John Plodinec

Resilience and the Hole in the Rock Expedition

December 5th, 2011 - John Plodinec  

Jenae Holtzhafer in the Emmaus (PA) Patch posed this question in a posting this summer.

“What if our circumstances on this Earth suddenly changed? Would we be able to endure the extreme physical and mental challenges faced by our ancestors to push through the hardships and survive with nothing more than basic necessities?”

She pointed to the Hole in the Rock expedition of 1879 as an example of the resilience of our forebears. For those who don’t know the story, in late 1879, 236 Mormons set out on a missionary expedition to southeastern Utah. They had selected the shortest path to their destination – they expected it to take only six weeks, but one that was largely unexplored. Trapped by snow behind them two weeks after they started, they were forced to go forward. Perhaps their most difficult feat was building a wagon road through the hole in the rock – a narrow cut in the cliffs surrounding the Colorado River gorge – and crossing the river. It took them about 8 weeks to build the road and get all of their supplies across, and another 10 to reach the site they choose to establish their “colony.” Amazingly, no one died on the five-month trek, and 238 arrived at the new settlement – two babies were born en route.

Holtzhafer’s gut answer were “No, we are not as resilient – we have lost the skills to survive these hardships.” A closer reading of history, though, makes her conclusion less compelling. The intrepid party – even though they set out as winter neared – was reasonably well-prepared. Eighty wagons, over 1,000 head of cattle, tools, dynamite and other necessary supplies – they were ready to confront what they faced. They had taken full advantage of the technology available to them. In similar circumstances today, most of us we would do the same. While we may have lost some of the skills those hardy Mormons possessed, we have other skills and technologies they did not have.

However, the expedition has an important lesson to teach us – being ready for surprises. The missionaries expected to be gone about 40 days; instead, they were on the road for 100 more. They didn’t expect to have to build a bridge across the Colorado, but they did.

Most communities try to prepare for specific threats – hurricanes, earthquakes, human-induced crises. But look at some of the events the Gulf Coast has experienced in the last decade – a recession in 2001-2; Hurricane Katrina and the levee break; the BP oil spill; the Great Recession…what’s next?

The pessimist looks at this list and says “Why bother to prepare? The next event may well be different. We’ll just adapt to it when it comes.”

The optimist says, “We’re strong, we will weather whatever comes; let’s prepare for what we know.

But the resilient realist says, “Prepare for the known threats, but be sure to include in your preparations those things that will help you survive and thrive in the face of any threat. Most importantly, make sure your people know each other and will help each other, no matter what threat they face.”

A simple thought, but with some profound implications. First, it means we shouldn’t rely on institutions to pull us through a crisis, but on ourselves. Second, we can’t count on getting resources from outside in a crisis – we can only count on what we have in our homes and our neighborhood. Most importantly, the one thing “Government” in general is not doing but could do to prepare us is to hammer these messages home.

Yesterday, I was speaking to a victim of one of the many floods that have hit the St. Louis area. Her house up to the top of the first story was flooded – she had to live in the upper floors. She “commuted” to wherever she had to go in her neighbors’ boats. She pointed out that it took 45 days before the floodwaters had receded enough for safe vehicular traffic to her home. By the time she and her family were ready to begin recovering, the news cameras had moved on; her story was old news; most of the government assistance was gone. With good grace and a sense of humor, she is coming back more or less on her own, with the help of her friends and neighbors.

Her experience shows that some of us, at least, are as resilient as any who came before. Her experience also testifies to the wisdom of the resilient realist: people are the best preparation for surprises.

Warren Edwards

Resilience and the Social Contract

December 1st, 2011 - Warren Edwards  

Democracies, the functional ones at least, are always in a discussion about the social contract between the government and its people. In the United States, the times and conditions may change and the conversation may wax and wane but it is never entirely absent. Usually it centers on whatever topic is perceived to be the most relevant of the day but in general the themes do not change significantly – more taxes or fewer; more regulation or less; federal or state control or no control at all; individual liberty or sacrifices for the common good. What sometimes changes is the intensity of the debate. This change in intensity has led occasionally to seminal changes in the way citizens view our American social contract. The American Revolution began that process for the new nation although the conversation and debate was already an old one in the colonies. Other significant and sometimes dramatic changes occurred during the American Civil War, the Great Depression, and perhaps the aftermath of World War II.

