Nucor and Advocacy

On page A13 of today’s New York Times, the steel company Nucor has placed an ad under the banner - - “What’s good for America?” Nucor answers their question with “Jobs.” Nucor writes the following in the ad - -

“Rising out of the Great Recession means creating jobs - - more than 25 million over the next three to five years - - to account for the millions of Americans currently without work, as well as for those young Americans soon entering the workforce. What’s more, we need quality jobs that will support a family.

Without creating these jobs, any recovery will be unsustainable. To create jobs we need policies that will address our trade deficit, cut our national debt, move us towards energy independence and rebuild our infrastructure. These changes will create sustainable, long-term growth that will be good for America.

And what’s good for America is good for Nucor.”

Nucor has identified specific outcomes that we can all share. From job growth to debt reduction to investing in our troubled public infrastructure - - all of these goals address a future represented by an improved version of the past. The ad is representative of a similar and united voice that most of our country shares - - GE, Boeing, Ford, and many others could run the exact same ad with an organizational name change.

We can all agree on the desired outcomes - - what is truly missing and clearly needed is the specific details on the decision making process. Most of the goals Nucor has identified make up our current “National Paradox” - - cutting deficits while investing in public infrastructure, reducing our trade deficit with other nations of the world while utilizing the world as our banker, calling for energy independence as we ban drilling in the Gulf of Mexico - - our national goal of sustainable job growth wrapped in a box of contradiction and incongruity. The need to invest, save, and spend all at the same time during the paradoxical era - - an era marked also by a sickness associated with modern democracy: the current system cannot impose any short-term pain for long-term gain.

Our “National Paradox” is extremely time dependent - - we are running out of time in a world where the future always arrives too fast - - and in the wrong order. Running ads may be an appropriate first step - - however, what is truly needed are not additional ads but greater advocacy. Honest public and corporate debates that address specific ideas and recommendations. What specifically is Nucor an advocate for in the context of increasing spending on our public infrastructure? Is Nucor an advocate for eliminating the Department of Education? What about raising taxes 30%? Maybe reducing Social Security benefits by 30%? The ad presents no specifics, no points of advocacy, no voice that declares we must change, a call that we must do something different, or declarations stating we must do something better. The central and hidden theme of our “National Paradox” is the need for rapid change - - individual and societal change over a broad spectrum of America’s political, economic, social, and cultural linkages.

Advocacy needs to be about change and the specifics of change with the understanding that people do not change when we tell them they should - - they change when they tell themselves they must. Whatever we are advocates for - - the language and context needs to be in terms of must versus should. The language of the Congressional Budget Office is one of warning - - from interest payments on public debt jumping from 1% of GDP to 4% of GDP by 2035 to Medicare doubling as a percentage of GDP by 2035, equivalent to $700 billion of additional spending in current dollars. What is truly missing is effective public and private sector leadership that translates warnings and the requirement for change with an advocacy for specific ideas, recommendations, and a common path to the future.

Engineering Artistry

The world of the engineer consists of that which is relatively measurable and that which is relatively un-measurable. One part requires a quantitative approach that entails making measurement using well-defined tools. At the other end of the spectrum, our sensory system is the primary source through which the qualitative environment is experienced. Qualitative relationships result in qualities like coherence, harmony and expressivity - - none of which the engineer can measure. This world of experiencing qualitative relationships and making judgments; recognition that form and context are usually inextricable; and understanding that not everything knowable can be articulated in propositional form - - is the intersecting world of engineering and the Arts.

Engineering and art both have paths where paying attention to qualities is a mode of thought that can be applied to all things made. From how a story is composed in the context of the language arts, to the degree of wetness of the paper when painting with watercolors, to the complexity of designing a bridge - - all three forms of making something profit from attention to the way the elements are configured.

Consider the case of watercolor painting. From paper, brush, and paint - - the variables are so numerous and complex. There are no formulas to employ that will guarantee a rightness of fit - - success is a function of immersed engagement. As with painting, the trained engineer becomes increasingly competent with his or her ability to deal effectively with multiple demands simultaneously. In learning to engage in painting or engineering - - perception is refined, imagination stimulated, judgment is fostered and technical skills are developed. For those who work hard enough, artistry can be achieved.

In many respects, engineering is closer to the Arts than say mathematics. Both the Arts and engineering must deal with the fact that very often there is more than one answer to a question and more than one solution to a problem. This is far different from the world of mathematics with a focus on converging on a single, quantifiably-correct answer. Another lesson from the Arts is understanding that the way something is formed matters. The Apple iPod is a great example of where getting it right means creating a form whose content is right for some purpose. During your next presentation, remember the lesson that actors and performance artists have learned. What is said cannot be neatly separated from how something is said - - form and content interpenetrate.

In engineering, like art, it is important to understand that seeing is an achievement, not merely a task. Both endeavors need individuals willing to embrace the idea that to really see is to accomplish something. Seeing in the context of engineering is not separate from cognition - - it is part of what one becomes cognizant of, and the goal is to develop your sensibilities in a given domain to enable you to see what might otherwise go unseen. That is the why the great engineering connoisseurs of our times can walk into a building, or look inside a computer, or fly an airplane and see things that many of us would miss.

The Engineer as Ethnographer

The engineer as designer has three important tools. These three tools are especially important in a world that substantially favors reliability over validity, consistency over innovation. The engineer as designer and symbol of design thinking lives to advance knowledge - - it is a core drive, a source of pride and happiness. The design thinker seeks a balance to the issues of validity and reliability - - the designer understands that one without the other does not make a sustainably advantaged enterprise.

