they had a much stronger class system than we do. i think america is a socially mobile society. people come up from nowhere and can succeed in our country because we make opportunity available. this is one of the reasons we sive universal health care. you can't have the opportunity to succeed if you are sick and can't get treated. it is part of the american dream a give everybody a chance and providing health care is part of giving them an equal chance. thomas roy reid has been our guest on "in depth" for the last three hours. these are his english books, "confucius l ves next door,"n "the chip", "united states of europe", "the healing of america", his most recent, "congressional odyssey," his first and his best reviewed "ski japan!". t.r. reid, thank you for being with us on "in depth" this

>> in their book, "dirty rotten strategies," authors ian mitroff and abraham silvers, claimed all institutions either solve the wrong problem unintentionally or intentionally tackled the right

problem in the wrong way. they claim that government does both. the commonwealth club in san francisco hosts this event. >> if i had to sum up the book in a single statement, it would be dull solve the wrong problems precisely. because if you do it not only waste the precious resources, time, energy, but it leaves the citizens in despair and further put solve the true problems such as they build up into a crisis. and also if i had to summarize in a single saying it would be from the celebrated author thomas come if they can get you asking the wrong question, you don't have to worry about the answers. so they can get you to say yeah, corporations like would a person as has the same political rights as free speech as a person, you go down the wrong track. what's worse, the wrong solution to the right problem, or the right solution to the wrong problem?

well, the right solution to the wrong problem is worse. because if you get the right solution to the wrong problem you convince yourself you have solve the right problem and you don't go back up to the start of the tunnel coming into all the different branches. i've gone down the right path. but if you keep getting the wrong solution to the right problem, use it, okay, i've made an error and hopefully the error will be self-correcting or i will come to the right solution, why solve the wrong problem precisely? as i said, a waste of time. in every case, what use all the right or wrong problem is due to a set of assumptions. it's due to faulty assumptions. i want to give you some examples of the right solution to the wrong problem, and let me start with the ad for a bank that i don't think i can show the video here, what i don't know, some of

you have looked at the ads for allied bank. some of you may, and it's a set of attention grabbing ads on tv. and what the future our young children. so in this shot here, which is a steal of a video, you have two children and a guy who is advertising the bank says, would you like to have a horse? in the first place, the little girl gets a plastic cork. then the second case, a real pony trots out. and then what you see is the disappointment on the face of the first girl. now, i looked at it and said, why would you want to film child abuse or humiliation as a way to get, you know, attention to your bank? yes, i know every business has to grab attention. and because there's oh so much limited attention that people have, and you can just, because i've been in corporations. this make sense, this will be

fun. then you all start going down that path. and you don't say how would somebody else you would. in fact, i called and wrote an e-mail to the bank and said don't you realize they were actors? [laughter] >> they weren't really children. of course, i realize that. that's not the point. they are still coming and showing it, but again, you get trapped by your assumptions. you can see how other people see it. let me give you an overview of the talk, and what's in the book. so we're going to talk about something called e3 and before, air of the third time in our the fourth can. they are central to solving the right or the wrong problem. i was plain that. in the book, we try to get as many examples as we can of where people fall into solving the wrong problem precisely. so we talk about the educational system, health care, national insecurity, act anemia, on reality, the medium, knowledge,

religion, and then hopefully some ways out of this conundrum dilemma. so let me start with e3 and e4. if you take a course in statistics, just about every course talked about two types of air, type one and type two error. everyone has taken a course that knows about that. the easiest way to understand is your a drugmaker and have a new drug or an old drug. what to do as you go and test run on the sample and hopefully the new drug is better than the old drug. but there are two types of errors you can make. one is to say the new drug is better than the old drug when it really isn't. and vice versa. the old drug is better than the new drug when it really isn't that those are type one and type two errors. those happen in like a bell shaped curve and would have gotten the right sample. e3 is very different. have it tested the right hypothesis to begin with? am i asking the right questions? so whether it is the cost of the efficacy of the drug or healthier, it's have e3 has to do with how we define a problem

in the first place. and so e3 is when we trick ourselves, not necessary in but else, but we took ourselves, okay, following up with your pet hypostasis. e4 is more deceptive and potentially more harmful. it's when i try to convince you that the formulation that i and my company, my organization come up is the right formulation that and you ought to accept it and there is no other way to formulate the problem. so it's are fundamentally with education, and in the book, talk about, i'm not a proponent of textbooks. most of us start learning from textbooks so the first thing we learned is six plus six, for example, equals 12. the reason is not about is already pre-formulated. there's only one in right answer but you can easily convert into a problem. billy has $6 the need to $11 to buy a video game the bill is in

