How Solution-Building Could Have Been Applied in this Crisis

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

Let’s look at decisions made in the current Covid-19 pandemic and how Solution-Building could have been applied.

[Update: As of this writing, there are, worldwide, over 2,200,000 reported cases of Covid-19 disease and over 150,000 fatalities. The USA now leads the world in cases, with almost 700,000 and over 36,100 fatalities. More states, including here in Colorado, have instituted movement restrictions, including some with “shelter-in-place” orders. I am not trying to make this some sort of tracking post; the situation changes continuously and I am trying to put a time stamp of sorts on the current information on which I am basing this post. The source I am using for these data is https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus. It must also be noted that these numbers are without a doubt underestimates and will continue to rise.]

For years the medical/scientific community has warned of the possibility of the broad-scale, world-wide, and rapid spread of an easily-transmitted disease, probably viral and airborne, in other words a pandemic, and recommended that countries put plans and measures in place to deal with it. Many countries, including the USA, did develop plans, procedures, and stockpiles of supplies that could be needed to deal with a pandemic. Then it happened.

First reports of a potential new virus causing pneumonia came out of the Chinese city of Wuhan, in Hebei Province at the end of December 2019. Initially, an effort was made to deny the reports and even discredit the doctor who reported it. However, the virus began a rapid spread and it became impossible to deny the developing situation, especially when patients began to die in mid-January 2020. To the credit of the Chinese government, they realized their errors and imposed very severe restrictions on movement, effectively putting 50 or 60 million (or more) people on quarantine in late January. The result of this was that, over the next couple of months, the spread of the disease was slowed and then effectively quelled within China. However, in the meantime, the disease had begun to spread quickly and extensively outside the country. 

Let’s jump to Italy, which first reported a case of what is now called Covid-19 (or sometimes referred to as SARS-2 Cov 19) in late February. The initial response was denial. Then there was a limited lockdown in the north and east of the country. Not being fools, many Italians fled south while they could, unwittingly carrying the disease with them. The final step was the first complete national lockdown, on March 8, but it was too late and the disease rapidly overwhelmed the medical system. Italy still has the highest number of deaths reported.

Contrast this to the island nation of Taiwan, just 100 miles off the coast of mainland China. Before the appearance of the virus, there were regular daily flights to China, including to Wuhan. When reports of a new and potentially dangerous coronavirus became known to the Taiwanese government, their plans for dealing with such an outbreak were quickly ramped up. Flights to and from China, and especially to the area around Wuhan, were suspended, production of protective equipment was ramped up, procedures were put into place to distribute needed supplies along with controls to prevent hoarding and to make sure every citizen of this nation of over 50 million would be protected as much as possible. As a result, the country has reported 10,300 cases and only 230 deaths from Covid-19 disease. Objectivity in making the decisions and commitment to the goal of nearly eliminating the disease characterized the response.

The pandemic is now in full swing and governments seem to have recognized a need to concentrate on, first, bringing the pandemic to an end and, second, limiting a total economic disaster, resulting from a market meltdown and massive job and subsequent income losses, from doing long-term harm to the societies. The responses to those twin needs have been varied.

There has been much analysis of the response here in the United States and in other regions of the world. I have neither need nor desire to go into the sequence of events and the decisions made by any administration (other than my examples above, which are intended as illustrations only), but the following are some of my thoughts on how Solution-Building could have been applied to beneficial effect. My comments will not be specific to any one country’s response or timeline since my purpose is not to blame but to offer suggestions for what could have been done and perhaps be considered for the future. It should be noted that a widespread epidemic, which could also be a pandemic, will happen again; how soon is not predictable. 

Let’s start with cover-up and denial. These actually violate the principles of commitment, objectivity and even courtesy, which I have been discussing. 

Cover-ups simply do not work. When people begin to see possible problems, as was the case with this new virus, they will make an effort to get the word out. A simple fact of life is that in a world linked so thoroughly by the Internet and especially social media, covering up something, anything, is generally not possible. As examples, consider the videos sent via social media during the “Arab Spring,” and the photos of a lone man standing in front of a tank in Beijing. Even before the Internet and 21^st Century telecommunications, it was nearly impossible to suppress information. The Hungarian Uprising of 1956, and its brutal suppression, is a good example from a pre-Internet era.

Denial was discussed previously, but denial rarely works either. In the case of a virus, which has no agenda other than its own replication, denial will backfire when the organism ignores borders and spreads, as, by the way, they always do. Denial in the face of reality is a form of lying, and people remember the lies far more clearly, and much longer, than the number of times truth has been told, even when the propaganda apparatus tries to change the story. 