The United States may be in or approaching one of those significant periods of change today. While the themes remain consistent with our past the debate seems now concentrated at the more extreme ends of the spectrum of positions. Beyond ideological advocacy, there appears to be very little interest in or movement toward finding a positive premise around which to organize the debate and give it coherence beyond platitudes and fixed dogma. Resilience, however, provides a powerful concept for organizing thought. It allows the nation to collectively discover practical solutions that avoid the extremes of ideological driven thought. Resilience pursues what works not what someone thinks ought to work.

Resilience when applied to civil society has great appeal. We are in a time when change seems almost overwhelming and disasters, natural and human induced, are evident in each day’s news. Life for many everyday people seems out of control. Resilience requires regaining a measure of authority over our lives, our families and our future. It requires everyday people and leaders at all levels to assess the present and plan for the future. Resilience breeds confidence that we can take action now, withstand adversity when it comes, and rebound quickly and completely.

Resilience has legitimate and practical appeal across a wide range of political philosophies. It requires more self-reliance, more realistic expectations of government, and more personal responsibility at the individual, family and community level. It also acknowledges a leadership place for governments at all levels, a need to address chronic stresses at the local, state and national levels and an equitable opportunity for every American to prosper. Resilience is a way to empower citizens making them the core of the solution rather than simply part of the problem. Empowering citizens, neighborhoods, communities and regions is a way of managing expectations and creating positive action in a time of limited resources. Resilience can be a powerful consensus builder; there are few who will come forward and declare themselves to be anti-resilient.

Just a few years ago, the word resilience was a term of art in the material, medical and ecological sciences. Now it has become so prevalent across a wide spectrum of disciplines that it may be in danger of losing all meaning. Rather than let such a powerful concept go to waste, it is time to make it the thought around which we organize the nation’s conversation about many things but certainly about the relationship between citizens and government.

Ian Moore

Contradictory Information

November 23rd, 2011 - Ian Moore  

When we are presented with information that fits with our beliefs or tentative decisions we will tend to accept any information that fits and not investigate further. When presented with information that contradicts we will tend to look further and check the validity of the information.

This leads to a skewing of the information that we take in. Most information will have caveats and situations in which it does not apply. When we dig deeper we may find more information that contradicts our position but we are also bound to find information which confirms our distrust of the initial contradictory information. Of course if the initial situation concurs with our initial ideas we don’t look further and so never find any subsequent information that might contradict us.

Psychologists have shown repeatedly that when people taking part in an experiment are presented with a mixed body of information they will pick out that which confirms their beliefs and find reasons why contradictory information does not apply. In a group with opposing beliefs the same information will be interpreted by both sides as supporting their own positions.

For effective decision making we need to firstly be aware of this behaviour and then develop techniques and approaches to ensure that we investigate supporting and contradictory information to the same depth and apply objective criteria to the assessment of both type of information.

John Plodinec

Resilience and Jobs

November 16th, 2011 - John Plodinec  

I am an inveterate, voracious and omnivorous reader. No cereal box near me goes unread. Books, blogs, and newsletters are fed straight into my bloodstream. This weekend I read two very good pieces that together got me thinking about jobs, recovery from the Great Recession, and community resilience.

The first was by John Mauldin, one of the best writers on financial matters I’ve found (www.johnmauldin.com). The second was by Ashwin Parameswaran in his series “towards a more resilient macroeconomy.” Both tackled the question of jobs and unemployment and provided a useful point/counterpoint to me.

Quoting first from John Mauldin, looking at where the new jobs came from in the last 15 years:

“…Big business is a net drag on job creation, and small businesses are a wash. Governments have seen job growth, but where does the money come to pay government employees?