a poor family and he has to get his money to help his mother and father. then it becomes a problem. because the context is all important exercise is move all the contacts, strip things down. the problems with exercises thy give students 20, 12 years whatever does of exercise. you turn them into certainty junkets and they balk like mad if you give them a real problem would have before but the problem. there's not just one formulation. so you get in the problem of negotiation but you don't get that. as you go through technical education. exercises don't equal problems. and problems don't equal massive. a mass as a whole system, a set of problems that are dynamically interconnected and change all the time. one of my mentors put it, managers don't solve problems. they manage messes. and that's what president obama certainly has to do. it's not a single ill-defined problem, but how all these

things are interconnected. so the health care problem is not separate from the financial recovery, and jobs recovery and all the rest of the. if you have a mass, and i wished an example, if you take any of the elements out of the problems of the mess, that comes with the, you distort the problem, you distort domestic because you have to look at the interactions. problems are not separable. health care, let me give you an example. of how we get off on solving the wrong problem. technically the u.s. has the best medical system in the world. no question from a technical standpoint. but technology does not actually equal the best good of health care as we learn. they are not the same. so solving the medical problem is not the same as the health care problem. in fact, the u.s. has a poor sick care system. we have learned how to maximize the bonuses, the pay of ceos, the current wellpoint massive shows which is incredible. not to think that you are not

just raising the premiums, but what kind of you would set off. and music they didn't think about that so they didn't formulate the problem as ms. it okay, we need to bring in more money. the health care system, and we'll talk about the current health care bill, is founded on three primary assumptions. one, government is the problem. number two, health care is a business, like any other business. and three, cost-cutting is the primary aim. now government is the problem goes way back to the founding of this republic. if you read robert rice, one of the primary this of this society, this country obviously given the experience we had in europe is that one of the myths he calls the bottom at the top that you can't trust those guys, the rich guys, the top who work on our behalf. that's just translate into modern times, you know,

government is the problem. health care is a business. and economy said no. no, because we have a health care property you can go and shop for alternatives. i can personalize. i broke up both of my arms a couple of months ago. i have a scar year and a plate that is embedded with screws. when i need surgery e-mail you going to go on and shop around. how do i know how to pick the best orthopedist? i visit i will have to realize on people to recommend people. so i -- it's not ordinary business. is helped or a privilege or the right? it's not that you have to accept my formulation or my statements. that's not the point. but i put my things, my assertions, strong as possible so you know what i'm saying. if you disagree, therefore, you have a hopeful better clarity on what you agree. so i'm not saying that. the trouble with cost-cutting is

this. you can cut costs, but you can cut it piecemeal. but cutting costs piecemeal is not the same as cutting costs across the entire cycle of health care. and that's where cost-cutting is falling down, is not consistent. so who's against cost-cutting? that's not the point if you do in an isolated piecemeal basis you and variably slammed into solving the wrong problem. the critical role, critical assumptions, everything is dependent upon assumptions. the me give you an example, something that is still unfortunately fresh in our mind, and that's the shooting in fort hood by an army psychiatrist. well, what happens in a crisis is principally this. it's not, yeah, people die, which of course they do. it cost a lot of money. the organization loses money. but one of the primary things that happens in those people aren't aware of, a crisis literally demolishes all or

nearly all of the principles assumptions that we used to get meaning to our life to reality. that's what i give an ex-essential definition of a crisis. so the case of fort hood, the enemy is not here on the base. that was, the enemy is in a foreign land thousands of miles from here. so cross that assumption out. again, we will face the enemy right here in the u.s. we will face them over there. so cross that assumption. and mental health care professionals, whom we can rely, that will be the envy. and then one of our own, which is related to the others. but here's the point. when i listen to crisis, i take them in a different way because virtually every case, the crisis undermined a primary set of beliefs that we used to make sense of reality come and that's why they aren't ask essential crisis. they undermine literally, pull the proverbial rub from out

under us that we used to make sense of our lives. and unfortunate i could give many other examples that the whole belief system crashed and that's way become so dramatic. in the indicates a vocal the city which is one of the first and i did this, there were three principal assumptions. remember the building that was blown up, by an american terrorist. terrorism doesn't happen in the heartland of america. wrong. and american will be a terrorist, kill other americans. wrong. and worst of all innocent men, women and children won't be killed. so in case of oklahoma city no wonder bill clinton and billy graham, national day of mourning, spiritual healing, because people were utterly devastated. so in every crisis i've seen, a primary set of assumptions is dismantled. gives meaning to our existence. give some examples of the book. well, we talk about unreality. what's really more. so much into image manipulation,