Here is where a calm and objective look at the situation was needed, along with a consideration of the negative consequences of trying to cover up events. 

The Solution-Building Guidelines related to objectivity are: no personal agendas, being ready and willing to participate, leaving ego out of the process, being willing to let go of idea ownership to find the best solution, and being committed to getting to an agreed decision rather than your own “right” one. These are, from the last entry, Guidelines 2, 5, 6. 7, and 8. 

One unfortunate aspect of the denial approach to the pandemic has been the marginalizing and even attacking the science behind, and likely danger of, this virus. While the medical/scientific community was warning that in many ways, this virus that not behave like other members of the coronavirus family and that we did not yet know how it spread or its “true” potential for mortality, we heard from sources in governments and media that “it is just like the flu.” Cautions from the medical community that it was not were ignored or ridiculed. This is yet another aspect of loss of objectivity as well as the ego-based claims that those ignoring and pushing against the scientific data knew more about this newly-discovered virus than experts with decades of experience in infectious disease.

For those in leadership positions, as well as others in positions to influence thinking, whether in business, politics, religion, the media, or family life, denial and cover-ups are poor decisions. In the context of the current pandemic, had the principles of Solution-Building been applied, and had the decision-making apparatus looked objectively at the situation, taking into consideration the factors above, the spread may have been much more severely limited and other nations could have been better prepared for dealing with it. 

Complacency, another blindfold that limits objectivity, was also a factor in the way many countries outside the East Asian region reacted. There seems to have been a feeling that it was another false alarm like SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) and MERS (Middle East respiratory syndrome), and H1N1 flu, which caused a lot of alarm in recent years and did result in a number of deaths in Asia and the Middle East but did not have the spread or number of cases, or mortality, that were predicted for them. In a sort of little-boy-who-cried-wolf reaction, the possibility that this new coronavirus could be the pandemic that many in the medical community feared was ignored or even dismissed despite the rising case numbers and, more importantly, deaths, as well as the rapid spread to the rest of the world. This complacency also could have been responsible for the erosion of the infrastructure for dealing with a pandemic in some countries. This, in turn, made a quick response harder to manage.

Personal and political agendas can be seen in the unwillingness to consider difficult decisions that could put the decision-makers’ political positions at risk. What were those difficult decisions? They were to either close down huge parts of national economies, through lockdowns or other severe restrictions on movement or group activities, or allow people to sicken and not be able to work and even possibly die in large numbers, which would eventually, of course, also do significant harm to economies. To put it starkly, they had a choice between an immediate serious blow to their economies or taking the chance of significant spread of the disease and the possibility of unacceptable mortality, similar perhaps to that of the 1918 flu epidemic, which resulted in up to 100 million deaths worldwide (by current estimates). 

Of course, neither of these is attractive, and here is where clear, rational, calm, informed and objective thinking and decision-making is critical. Here is where different ideas, ideas that would not even be considered normally, are needed. We have seen some creative actions taken by countries like Denmark and the UK, where the governments have pledged to provide between 75% and 90% of the salaries (with some limits, of course) of employees who would otherwise be laid off, in order to make it possible for them to live and pay for necessities like housing and food, and which also can keep other businesses in operation. Spain recently announced that it was going to institute a program of Basic Universal Income for its citizens. 

The US still resists national lockdown approaches but under its Federal/State structure, most state, and many local, leaders have imposed some measures of restrictions on gatherings and movement. The Federal government has instituted several programs to provide support for businesses and individuals to reduce the economic impact of forced business closures and other disruptions. 

These programs in the various countries discussed above would have been considered unthinkable a few months ago. But they result from a commitment to the twin needs of ending the pandemic, and the associated morbidity and mortality, and at the same time providing sufficient support in maintaining economies through the pandemic so that when it ends those economies are able to be more easily resurrected. The principle of courtesy is also being seen in some countries by the governments communicating honestly with their citizens about the decisions made and the impact they will have both in the short run and long-term. It is critical that those asked to deal with those decisions understand their need and value and are encouraged to fully support them.

That commitment, along with the objective evaluation of ideas, no matter how unusual they may be, is what is needed in this time. Part of the commitment is that when ideas that are unusual, even radical, are determined to be needed and are adopted, there is full support from all concerned so that they may be given the chance to prove themselves. Some governments are doing a better job of this than others. 

It is my belief that the principles and Guidelines of Solution-Building™ provide the necessary framework for making the decisions needed in complex times such as we currently are experiencing. 

We will get back to discussing the implementation of the Guidelines of Solution-Building. But I will reserve the right to swerve back to current events, and how this process could help make more effective solutions as the situation changes.