Net new jobs come from new businesses (defined as those started within the last ten years). Yes, some of those businesses become Google and others are the local dry cleaner or donut shop. But those start-ups (if they survive) are the source of new jobs.”

Ashwin’s piece (warning – desert-dry academic writing!) focused on the role of innovation and competition in employment. He considers technological unemployment (where a company or industry’s market is destroyed by a new way of doing what has been done before – think buggy whips at the dawn of the automotive age), and truly innovative products that create brand new markets. He asserts that we are seeing a dearth of innovations across our economy, primarily due to a lack of investment.

What binds these two together is that each points to investment in startups as the best way to create jobs. You can’t have startups if there isn’t money to make the initial investment to create the business. You can’t have innovative new products without investing in their creation. This implies that the best way out of the economic morass we’re in is to encourage investment in new businesses in every way we can, and to remove barriers and disincentives to their formation.

This is where communities need to look inward and begin asking some tough questions. What are we doing to encourage startups? Do we have an able workforce? Do we have unnecessary permitting or licensing requirements? Are our transportation systems blocking access to areas that need new businesses?

Do we have sources of capital in our community? Rural agricultural communities might say no, but they’d be wrong. Some very innovative Canadian farming communities are forming micro-investment funds that are creating new businesses. Are we taxing startups at the same rate as large companies? Most importantly, do we understand and appreciate the important role that businesses play in our community, providing jobs, taxes, and, often, crucial support to the things that pull us together – the arts, sports teams, and community events? That means, are we working with businesses to make them – and the community – stronger?

Mauldin points to an article in last week’s Wall Street Journal by Daniel Henninger. He interviewed many businesses that had moved to Texas. The overwhelming sentiment was that it wasn’t just lower taxes or no unions, but a willingness to get things done – a can-do attitude. Communities that care about jobs can learn a great deal from Fluor’s experience in leaving California and coming to Texas. According to Alan Boeckmann, former CEO:

[When the 2006 move became known] “California made no attempt to keep us… things started to happen quickly [in Texas], without us initiating them. The Irving Chamber of Commerce did orientation sessions for employees and spouses, even helping with new-house searches. Or ‘little things’: Irving on its own renamed a street Fluor Drive, which in California or the Northeast would be laughable.”

Resilient communities recognize that businesses are vital parts of the community, and central to the community’s survival. These communities seek to encourage new businesses so that the communities can remain relevant in a changing world. If resilience is adaptation, these communities are discovering that fostering new businesses in the community is a way that they can actively be a part of the future, and thus more resilient.

Ian Moore

Decision Making: Handling Information

November 14th, 2011 - Ian Moore  

When planning for resilience the way we interpret information is critical to our planning and decision making. This article looks at some of the ways in which our processing of information is flawed and suggests some ways of countering this.

Our brains have evolved over hundreds of thousands of years to help us survive and to that end they are highly effective decision making instruments. However in modern day situations, and especially in business, these mechanisms for decision making may not be the best. So rather than spending time on developing sophisticated decision making strategies it is bound to be useful to understand some of the mechanisms that our brains have developed to make decisions. By understanding these mechanisms we can become sensitised to their shortcomings and so develop approaches to counteract these shortcomings and thus make better decisions.

The way we process information is critical to our decision making. Unfortunately we do not always process this information correctly. We do not always see what is actually there. If we are basing our decisions on correct information which we have processed incorrectly this will obviously lead to faulty decisions.

We tend to see what we expect to see. Have a look at the following diagram. Which square looks darker, A or B?

The vast majority of people think that square B is lighter than square A. However if we draw some uniform grey bars on the diagram we can see that A and B are exactly the same shade.

In the first diagram without the bars we make the assumption that the cylinder is casting a shadow and our brains automatically make the B square appear lighter than it actually is. Now look back to the diagram without the bars on. Even though you know that squares A and B are exactly the same shade B still appears to be lighter.