and has been. we can merge, and i think in the last election on cnn as article, i forget the name, quote, the same virtual room with wolf blitzer. it was a holographic, you know, he was talking to a holographic image of one of the other anchors. and we excepted. but there are other things that we have so merge information for entertainment that we don't know which is which any more. and it has to be entertaining or it can hold our attention, doesn't engage us. one of the examples of unreality, i don't know whether you know this, but johns hopkins have allowed twittering in the operation room of a brain surgery so they can bring, they can get business for the hospital. well, so now we have a merging of what's inside, what else i want the things that happens in unreality we do boundary blurring. so we have learned very well as

a society how to merge, you know, images and quotes, which real that after a while can we keep it straight? well, we also have the normalization of the bizarre. look at tv. normalization of pornography on a social media, normalization of terrorism or -- it just goes by the board almost anything you can think of is knocked out. knowledge, how can we determine if we are committing a e3 or type for error. i would have to go in various knowledge systems, and let me, i will do this quickly. we can talk more about it. there are five principal models that we used to determine the truth of anything. most of us are unaware of it. the first is the expert consensus. there are a group of experts who agree on one statistic and the more they're in agreement,

supposedly the better truth. but another way is can we build a scientific modeling? in the '30s multiple models, can i build multiple models? what let me give you a concrete example, otherwise it gets too abstract. when i teach a class, about five weeks, four weeks in class i asked my students to write a letter. i asked him to write a letter to somebody who's important in their life, explaining in their words, their own words, what they have been learning. so i had a young woman who came up with a beautiful example of these abstract systems, and what she did, she won't a letter to her mother how to bake the perfect apple pie. and if you use expert consensus, you go out, you know, you do a big web searching with the gourmet cooks on that's the perfect apple pie. number two is use a site like chemistry. you get the perfect ingredients. three, you go round the world and get different cultures and with different cultures might consider the perfect apple pie.

fourth, the conflict model we have a knockdown drag-out debate. is iron chef. you have to people get on and they have to, you know, different philosophies of cooking. and whatever one survives, whatever one wins the debate, that's called big perfect apple pie. and this one is interesting. it's not just the ingredients alone which make the perfect apple pot but the ambulance of the kitchen and how you feel about cooking. here's the point of this. you can't really determine whether you are committing a type three or type for error if you only use models wanted to, the first two ways. because they typically only produce one view of a problem. what they take as the correct one. it's only when you get the multiple ways of defining a problem that you can begin to get a handle on, quote, what is truth or what is false, or otherwise you can't do. not that it's perfect. i'm not saying that, but it's only when you get to the. and it's only when you get to

four and five. when you get down to five, it's the rarest type of knowledge system of all. we don't train people how to thank systemically. and that's the only way out of these horrific problems we face. they can't be defined by one discipline, one profession. in fact, when i hear people come up with quotes one definition of any problem i'm going to run like mad because i know you have to accept that their assumptn, and there is rarely do people make their assumptions clear. religion just to give you a quick overview, is that i really recommend, i can't recommend enough karen armstrong. she is i think the clearest, most masterful author of life, of which i know who writes marvelously about religion. and she has written, you know, religions are really the solutions to the social problems. that doesn't make about today

but you have to understand the historical context in which they arose, and not necessarily everything appropriate for our times. if you read her latest book, the case for god, which is even more marvelous, you get the same. there are rational reasons for believing in god, contrary to what and sam harris. it's not the solution to the wrong problem. there are rational reasons. they give the worst possible definition of religion, which they can venture down and call it the source of all our problems. but there's no reason believe if he got rid of all religion, tomorrow that we wouldn't have the same conflicts. in fact, one of the first books i did was the subjective side of science. i studied the apollo moon sites. not the astronauts. and if you think a science is worth his or her salt is going to give up his or her pet hypothesis, particular for the origin of the moon because the first round of rock art return

to the moon you've got to be great. ultimately, they will give it up, but only after they defended it to the death. when it hit 42 of the most prestigious scientists, they said that was rational. that a scientist shouldn't abandon his or her pet hypothesis too soon, lest they give up something that's worth exploring. it's not the wrong solution, wrong problem. i don't have time to go into, but one of the things that's most interesting when we study religion historically is that our concepts of god have evolved historically so you go back to the old testament. it's a raffle, vengeful god, take no prisoners, you know, to the kind of god that some of the theologians is document is what is the image of god that we need that is important or a sustainable economy for a world that we want to make ecologically healthy and preserve. that's a very different kind of conception of god. so the image of god is not

