By: Douglas J Utberg

There are many times in business and life where problems are approached in an ‘inside out’ fashion.  This phenomenon is known as “A solution looking for a problem” and frequently manifests itself in a situation where key decision makers use any problem that comes by as an excuse to implement their personal agenda.  In most cases, this personal agenda has nothing to do with the problem that it is being proposed to solve.

This behavior pattern is particularly dangerous in regards to government activities, since the knee-jerk response to almost any difficulty is to increase the power and scope of government.  It should be of no surprise that the people who are in charge of government happen to benefit handsomely when government becomes more powerful.  This generates a perpetual wheel of ‘solutions’ that are seeking problems . . . even though the proposed solutions frequently fail to tangibly accomplish anything outside of making the politicians who write the laws more powerful.

And in a strange twist of irony, this sentiment is also held by many people whose minds are continually dominated by thoughts of conspiracy.  It is no coincidence that all events (regardless of what they happen to be) are taken as evidence of a conspiracy to the hardened disciple of such theories.

This behavior is also known as the ‘confirmation bias’ and results when a person approaches situations looking for a specific answer to confirm a belief or hypothesis.  This will frequently compel people to only accept information that supports their belief and disregard any information that contradicts it.  This phenomenon tends to create ever increasing amounts of polarization as all people become increasingly convinced that they are absolutely right and everybody who disagrees with them is absolutely wrong.

In all situations, it is critically important to understand that we do not necessarily know the answer to a problem before it is presented.  It is not easy to separate out personal feelings from our observations, but failure to do so will never fail to enslave people by their opinions.  We cannot expect to see the real world if we refuse to admit that our own opinions may be wrong.  We cannot apply one-size-fits-all solutions and expect to achieve anything better than failure.  Success requires solutions of a higher quality.