Here is another example of how we see what we expect to see rather than what is actually there. Try reading the following:

I cnduo’t bvleiee taht I culod aulaclty uesdtannrd waht I was rdnaieg. Unisg the icndeblire pweor of the hmuan mnid, aocdcrnig to rseecrah at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno’t mttaer in waht oderr the lterets in a wrod are, the olny irpoamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rhgit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whoutit a pboerlm. Tihs is bucseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey ltteer by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Aaznmig, huh? Yaeh and I awlyas tghhuot slelinpg was ipmorantt! See if yuor fdreins can raed tihs too.

Even though all the words are seriously misspelt we still impose meaning on them. We are not seeing what is actually there but what we would like to see and what we expect to see.

So that is just a couple of examples of how we see what we expect to see rather than what is actually there. In order to make effective decisions we need to see what is actually there not what we expect to see.

If you would like to improve your decision making by seeing what is actually there, try making a list of the ways that you see what you expect in information rather than the actual information. When you have done this you could go through the list and see if you can develop any techniques that would help you see information as it actually is.

There is another way in which information affects our decision making. That is when we have to much information. The next diagram is a simple picture. It is not animated in any way. However when you look at it, it will appear to be moving.

This is a nice example of how too much data causes confusion. Even though the diagram is not moving it still appears to move because of the way our eyes view the picture. If you don’t believe that it is not moving try focusing on one individual spot. You will see that it is not moving but other areas appear to move. Then try to focus on one of the areas that still seems to be moving. It will now appear to be stationery and other areas will appear to move. Or if you focus on the two small red markers on the two top, middle circles, you will see that these circles are stationery.

If you would like to improve your decision making try making a list of the ways that too much data causes problems for your decision making. When you have done this try going through the list and see if you can devise techniques that would help.

John Plodinec

A Path to Economic Recovery and Resilience

November 10th, 2011 - John Plodinec  

Just over a year ago, I wrote about what a more resilient economy might look like (see Recovering from the Great Recession – What Might a More Resilient Economy Look Like?). I talked about a value-driven rather than a consumer driven economy. That post begged the question, though – how do we get there from here? In the next few paragraphs, I’ll try to outline an answer to that.

Before I do, however, my disclaimer. I am clearly not an economist (I’m not sure that’s a disqualification, since the economists are all over the map on how to recover!). Further, politicians will be making the most crucial economic decisions over the next few months, and they are clearly not economists (not to mention their roles in getting us into this mess in the first place).

Our national economy is in what economists call a liquidity trap. In a liquidity trap, there is relatively little investment because those with money are very risk averse. Consumers don’t spend, businesses don’t hire, and everyone looks at the economic glass as half empty. And that’s what we’re seeing right now – individuals and businesses are paying off their debts, individual debt is at levels not seen since the early 1990’s; those who can are saving at rates not seen since the 1970’s; and businesses are sitting on their cash (and not borrowing) rather than investing in new products and jobs.

The two antipodes of the debate over how to fix our economy – escape the trap – are characterized by the “Spend, Baby, Spend” school and the Tea Party’s call for government austerity. The Spend, Baby, Spend school is epitomized by economists such as Paul Krugman, who vehemently believe that our federal government should be spending more, much more, to spur demand for goods and services. This group points to our nation’s crumbling infrastructure as a place where investment would create jobs, creating demand, and facilitating economic recovery. At its core, this view sees lack of demand for goods and services as the problem that needs to be addressed.

The Tea Party-ers, on the other hand, see the size of our government as the core problem. In this view, a smaller government, with fewer regulations and lower taxes, would put money back into people’s hands to spend on goods and services, thus jump starting the economy.

You’ll notice, however, that neither view really addresses the core problem – how we get out of the liquidity trap. Or, said a little differently, how do we help businesses, in particular, become less risk averse so that they will invest the cash they are now sitting on in new equipment or new jobs. Framed this way, it seems that government spending per se is somewhat irrelevant to getting out of the trap. Recovery will come only when people have confidence once again that there is a secure future. That’s not to say that government spending is unimportant, just that stimulus spending doesn’t really seem to be the right answer.