remain static that's a different of what image of god you either solved or not solving the wrong problem. way out, well, messes cannot be managed by the mindset that created them. albert einstein, that's too. private albert einstein said many years ago. that the solution to a problem cannot be greeted by the same mindset that created the problem. so you need a different mindset, and to give you a flavor, this is the health care mess. you can't say the solution to health care is in any one of those boxes. it makes no sense. i don't exist independent. rather, we have to evolve and don't do this and universes. we don't really -- the fundamental purpose of university and is to teach critical thinking. teach technology and theories, of course that's important, but the fundamental job is critical thinking. and critical thinking involves knowledge of assumptions, be

able to criticize your assumptions and able to replace them, to think about alternate assumption. them to be able to appreciate complex messes. not simpleminded problems in their entirety, and to bring to bear on them multiple ways of looking at them from multiple disciplines, both appointed use, to say by looking at the mess, okay, maybe now i have a better idea as to which parts of the mess i want to concentrate on for the time being. but in order to know that i have to see the entire mess. to be able. now, is there any definitive way to say you know you define domestic rackley? of course not. it's a starter. and i have no idea if you put that up that other people would be able to add to it. in conclusion, use that great philosopher george patton, if everybody is still alive, then somebody isn't thinking and even i, my co-author modified it, everybody is thinking alike and nobody is thinking. i will stop with this anecdote

that one of the first ceos of general motors, alfred p. sloan, i don't know how many of you know that, but he was marvelous. he was dismayed when he had an important problem in the corporation and brought to get his top executives. and they agreed to readily. he said, gentlemen, i propose that we postponed until we can come back and meet and have been ordered debate on the problem. so he was very, very -- he didn't believe -- he was very skeptical and full of doubt if there was to readily agreement on what the nature of the problem is. with that, that's my formal remarks in what i really like to do and we have plenty of time, be glad to talk about more, many parts of the book. but what questions you have and

what your comments are about the topic. rather than by just lecturing or preaching at you. so whatever questions you have, i'd be glad to address them, as best i can. anybody. mark? [inaudible] >> spent i would like to ask you to please come up to ask a question. we're recording this for c-span and possibly broadcast onorato. i would like to remind are losing audience at home that you are listeninwere listening to te commonwealth club of california. our program tonight is "dirty rotten strategies: how we trick ourselves and others into solving the wrong problems precisely." with dr. mitroff. i am chairman of the business and leadership forum at the club. and i'm as you please to come up and answer questions at the microphone. thank you. >> okay. mark, come on up. this is my friend, margaret.

>> i was just one if you could take was going on and on the manufacturing world right now and put them, cuba, the construct of your notions hear about the problems that. >> i would be glad to but i want to say a little friend about my friend mark anderson. we knew one another when i lived in l.a. and he was a deputy chief to the los angeles police department. and i learned a lot by hanging out with mark and his colleagues, and i always said the citizens of l.a. didn't know how lucky they were to have the people, at the executive level i met and the officers i met were not that there were problems in lapd, which we know, in fact, talking about crisis management, every time in los angeles police department had a crisis, with the l.a. times would do is trot out the 40 year history of all the previous crises that lapd

had in order to make the case, rightly or wrongly, that it wasn't an aberration. i'm going to tell you, because when i was studying firestone, and what i did in firestone, i take about nine weeks of that off the air and boiled it down to an hour and a half video, which it used to train people and crisis management. and its visual case, not just one of these written cases. and you get all the emotions and you get people, you get the corporate executives not speaking, you know, they are dragged into speaking, you, it is virtually like toyota. but here's what the l.a. times did on the ford firestone. they ran a column. out how many weeks in the ford firestone. they said the top 10 tie recalls in u.s. history, firestone had five of them. half of the. again, to show it wasn't an aberration. because here's the point. there are no secrets in a crisis as toyota shows. the investigative reporters, the

discord employees, everything will come out. so what i would have said to toyota, are you crazy? you think this isn't going to come out? because the media are always going to ask this. when did you know, if you didn't know, why did you know and if you know why didn't you do anything about it and why didn't you speak out about it? the point is, if you don't get that out that yes, we did something wrong, then it's only going to add to the crisis. okay, so what i would have done is painful as it is, and it is painful, it's like speaking to bill clinton when he was president, yes, mr. president, with all due respect, i know how painful, it's better to get out on your watch, your time that you did have an affair with monica lewinsky because it will come out that the only question is how it's going to come out which are going to say about it. so it has come out that toyota did know, they didn't do anything about it. now there setting up a special unit, just like ford firestone said we're going to set up a special unit to model the stuff around will. a 500 person unit that for set

