writes:
„The economy must serve people, not the other way around. Work is more than a way to make a living; it is a form of continuing participation in God’s creation. If the dignity of work is to be protected, then the basic rights of workers must be respected: the right to productive work, to decent and fair wages, to the organization and joining of unions, to private property, and to economic initiative.“
Fracking is a way of mining underground gas, but it has been linked to earthquakes and tap water that burns (at least when you run it over a lit match).
The method was first discovered during the American Civil War, when Union Colonel Edward Roberts noticed the effects of explosive Confederate artillery plunging into the narrow millrace (canal) near the battlefield.
Americans, who enjoy using any potential resource once it becomes apparent, soon began experimenting with the new procedure, and these days there are several fracking operations taking place in the US.
Although there have been attempts to legalize fracking in Germany, so far it seems like Germans would prefer not to risk the potentially dangerous method in order to gather new resources.
‘Paralysis by analysis’ – a phrase often used in the American business context – describes over-thinking that leads to a reluctance to make a decision, and in doing so exhausts the available time in which to act.
In Aesop’s fable The Fox and the Cat the fox boasts of hundreds of ways of escaping while the cat has only one. When they hear the hunting dogs approaching, the cat climbs quickly up a tree while the fox in his confusion was caught. The moral: “Better one safe way than a hundred on which you cannot reckon.” In Hamlet, Shakespeare writes of Hamlet’s flaw of thinking too much: “sicklied over with the pale cast of thought.”
Analysis: ‘In the final (or last) analysis’ means when everything has been considered. This phrase is used to suggest that a statement expresses the basic truth about a complex situation. Late 16th century. Medieval Latin from Greek analusis, from analuein unloose.
Reluctance: Unwillingness or disinclination to do something. Ambivalence: The state of having mixed feelings or contradictory ideas about something or someone. Hesitation: The action of pausing or waiting before saying or doing something.
Good decision making in the American context means a healthy balance between objective analysis and intuition.
Intuition: The ability to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning; a thing that one knows or considers likely from instinctive feeling rather than conscious reasoning. Late Middle English denoting spiritual insight or immediate spiritual communication. Latin intueri, to consider.
Empiricism. Observation. For Americans, intuition is experience-based knowledge, called on immediately. Intuition is more than a spontaneous thought, a “gut reaction”, a hunch. Americans trust the judgement of the experienced, the wise, of those “who have been there”.
But not to the exclusion of objective analysis. Americans are constantly coming up with new ways to quantify what is deeply human, what in its essence cannot be quantified. It’s a question of balance. When to go with the objective analysis, when with intuition? Can they be combined?
Star Trek. A brilliant television series. Late 1960s. Deeply human, created with little frills, eye-candy, special effects. Instead it tapped into the human imagination, the greatest source of special effects. Kirk is intuition. Spock is reason. Tension between the two. But it worked.
The Powell Doctrine, named after General Colin Powell, stresses exhausting all political, economic, and diplomatic means, before a nation should resort to military force.
Powell has since expanded the doctrine, stating that when a nation is engaged in war, every resource and tool should be used to achieve decisive force against the enemy, minimizing American casualties and ending the conflict quickly by forcing the enemy to capitulate.
Deploy. To extend a military unit especially in width; to place in battle formation or appropriate positions; to spread out, utilize, or arrange for a deliberate purpose. From French déployer, literally, to unfold.
Let’s Stop “Throwing More Bodies” at the Problem, written by Adam Ziegler, August 8, 2013, on: smallfirminnovation(dot)com:”
“In my early days as a lawyer, there was one all-too-common phrase that drove me nuts: ‘just throw more bodies at it.’ I think it’s time to give this phrase a proper, final burial.
It’s insulting
Most new lawyers enter the market as smart, well-educated and highly motivated professionals. They’re not that different than you were a few years or decades ago. And most importantly, they’re people.
It’s dumb
Treating associates like cannon fodder is bad business. Associates work harder and better for supervisors that respect them.
It’s bad for clients
The ‘throw more bodies at it’ mentality is terrible for clients. Treating legal problem-solving as a brute force function of the quantity of lawyers and billable hours that can be brought to bear on a situation leads to flawed, wasteful, overly expensive work.”
In his 1893 book The Distribution of Wealth economist John R. Commons used the term human resource. The term was then used in the 1910s and 1920s. Workers were seen as a type of capital asset. E.W. Bakke revived “human resources” in its modern form was in 1958. Adam Smith defined human capital as follows:
“The acquisition of such talents, by the maintenance of the acquirer during his education, study, or apprenticeship, always costs a real expense, which is a capital fixed and realized, as it were, in his person. The improved dexterity of a workman may be considered in the same light as a machine or instrument of trade which facilitates and abridges labor, and which, though it costs a certain expense, repays that expense with a profit.”
“… in the same light as a machine.”