If this is true, then what should government do to put us on the road to a resilient economy? Simply put, governments should do those things that will remove uncertainty from people’s minds and those things that will make people more confident in their futures. In this light, it seems that we need to take some of the medicines prescribed by both schools of thought to help bring us out of our national malaise.

We need to recognize that the current pace of regulation creation is creating great uncertainties for businesses and individuals. In the first two years of the present administration in Washington, we created more regulations than we did in eight years of the previous administration. Further, whether we like it or not, small businesses are already telling us they won’t be hiring in the near term because of the possible impacts of health insurance reform (and those impacts won’t be fully known until 2014 at the earliest!).

We also need to recognize that our national debt is unsustainable – if we continue on our present path, we as individuals eventually will end up paying exorbitant amounts in taxes to support intolerably high interest rates to service both our national and personal debt. We as individuals or investors or business owners recognize this and are saving at almost unprecedented rates to provide our own safety nets for ourselves.

However, we also have to recognize that the government must continue to make investments that will help us to have a more certain future. We must invest in our infrastructure – not to stimulate spending but to ensure that we can continue to move goods, people, and information where they are needed. If we don’t, we will spend far more to respond to and recover from the disasters that will expose our infrastructure’s fragility.

We also need to heed the lessons we have already learned about what went wrong and put regulations in place that address the root causes of those problems. The current regulatory framework for the financial industry has much that is wrong with it; recently passed legislation is likely to drive smaller community banks – who in the main were not at fault in getting us into this trap – out of business. This will make it more difficult for entrepreneurs and small businesses to get the capital they need to start up or expand their businesses, i.e., will make our economy even less resilient. Meanwhile, many of the more speculative financial sectors remain unregulated even though they were prime actors in our economic tragedy (and are doing nothing to help us recover).

We must provide a safety net to those of our citizens with special needs. Not because of their vulnerability but as an investment in their future and in ours. The safety net should be focused on outcomes – for example, living healthier and more productive lives – rather than means, for example insurance. Just as with our physical infrastructure, if we don’t make these kinds of investments we will spend far more to respond to and recover from the human tragedies that will result.

I don’t think it requires a rocket scientist (or a Ph.D. economist!) to see a path to recovery. It only requires a clear recognition of where we are as a nation, and then some common sense actions to move to where we need to be. We have to cut government spending and the pace of regulation, but we also need to invest in ourselves and take actions to prevent us from falling in the same trap again. At its core, we have to restore our confidence in ourselves if we are to recover. Neither school of thought, neither political party, can or will be successful unless they grasp this simple truth – this is the only path to economic recovery and greater national resilience.

John Plodinec

Resilience for Dummies: What is Community Resilience

November 8th, 2011 - John Plodinec  

I read a lot – if I don’t have a newspaper or a magazine or a journal article to read, I’ll read cereal boxes. Or I’ll get on the internet and find something there. In doing this, I’ve discovered a new phenomenon – the proliferation of books “X for Dummies” – Puppies for Dummies, Stained Glass for Dummies, Relationships for Dummies. All designed to help the neophyte learn enough to at least be unafraid of the subject and willing to take basic actions. For those like me, whose ignorance is legion, there is even a website – dummies.com – where you can find basic help on almost any topic.

So, over the next few months, I’m going to be writing Community Resilience for Dummies – detailing what this neophyte has learned about community resilience in a way that I hope others can use. As we in CARRI have talked to people about resilience it has become clear that – like sustainability – resilience is a word in danger of losing its meaning because it is being used by so many in so many different ways. So I’ll start by talking about what community resilience is.

As do so many others, we at CARRI have our own definition of resilience:

A community’s ability to anticipate risk, limit impact, and bounce back rapidly through adaptation, evolution, and growth in the face of turbulent change.

In fact, on the CARRI website, you’ll find a document that compares and contrasts many of the definitions.