up at the height. why the hell did you have a 50, permanent unit, constantly searching around for problems. in fact, what i have said to my clients, the people i've consulted with is that if you have only one thing to do in a crisis, my one recommendation, hire an ex-investigative reporter to dig around all the dirt in the corporation and make a mock newspaper or a mock tv interview to show your corporation what it looks like because i guarantee you, that's what will happen. why doesn't that happen? denial is so powerful when started doing research on crisis management, and i had graduate students working for me. they went out and they did interviews and corporations. and they kept coming back with this. they said, you know, we're hearing all of these rationalizations about why corporations don't need to do crisis management. it's interesting. and people in the middle say we would like to do it but here's what they said.

and then the light went on one day. and here's what went on. and my brother was in the audience, who is a psychologist, this will gel with him. i looked at the corporate rationalizations and i knew the freudian defense mechanisms. and they almost mirrored the freudian defense mechanism. in fact, they did. for example, denial. nothing bad can happen to us, you know, or the grandiose idea. the bad things don't happen to perfect good organizations that go tell that to johnson & johnson. that's what a pick on you because that way they make a good case. . .

because we do know some of the things from a good case is that we studied of organizations that are bryce is prepared. it's not a mystery coming out. anyway so toyota is particularly painful to me. i am disgusted, this completely disgusted. being in this for 25ears learn s it's not like this is rocket science but the nile and defense monisms are so powerful. yes, sir. >> dr. mitroff, i run an organization, a small nonprofit that worsen the environmental community. i have to make decisions all the

time, nobody dies from the decisions i make but people are impacted, policies that we pursue our impacted. i'm most concerned that when i am faced with a mass because i inherited various masses that people don't give me a month -- enough information that people% with false choices. which lead to false policies which think it undermined by reality when it comes off quickly thereafter. can you give us any clues as to how to identify the things that go into the presentation of false choices and how to combat that in a way that doesn't mean the integrity of the people that you're dealing with because there just dealing with their own things. >> let me give some clues, you can't do these on all organizations and i realize this but here's one of the things that i and my colleagues and my wife and i have worked on over the years. remember i talk about those five inquiry methods, those are

abstract but as a social scientist i have worked turning to planning methods so to give an example, i don't know if you know the myers briggs type indicator for you measure personality and one of the things we have done for how many years is that go into a corporation organization and get the myers briggs. you put all the people in one personality type and the same group, breaking problems down into details and then from technical standpoint you put all the these into a group and the intuitive feeling and of the sensing feeling people into their separate groups and many to that it intensifies that way of looking. first of all, everybody comes to a quick agreement because they all think alike and then it magnifies the differences between them. no matter what the problem is you ask them to define the problem from their perspective, you ask them to list the major stakeholders affected and the

fact the problem and what assumptions they make either about the problem or solution. you then have a systematic way to get a good debate, not a destructive debate but hopefully constructive debate. after you've had the debate you can then combine the group's with all the types together at random and say what's the best we can do given you further debate or if you can't get the myers briggs let me tell you another way. so i'm not in the organization and you put people in one group that argue the status quo. don't change the policies, do everything we've done the way with diamonds and whether they believe it or not because you put people at random because often people who don't believe in a policy to make a stronger argument for it than people who do and then you put people who moderately opposition from the status quo two really really are positioned to the fourth group that is radically -- everything is status quo goes. what to do is the same thing, define the problem, list the

same colors and assumptions you have to make about your policy so why it's the best and the biggest problem on which i have worked in some time ago the director of the u.s. census bureau was a personal friend. i happen to work as a consultant on the conduct of the 1980 -- 1990 census with the 2010 coming up, a billion dollars operation because billions go into the federal government based on population counts back to the states with the problem is undercount. if you miss people in the minimus' blacks and hispanics more than caucasians and so states don't get their proportion. so we set up a week-long debate because it was that important and we had people are you these four policies and i will go with the rock hounds and adjust the numbers to radical forms of adjustment. so that the director of the census could say i have examined

this debate and the options open to me with broadly as i can and i'm prepared to defend in an article and the federal register, not that it's perfect but it gave you a deeper and broader understanding of the problem. anyway that's one example. obviously if you have a small organization your hard put to may be set up those differences which can. he can do it in any organization. let me tell one of the problems i felt the biggest problems for nonprofits. they often don't see the benefit but professional management. they think we don't need that and they're not as well managed, not that are busily for-profit corporations are necessarily as well managed as we have seen but i believe in professional management so you have to look at the shadow sides, the strengths and weaknesses and set up groups to do that as well.

