The Decision Strategist

Today is Sunday, which means it’s time for the Sunday Morning Strategic Discussion (I’ve really got to work on getting it done before noon). Bait and switch tactics are used all the time in politics today, and there was a great example several days ago with the reaction to the Moveon.org advertisement about General Patraeus.

A bait and switch in retail is when a business offers a product at below cost, but then says the item is out of stock and offers a different item at a higher price. It works because people are willing to pay a higher price to overcome the disappointment of not getting the original item.

In politics the bait and switch is when a group makes a big deal about an issue to shift damaging attention away from themselves. It almost always works.

The reason it works is because the switch issue chosen is something that can be framed in terms of principles that are universally held. In the General Betray Us issue, the Republican party tends to choose an issue they can frame in patriarchal terms such as respect, responsible, morality, honor, and hero. No politician wants to be seen as against those issues.

Democrats tend to choose issues such as Bush’s veto of child health care, that can be framed in terms like giving, caring and children.

Clearly neither party wants to tackle the most important issue at hand, which is getting the US out of Iraq. There are plenty of voters who no longer want us in Iraq, but not a lot of people who think it is a good idea to pull out and leave the country in shambles.

It’s an intractable problem, and the people that come up with a strategy to fix it will gain a lot of political capital. Only there may not be a solution. If history is any guide, occupying forces only succeed if they are ruthless enough to commit virtual genocide and maintain total control over information (such as China in Tibet), a tactic that few in the US or the rest of the world would sit still for.

I don’t have a strategy for getting out of Iraq, and in my experience most people have nothing to suggest. Difficult though it may be, I think it’s time we started to consider solutions. Let’s start with goals. Part of the difficulty of the situation is that we don’t share common goals. Depending on your political leanings, you may think our current goal in Iraq is any or all of the following:

• Fight terrorism
• Ensure cheap access to oil
• Spread Democracy
• Stabilize the country enough to leave
• Ensure global dominance

And many more I’m sure. Our views are so disparate on this subject that there is little wonder we have no coherent strategy for what we are doing in Iraq.

Every analyst of the Iraq War focuses on what is wrong in Iraq, but I have a different take that people don’t want to hear: we won’t be out of Iraq until we fix our own problems. Most importantly, until our fractured nation can arrive at some common ground.

Let’s start by looking at some alternative points of view. If you’re conservative, consider reading these posts:

• Common Dreams
• Develnet
• Scott Teresi

If you’re liberal, start with some of these links:

• Right Wing News
• Conservative Voice
• Clarion

And then there’s the libertarians:

• LewsRockwell

Pretty crazy isn’t it? We will not be successful in Iraq until we reconcile these views. It may not seem like a big step, but until we have a common goal and reason for our existence in Iraq, we cannot begin to measure success or failure there, or determine how and when we should leave. There can be no real strategy.

If you have ideas about a strategy for Iraq, or a reason that you think we’re in Iraq that I missed, let me know. As always, I’ll post your responses next Sunday.

I’m tired of listening to both parties as they jockey to place blame. It’s time to shift the dialogue towards a solution.

- zot

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In response to last Sunday’s post of the strategic value of meetings, Bob weighed in with a couple of other suggestions

Discuss (in a personal meeting) with the people in charge of the meetings what their goal and ajenda is, and if they are open to hearing from me lay out a non-emotional, non-judgemental list of what I think could improve the meetings based on what their stated goals are;

Give my input about what I think would be a better use of company time/resources demonstrating what the pay off is from my persepctive;

Depending on my standing in the pecking order, employ skills to help focus and move things along, or keep a low profile;

Try to maintain collaborative and positive relationships with as many co workers as possible;

Finally, if I can’t find the leverage to shift the culture from toxic to productive, I get very busy trying to learn why I missed the true nature of this company when I was deciding to hire on, develop a job search strategy, and get out of Dodge. Life is too short–and too full of opportunities–to waste it where I don’t fit in, there is a lack of focus and teamwork, and mutual respect is lacking.

Bob brought up a couple of good points that I hadn’t considered. First is that if you have a good enough relationship with the people who run the meetings, you can meet with them directly to discuss the value of meetings and your ideas for improving them.