Most people who are using the term resilience are doing so in a crisis context – a crisis being anything that strains the community’s resources. While resilience may be an inherent trait of a community, its resilience is only seen in how well it recovers from the crisis. As a community evolves over time, it may become more or less resilient. Thus, in these parlous economic times, most communities have become less resilient toward natural disasters or human-induced crises due to dwindling resources – both human and financial. Those communities that have maintained their same level of resilience (and the few that have enhanced it) have generally done so by finding ways to adapt to the financial crisis they face.

Adaptation is the key to resilience – it’s the ability to turn disaster into opportunity; to create social capital to augment finance; to form partnerships to replace or repair needed infrastructure when no one entity has enough money to fund projects. Greenburg, KS’ response to the devastating tornado that hit the town is an example. Prior to the 2007 storm, the town was in danger of dying. It used the opportunity provided by the devastation to attempt to create a different and more sustainable Greensburg.

Mayor Tom Tait’s (Anaheim CA) “Hi, Neighbor” campaign is an example. It recognizes that in the event of an earthquake, one’s neighbors are the real first responders, and should be the enduring support structure for individuals and families. The campaign seeks to build up the “social capital” of Anaheim’s neighborhoods.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey provides another example. It has formed a public-private partnership to fund and operate a replacement for the Goethals Bridge that links New York and New Jersey. This type of arrangement would have been unheard of even five years ago; now, it represents a very innovative way for a community to do what’s necessary with less.

Thus, while resilience is not a uniquely American trait, this ability to make lemonade when you’re handed lemons is embedded in the American spirit. And it doesn’t take a dummy to see that our resilience is being tested as never before. In the next post in this series, I’ll begin looking at what makes up community resilience – starting with leadership.

John Plodinec

Searching for Resilience: A Walk in the Woods

October 20th, 2011 - John Plodinec  

I read an interesting article recently that crystallized several other thoughts for me. The paper – with the somewhat dry title of Resilience as Resource-based Design of Anticipated Situations (www.resilience-engineering-asso.org/ACTES/2011/Papers/13.pdf) – is couched in the language of safety and risk, but takes a very different approach to identifying resilience than I’ve seen before.

The authors start by talking about traditional safety and risk management approaches. To paraphrase the authors, these approaches have inherent limitations:

• They are based on analysis of failures. They do not reflect either that risks can emerge from “normal” situations, or that some of the greatest risks may actually be unanticipated surprises.
• They seek to mitigate without considering either the real gap between intended actions and real capabilities, or that coping with crises is dependent on “the strategies, initiatives, tinkering and ingenuity brought by individual and collective skills in real time.

The application of these to emergency management seems straightforward and very appropriate.

The authors then go on to quote a definition of resilience by Hollnagel:

The intrinsic ability of a system to adjust its functioning prior to, during, or following changes and disturbances, so that it can sustain required operations under both expected and unexpected conditions.

I’m not a big fan of defining resilience – too many have spent too much time in what becomes an unproductive exercise in navel contemplation – but the authors put legs under this one by trying to determine how anesthesiologists make decisions both in routine cases and in complex ones. Their conclusions are worth noting because they seem to apply so well to the relationship between the federal government and local community leadership.

• Resilience – in addition to vulnerability assessment – involves consideration of local resources and capabilities.
• Decisions are designed to empower those coping with crisis, and not to control them.
• Organizations should be structured so that local standard practices can be shared.

While some may argue about the conclusions, what was striking to me is the very different way of trying to find resilience. Most of the resilience literature focuses either on vulnerability or on case studies of past disasters. What the authors have done is look at behavior – both in routine and unexpected situations – to try to find clues to resilient behavior.

Thus, if we are trying to judge the resilience of a tree to a high wind, we may walk through the woods looking at one that has fallen and try to judge the cause and how to prevent it from falling. Or, as the authors have done, we can study the forest, during both calm days and those with brisk winds, and see how each tree adapts in its own context.

As we were putting the Community Resilience System (CRS) together, one of the strongest sentiments expressed by our Community Leaders Group was that the CRS had to improve normal operations as well as easing the transition to a new normal. This paper not only agrees with that, but shows that understanding how the community functions in normal conditions is a key to understanding its resilience to a crisis.

