Focus on Solutions

At any given time someone is writing or speaking about a topic of interest to them. They press a point of view. They attempt to educate their audience about the topic and the various points of view. They also attempt to persuade their audience to support their point of view.

Such messages are received by email, letter and brochures sent in the mail, as well as a host of electronic media – internet, email blast, blog, webpage, live link among electronic media. The topic may be covered in newspapers, magazines and on the radio and TV news outlets. In short there is an avalanche of information provided by many people about many topics. All are competing for attention.

Your attention. And mine, too. I find this exhausting. And confusing.

Searching for a simpler way I came up with a concept of ‘desired results’. The idea is to imagine the world, home, work place, whatever, existing with the topical area working well (in your opinion). What would that be like? Can the results be described accurately?

For example, in my world my car would easily get 75 miles to the gallon of fuel. At this point we don’t worry about how we achieved this result, only that it is a desired result. 

Placing this topical result in context with many other result areas makes things far more interesting! For example, I get 75 mpg with my car, commute less than 15 minutes one way to and from work. Air quality is super good with appropriate EPA rating. Energy supplies are sufficiently plentiful to maintain all energy costs to less than 7% of my household budget (heating, cooling, lights, cooking, automobile fuel). Furthermore, my electronic communications (TV, radio, internet and phones) cost less than 5% of our budget. An additional result area is ample supplies of quality water throughout the nation.

Joining contexts adds to the challenge of expanding access to needed technology, utilities and energy at affordable cost. I would add that such access provides room for choice and expanded use without wanton waste or damage to our living environment (water, soil and air quality).

Perhaps we could manage to acquire one or two of these results but not all of them together. Or perhaps we could achieve the results but only if household income rises to afford escalating costs. By the way I’m assuming a household income of $3100 per month, a middle of the road figure for senior citizens of recent retirement age. It is easy for a household with $10,000 per month to acquire the result areas shown above at vastly reduced proportions of their income or budget. We can readily see the problem posed by widely divergent economic levels of living. That alone may give rise to another result area such as “base household living costs for a family of 2, 3 or 4 persons”. By doing this we could separate the poverty from the middle income people, and still provide plenty of room for wealthier households who use their income very differently than the rest of us.

Rather than get involved with this sticky area, I wish to direct our attention to making a difference in real topical areas with clearly defined results. Such topical areas allow us to focus on what’s important as well as how to measure desired levels of achievement. In that way we can clearly place creative attention on solving many related problems that currently challenge key result achievements.

Attaining a high miles per gallon performance for an automobile will include inclusion of hybrid vehicles with both gas and electric propulsion. The entire fleet of vehicles may include totally electric powered autos as well. Over time we may include solar powered vehicles or any number of new technology energy resources that are not now available in the market.

Pricing of energy supplies alone accepts the challenge of increasing market prices for scarcer energy supplies. If we are to expand energy supplies while holding down consumer costs of those supplies means we will need to expand the supply technology as well as forms of energy beyond what is in use today. More supply, tempered demands equals lower unit costs billed to the customer. 

Many advances on several fronts will be necessary to achieve the desired results in one, or several, of the key result areas. That means our entire nation must get to work to work on several areas all at the same time. This will require relevant education of desired labor pool components. It will need research in scientific and engineering arenas to keep up with new product and system demands. It will require open economic markets to support the movement of capital among several areas of interest all at the same time. Similarly, government regulation and decision making modes must improve in accuracy and appropriateness in order to support the goals outlined above.

Special interest areas have held us back in the past. Witness slow growth of new technology in heating and air conditioning. Also of automotive design and propulsion technology. America has been wedded to oil interests going on 200 years. Electrical generation modes are also a special interest area that have blocked major invention of new energy sources. Coal powered turbines need to be replaced with other fuel options to safeguard our living environment. Nuclear options need to be safer or eliminated replaced by other energy sources.

In short we need to stop arguing about special interests and get at the real targets: key result areas. These should be broad enough to allow breadth of creativity and inventiveness. Along the way I believe what is important to the long term health of our nation will get the desired amount of attention and make-work nonsense will fall by the wayside.

Harnessing change for the commonweal is the goal. Not all change is good or efficient; but much is. Making good use of that will make us strong and keep us strong.

So what are the key result areas you think we should target?

October 7, 2014