Solution-Building During a Crisis

A short sidestep: a look at current issues in decision-making and how Solution-Building™ can play an important role

At the end of the last post I said I would move on to Guideline number 4 of Solution-Building. But given events of the past few weeks, and decisions by individuals and various groups, organizations, and governmental bodies, I thought I would step aside from the general discussion of Solution-Building™ and its Guidelines for a bit and look at how the Solution-Building approach could be applied effectively in times of chaos, uncertainty, and crisis.

Such times can be, for instance, natural disasters (earthquakes and hurricanes come to mind), acts of war, financial market upheavals, or pandemic disease. We are currently in a double situation: financial market meltdown AND a pandemic, which are very much interrelated. 

I want to point out that natural disasters are almost always limited to relatively small areas that can usually get the resources needed to handle them from the wider society, while pandemics, by definition, affect those entire societies, straining the resources needed to deal with them. When the whole world is affected, where do needed resources come from? This difference means that very different decisions need to be made in the case of a society-wide issue such as the one we are facing now.

We need careful, calm, rational, informed, and clear decisions to handle situations that are rapidly changing, as is very much the case with the current coronavirus pandemic. 

What is needed for this careful, calm, rational, informed, and clear decision-making is objectivity and commitment, which, along with courtesy, I have recently been discussing as the basis for the Guidelines of Solution-Building. This applies to everyone affected or potentially affected, which in the case of pandemic disease, is all of us from top political figures making strategic decisions to those of us in the communities trying to make day-to-day decisions about how to handle not only the pandemic but also the fallout from those strategic decisions made on high.

Objectivity is needed to acquire and evaluate information about whatever the situation may be. It is a characteristic that helps us avoid the temptation to quickly decide not only what is happening but how to deal with it before we understand enough about it. Objectivity is what helps us not panic and make rash decisions that can lead to other problems. It helps us avoid a common reaction to bad news (and a pandemic is, indeed, bad news), which is denial. It allows us to look at proposed courses of action and consider not just the desired outcomes but the potential downsides of those actions. Objectivity allows us to consider alternatives that can be implemented if the first actions do not result in those desired outcomes. 

Commitment is a part of this, too, a commitment to do the best we can in the face of this virus and the disease it can cause, something that is not visible and can have devastating effects on us and our families and friends. When we consider that the basic characteristic of a pandemic is that everyone around us is a potential victim of either the disease or the consequences of decisions made by others in finding a way to mitigate, to combat, the disease, we discover that we are all in the same, or at least a similar, situation. In other words, we are all in the same boat.

We can see the result of not applying Solution-Building, or at least some form of the objectivity and commitment that form its basis. These results, seen all over the world, include:

• Denial – leading to
  • Ignoring requests to avoid groups above a certain size
  • Pretending it will go away on its own
  • Making no decisions in the face of information that they are needed
• Panic – stripping store shelves of food and supplies we all need, such as
  • Hand sanitizer
  • Face masks
  • Flour
  • Sugar
  • Tissues
  • Certain OTC medications
  • Canned soups and other foods
  • (you can probably add lots to this list)
• Fear – leading to
  • Stealing hand sanitizer and face masks from clinics and hospitals (yes, this is happening in many parts of the world)
  • Stealing toilet paper from the bathrooms in those places as well as stores, etc.

These are all symptoms of poor decision-making at the individual level. But at the level of nations we have seen many poor decisions in recent weeks. I will only go into a few here; you have probably seen the news and know about many.

China initially denied that there was a problem in Wuhan and even censured the doctor who first raised the issue. As a result, the disease spread rapidly out from China to become a world-wide problem. But, once it became clear, they moved quickly with draconian restrictions on movement and appear to have quelled the spread recently. They are now providing not only needed supplies but also sending doctors to other countries (including the USA) to lend their expertise, gained by sad experience, to those countries for treating the disease.

Italy tried to ignore the first outbreak and then tried limited restrictions, denying there was a problem. The disease got out of hand and the death rate rose swiftly, prompting a complete shutdown of the entire country. They now have the highest number of deaths from the disease, surpassing in number that of China, but with 5% of China’s population. From the available reports, their entire medical system is overwhelmed. They are now warning the world not to follow their path.

Here in the USA, the first reaction, when the disease was beginning to spread outside China, was denial. Then, there was a decision not to use the test used in other countries, from the World Health Organization, but to develop one of our own. It was unreliable and thus testing was very limited. Then the deaths started, and as of this writing exceed 460 of the more than 35,000 diagnosed with the disease, and the disease has spread to every state. At the federal level, there are requests to avoid exposing at-risk people, the elderly and already ill, but no requirements to do so. Even though it would be legal, there are no clear plans to order companies to manufacture needed supplies such as ventilators, masks and protective gear, or even tests, but to request that they do so voluntarily. Many states are taking action, with several imposing extensive lockdowns and movement restrictions. Others, such as Colorado, where I live, have mandated closures of businesses where crowds of people are the norm, such as bars and restaurants as well as schools and public venues, and encouraged businesses to go to remote working if possible; have closed businesses where there has to be close contact with customers (barbershops, tattoo and massage parlors, hair and nail salons), have banned most elective surgeries, and have kept a full lockdown as a last resort. 

All over the world, denial has been generally the first reaction, which is likely to have resulted in further spread of the disease. This was done in the face of repeated warnings from infectious disease experts all over the world that this coronavirus, Covid19, had the hallmarks of a potential pandemic.

Could Solution-Building have led to better decisions being made? I would like to make that claim but of course there is no way to know since many of the decisions made seem to have been political rather than based on solid information and data. Even so, it is very possible that the decisions could have led to a more desirable outcome had Solution-Building been used. And those made by individuals out of what seems mainly panic could certainly have been different. 

But approaching critical decisions in a systematic way, which Solution-Building certainly offers, probably would have resulted in a different situation here at the latter part of March 2020.