The Problem Longevity Problem

There is a consistent theme on many fronts where difficult problems are tackled and then marginalized before they are complete. Often times organizations get into a vicious cycle of trying to change something, or find a solution, and then before the work is complete there is a push to change the direction. This seems like such a simple thing, but incomplete solutions are a a failed effort.  And because they are unresolved, it is a reality that they stand in the way of future progress.  So why would an organization turn its back on a problem left undone?

Here are the core realities that underpin this kind of situation.   The most basic problem is the difficulty of the problem.  Because it is difficult, in general the solution is not known in advance.  Now, here is where you get into a fundamental logical flaw when it comes to unknowns: since it is unknown, how do you know what the solution will be?  If you do not know what the solution will be, then how are you sure it will take 6 months or 3 years?  The truth is you are never sure.  Research is not linear; you don't get in a discovery for every so many hours or dollars.  So everything is done with estimates.  With estimates, there are no guarantees. 

Let's take the Manhattan Project:  the physicists had some very challenging problems.  You can find out a lot of information here at wikipedia.org

Here is  a rough excerpt:
"The project's roots lay in scientists' fears since the 1930s that Nazi Germany was also investigating nuclear weapons of its own. Born out of a small research program in 1939, the Manhattan Project eventually employed more than 130,000 people and cost nearly US$2 billion ($22 billion in current value). It resulted in the creation of multiple production and research sites that operated in secret.^[2] "

Few organizations today could amass 130,000 people and $22 billion dollars towards a single project like the combined forces of the American, British, and Canadian governments working to a single purpose.  Sooner or later, the scientists and engineers developed the right solutions for the key questions of a nuclear fission bomb.
Of course the difficult problems involved seem simple to the outside world.  The whole kernel of the problem could be summed up as three problems: what nuclear material could detonate like a bomb,  how much material would it take to make a sustained chain reaction, and what would the best way to start the chain reaction.   These seem straightforward.  Remember that this was done long before digital computers, a complete understanding of particle physics, and based on the unstructured ramblings of university professors - all difficult challenges.

Did the Manhattan project have an initial budget and project deadline? Of course it did.  Did it fail to meet the original estimates?  Of course it did.

So risky problems are entered into with estimate  projected budget and timeframe.  Unfortunately, managers choose to take these as the gospel and there's where the problem starts.

The second problem is risk aversion. Managers like to claim that they can accept some risk, but in the end all managers are looking out for number one. Association with a failing project - because it is behind schedule and over budget - is not on the good side of career advancement. If a company can only see over-budgets and time delays, there is a level of risk aversion that may make revolutionary change impossible. There needs to be enough vision to undestand the long term objectives.  This gets harder and harder as companies look closer for profit and sacrifice opportunities for long term growth.  Just remember all those bailed out banks and investment companies that failed because their executives were more interested in short-term (and personal) profit that disintegrated their companies.

The third reason is the personal ambition of the manager in charge of the difficult task.  If a manager can find a way to avoid personal liability by eliminating an important yet unpopular or risky project then it is in his personal interest to do so.  If an important project gets into the infavorable territory, it may be called a success and shuffled into the completed column without any real progress. If you let managers avoid personal liability then it makes sense they will use it to survive those failures.

Comparing most managers to the manager of the Manhattan project, General Groves was a no-nonsense character that planned to win but he understood that failure was not an option so he continued to sacrifice his personal goals for the needs of the organization which was to develop nuclear weapons first.  It probably helped that this was during the war - so things like budgets and delays were not seen as failures unto themselves  because people understood the Nazis might be close to completing the same capability.  But the fact was that Groves saw the project through to the end- taking the heat and stress - and in the end the results changed the way wars are fought.


So we come to the crux of the problem longevity problem.  A difficult project that needs to be solved sometimes - in fact in most cases - can't be solved in the time and budget that was originally set out. If the company cannot accept risk that may be enough to end the project.  If the manager feels it is possible to avoid personal liability then that project may become a casualty without a realistic chance of solving it. 

We can see the footprints of this every where: problems that were assumed solved when some manager completed a powerpoint claming great results.  Then months or years later - well beyond the statue of limitations on the previous manager - that problem resurfaces and we find out that it was never really solved the last time resources were bent towards solving it like we were promised.

IED have been known about for 60 years, and yet the government makes it sound like we are meeting a new threat. Global warming is still not conclusively proven and so the skeptics are justifiably able to stall any climate change solutions. And the Taliban came to power because the CIA wiped their hands and claimed victory against the Soviets.

All of this has happened before, and all of it will happen again.

Companies and efficiency: Dual-use example

There are lots of ways to make your money go farther.  You need to make the best of what you do, great, so the easiest way to economize is to find simple ways to reduce your effort and your resources.  One way is dual-use a resource. Here is a simple way to dual-use resources.

The example I will use here is half used water bottles. You can't walk down the street without seeing a water bottle with a little bit of water in it.  Some are full.  and what happens when people people pick them up?  People dump the water in a sink or in on the ground.   

Instead of dumping the water out into the sink - so it has to be processed by the local water treatment facilities - find a plant and dump the water in.  You paid for the water, and you need to feed your plants, so combine a simple need with an available resource that was about to be thrown away.

In larger offices, you can set up a funnel and an empty water jug to store the water of all employees in the building. It's that simple.  You could place the recycling bin right beside the plant water jug.  Now there's no excuses to avoid it.