In other words, watching how trees bend and sway in the wind can often tell us more about the resilience of trees than exhaustively researching why one fell.

Ian Moore

Decision Making and the Brain

September 23rd, 2011 - Ian Moore  

CARRI welcomes Ian Moore as our guest blogger. Mr. Moore specializes in the psychology of decision making and how, by understanding how we make decisions, we can improve the way we make decisions. He is the author of several books on the topic and also runs a variety of workshops, gives keynote presentations, and facilitates group sessions. Today’s blog details the connection between decision making and resilience. For more information please visit http://www.unthinkablethinking.com or email ian@unthinkablethinking.com.

My personal fascination is about how we make decisions, and the articles that I will be writing for this blog are about decision making and how, by understanding some of the ways that we make decisions, we can improve our decision making.

 What has decision making got to do with resilience? When we are planning to create a more resilient group or organization, we are constantly making decisions about how we can best do this and what threats we need to take into consideration. On the personal side when we experience a crisis situation, we are making decisions for ourselves and others. Unfortunately in all these situations our decision making processes are subject to a number  of built in biases; however if we can understand these biases, then we are in a position where we can develop techniques and ways of thinking to counteract these innate biases.

It is difficult to clearly quantify how much poor decisions cost either in monetary terms or in lives and suffering, but it would seem obvious that even a small improvement in our decision making could have really significant benefits. In this article I would like to introduce some of the ideas that I will be developing in future articles.

I will start by stating the obvious – we make decisions with our brains. But let us consider what our brains are for. They have evolved over hundreds of thousands of years to help us survive, and to that end they are highly effective decision making instruments. However, in modern day situations these mechanisms for decision making may not be the best. So rather than spending time on developing sophisticated decision making strategies it is bound to be useful to understand some of the mechanisms that our brains have developed to make decisions. By understanding these mechanisms we can become sensitized to their shortcomings and so develop approaches to counteract these shortcomings and thus make better decisions.

We can make better decisions. The good news is that we have a brain! In our brain we have over ten thousand million neurons, and the number of possible interconnections between these neurons is 10 followed by 100 zeros. We have an immensely complex piece of machinery in our brains. However, is the brain fixed in the way it processes information?

In order to drive a traditional black cab in London, a taxi driver has to pass ‘the knowledge’. This is a test about the streets of London and the best way to navigate around them. It has been known for some time that the hippocampus, an area of the brain, is responsible for processing geographical information. In the year 2000 a team from University College London scanned the brains of some taxi drivers and found that their hippocampuses were bigger than those of normal people. This is a really significant finding! It shows that exercise and practice can physically develop areas of the brain and increase the connectivity of the neurons.

The bad news is that the brain has a very specialist design. It has evolved over hundreds of thousands of years for survival purposes and not necessarily for making the best decisions. Part of the specialist design is our memory systems. When brain scans are done on chess players some interesting results are found. Masters and Grand Masters seem to have activity towards the rear of the brain which is normally associated with our memory systems. Less competent chess players tend to have most activity towards the front of the brain, in the pre-frontal cortex, which is normally associated with decision making. When we make decisions are we using our memory of past situations or analysing each situation anew?

Large areas of our brains have developed for pattern recognition. This is obviously useful for recognizing objects and faces. Unfortunately we also tend to see patterns when there are actually none there.

Our brains are also very good at establishing habits. These are very useful ’short cuts’ to our decision making processes. We don’t need to think about everything that we come across on a daily basis. Let’s have a look at one habit we have developed – how we fold our hands.

So let’s try it out. I’d like to ask you to fold your hands. If you look at your hands you will notice that one index finger is above the other one. When we are young we have to learn to fold our hands like this. Each way is equally likely at this point. However a habit quickly forms and one way becomes dominant. When we are older we will usually only fold our hands in one way. So for most of our lives we have been folding our hands in only one way. You would think that a habit as well established as that would be hard to break. But let’ try this. Try folding your hands so that the other index finger is on top. What does it feel like? Most people find this quite uncomfortable but bear with me for a moment. Let’s try slowly folding our hands back to the original position and slowly back again to the second position. And then back again, and back again, and back again, and back again, and back again, and finally back again. Now just shake your hands. So let’s try it again. I’d like to ask you to fold your hands again. Can you remember if this is the way you did it originally?