>> and dismayed that the ability to think that we seems pretty rare. and i'm wondering where are we cultivating the ability to think systemically in the electorate in the congress and managers and business schools? because i'm afraid is rather rare commodity and if that's the way out afraid there's too many of us to the two that door. do you have thoughts about how we can do that better? >> you're right. if i am in my throws and dups of what passes is a newcomer not cynicism but pessimism, a half to a brain ennead let me tell you how i don't get to the illogic and that's the biggest part of the book that i skipped over and that after i talk about i don't know how many know this man by the name of ken wilbur. the is for me one of the

foremost writers and spirituality and human development alive on the planet today. he's an incredible fear edition. i have to believe in the power of human development because supply take which you just said and i'm not inclined to disagree i have a sense of hopelessness. but the point is that the reason why i'm here speaking out that i believe one book would make changes the whole face of the one, but that one idea that is unleashed over it gains currency and takes off so i have to believe in that, that's one of the types that i talk about in the chapter zero and religion and here it is. a confusing one state of development for its lack thereof in another state and that's one of our principles. we try to solve the problems at one level by allowing levels down and i can be solved, that's the whole point and that's what

i'm talking about sustanon because the problems we have cannot really be solved more than a sustanon perspective but yet you're right. we don't teach kids and really much of education but that's why i've been a maverick my entire career. not that i necessarily the best spokesperson, i just am. a maverick and not necessarily does the academy want to hear it to and that's why i have to stand by standard university press for taking the radical manuscript like this with this kind of a message to say the ability to challenge our assumptions, to rethink her the substance and think expansively come to think beyond the confines of a single narrow discipline or oppression, that's the way out. if we are so tired in the onset of assumptions or one organization by definition began to appear that's why in my own life i have been really career

and fortunate enough to do consulting on a wide variety of organizations because i can generalize, but the good news is this. here's the good news -- that 15% of organizations i would say our pro-active prices prepared and maybe get a fresh thinking systemically. 85 percent can't. that's the bad news and that number has remained pretty constant over the 25 years i've been doing this study. and yet to we are trying, i am trying everything in my capability in my power to increase that and spread the message. because otherwise global warming is just another example. obviously it's a systemic global phenomenon, not a problem just one country or one discipline. yes, sir. >> you asked for questions or comments and i really don't have

a question but i have a comment. that stems from when i was at the lawrence national laboratory and we had in number of outside agencies coming to us and saying help us solve our problems. i saw what was going on and said this is no good. i said when if you're going to solve the problems we have to set aside 20 percent of the time of friends talking about whether you have defined the problem correctly and if you agree with add then we can go on to solve whatever the problem really is. in seoul said it directly to them and change the whole for a reference and everything. if you want to comment on that. >> i agree. i agree wholeheartedly. i have studied scientific inquiry from the sustanon perspective and let me very briefly laid out for you. good john dewey won a full

american philosopher pragmatist said problems don't just dart in this inquiry. .edu starred in moral outrage like they raise their rates 39%. how can they do that. in fact, i want to say that from a sampling of what we're talking about in our book wellpoint and have done anything more beneficial forgetting universal health care in this country. couldn't have done anything better. from their standpoint it's crazy, from our standpoint i think it's crazy but in terms of finally getting home that it will cost a trillion dollars to the government with health care but if you don't is going to cost $10 million in premiums and you can go to the cbo. here's the fourth steps of santa for problem solving. the first up defining the problem. you build a conceptual model of the problem, that's when you say what other variables and abroad burbles, is a psychological, is a sociological and then you take

a drug addiction. is there a single explanation for drug addiction? no, psychological problem, a medical problem, a family problem -- each of those professions as different variables that will define the problem differently and remember years ago came across the study where they gave to advance medical students and man psychology students a series of pictures of babies in distress and, of course, of medical students sought kollek and a psychologist saw stress. with a wrong? i don't know but the point is to see it through the filter of your profession as a build a conceptual model. the second is to build an enzyme scientific model so the first-aid to was semantic. the second stage is syntactic. learn how to build models. the third stage i derive a solution. i derive a solution not to the problem but to the model. and it doesn't necessarily follow the solution to the model

