Learning from a 5 year old

Do we over complicate our lives for no good reason?

People spend vast amounts of money on, books, seminars, special programs, workshops, conferences and more, in an effort to improve their skills and work towards positive progress in their lives. I would suggest you save your money and spend some time with a 5 year old. They have no PC view of the world and are not scared of asking questions. They do not infer meaning from whatever you say, they take it literally as stated. They force one to think carefully and to explain clearly and simply.

My grandson is 5 years old and I spend a lot of time with him regularly, so I have lots of direct experience in slowing down and thinking clearly.

Whenever I ask or tell him to do something he is likely to ask why and will continue to ask this question until he has some understanding that makes sense in his world. A mother can say "because I say so" but a grandfather simply can't get away with that one.

Society has reached a point where there will always be somebody who will take umbrage at something that is said. We are in the age of the "offended" and there are now groups of these people who have some issue with the rest of the world. They not only feel aggrieved but believe they are entitled to some special treatment and preferably some compensation ( read money ).

Soon we might have a new group, the red headed, left handed, jockeys who should be compensated for being a minority with inadequate representation in boardrooms and government. Long jump and basketball are two other areas where they are completely absent and surely this is not good enough. We live in an age of "invented" special considerations for every subgroup able to motivate others to participate in their sense of outrage.

My 5 year old grandson is not capable of understanding any of this, not because he is 5 but because he has to rely on some logic, as he learns to make sense of the world around him. He understands when I say somebody is dead but can make no sense of "some people sustained injuries incompatible with life" ( this I heard on the news tonight ).

To him people are people and only when we get older are we taught that this is not so. We are taught about differences not similarities. The multitude of "sub groups" are all beating their drums to proclaim their differences and then complain when people might mention these differences. Instantly this becomes discrimination and in short order legislation is required to ban this kind of behaviour.

We live in an age where the media is an echo chamber for the power factions and at the same time must stay mindful never to offend anybody. No personal opinions are allowed as legal challenges are expensive and time consuming.

My grandson would ask these offended people to explain why they are offended and I challenge any of them to explain their grievances in simple language and then to withstand the scrutiny of a 5 year old.

In business we now have to walk on eggshells in an effort never to offend. Workers who are not performing have the law on their side to prevent dismissal and any company brave enough to travel down this path require legal advice plus lots of time and money. There are consequences to the economy as can be clearly seen in the number of part time or casual jobs vs full time jobs. Companies must weigh the risk of employing staff carefully, unless they have deep pockets.

Governments and large organisations are in a better position to deal with this, but to small and medium size companies this is a major obstacle.

The other day I was having a conversation with a friend where I mentioned something about laws, rules and regulations. My grandson was listening to the conversation while he was playing with some toys. Afterwards he asked me "poppop, what are laws and regirlations".

In a future post I will tell you my response, but as a small challenge, you try to articulate a response that might satisfy a 5 year old.

Businesses and governments become dysfunctional when faced with the barrage of rules regulations and enforced political correct expectations of the smallest of pressure groups.

The rules and regulations constantly constructed and reviewed by those in positions of governance have reached a point of lunacy that is only invisible because nobody is looking or paying attention.

In conclusion a story that can never be explained to a 5 year old, as there is no logic or reasonable answer, other than total stupidity and this is always a good indicator that something is terminally broken.

We hear the frequent refrain from our elected and business leaders that they are listening. They fail to mention that they have no interest in what one might be saying, have no mechanism to cope with any information from outside their standard processes and procedures, and absolutely no desire to pay any attention anyway. Their "listening" mantras are all just PR with no serious intent. 

For several years I had researched a particularly incompetent waste of council money on an IT system. During this period and after my initial research ( over 1000 pages of documentation )  I drafted and submitted summary reports to every available authority tasked to deal with such matters. Additionally I contacted every conceivable entity from council to federal government in an effort to stop this lunacy and waste.

Uniformly every authority refused to engage, despite my offers to make my time and material available to them, for free and at their convenience.

At one point a State government minister referred me to the local council's complaint management procedure and this finally opened my eyes and showed me why I was wasting my time.

I had previously read this document and other than it being a funny "yes minister" type of document, it appears to a serve very little purpose. Considering the council had already advised me, several times, that they refuse to talk to me, their complaint management procedure is about as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike.

On re-reading the procedure I noticed a few interesting bits and started making some notes.

Without boring you with any more details, below I show the results of my analysis and maybe provide an indication as to why all levels of governance and many business organisations, have become deaf and knotted into bureaucratic gridlock. They should consult a 5 year old.

Complaints Management Process

Complaints (Administrative Actions) Policy & Procedures  (C(AA)PP)

We know there is a problem when the acronym has an embedded acronym.

This is a  24 page document that refers to
        17 other Acts containing 1802 Pages and they in turn refer to an additional
        236 acts comprising another 2472 Pages of legalese.
The total at this point  
        253 Acts and 4298 pages of legalese ( and this is not 100% complete.)

It gets much worse, as the first 2 Acts from the above 236, result in an additional 152 Acts and I gave up counting more acts and pages at that point as I was losing the will to live. 

Remember this complaints Policy is the lens for any submission we make to council and provides them with any number of reasons to legally ignore whatever we have raised as a concern.

Let me share with you a real example of how these 24 pages work in practice.

I submitted a request for information to the Right To Information office at my local council, paid my money and then waited.

After several reminders I received the response below ( extract ) and here we have the results we can expect from rules and regulations completely disconnected from reality and completely bereft of any logic.

 

 

Brilliant logic, reminding me of what George Orwell said

"Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."

In conclusion it is my belief that large organisations, private or public would do well to examine their policies and procedures, as it could be strangling their business and will always destroy any discretionary effort by employees. 

Maybe we all need a couple of 5 year olds to keep us from drifting into the kind of alternative reality created by bureaucratic "flowerpots".

( Flowerpots =  marginally decorative but functionally useless. )