The McNamara Fallacy

The McNamara Fallacy says this:

The first step is to measure what can easily be measured. This is OK as far as it goes. The second step is to disregard that which can't easily be measured or give it an arbitrary quantitative value. This is artificial and misleading. The third step is to presume that which can't be measured easily really isn't important. This is blindness. The fourth step is to say that what can't be easily measured really does not exist. This is suicide.

I can think of lots of places where this applies, but the first one that came to mind was science's disregard for subjective experience.

What to do, what to do...

I recently attended a Day of Practice devoted to “Right Livelihood” at my meditation center. It consisted of a mix of teachings, group discussions, one-on-one dialogue, and sitting meditation. About 50 people showed up, most of them over age 35. (Livelihood is a foundational teaching in Buddhism—one step of the eightfold path. So people work on it all their lives).

Let me first note the meaning of the word "right." It is easy in Western culture to think of something moralistic – "right" vs "wrong." In fact, the original word (samma) should be translated more with the sense of "appropriate," as in having the right tool for a task. Sometimes it is translated as "wise," but I rather like the ring of "right." It reminds me of that feeling when things just flow appropriately, and the world is all right.

So what is Right Livelihood? There are two aspects: The "what" and the "how." We devoted some time to exploring each one.

What

What should we do in the world? In our society, this can be a big source of stress. Many of us have a lot of options. This simply was not true long ago, when people were born into their jobs: Farmer, blacksmith, merchant. You did what your family did. So one part of the stress is just figuring out what to do.

A subsidiary stress here is that not any "what" is appropriate. There are some jobs that cannot serve the world or the job holder: Things like dealing in weapons, dealing in humans (slavery, prostitution), and dealing in drugs or poisons. But every job seems to cause some harm somewhere in our modern, interconnected world. We must all come to terms with the fact that our livelihood cannot be totally pure.

Another source of stress is the idea — very common in America — that we all have just one "calling" that we are supposed to "find" and then devote our lives wholeheartedly to. When we find that perfect thing, work will be easy, joyous, and tireless. For some people, this indeed happens, and they blossom forth. But for most people, the path is less clear. For us, the image of a "calling" can be a burden, and we must be careful not to get caught up in it.

What is the "right job" for us is not a single thing. And it can change over time! I am certainly an example of someone who makes large career alterations (I am on #3). I am just coming to realize and fully own the fact that this may be my pattern of working in the world.

How

Although "what" is an important question to ask, "how" is ultimately the deeper issue. How do we want to be when we are at work? Do we want to be surly, cynical, hyperactive, conniving, kind, calm...? There are many ways to do any task, and we have a choice.

Looking deeper than just what we doing also allows us to transform work into a learning experience. Instead of just focusing on the task itself, we can start to ask, "How can I do this in a way that fosters new skills, builds relationships, or develops wisdom?" I find it useful to think about what a given task is teaching me: Am I discovering that I’m impatient with repetitive tasks? If so, how can I relate to that impatience? I could fall into it, getting more and more annoyed with the dullness of data entry. Or I could find ways to introduce more variety and challenge for myself. Or I could just sit back and observe what impatience feels like.

Intentions become important. We can intend to have collegial relations with all our coworkers. Or we can intend to "get ahead" in the organization. Or we can intend to get the work done as efficiently as possible in order to get home early to see our family (or watch TV, or work on our first novel).

Some people discover that the "how" is so interesting and important to them that the "what" becomes less relevant: Any decent kind of work will do. I have a streak of this in me. I have to say that tutoring high school students is just as fascinating (and challenging!) as market analysis and physics research. And it is teaching me some new things that I wouldn’t have encountered in those other jobs. I am starting to sense that when I get that "wandering feeling" — the one that led me to BGI — it might be because I am ready to learn something new, and I have to get to the right place to learn it.

There is a Zen saying: When the student is ready, the teacher appears. I think our jobs are one form the teacher takes.

Another one!

Colorado State University just started up a Master's program in Global Social and Sustainable Enterprise through its College of Business. The director, Paul Hudnut, has been visiting BGI extensively over the past year, observing what we do and figuring out how to create something that works for CSU. Huzzah for the launch of this program! We've had visitors from several other schools recently too-- it seems many folks want to try their hand at programs like this.

It's not competition-- it's all good work.

Regime change begins at home

From Zen priest Jan Chozen Bays:

I've noticed that it's a lot easier to fume about a distant war than to call a person we've hurt and apologize.

Well worth pondering (or better yet, pick up that phone).

A Fine Price

Here is an interesting study about valuation: A Fine is a Price by Gneezy and Rustichini.

Suppose you are the manager of a day-care center for young children. The center is scheduled to operate every day until four in the afternoon, when the parents are supposed to come and collect their children. Quite frequently, however, parents arrive late, and force you to stay after working hours. You have considered a few alternatives in order to reduce the frequency of this behavior. A natural option is to introduce a fine: every time a parent comes late, she will have to pay a fine. Will that reduce the number of parents who come late? The prediction that it will seems extremely plausible.