will remove the problem. in the fourth stage is pragmatic where i take this theoretical solution and implement and see if it moves the problem. the type three and type four errors primarily occurred in the first page. fi define the problem raleigh and by the way if i don't see all the stages of define problem wrongly. if i'm already thinking implementation and just thinking about theoretical models have defined the problem incorrectly. because i have to think systemically. but at least what we can do is we can say. the different parts of a problem solving and the point is there for people concentrate on these children branches and the trouble is they don't tend to see all of them in the full context of scientific problem-solving as a system. if you do have to in this you misrepresent the activity but it's another example of the systemic looking at things. is it so difficult and

impossible that you can't teach? no, you can teach it in the trouble is you've got to go through this way of thinking and the more you do it is not the becomes like that some, but it just lichen non is a hard to do differently misrepresentations are problems. at the beginning in doubles every but the more you do it in a dozen double the effort. if you look at the assumptions of the democrats and the progress of susie the assumptions of the conservatives and republicans feared the automatically -- you can't define one without the other. but as a way of thinking and it's like any activity the more you exercise that the more it becomes a normal part of thinking and doing. any other questions or comments? i can't believe there are no more questions or comments. about anything? yes, sir. >> when i saw the title of your

book and was thinking of government as a classic example. we have problems everywhere in a suicide no problem ever really gets solved, we go from one problem to another. would you like to comment on that? >> i agree, you begin to see that their characteristic typed three and four errors that run rampant now matter what the particular area is that we would focus on and that's important but you sit in government but you also see in corporations because the point is we know we are busy fighting today's fire. but here's the point. it's the point of strategic planning which all big corporations supposedly have. not just to think about isolated problems but to think about them in a broader context and to anticipate problems. is it done perfectly? of course, not so it's easy to beat up government but i have to

say having my whole life worked in both private and public sector with elements have it, i don't really see one is better than the other, and going to tell you that i've been consulting with general motors and if you think general motors is one of the biggest bureaucracy is obviously i would have seen rivalling the federal government. my friend vince who is director of the census bureau went to work as the head of market intelligence for general motors and i've worked with ham and came in and the bureaucracy and the five domes and general motors rival anything that you see anywhere. the buick people speak to the chevrolet and vice versa. so there wasn't any really planning across the separate towers so you can see it most of all and feel the brunt in government but the point is we

feel the brunt of all this other corporations as well. you have to bail out general motors if they make director carson will lose car share whatever so i wouldn't say it's just one sector. i talked about my friend the market here, i wouldn't say by any stretch of lapd is completely won a pole, had a lot of good will performing people and did a lot of face, a lot of things well. i can tell you one thing from crisis management of. that shows the lack of systemic thinking and you see its in the latest winter olympic games but you see it in salt lake which you called government and public-private. in this so late winter olympics i think $200 million was spent on terrorism, the threat of terrorism but you know, what it did in the winter olympics and use the part of it in today's winter olympics people's

inability to think systemically. remember what the problem was? the russian ice dancers were downgraded if so it was the internal moral crisis because they put all this money brightly south preparing for terrorism but they didn't think broadly across the board at all the different kinds of crises that could come to refer to the international olympic committee. so the fact that you prepare for one type of crisis doesn't say you prepare for the others and i had time i did sherry the different families and groupings of crises, they're not of an abstract and the best organizations do this. they pick one prices at least one from each of the death and types and then they interrelate them. so they are prepared across the board. that's thinking systemically and the best organizations to that and that's where relearned so it's not the key is that there are no good organizations which to learn. i wish there were more but it's not that there are zero.

that's not -- i wouldn't say that and that gives me hope. we can learn from them. i wish to learn more from them. we haven't, but i have the hope that we can or at least that's what i stand for. not to say let's pack it in, we can't think systemically, it's all over. because that will go back to my friend can wilbur. as part of the evolution, our evolution hopefully have the ability to think more complex manners and complexity of the world as obviously increases. so the challenges we face are greater. hope without hope it is hopeless. any other things? >> i happen to be old enough to remember when the national and

international news was 15 minutes every evening. john cameron swayze, douglas edwards. now we have 24 hour news including a lot of the talking heads. can you comment on how this exacerbates problems and maybe magnifies? >> that's interesting. that really is interesting. more does not necessarily lead to better, more is not better if you have to talk about the quality because i'm old enough to remember when you have 15 and have heard the news was devoted in now with a 24 hour, it doesn't necessarily mean more insightful. i happen to be a fan and my wife and i of the pbs newshour were you find and out for maybe six minutes or tenants more in-depth reporters covering the two find them on the average new.