Second is that the quality of management can have a lot to say about the organization itself. If the meetings are poorly run, what other ways is the organization wasting your time or holding back the development of your skills?

It’s definitely something to think on. In today’s world it seems like no one (in my generation) stays at a job more than 5 years or so. What is the optimal length of time and how do you decide when it’s time to move on?

I’ve generally used the rule that when you are past the peak of learning and growth you should start to look elsewhere, but the location of that peak has as much to do with the individual as the company. Perhaps passing the learning peak is a sign of personal complacency more than limited options.

That’s it for this mornings ponderables.

-zot

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After a year and a half of hard work to pay off my credit cards I am finally making the last payment this morning. My only remaining debt is school loans at 3.5% interest and a car loan at 4.5%. Getting out of debt has been one of my primary goals, and I’m really excited to have achieved it.

So how did I eliminate my credit card debt?

To be honest the single biggest factor in paying off my credit cards was making a significant (to me) amount of money. Slightly less than two years ago I was just out of a masters program and was making a paltry salary as a part time adjunct faculty to a state college in Massachusetts. But in January of 2006 I moved to New Mexico for a great job doing economic analysis and began making significantly more.

I can’t directly take credit for that, but I can take credit for not allowing my lifestyle to expand to meet my income. I’ve done a number of things to fight the desire to buy things that have cut my expenses pretty drastically:

• Living with roommates. Though I didn’t really know anyone in Albuquerque, I always moved into places with roommates. This was less enjoyable than living alone until my girlfriend and I got a place together, which is the best of both worlds.
• Resisting big ticket items. I’ve succumbed to an Ipod shuffle and a first gen Ipod nano, but have resisted buying an Xbox 360, a Playstation 3, a big flat screen TV and a speaker system (I really wish I was playing Halo 3 though). I haven’t upgraded my Toyota Corolla to a more expensive car with a bigger monthly payment.
• Cutting back on small luxuries. I’ve been less successful at this. My chai consumption is still out of this world, and I typically spend more money per month eating out than I do buying groceries. I’ve made improvements, but I could do even better.
• Tracking my expenses. Tracking your money does have any direct money-saving effects, but it put me in a much better position to know how much I was spending on different things. What I saw initially appalled me and provided me with much of my motivation to reduce expenses. Aside from living with roommates, this has been the most important factor.
• Discussing finances. I’ve gotten some good ideas and motivation from personal finance blogs like The Simple Dollar, Digerati Life and Get Rich Slowly, but I’ve also talked a lot more about money and finance with family and friends, sharing ideas and providing further motivation to reduce spending.

The Story of Frugality

I’ve talked a lot in the past month about metaphors and how the stories we tell about ourselves affect many of our decisions. A big part of my journey to being credit card debt free has been re-aligning my view of myself to be more frugal and fiscally conservative. This is probably a natural progression as I get older, but I’m much happier with a story about myself as a frugal simple living advocate than I was with the self-story of a consumption-driven post-college kid.

-zot

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One of the worst things you can do when facing an important decision is to try and make the decision while engaged in other tasks. As we increase the number of things we are thinking about at a given time, our ability to consider information relative to the decision declines fairly sharply.

The basic problem is that people can hold only 3 to 7 bits of information in their head at one time. As that limit is approached, we necessarily begin limiting the information we take in. Evolutionarily speaking, it’s not surprising that when faced with limited bandwidth/storage problems our brains filter out the content of the information but leave the underlying factors like tone of voice and body language. These are the clues that tell us whether we are in physical danger.

What’s really interesting is that when we are distracted we respond to positive signals as well.

The Deception Blog has a post about how people judge things when they are distracted or unmotivated. A lack of motivation (either because people are busy or they don’t care) causes people judge what they hear not according to what they are actually hearing, but to the superficial physical clues such as whether the speaker is good looking or sounds confident. But when people are actively engaged, they analyze both what they hear and what they see in an effort to detect deception.

Most of us recognize that making decisions when distracted isn’t a good idea, but I don’t think we are really aware of how impeded our decision making ability becomes.

-zot

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