• No extra resources.
• A small outlay for operations & maintenance ( a plastic funnel)
• Re-uses the plastic jugs that get cleaned by the water company anyway.
• Feeds thirsty plants - just make sure they're not plastic too!

A simple way to optimize operations is to find ways to dual use the same resources and save.  Simple ways like re-using water is not a gigantic savings, but instilling a simple way to achieve more will permeate other economization thinking.  And quench some thirsty plants.

That's tactical thinking at its best.

The Body Temperature Gauge Theory - Why do you get a flu or cold?

I am something of a philosopher and tinkerer.  And from time to time I have an idea that I need to put forward, despite my lack of subject matter expertise, just as an observer of reality.  I encourage anyone who is better equipped to engage and complete the theory - or explain why they refute it.

I would like to share with you my theory on why people get sick during "the flu season" based on the observation of my own personal brush with illness and moving between climates. I call it the Body Temperature Gauge Theory.  I capitalized it to make it look more important. But it's just a theory.

As a control systems engineer, I know that you can model any system as a set of inputs and outputs, and if you are lucky or hard working you can construct a model of the inside system dynamics that can explain why the inputs reach the outputs for a large region of the state space.

If you didn't understand any of that, no problem, I don't fully understand it either but just go with me here. 

Let me bring forward my experience in changing weather from my own journey across Alberta.  I have moved over the timeframe of 14 years from Edmonton Alberta, to Calgary, and then to Medicine Hat.  Calgary is about 300 km south of Edmonton, and Medicine Hat is about 300 km south east of Calgary.  In those moves I have crossed some isothermal - or weather pattern - topology where the seasons operate differently from place to place.  In general, it gets warmer longer the more south I went.

The winter in Edmonton that, on average, lasts about 6 months continually,has a temperature pattern where the temperature dips down below freezing and stays there from about mid- October to mid March. There are brief periods of warmer weather, but those are few and far between.  And the lowest temperature will make you feel like the Arctic circle is next door.  As a side note, Edmonton is the most northerly - if that's a word - city on the planet. The temperature changes slowest of the three places I am referring to.

Calgary winter weather varies somewhat from Edmonton.  Calgary has a winter season that is almost as long but it undergoes a weather pattern we call a chinook.  Chinook weather is when the wind off the Pacific ocean dominates the high pressure Arctic air and then the lower half of Alberta, even in winter, warms up above freezing for a period of time.  Calgary normally has about 5 months of winter, from end October to March, and on an average of every two to three weeks, there is a brief period of warm weather.  This weather has gotten so warm that all the snow can melt. People start appearing from their houses, and some people go without coats. This weather moves in off the Rocky Mountains - normally in the form of inverted clouds and warmer breezes.

Medicine Hat is further south and the weather during winter is even more mild.  Medicine Hat, from my 7 years of experience, has even more drastic weather changes and the time it takes to change is by far the most abrupt.  During some winters, the temperature climbs to 20 degrees C.  I have been outside on my patio using my barbeque in shorts in the middle of January! The weather changes very quickly. I have heard stories of people driving back from Suffield to Medicine Hat that had icicles and frosted mirrors in Suffield, 32 km away, but as they neared town that temperature turned to above freezing and suddenly windows are fogged and the icicles are dropping off.

Based on that input, would it surprise you to know that I have been the sickest - or sick more often - in Medicine Hat?  I was sick more often in Calgary than Edmonton.  I was also sick more often in Medicine Hat than Calgary.

It is important to know that I am not from Alberta, I moved here when the Army closed the Chilliwack British Columbia (BC) army base in 1996.  I used to live in Abbotsford, or Vancouver BC area where the Olympics is going on. In BC true winter is about a 2 month long timeframe and the rest of the year is liquid sunshine, or rain. So when I grew up I didn't experience the very long cold winter or the rapid changes in climate. So along with other things like age, diet, and stress, those are two factors that are the independent variables in question: the length of the winter and the differential in temperature - or the temperature acceleration.

So the output of rapidly changing weather patterns is more times when my body's immune system was compromised and I got sick with colds and flus. Right now I am fighting off a virus I picked up in January.

So here is my theory:  You are most likely to get sick when your core body temperature fluctuates rapidly than when your core body temperature changes gradually.

Perhaps someone has already made a thesis about this. I would hope that if that is the case, that person communicated that to the rest of the world.

If not, then here is the simple layman's theory.

I would argue that it is not the length of the winter that is important, flu season varies from climate to climate and always appears on the ends of winter - Fall and Spring - which could also be interepreted as the two time points when the temperature acceleration is the greatest. It is also important to point out that I believe that it does not matter if the temperature is going up or down, but that it varies rapidly. 

This sort of phenomenon has been known by the Inuit people for a long time; when they work outside in the winter they know not to work so hard that they sweat.  If they sweat then their core body is wet and the cold air will rapidly freeze their bodies.  It would appear to me that this is a long held theory that may not have been presented formally up to this point.

And here is the strangest part of the theory; I believe that my sickness problems are also based on where I grew up.  I know that people that were born here and have lived here all their lives do not get as many colds and flus as I do.  So I would argue that it is also linked to how my body learned to cope with changing temperatures - how quickly my internal thermometer knew to increase heating  or stop heating in the face of changing temperatures.

I think that the best way to avoid illnesses then is to make sure in Fall and again in Spring that you be aware of your body temperature and make sure you have enough clothing and enough layers to accomodate those rapid changes. Of course, all the doctors advice about eating right, exercising, and washing your hands is important. But from my experience watching your own temperature guage is important too!