What’s interesting about this is that most people, after only five repetitions, feel much less awkward. Some people cannot even tell the difference any more. This is a very simple example of how a life-long habit can be overturned (or at least lessened) by only five practices at doing it a different way.

We have seen that our brains have some limitations when it comes to decision making.

The good news is that if we understand what these limitations are, we can reprogram even long established habits. We can also grow parts of our brain.

So if we can understand how our decision making works, we can spot the deficiencies in our decision making. Knowing what these deficiencies are, we can take countermeasures to improve them.

John Plodinec

Remembrance, Renewal, Resilience

September 20th, 2011 - John Plodinec  

On September 8th, CARRI co-hosted the 9/11 10th Anniversary Summit in Washington, DC.  Entitled Remembrance, Renewal, Resilience, the event saw the premiere of four videos, each reflecting a different facet of the theme.  Together, the videos were always inspiring, often poignant, and sometimes funny – in a way that that showed resilience not as a passive virtue but as an active force in people’s lives.

Boatlift tells the sadly under-reported story of the marine evacuation of Manhattan on 9/11.  In 9 hours, almost half a million people were evacuated in all manner of boats – more people than were evacuated from Dunkirk in nine days!  This operation was called for by a Coast Guard lieutenant (on his own) and coordinated with a wide array of maritime organizations and individual vessel captains.  The scenes with the gravelly-voiced captain of the fishing scow Amberjack V were perhaps the most affecting of the day, as he talked about never wanting to have to say “I should have.”

Wounded Warriors focuses on a few of the “wounded warriors” from our mid-East conflicts.  It demonstrates forcefully their resilience in the face of devastating wounds, finding opportunities for themselves in the midst of their personal disasters.  In the panel discussion after the video presentation, Denis Oliverio (who had been wounded while warning others from the top of his tank) typified the upbeat feelings of the wounded warriors when asked what he would do differently – “Duck!”

Gulf Coast Resilience is a paean to the resilient spirit of those on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.  Mayor George Schloegel (Gulfport) told amazing stories about getting the Hancock Bank back into business after Katrina, while Chief Pat Sullivan and Bill Stallworth portrayed the human impacts so well.  After the video, Governor Haley Barbour accepted the first Community Resilience Award on behalf of the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

Renewal is a glimpse into the near future of the World Trade Center site.  The two cascading pools of water where the Twin Towers were are belted with a bronze ribbon honoring the names of those who died.  The new One World Trade Center skyscraper will make a statement while being the safest building in the world.  But, for me, the real star is the World Trade Center transportation hub that will open in about two years – a beautiful representation of a bird taking flight – it will be as striking in its setting as the Opera House is in Sydney Harbour. 

Interspersed among the videos were talks from a diverse group of speakers, each speaking to one or more aspects of the theme:  Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano; Mary Fetchet, Executive Director of the Voices of September 11th; FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate; Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta; former Secretary of State Madeline Albright; Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour; representatives from Canada; the chairman of the Rockefeller Foundation, and others.  The story of Gander, which more than doubled in size when on 9/11 planes from foreign lands were diverted there – the friendship and kinship with we Americans they showed – was a quiet coda to the earlier stories of resilience.

Closing the event, Warren Edwards announced the names of the 7 leading communities who will be the initial pilots for CARRI’s Community Resilience System (CRS):  Anaheim, CA; Anne Arundel County and Annapolis, MD; the Charleston (SC) Low Country Area; Gadsden, AL; Greenwich, CT; the Mississippi Gulf Coast; and Mount Juliet, TN.  These communities will use the CRS to enhance their resilience and at the same time will provide feedback to CARRI so that we can improve its usability and usefulness.

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