So they tried it. But it didn't happen that way. In fact, introducing the fine increased lateness. Moreover, subsequently removing the fine left lateness at the increased level!

What happened?

Placing a value on lateness in the form of a fine made parents feel that they were in a market relationship with the daycare staff -- lateness became something they could buy. Removing the fine didn't change this perception; it simply lowered the price of lateness to zero. So the behavior persisted.

This study is intriguing to me because there is much talk about trying to place a monetary value on aspects of the environment, or even social factors. For instance, we might try to say how much (in dollars) it actually costs to use water, air, or soil that have generally been regarded as free. We might even give Nature some of her own capital, deciding how much processes like nitrogen fixation or atmospheric turnover are "worth." Companies would then have to "buy" these services from Nature as part of their operating expenses. And perhaps this notion could even be extended to a valuation of (say) a pleasant office ambience -- wouldn't it be nice to reward companies that have clean, spacious offices for the benefits they offer employees in terms of peace of mind (compared to companies with cramped, dingy cubicles)? Currently, we have no way of valuing these "soft" things, so they are simply unaccounted for and hence ignored in most corporate economic decisions.

And yet, the daycare study may give us pause. Will valuing these items suddenly place them in a market setting, making them things that can be bought and sold callously like inanimate raw materials? Come to think of it, it's way too late for the case of people's labor -- we have already valued that through the salary/wage that people earn, making employees effectively things to be bought and sold. Many of us are familiar with the feeling of being treated like just another cog in the wheel.

I don't have a quick answer or fully-developed opinion about whether and how these social and environmental factors might be given a price, and hence placed within the usual terrain of capitalism. Instead, I'd like to offer another idea that has come to mind, and which I haven't seen discussed explicitly.

That is the idea that placing a value on previously invaluable items like ecosystems and friendly office atmospheres might actually be uncomfortable because it challenges our belief in the solidity of the economic system. What if deciding that nitrogen fixation is worth $1 billion/year is ridiculous not because it denigrates nitrogen fixation, but because it exposes the essentially arbitrary nature of economic valuation? Perhaps we are treading a little too close to the curtain, behind which is the very human Wizard of Capitalism.

The economy is not real in a fundamental sense. It exists because we all create it together, every day. Why is milk worth $2/gallon? For no reason other than that, somehow, we have decided that it is. We have to be very careful with the language here. There is no central committee "deciding" things in a market. And neither is this an excuse to blame individual people for their own economic plight (poor people can't afford milk? Well, why are they agreeing to pay $2/gallon?). The tricky thing here is that there is no decision-maker, and yet decisions are being made. The web has no weaver, but we are quite certainly "doing the web". All of us, whether we know it or not.

Adam Smith first glimpsed this in his notion of "the invisible hand," but later economists have delved much more deeply, given the reality that economic systems are invariably tied to political systems. I cannot summarize all of that here.

What I can say is that beginning to consider the economic valuation of things like Nature, trust, and goodwill will actually feed back to alter economics itself. We will be forced to think about aspects of the economy that we had the luxury of ignoring previously, when things were more neatly compartmentalized. As is happening in other fields of study, we will see a breakdown of barriers between disciplines and a reorganization of mental models. The effects are anyone's guess, however.

Gifts

I've been away on silent meditation retreat for 7 days. It's a lovely way to start the new year-- with reflection on the past combined with wise intentions for the future. This is a season of giving, well-wishing, and rest; it's important not to forget that amidst the occasional chaos and overindulgence.

There have been many wonderful gifts. Here are two. First, my parents donated a goat in my name through an organization called Heifer International. Heifer helps familes all over the world overcome poverty through community-building programs and donations of livestock. One of the best parts of the approach is that offspring of those livestock are passed on to other needy families so that those who have been helped have the opportunity to help others directly themselves. This may be my favorite Christmas gift ever.

Second, I was the "work retreatant" at the retreat I went on, which means I did several hours of work in the kitchen each day as part of the retreat experience, in lieu of the registration fee. In a way, this is a gift from the retreat center to allow people to attend if they cannot afford to otherwise. My finances are somewhat tight right now so this made sense financially, but in the process I discovered that work retreat is much more than that. It was also a way for me to give service to the other retreatants and the teachers. And it enhanced my meditation in very meaningful ways.

It's also just an amazing experience to work in a large-scale kitchen. We were cooking for a bit more than 100 people, three meals a day! The processes in place for making all of that happen smoothly are a business school student's dream, and are actually fun to participate in. It's a big dance. The goal is to watch your own feet, fall into the flow, and smile at your partners. Then the food, utensils, dishes, clean-up, and everything else happens on its own. Voila!

One teacher pointed out to me that this is actually much closer to the true monastic experience. Sitting all the time isn't terribly natural, except perhaps during Rains Retreat. Mostly monks and nuns are working to keep the monastery functioning-- cooking, cleaning, mending, building, gardening, setting things up, talking to visitors, etc. Of course they meditate a lot too, but it's still living life, not sitting around like a chicken. I was pleased to get a taste of it.

May this new year bring good health, good friends, and good living. What are your intentions at this time?