and no, it's not necessarily more is better and i don't necessarily believe that facebook and all the social media necessarily have led to better coverage and to be honest and not sure what the way out his. and a technologically we have improved and we can now manipulate and merge images with so-called morality and becomes difficult to know what is real. assuming we still care and there's been experiments work people not only can tell the difference but don't care to tell the difference. because we now so thoroughly have merged information and entertainment that it's got to be entertaining. that's why going back to the allied bank commercial, i know there try to do, try to grab our attention and hold it because everybody's guide to fight for that. the me give another example that's off. one of the examples i didn't talk about the one that is disturbing to me. we all know who michael dick,

the disgraced atlanta falcons quarterback went to prison for dogfighting and has since come out to and reinstated in did his time. i don't think many people know this which is disturbing talking about when moral devaluation. michael before he went to prison was standing at the lectern in atlanta and had a series of notes and when he left the lecture and he left the nose behind and i think it was the president of humane society are so many high up took the notes and auction them off at ebay. that to me is a type three errors to say you are strapped for cash but supposedly humane society is a moral higher plane. wamp stands as a beginning and you expect more from them. i don't know about you, talk about queasy feeling. i am understand where we get trapped into the strapped for cash and debt to raise it, so

it's not just the news media but to see it all across the whole society and say why are you doing that blacks shirley there have to being other way is, not doing something that lowers your morals currency. i'm so of the media have gone back to the media. and now the problem all too well and they really have solved how to merge the latest technology into an image manipulation interspersing was real and and what's not real into the same thing that we are astonished images. obviously we have a society that are proportionately and people looked on texting while driving there's obviously a problem. wherever you look at it.

, that is precisely the point, not that i'm an anti technology person, i silliman engineer but not solely an engineer. that's the point. i don't just look for technical excellence of. back to health care, yes, we have technically the most advanced medical system in the world but obviously not in terms of the liberty -- delivery, whenever primary modes of delivery, that's an outrage. yes, sir. >> banaa. c-span: one word question, tiger. tiger woods is an interesting case on which i have commented on the the radio and tiger woods is another prime no example of what can happen in a crisis. listen to his manacle button, i believe it got so big the rules did not pertain to him and

that's what happens to media celebrities but here's the point of tiger woods. the first billion dollar athlete corporation wall, the hard to professional golf and shows how instantly an icon and crash into these worlds. obviously you're not going to hear and if and when he.com it wasn't right and he admitted it but here's the point, no secrets. i know that she. in the look on cnn there were horrible stygian other videos and some of them were comment now cartoons that portrayed him in a worse light, but that's what will happen in a crisis. now you tell me how many corporations to hire the going back to the investigative reporter, somebody who will betray them in the worst possible light. that's the way to get an attack on a corporation because i guarantee you absolutely that is what will happen. i remember years ago i was

speaking at a group of people from public broadcasting system, the head of corporation public broadcasting or some crisis and he said he didn't have any time to prepare a response to congress about what was alleged to have happen and i went after him and i said with all due respect that's one of the primary things in a crisis. you don't on the clark, the party to or. the newspaper intourist. cnn is not yours. you have lost control. the only way to gain control is to dress up with copley the american public will forgive and say i did it, i did something really bad, i have to atone for it. whether i can rebuild my family, that's -- because look at toyota. if you have to drag that out of them which was the case of toyota is worse. because now look what toyota

stood for -- trust, reliability, quality. tell me which one of those three pillars is left? apparently the people considering buying a toyota it is down 24% or 20 represents. they're not going to do because it is that for agile. you can lose and will they come back rest of probably come back like a board of firestone. there will be people who will not come back to it, there will be perpetually skeptical. i will be angry, not just being angry old guide but say you abused my trusted. that was the heart of the business and you didn't fess up. i was really bad apparently toyota had a history of opening up in fixing whenever problems there were in the manufacturing, the quality and once that is lost of you have betrayed -- it's akin to an active bridge railing once people have arbitrate one of the worst

things you can do to a person is to betray them. because that is all lost. we can have a long conversation about what if anything they can do to repair their image but that is another conversation. so this does stuff come back to prices. you don't solve the right problem. can you ever know exactly that you're solving the right problem? of course, not because presumably if you did he was all the right problem but nonetheless if you get a reading and it's all depending on your assumptions. but i find is assumptions have a half life. they decay over time. there's no set of assumptions that i know that's true fraternity for some people not for me. kgk as the contest and circumstances change. the assumptions change in every don't change assumptions it is