The first tool of the engineer as design thinker is observation. Observation that is deep, careful, and open-minded. They see the grays in a black and white world - - the new insights that will enable them to push knowledge forward. Their sense of sight and hearing is greater than most - - they must be able to see things that others don’t with an optimal combination of careful watching and listening. The engineer as anthropologist skilled in ethnography - - the ability to walk into a new society and culture and listen, see, and learn. Where learning is deep and user-centered with the goal to understand your customers, thinking carefully about the kind of data you want and how best to get it.

The second tool is imagination. One would assume this is a natural ingredient in the engineering recipe. Part of a natural ability versus something in the toolbox. In many engineers, imagination is underdeveloped. Engineers that favor deductive and inductive logic versus the world of imaginative abductive reasoning. These are engineers comfortable with the experience, through observation, of embracing data that is neither consistent with nor explained by the current models. When faced with that data, the abductive design thinkers must make an inference to an explanation. It is an inference and testing loop - - it is a guess that constitutes the best explanation one can devise given the data, which is insufficient to yield a statistically significant finding.

The third tool is configuration - - observation and imagination must be translated into an activity system that will produce the business outcome. There needs to be a meaningful payoff. The design thinkers and managers need to ask how insight and new solutions fit into the larger schemed of a business enterprise.

"A Widespread Yearning for Significance"

Nancy Adler writes the Point of View column for the business journal Rotman. Her Spring 2010 column is entitled The Art of Leadership. The article focuses on a 21st century society yearning for the leadership of possibility - - a leadership based more on hope, aspiration and innovation than on the replication of historical patterns.

She writes the following:

Following a century focused on the efficiencies gained through mechanistic and reductionist techniques, we yearn today for wholeness and meaning. To paraphrase Simon Fraser University Professor Rosalie Tung from her recent Academy of Management presidential address, "What we need is not an economy of hands or heads, but an economy of hearts. Every employee should feel that he or she is contributing to something that will make a genuine and positive difference in the lives of customers and colleagues. For too many employees, the return on emotional equity is close to zero. They have nothing to commit to other that the success of their own career."

Why is it that the very essence of our humanity - - our desire to reach beyond ourselves, to touch others, to do something that matters and leave the world just a little better - - is so often denied at work? To succeed in our current environment, firms must give their members a reason to bring all of their humanity to work.

The Fluids Index

From the May 2010 issue of British Wired - - a ranking of the most expensive liquids in British Pounds per liter:

• Human semen (spot market per fertility clinics) - - 44,000
• Swine flu vaccine (Pandemrix) - - 12,000
• Scent of Eros "pheromone" cologne -- 3,198
• Domaine de la Pomanee-Conti 1997 red wine - - 1,310
• Channel No. 5 eau de parfum - - 1,020.00
• Hewlett-Packard black ink - - 952.40
• Human blood (UK price of collection and processing) - - 295.60
• Comvita Manuka honey (UMF 25+) - - 160.00
• Absolut vodka - - 22.97
• La Vieille Bon-Sencours Belgian beer - - 16.00
• Berg water (bottled iceberg melt) - - 6.20
• Starbucks cappuccino - - 5.80
• Red Bull - - 4.40
• Diesel (February average on UK forecourts) - - 1.10
• Crude oil - - 0.30

Deadly Sins of Modernity

From Gandhi (1950) - - the seven deadly sins of modernity;

1. Wealth without work
2. Pleasure without conscience
3. Knowledge without character
4. Business without morality
5. Science without humanity
6. Worship without sacrifice
7. Politics without principle

The Wicked

The graveyards of the world are full of indispensable people. General McChrystal probably learned that fact yesterday morning. In his place, General Petraeus faces a daunting task for a monumentally complex problem in Afghanistan. In this case, complex is the wrong word. Wicked is more appropriate. Wicked problems aren't merely harder or more complex than hard problems. They don't just involve more factors or stakeholders. They don't just take us longer to solve. Analytical thinking alone, no matter how skillfully applied, is not going to generate an answer to a wicked problem.

The term "Wicked Problem" comes from Horst Rittel in a 1968 article in Management Science. Wicked problems are " . . . problems which are ill-formulated, where the information is confusing, where there are many clients and decision makers with conflicting values, and where the ramifications in the whole system are thoroughly confusing." They show up in our social systems, economics, politics, science and engineering - - problems that are ill-defined and unique in their causes, character, and solution.

Think of the following characteristics when examining the wicked world of unique problems:

• The causes of the problems are not just complex but deeply ambiguous: you can't tell why things are happening the way they are and what causes them to do so (finding a cure for Alzheimer's disease).


• The problem doesn't fit neatly into any category you're encountered before; it looks and feels entirely unique, so the problem-solving approaches you've used in the past don't seem to apply (BP's efforts to come up with solutions to plug the leaking oil well).


• Each attempt at devising a solution changes the understanding of the problem; merely attempting to come to a solution changes the problems and how you think about it (developing policies and economic alternatives for combating global climate change).


• There is no clear stopping rule; it is difficult to tell when the problem is "solved" and what that solution might look like when you reach it (what the "end game" looks like with respect to the Afghanistan war).

Engineers are trained for the complex - - look at the situation, identify a set of definite conditions, and calculate a solution. The world of the wicked is entirely different - - the solution can no longer be the only or even the primary focus. The fundamental issue when dealing with wicked problems is a complete understanding of the nature of the problem itself. It is a world in which engineers and policy formulators must thrive on problem setting, at least as much a problem solving.

Petraeus falls into the rare category of indispensable and tackler of wicked problems - - those two attributes go hand in hand.